Polychrome

Our 5e Land of Azurth campaign continued last night, with the PCs at sea in an automata-rowed vessel on their way to the city of Polychrome in the Motley Isles. Their goal was to find the probably-not-kidnapped Gwendolin Goode. Only a few hours away from their destination, they respond to a flag of distress from an unusual barge:

There are only 4 green-haired women on board the ship, claiming to be future wives on their way to a future husband, a potentate of Zoob. The party is suspicious, and these suspicions turn out to be well-founded as the women are revealed as harpies. A battle ensues, and all the harpies lose their lives. The party cuts off their heads in the hope that this proof of their bloody-handedness will prove their bona fides to the pirates in Polychrome.

After haggling with the harbormaster over docking fees, they make their way to a tavern called the Pale Whale. It turns out that buying a round of drinks for everyone is more impressive than brandishing harpy heads. The barmaid tells them the first mate of the Vixen (Black Iris's ship) happens to be there in the bar.

Art by Yuriy

Kully strikes up a conversation with the half-drunken Hara (Rabbit Folk) named Rarebit Finn. Rarebit reveals he was jealous of the relationship between his captain and "the young land lubber," and angry that she seemed to be influencing the captain to turn from piracy. In anger, he dangled "tales of a trinket" in front of them, so they went out to look for this treasure on the Candy Isle, one of the infamous islands in the Chain of Fools.

Kully is less successful in getting Finn to join them, but the inebriated sea-dog promises to think about it and give answer in the morning. The party goes back to inform Cog and beginning preparing the ship for the journey the soon expect to embark on.

Select Contents of a Wizard's Spice Cabinet

Here's a excerpt from Mortzengersturm, The Mad Manticore of the Prismatic Peak: unusual items found in the wizard's kitchen:

Demonlander ground hellpepper in a smoked glass, stoppered vial. The hottest pepper in the known realms. It has a burnt smell, and even sniffing it will slightly irritate the nose.

Slow thyme sprigs in a lidded wooden vial. Slows (as spell) the person consumes it briefly to enhance the pleasure of a meal. In high doses (like all the sprigs in the container) it can keep a dying person from passing from the mortal plane for 2-12 rounds.

Troglopolitan memory bulbs in a wooden box. Pale yellow fungal bulbs from Subazurth. For most they have a light flavor of nostalgia and evoke a memory of home; for a few, they have the slight, hops-like bitterness of mild regret and bring to mind a thing left long undone.

Baroque Space: Brethren of the Belt

The Brethren of the Belt is the somewhat lofty name the pirates of the asteroids use to describe their outcast society. It suggests a certain honor among these thieves, and those who claim the rights of brotherhood must also adhere to a certain code of conduct: No member may  rob or cheat another, loot must be apportioned by established rules, and no captain may command without being elected by the crew.

Though these buccaneers may range the whole of the known cosmos, they most commonly lying in wait amid the strewn rubble of an ancient world betwixt Mars and Jupiter, destroyed for its iniquity. They harry trade between Earth and Mars and hunt treasure craft going the domain of the King of Jupiter to the inner planets. Their base is the planetoid of Ceres, a barren rock where pirate law is the only law, riddled with crooked tunnels lined with alehouses, inns, and brothels.

At Last! Strange Stars Fate Softcover Available

After a couple of proofs and some corrections (included in the updated pdf) Strange Stars Fate by John Till is finally available at rpgnow/drivethrurpg. Reserve your copy today!

Wednesday Comics: Storm: The Deep World (part 2)

My exploration of the long-running euro-comic Storm, continues. Earlier installments can be found here.

Storm: The Deep World (1978) (Part 2)
Art by Don Lawrence & Script by Saul Dunn

After passing the red-haired woman, Storm is taken to the upper levels of the prison where strangely Ghast appears to have his throne room. He allows Storm to test his strength against him; Storm is no match.

Ghast has no idea what an ocean is and quickly tires of Storm asking about it. He crushes Storm's space helmet in his bare hands to show how little he's concerned with Storm's questions. He's got questions of his own:

Ghast is not pleased with that response and Storm ends up in the lowest level of the dungeon with no food or water--but he does have the red-head he saw before as a companion. She's mistrustful, thinking he might be a spy for Ghast, and doesn't believe his story about oceans and other worlds, either. Her name is Carrots, and she comes from the lands beyond the Wall that Ghast is so eager to know about. Eventually, she decides to trust him so they can both escape.

