Jailbreak in the Etheric Zone

In the continuation of our 5e Land of Azurth campaign, the PCs arrived at the Carnelian Hypercube, a prison for those who have committed "crimes most cosmic" disguised as bounty hunters. They were there to rescue one of the two (known) surviving Super-Wizards at the behest of the other one, Zuren-Ar. He assures them they will able to get past security whereas someone of his vast powers would not be able to.

From the PCs perspective, the hypercube looks like a regular old cube--albeit a gigantic one made of red, semi-precious stone. Every face is patrolled by giant creatures that look like spheres, sectioned like an orange, but with eyes and mouths on the faces of each section that rotate, and ten tentacles in between. These were the Decaton guardians.There eyes shot scanning beams, but the documents the PCs stole and the story they gave got them by. Zuren-Ar had halted his approach at a safe distance so as not to meet these guys.

A pyramidal creature and its one-eyed spheroid flunkies took the prisoners from them. (Including the Lagomorfan the PCs had said they would set free!) When the guards were distracted, the PCs took an a doorway to Cell Block 7. The internal geometry of the hypercube was confusing as up and down shifted between so areas, but luck for the players, they didn't need to go far.

Zuren-Ar had given them a device to locate his beloved Xura, and it led them to her cell. They had to fast-talk some guards, but they remembered Zuren-Ar's admonition to speak with authority to them and keep things simple. Confused guards tended to stop and consult others in their beeping and blipping language, usually giving our heroes time to slip away. So they found her:

by ㅇㅇ JOO

Xura Kru-Ul. She's every bit as imperious as her lover and a bit more unpleasant. Still, a job's a job, so the PCs freed her., despite the warning of the mantid humanoid in the cage next door who claimed she was worse than he was. Of course, he did admit to wiping off all the mammals on his planet. Once Xura was sprung, the guards came running, but outside of her cell, her magic worked and she was able to mass teleport them too...

Well, right in the middle of the guard pyramid, thanks to the disorienting effects of the hypercube. They faced one of the supervisors:

And it called for backup. Our heroes were in battle with at least fifteen guards of various sorts. With the luck of the dice on their side, they were able to cut through them before more reinforcements arrived, though their bard go paralyzed briefly. The group broke away with more of the guards on their heels and managed to make it out through the exit (in a way, the location of the guard pyramid proved to be a lucky break). They caught a glimpse of what might be the warden, a giant being inside a panopticon sphere:

On the outside, the decaton was moving in slooowly. It did scan them with a blast that seemed to shiver the souls of at least a few but had no visible effect.

Zuren-Ar was reunited with Xura Kru-Ul. He teleported the party back to close to the portal to Azurth in gratitude, but announced just before he did, they he and Xura were going off the found an empire.

Mall Security 2020

Let's go back to the 80s when the Soviet Union was still a thing, indoor malls were at their height, and the dystopian near future wasn't usually full of zombies.  from that early 80s mindset, imagine the world of somewhere around 2020...

The environment isn't so good. In fact, there was probably a brief nuclear exchange some time in the past decades. And an economic crisis or two. Things aren't all that bad, though. Rampant consumerism still abounds, and this guy (or his clone) is still President:

Megacorporations helped America (the world actually) out of those crisis with a leveraged buyout--a sponsorship. The Soviet Union was bought out, too, only over there in USSR^tm, they offer consumers a planned community with a "Golden Age of Communism" theme. In the good ol' USA, some rednecks, religious cults, and survivalist nuts stick to the environmentally-damaged rural areas (think Mad Max meets Winter's Bone), and some wealthy folks can afford walled enclaves meant to replicate idyllic suburban life of the 20th Century with protection by real police, but most people huddle around the decaying industrial city cores in neon-lit arcologies that combine shopping and living in one. Malls.

These Malls need protecting and that's where the PCs come in as deputized corporate security officers safe guarding the 21st Century American Dream!^tm from all sorts of threats to peace and prosperity: trigger-happy poli-clubs, youth gangs, subversives, and consumer products run amuck. Think Shadowrun with less punk and less cyber. And presented as a Nagel painting.

So this is American Flagg! or Judge Dredd (with more of an MTV aesthetic), influenced by any number of 70s and 80s dystopian films like Rollerball or Robocop, mostly played with the black humor of the latter. Literary sources like Shockwave Rider and Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner or some later Cyberpunk works will also be informative.

Aboard Aureate Majestrix on the Occasion of the Panarch's Anniversary

The airship Aureate Majestrix is a wonder, even by the standards of airships. It was carved by ancient hands from a single, massive stone of an unknown variety. Fitted with mirrors which serve as sails, it is pushed to its destination by concentrated magical energy beamed at it. Long ago, it was claimed by the Panarch, and now it is operated mainly to transport those of means from Imbis to the Panarch's capital. Today, it carries various dignitaries, courtiers, and seekers of influence to the celebration for the anniversary of the Panarch:

by Jason Sholtis

A hohmmkudhuk stone-shaper whose name is actually Mmungmatukt but he is not offended when called "Mung Matuk." His clan wishes to send a new Princess to establish a descendant warren in wilderness controlled by Omunth-Ech and wishes the Panarch to support their settlement. Mung Matuk bears a tableau vivant in stone that enacts a fanciful version of the Panarch's victory over the Great M'gog and the Gog Horde as a gift.

Yreul Dahut, Galardinet Officer of the Daor Obdurate armed with customary punishment rods. Her presence suggests there is a defector from her city-state's tyranny among the celebrants, and one formerly highly placed, as the Obdurs are notoriously frugal with state funds and disdain public spectacle.

