Azurthite Bestiary: The Arthropods from Nowhere

There is a place that the inhabitants call Zrgztl, but you might as well call it Nowhere because it's here and not here all at the same time. Its inhabitants live out of the phase with the world we know and only seldom interact with it. They are as smart as any normal folk--perhaps a little smarter--in Nowhere, but like a fish's gills don't work so well in the air, the Nowhere creatures' brains can't fully turn the corner to Earth and they become rather stupid here.

They're mean where ever they are.

The arthopods of Nowhere have strangely human-like faces, but they always look angry, like an irate schoolmaster. Even when they are in our world, they are only half here. Their forms are shimmery as heat haze. Their shadows seem more solid; They look like very flat mirrors or thin pools of mercury. The arthopods are always after something, but often they can't remember what it is.

Stats: Use the stats for the Phase Spider.

Sir Clangor's Character Sheet

Last week, showed off a couple of portraits for the pregens for my Mortzengersturm, the Mad Manticore of the Prismatic Peak game at NTRPGCon. Here's the character sheet for the first one--at least the front side:

Superman v. Batman is Just Ok, But It Made Me Hopeful for Justice League

I saw Superman vs. Batman: Dawn of Justice last night, and while I don't agree with the degree of negativity in a large portion of the reviews (some of which I suspect were at least partially composed before the movie even came out, given the hate it got and Zack Snyder gets in some quarters), a lot of the specific criticisms aren't without merit. The movie tries to do a lot and at times making this particular movie good in this particular moment seems to take a backseat to setting the dominoes in place for later scenes or future films.

The good: It's generally shot well and well-acted. Ben Affleck is both a good Bruce Wayne and a good Batman. The fight scenes in general are good, but particularly in the area of "Batman vs. normal folks" which have suffered in previous Bat films. Amy Adams as Lois Lane (though she doesn't have as much to do as I would like). Lawrence Fishburne as Perry White. The rationale and structure for how the Justice League sequels are established. The fact that Gotham and Metropolis are across a bay from each other (as suggested by numerous Silver and Bronze Age comics). The result of the battle with Doomsday (which I would not have done but is an interesting way to move forward). And Wonder Woman--pretty much everything to do with her:

The not good: The choppy nature of the first half of the film; I realize "show don't tell," but showing too much makes your film a series of vignettes. Some of that could have been handled as exposition. Batman is far from the world's greatest detective here. Luthor has a nicely set up super-villain ridiculous plan (I mean that to be complimentary) in many ways, but his final push that makes Batman go into a reason-abandoning, anti-Superman frenzy is elementary school level subterfuge. Superman standing or floating majestically instead of--well, doing something--too many times; I realize less-active-Superman is a tactic other media has often engaged in to deal with his power level (even in the DC animated stuff, Superman moves awful slooowwww at times for a guy with super-speed and super-reflexes), but it just makes you mad at him. Here his passive broodiness is suppose to convey emotional conflictedness (I guess), but they didn't sell you on that with dialogue. Lex is sometimes perfect in his manic-ness and other times overdone; my biggest complaint regarding him is that no one in story comments on his clearly mentally ill behavior until he reveals his villainous plan.

Pregen PC Portraits

My con game of Mortzengersturm, The Mad Manticore of the Prismatic Peak (and the published adventure after all) will have pregenerated characters. The awesome Jeff Call has been working on portraits to bring the particular character of the Land of Azurth to them. Here are the first two:

SIR CLANGOR, 

A Knight of the old and famed Order of the Pennon Or.

His blazon is: Or, a chess knight sable.

Fighter (War Master)

MOONFLOWER, 

Wood Elf of the Aldwode

She is reputed to have once killed an Ogre with attitude alone.

Ranger

Wednesday Comics: Storm: The Green Hell

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

Storm: The Green Hell (1980)
(Dutch: De Groene Hel)
Art by Don Lawrence & Script by Dick Matena

Storm and Ember fly over the thick jungles of what used to South America in the aero-transport, looking for a place to land so they can find water and food. Suddenly, they are attacked by large vultures looking for a meal. Storm is knocked from the craft.