They don't have to wait long for a chance. A thin, reed whistle sounds from outside and Carrots responds with a whistle. She says it's "Kiley."

That night, Kiley pulls the bars out of the window with a rope and Carrots and Storm escape, though Ghast's men aren't far behind. Kiley stays behind to hold them off, sending the other two on to "the Dive": a tavern where others of Carrots people are waiting.

Storm is greeted with mistrust, but Kiley arrives and tells them he has gotten reports of a machine (Storm's spacecraft) and knows Storm is the man that arrived in it. Carrots is still skeptical the machine can fly, but they agree to accept his help against Ghast.

The escape route for Carrots, Kiley, and Storm is via an underground river. They swim to room that acts as an airlock. Storm is surprised to learn that they have electricity; Kiley explains that they are more advanced than Ghast's city. He leads them to a waiting craft:

Unfortunately, Ghast and his men have found the dive and the trapdoor. They make it to the railway, but most of Ghast's men perish in the explosion caused by the control panel Kiley boobytrapped. Ghast survives, though, and finds a hand cart to continue the pursuit. Then:

Spider-bats!

TO BE CONTINUED

SWN World Tags in Strange Stars

Stars Without Number has an interesting way of presenting world information by use of  "tags." Many of these takes are familiar science fiction tropes/elements and work fine in Strange Stars, but some are more specific to the Stars Without Number setting and are based on different assumptions. Here's a list of those that don't really work with Strange Stars and in some cases how they can be tweaked to fit:

Alien Ruins: These could be alien, but are just likely to be ancient ruins from the time of the Archaic Oikumene or before.

Altered Humanity: Much less notable in Strange Stars than in the standard standard SWN, but it is still usable for more extreme cases.

Eugenic Cults: The rough equivalent of these can be found in the Strange Stars, but given the commonness of genetic modification, the “eugenics” element is less important than the “cult” part.

Exchange Consult: This organization doesn’t really have an equivalent.

Forbidden Tech: Much of the technology considered forbidden in the standard setting of SWN is common in the Strange Stars, so the use of this tag would be limited.

Perimeter Agency: In Strange Stars, the equivalent of this group might be Luddite or anti-technology fanatics/cultists.

Preceptor Archive: These would be replaced with troves of data or technology from earlier time periods, mostly the Archaic Oikumene, but possibly the Radiant Polity. The Library of Atoz-Theln would have the suitably modified version of this tag.

Pretech Cultists: Like the eugenic cultists above, the focus should be on the odd use of a technology rather than its mere existence.

Primitive Aliens: Probably just “primitives” of a nonbaseline or exotic biotype, rather than actual xenosophonts.

Unbraked AI: This would instead be a “Tyranny” that just happened to have an infosophont tyrant.

Xenophiles/Xenophobes: Again, read “alien” simply as an “exotic clade.”

Grit & Vigor

I sometimes think John M, Stater is the hardest working man in DIY gaming (and that's saying something). He turns out game after solid game--not just adventures or settings but--games. And those are just the ones in print. His latest is Grit & Vigor, which is a pulp adventure adaptation of his Blood & Treasure (read Chris's review here) which is either a distillation of 3e-ish D&D to an old school level of complexity or a rebuild of old school D&D with some modern features, depending on how you look it at.

Unlike post pulp games which plant their flag squarely in the Depression era 1930s, Grit & Vigor seems a bit more informed by the early pulp and the end dime novel era that prefigured it: something like 1890-1920s. This is not to same G&V doesn't cover the classic pulp era--it does--but most of its illustration and sample NPCs harken this this early era. (For a good retrospective of the pulps of this time, you could do worse--and likely no better--than Robert Sampson's multi-volume Yesterday's Heroes.) Stater mentions expanses later covering some of periods the stories in those pulps take place including the Golden Age of Piracy and the Furture--and given his track record, I expect he'll deliver.

All the usual bases of classes are cover for the era, though magical (or occult ones) are left to an appendix so you can tailor the level of fantastic you want in your game. Feats providing for the larger than life nature of the pulp heroes are likewise a part of the game. There's even a section on Wonder Dogs! NPCs include Nellie Bly, Sherlock Holmes, Bertie Wooster, and Aleister Crowley.

So if pulp or adventure gaming interests you particularly with a familiar D&D-ish backbone, Grit & Vigor is well worth checking out.