Six Mysteries in Azurth

While I "built in" some mysterious background elements in the Land of Azurth setting, more have emerged in the year and a half of play. Here are some of the questions the player's have been left to ponder--and possibly follow up on in the future:

1. Who is the man in the metal suit beneath Castle Machina?  The name "Lum" was thrown around, and Mirabilis Lum is said to have disappeared beneath the castle, but is the man in the metal suit him, who was he gaming with, and why does he stay down there?

2. What does Calico Bonny look like? The Queen of the Floating World of Rivertown tends to hide behind a folding screen if she bothers appearing at all. Is there a reason?

3. Who were the builders of the Cloud Castle? The scale of the castle indicates they most have been near giants, though the ancient images suggest they looked something like the Cloud People that live there now. Who were these people with a flare for Googie architecture and mid-Century design and what happened to them?

4. What does the projector do? The Princess Viola says it can open a portal to another world once it is fixed, but what world? And who built it?

5. Where does the magic portal in Mortzengersturm's mansion lead? The frox thief Waylon saw an image of another world: people in unusual clothes in an impressive city, beyond the technology of the Land of Azurth. Where (or when) was this place and why did Mortzengersturm have a portal to it?

6. What was the deal with Mr. Pumpkin and his carnival? Since when can a swarm of rats manage a carnival, and what became of all those rats that got away when the carnival got destroyed? Do these events have anything to do with the giant rats seen later in the beer cellar of the Silver Dragon Tavern in town?

Wednesday Comics: Storm: People of the Desert

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

Storm: The People of the Desert (1979)
(Dutch: Het Volk van de Woestijn; Alternate English title: The People of the Plains)
Art by Don Lawrence & Script by Dick Matena

Storm and Ember stumble through a salt flat desert that was once a sea bottom. Ember soon passes out from heat and exhaustion, but Storm manages to carry her to the shelter of an ancient coral reef. despite an attack by vultures sensing their weakness. Finding shade and fresh water, the two rest until the hear someone:

The oddly white-skinned stranger collapses. They notice he has a red circle on his forehead. They are about to get the man water when:

One of the men fires a gun that places another red disk on the man's forehead. When Storm tries to remove if, he gets a strong shock. The disk seems to place the man under the control of the two strangers. Under their command, he stands then easily overpowers Storm knocking him out with a chop to the neck. Storm and Ember are taken prisoner.

On the March to their camp, one of the men explains what's going on. The United Cities want to colonize the salt desert, so they commissioned "the Prof" to engineer a race of people capable of living and toiling there. This guy and his crew raid the tribes at the edge of the desert to supply test subjects. The place a "hyno" on them to get them under control. He plans to turn Storm over to the Prof and give Ember to "the Boss," who he thinks will like her.

Later, in the raiders' cave base, the Boss, Hanyin¹, is indeed impressed with Ember's beauty; Ember's response to his advances is predictable:

Storm wakes up and manages to get a knife to Hinyan's throat. One of the raider's fires a hypno at Storm, however, and he is quickly under their control. Ember tries to remove it and is shocked to unconsciousness. Hinyan has her thrown in a cell to await his return.  He gets a message the Prof wants to see him.

Hinyan takes a glass tube elevator to the Prof's lab. The Prof's experiments to perfect homo incultus--the desert people--are almost done. He only needs one more batch of test subjects. Hinyan doesn't want it to be the last one; there's still a lot of work to do in the cortite mines. The Prof is adamant, however, He only worked with Hinyan and his crew and put the desert people to mining to fund his research. Now he's close to a solution to the cities' overpopulation.

Hinyan isn't happy about any of this. He takes the elevator to his heli-jet and heads over to the mines. Storm is at work there beside the mind controlled desert people. Hinyan tells his confederate about the Prof's orders. They begin to plot on how to insure the mines stay open--unaware that the Prof has them under surveillance.

TO BE CONTINUED

Notes:
1. "Banjo" in the original Dutch.