The birds keep chasing Ember, but she manages to find an opening in the thick canopy and dives down. She looses the birds, but also control of the craft. She jumps free before it crashes into a cliff-side. She falls through the canopy, bouncing off vines and branches until she lands, dazed by relatively unharmed on the mossy floor. She isn't alone:

Meters away, Storm is hanging unconscious on a vine higher in the canopy. An ape-man approaches him and is about to bash Storm's skull with a stone axe, when he's felled by an arrow. The old man who fired the arrow lifts Storm over his shoulder and carries back to his cabin in the trees.

Meanwhile, the green humanoids are advancing on Ember with clear intentions of eating her. Suddenly, they stop they sense someone else coming. They turn and run but one gets shot from behind as they go.

When Storm comes to, the old man introduces himself as Gran'pa and says he's a snake hunter. Storm notices a space helmet that looks just like the one he had (destroyed back in Volume 1). "Gran'pa" tells Storm he got it in Carefree City from a guy named Toriander. He's the only one with guts enough to go scavenging on the ground.

Ember is face to face with her rescuer--"Sudden Death" Toriander. He can't believe his luck finding a beautiful outsider on the ground. He figures he can get a good price for Ember in Carefree City. Brandishing the gun he used to blast the "corpse-eaters" he sets Ember walking.

Meanwhile, the old man explains the lingo of the forest civilization to Storm: The ground floor is the ground, Only crazy folks like Toriander go there, but that's where he found his gun. The third floor is the highest level with the most sunlight--and food. The second floor is where the old man lives. The first floor is inhabited by snakes and ape men. Carefree City is on the third floor.

Storm will need to go there to meet Toriander and find out where he found the helmet. Before they make any further plans:

Ape attack!

TO BE CONTINUED

Hewcrawl Rann

Chris Kutalik wrote a post last week that got me thinking about science fictional (or fantasy) hexcrawl appropriate locals. I've mentioned Krypton before, but that's not the only planet in the DC Universe that has a lot of crazy locations. Check out the map of Rann, above I shared in this old post that has background. Here are some highlights:

Dancing Waters of Athline: A field of high-power geysers whose sprays are shaped by strong winds.
Flaming Sea: Flames sprout from the surface of this body of water.
Illsomar: A ruined city where Nimar, a megalomaniacal, super-intelligent energy being that resembles a gigantic, Bohr-model atom has taken up residence. He is able to animate humanoid figures of metal, stone, and sand to serve him.
Kryys: A city of ice in the polar regions.
Land of A Thousand Smokes: An area containing numerous fumaroles.
Old Reliable: A sinking island in the Sea of Ybss; a source of the rare metal orichalkum.
Samakand: An advanced city that exists outside of conventional spacetime and only appears once every 25 years.

Tower of Rainbow Doom: In the ruined city of Yardana (or Vardana), it is a sacrificial place for the primitive Zoora tribesman. When a switch in thrown in it's central room, concentric flashes of rainbow light surround a throne-like chair and transport anyone or anything in it to a neighboring planet.

The Starrunner Kit

After an untended hiatus caused by internet-outage, I'm back with a copy of Mike Evans's The Starrunner Kit in my hand (figuratively, since it's digital) that got released last week. Mike is a friend, so I wouldn't call this an unbiased review, but I think Mike has done a bang up job.

The "kit" portion of the (so important it gets mentioned again in the subtitle) is the key. Everything that's in here fills in some little gap or another that may be present in the old school sci-fi game you're playing: mechs, or a hover-bike pilot or plant lifeform class. These are particularly aimed at White Star, broadening a bit its serial-numbers filed off Star Wars with stuff out of space opera seen in film, comics, and anime post-Star Wars.

There are a lot of gear and character options, but there are also goodies for the GM. In fact, the plethora of random tables are probably where The Starrunner Kit shines brightest and where it's most useful for those playing a fantasy game not derived from the D&D chassis. There are tables for random jobs, random events between adventures, random sights and sounds in the city, even a short random table of alien religions. All of these are easily usable in any space opera game and more importantly, they are a springboard to the imagination for creating your own setting specific ones. Looking through these I started getting a lot of ideas of things that could be used in Strange Stars--and that was without rolling any die!

If any of that sounds interesting to you, then you should definitely head over to rpgnow/drivethrurpg and check it out!