Pwi dwek Abth, hwaop senior scholar sent by the Library to record the events in that pedantic and overly detailed way hwaop are famous for. He wears heavy perfume to mask his odor in deference to the "simplistic and unrefined" olfactory preferences of humans, but it is not quite sufficient to the most sensitive noses.

Zira Si, ostensibly a demimondaine in the entourage of --well, one noble or another, depending on who you ask. She is actually a powerful Green sorceress and prized agent of secretive Yzordadreth, Mountain of Wizards. When her mission is done, her confederates will swoop in under cover of darkness and spirit her away on a swift-winged and silent thrykee, and no one will remember she was ever there.

(more from this world.)

Treasures from the Sectaurs

These are model sheets for the Sectaurs cartoon. The items depicted here should had a little post-apocalyptic strangeness to any treasure haul:

Find more here.

Wednesday Comics: The Secret of the Nitron Rays

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

Storm: The Secret of the Nitron Rays (1981)
(Dutch: Het Geheim van de Nitronstralen)
Art by Don Lawrence & Script by Dick Matena

The Azurian Armada makes its way toward Earth, but they find the human forces ready to meet them. After a pitch battle, the Armada is defeated and many Azurian troops are captured on the battlefield of the Moon.

One of the prisoners delivers a message to Solon: It says that his parents have been taken captive if he doesn't sabotage the Earth fleet and deliver Storm to the Azurian command. Solon feels he has no choice but to do what they want.

Solon sets a bomb that destroys the fleet based on the Moon. Only one fighter remains which Storm plans to take to the Earth for reinforcements--and Solon goes with him. They have only just left when an Azurian fighter contingent strikes the room.

Balder and his men are helpless before the onslaught. They are forced to take refugee in the old Azurian nitron mines; Nitron being a precious mineral that unfortunately admits a lethal radiation that causes "nitron fever." The Earth men will rely on their spacesuits to protect them from the radiation.

In the mines, they encounter an old Azurian that quickly dies from nitron radiation and the bodies of others who have succumbed, but also:

Meanwhile, Storm has returned with the remaining fleet to find their moon base destroyed. Before Storm can land, Solon pulls a gun and forces him to set course for the Azurian base. The Earth reinforcements enter the nitron mines and aid their trapped friends in defeating the Azurian troops. In the aftermath, they decide to send the young girl they found to Earth to try and discover how she was able to survive and then put her in a foster home.

On the way to the Azurian base, Solon forces Storm from the ship, then pilots it directly into the Azurian domed command center. Somehow, Storm jetpacks back to the moon where he finds the letter and realizes why Storm did what he did. His sacrifice was not in vain. After such a blow, the Earth forces are able to rout the remaining Azurians and drive them from the inner system. The fight for Earth is ended. It is free for the first time in centuries, and Storm is hailed as a hero.

TO BE CONTINUED

A Couple of Lexicons I Forgot

When I posted about the Jack Vance Lexicon last week, Baron Opal lamented there wasn't one for Gene Wolfe--which reminded me that there was. Or more precisely, there are a couple. I figure the one most of interest to people would be the Lexicon Urthus by Michael Andre-Driussi. (The same guy responsible for GURPS New Sun, by the way.

Not exactly a lexicon, but the Burroughs Cyclopedia (which Amazon knows as the Burroughs Encyclopedia despite the name being pretty clear in the cover image) covers a whole bunch of new terminology coined by Edgar Rice Burroughs in his Tarzan, Mars, Venus, Pellucidar, etc. stories.

Four Nonhumans, Briefly Described

They are all inhabitants of the same distant world.

Art by Jason Sholtis

Ylthlaxu: There are few of them left, and for that, a great many are grateful. When they emerge from the shadows, tall and skeletally thin, too often it is to feed--and then they open the lower portion of their face that is not a face. Their tendrils snake out and devour the brains of humanoids. It is very unpleasant to see. They once commanded a vast star empire by mental domination, and they are accustom to being obeyed. They reproduce by turning other beings into more Ylthlaxu by introducing a mutagen into the bloodstream and nervous system of their victims.

Skarzg: Sometimes they run on four legs, sometimes on two. They are gaunt things, like greyhounds the size of men, if greyhounds had rubbery, scabrous hides, and beaked faces full of nightmare teeth. They are very hard to kill, and they will eat anything. They live like animals, but they have speech and are cunning and cruel.

Trell: Blueskinned, four-eyed giants from another world, the Trell came in great flying cities where the parties and symposia went on perpetually. They are now somewhat fallen and more decadent--sometimes more savage--than before. They can be hedonists or ascetics, but their personal desires tend to outweigh the desires of lesser creatures. Every non-Trell is certainly a lesser creature. In times past, they were often trendsetters and propagators of cult religions and faddish notions. Now, their dwindling race mostly keeps to their crumbling sky cities and celebrates the past.

by Ken Kelly

Ieldra: One of the native species of this world, they are now only a remnant of what they once when when their sacred groves dotted the forests and their queens fought Nest Wars for glory and territory. They remind humans of insects in many ways: antennae, large eyes, and peculiar movements.  Ieldra may be immortal, and their life stages are marked by instars named for the seasons. Summer wildings, their honey-colored adolescents, are savage things left to hunt and laugh and sometimes kill in what sacred groves and hidden grottoes are left to them. They seldom work stone or metal, but instead shape living things.