Hohmmkudhuk

by Jason Sholtis

Hohmmkudhuk* are dwarfish beings resembling bipedal anteaters whose dorsal surface is covered with over-lapping, plate-like scales similar to a pangolin's. They spend much of their life underground in great subterranean halls or warrens. They are clannish and eusocial. Each hall belongs to a Queen, though her holdings are managed by her mate or mates, the Drone-Princes, of which there may be as many as three.

Only the Queen and her consorts reproduce, the rest of the clan is made up of their siblings and children who are sterile. Children are raised communally and in the same way: they pass through a sort of apprenticeship, doing low-skilled tasks as soon as they are able, then advancing to the role of warrior, trader or artisan as they so aptitude and develop the appropriate skills.

If the Queen dies or decides it is time to create a daughter-clan, one of her female progeny becomes able to reproduce and becomes a new queen. This new Queen will have a mate from an unrelated clan. These unions are arranged to form alliances, but their is also a strong tradition of wandering male adventurers winning the heart of a young queen.

Hohmmkudhuk know the ways of the underground and the working of stone. Their magic is bent to this purpose. They personify the planet itself as a goddess.

Hohmmkudhuk Traits
Ability Score Increase. Constitution score is increased by 2 and Wisdom is increased by 1.
Alignment. Hohmmkudhuk tend toward lawfulness.
Size. Hohmmkudhuk are around 4 feet tall, but heavy for their height.
Speed. Base walking speed is 25 feet.
Darkvision. Accustom to life underground Hohmmkudhuk can see 60 feet within dim light as if it were bright light.
Natural Armor. Due to their scales, Hohmmkudhuk get a +1 bonus to Armor Class.
Resilence. Hohmmkudhuk have an advantage on saving throws against poison and resistance against poison damage.
Languages. Hohmmkudhuk can speak and read the Common language of humans. They also speak and read their on consonant-laden, rumbling tongue.

*pronounced ho-hmmm-ku-thuk, where u is as in put and th as in though.

Dungeons & Stranger Things

Watching Stranger Things the very 80s horror/sci-fi Netflix series last night gave me an idea. I won't be discussing a lot of plot detials here, but I will mention some setting/situation stuff, so the absolutely spoiler averse should beware...

So strange things are afoot in a small town, that seem to involve another dimension/universe whose walls have been breached by a nefarious research organization and D&D-playing kids investigating these goings. What if the other world was something more like a "realm of Dungeons & Dragons," as the Dungeon Master in the old cartoon used to say?

Somehow (psychic powers, I'm guessing, but maybe a device), a gaming group gets transported to this parallel realm that is a distorted mirror or their home town, filled with the trapping and set-dressing of setting-nebulous D&D. Like, geographically, where the nefarious corporations facility is, there's a mountain where evil creatures dwell. The sublevels beneath the facility are (of course) dungeons. The corporations video archive room might be a forbidden library, etc. The kids aren't transported into this realm to stay, like the D&D cartoon or Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame novels, but instead visit there in sessions and return to the regular mundane world at other times.

The kids are trying to solve a mystery of some sort in the real world. The forays into D&D fantasyland would need to serve this mystery somehow, allowing them to gain information or get access to places that they couldn't get to "in the real world." While the presentation would be different things would work pretty much the same as the Matrix/real world divide in the Matrix films.

You could run a campaign with two systems (or at least two settings) in tandem. The players would play kids in the real world 80s small town, but also kids playing D&D characters in a more conventional D&D game. The goal of adventuring in the D&D world would be to ultimately solve the mystery in the real world. Both worlds would be essentially mystery sandboxes.

The Savage Sword of El Cid

Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, the man called El Cid, famous war leader of Medieval Spain, got the comic book treatment from in Eerie Magazine in the mid-1970s--and now a collection from Dark Horse. Though not as gonzo as the history-be-damned romp that was DC's Beowulf (where, I will remind you, Grendel battled Dracula to see who would replace Satan), it kicks history and even legend to the curb to present El Cid as Prince Valiant by way of Conan and the Medieval world as something more akin to the Hyborian Age.

While this approach is not unique in comics (Arak: Son of Thunder did a similar thing--though Thomas borrowed more from myth and legend), The approach of writer Budd Lewis and artist Gonzalo Mayo is different. Lewis tends to write it caption-heavy like a latter day Prince Valiant, albeit with more sword & sorcery paperback prose. Mayo is one of a number of Spanish artists in the Warren Magazines that look somewhat similar (and this is by no means a criticism), so if you recall Esteban Maroto's illustrations in the Ace Conan volumes, then you have the basic idea of how the world of El Cid looks. He does "homage" some poses at at times: Frazetta's ghoul queen at one point, and Racquel Welch on the this page below:

It's pretty standard 70s Sword & Sorcery stuff, but if you like that--and I know a know a number of my readers do--you should check this collection out.

Wednesday Comics: Storm: 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) (part 2)
(Dutch: Het Geheim van de Nitronstralen)
Art by Don Lawrence & Script by Dick Matena

After the defeat of the Azurian fleet, the remaining Azurian colonists settle down to live together peacefully with humans. Human and Azurian children are educated together in some places. In one of these, Bitak, the girl found in the nitron caves, is at the center of some strange events. She's got telekinetic powers, apparently.

After he tells Storm, Modegai also reveals that she has a blood group rare among Azurians.He plans to visit the colony where she lives, but he is suddenly struck by a mysterious malady. Benjamin, Mordegai's assistant, is handily also a doctor. He blames it all on stress.

Storm and Ember head off the visit the colony for Mordegai, leaving the old man in Benjamin's hand, who makes some cryptic comments as they fly off.

Storm and Ember observe for themselves Bitak's powers. They plan to take her back with them so her abilities can to studied further. On the way back over the frozen sea, Bitak gets bored and decides she wants to see the moon again. Storm tells her that's impossible; the ship isn't made for that. Bitak doesn't take no for an answer:

Accelerating out the atmosphere, the three lose consciousness. Unguided, the ship is headed toward some asteroids at the Lagrange point. Luckily, they are spotted by an Azurian pirate ship hiding there. When the Storm and the others are brought aboard, Storm is recognized. The Azurians blame him for their current situation. One once to ransom him, but another decides to kill him--only to be stopped by Bitak's power:

The pirates decide Bitak is the real treasure. They put Storm and Ember back on the ship and send it toward Earth. When they try to contact Mordegai, they get Benjamin, He tells them Mordegai's condition has worsened--then tells his suboordinate an Azurian recon craft is approaching and it must be destroyed.

The fighters shoot down Storm and Ember's craft. They survive the crash, but have to walk a ways to civilization. There they are told that Benjamin had declared both of them dead, murdered by Azurian separatists, and was using that story to incite violence against Azurians.

Storm and Ember sneak into the strife-torn city by night.. They confront Benjamin who is in the act of administering poison to Mordegai. Once Balder finds the truth he's about the kill the traitor, but Benjamin bargains for his life and freedom in exchange for an antidote for Mordegai. Storm makes the deal.

Unfortunately, it's a trick. Benjamin escapes while Mordegai dies in agony after Storm administers the "antidote"--actually a fatal dose of poison.

Meanwhile,. Benjamin's craft has reached the Lagrange point. Suddenly, something pulls him off course...

TO BE CONTINUED

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.)