Things Are Not Too Sweet on Candy Isle

Our 5e Land of Azurth campaign continues: The party set sail for the Candy Isle, hoping to find Gwendolin Goode and her campanion, the pirate Black Iris. They are accompanied (somewhat reluctantly) by Black Iris's former first-mate, Rarebit Finn. He tells  then he sent Iris and Gwendolin to the Candy Isle by telling them it was the landing site of the Confection Perfection, the candy of the gods said to have fallen from the table of Queen Urania herself.

They find the Candy Isle easy enough, and Black Iris's ship Vixen is anchored in the lagoon. Cog brings his ship through the opening in the rock candy reef and comes along side. The Vixen is abandoned, but for the corpse of a crewman killed by a spear tipped with peanut brittle. Our heroes take the remains launch and go ashore.

The beach is made of luster dust and powdered chocolate. The trees have fronds like fruit leather. Our heroes follow the tracks of humans that seem to be followed by some nonhuman prints. They soon find the jungle holds dangers other than too much sugar: they encounter a giant gummy constrictor, ribbon candy centipedes, and sugar-sucking stirges.

The also find curiously abandon villages and at least one more dead pirate. At the crater, which they presume to be the place where the Confection Perfection fell, they find the body of a red gummy tribesman. When crossing a chocolate stream, they run into a patrol of more such tribesmen armed with peanut brittle-tipped spears, but Kully uses a sleep spell to nullify most of the them.

At the base of the large volcano on the side of the island opposite the lagoon they see an ancient temple made of cyclopean fudge. At its base is a large village--perhaps over a hundred tribesfolk! The group pulls back to consider the best plan of attack as they're convinced Gwendolin is in the temple.

The Historicity of The Witch

I got a chance to check out The Witch this weekend and it was well-worth it. It's a well-executed historical horror film that eschews the jump scares and other tropes of most modern horror in favor of building a sense of dread. (It perhaps resembles in some ways It Follows though in style not content.) Though its a very different film, it would probably make a good double feature with A Field in England.

Anyway, my friend Jack wrote a good review here.

Robert Eggers, the writer-director, emphasized historical accuracy in the film, even down to sampling dialogue from period references (though unfortunately, we do know which specific ones for which piece. Maybe an annotated screenplay will be released?). Here's a post on an early American history blog reviewing the Witch's portrayal of witches compared to period beliefs in the early colonial area.

The New York Public library put together a resource and reading list for the film, including the works Eggers specifically mentions in interviews.

Thedabara the Vampire

Here's an excerpt from the upcoming Mortzengersturm, the Mad Manticore of the Prismatic Peak:

Thedabara, former chanteuse, actress, and member of the undead, is most often found in her chamber beneathed Mortzengersturm's manor reclined on her chaise, reading a book of decadent poetry, with a glass of brandy mixed with blood (her preferred way of taking nourishment, these days) in her pale hand. She has grown old in the way of vampires who do not fight back against the dwindling of unlife with ever-increasing wickedness, and so she spends most of her time in repose and reminiscence. Her wickedness is more the kind of self-absorption seen in fading celebrities, made only a little less tolerable by her tendency to violence and blood-drinking if she is not indulged or accorded the deference she feels is her due.

She drinks blood only once every few weeks and finds hunting a bother. She entertains visitors beyond Mortzengersturm (and he is a less than ideal conversational partner, as he is as much an egotist as she), much less often. She will greet any party cordially, perhaps offering them a drink (not carrying that she has no more than 4 glasses). Then with exaggerated gestures and dramatic diction, she will regale them with stories of her past exploits on the stage—so long as they will sit and listen.
It is certainly possible for a party to take their leave of her, without provoking her to petulant violence, but it will take a great deal of care.

Here's Jason Sholtis's old school stats for Thedabara:
HD 9, hp: 48, AC 2 [17] Attk: bite (1d10+ level drain) Special: change form, summon wolves/bats, charm

Wednesday Comics: Storm

The next installment of Storm will start next week. Today, check out some art from the series:

A peak into "The Green Hell," the volume after next.

A transformed Ember amid weirdness in the volume "The Seven of Aromater."

Taxman

Working on my taxes this weekend made me think of this class Weird Adventures post: "Death & Taxes."

Nobody in my game ever ran afowl of the Taxmen. Maybe next campaign.