Wednesday Comics: Storm: The Creeping Death

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

Storm: The Creeping Death (1982)
(Dutch: The Dormant Death )
Art & script by Don Lawrence

Storm and Ember are racing along over water on hover-bike type things. They've been exploring the world since they left Antarctica. Suddenly, a sort of giant slug creature rises from the water, knocking Ember from her vehicle. Storm swoops down to help her, but the creature smashes into him.

When Ember surfaces, she sees Storm unconscious in the roots of a tree near the water's edge. Their bikes were destroyed. When Storm comes to, they decide to climb a tree to survey their surroundings. All around them is an immense jungle, but they also see what may be buildings at the horizon. With no place else to go, they head off in that direction.

It's tough going. They have to climb treacherous rocks and cut through dense vegetation. Then:

Hit by the dart, Ember first swoons, then wakes up in a violent rage. Storm manages to avoid her attacks then restrain her until she passes out. Storm carries her on then makes camp for the night. The next day, she is still out. Storm moves on, hoping somehow to find an antidote for the poison.

He makes it to the buildings, but they appear long deserted. Then:

The men reveal they've been following him all day, and they are the ones that shot Ember with the dart. The plan to take Storm to their leader. He isn't having it:

Once he beats them all, he tells them that now he's ready to be taken to their leader. And they do.

TO BE CONTINUED

Pointcrawl the Green Hell

This map is is by Harold Wilkins and found in his book Secret Cities in Old South America. All it needs is some of these locations written up and it's ready to go:

A lot of cool stuff going on there. Some highlights:

• Unknown Mountains of Gold and Mystery - They had me at "gold."
• Unexplored Dangerous Territory - Obviously, explored enough to know its dangerous.
• Atlantean Hy-Brazilian Dead City - If Dead City weren’t adventure fodder enough, Atlantean ought to sweeten the mix, to say nothing of Hy-Brazilian.
• Strange “Cold” Light in Tower - Again the Hy-Brazilian Atlanteans are invoked for probably the most intriguing place on the map. And why is cold in quotation marks--so-called cold, perhaps? The mind boggles...

Random Images from Baroque Space

Art by Mel Birnkrant

A winged Devil from the Tartarean dark beyond Saturn.

Art by Bailey Henderson

Leviathan rises from the thick clouds of Jupiter.

A fop seen in a Jovian gaming house.

Pirates of the Belt in debauchery.

Bandits on the Planet of the Apes

"WHITE SANDS" 

Player Characters:
Jeff Call as Brock Irving
Lester B. Portly as Eddy Woodward
Jason Sholtis as Francis La Cava

Nonplayer Characters:
Ted Cassidy as Eezaya
Alfonso Arau as Lope
Wardude
Broh
Dan-Nee
Stev
Bonobo Banditos

Synopsis: After repelling the Kreeg attack, the astronauts push the human tribes to get better organized. When theyy set out on their own raid against the mutant's hideout, they have to contend with an unexpected foe.

Commentary: This adventure featured the first appearance of a hereto unknown intelligent ape species: bonobos. The group captures a wounded bandito, Lope, and gently interrogate him. They get further confirmation that ape society is not homogeneous.

The astronauts also picked up a ground of Tehi warriors as henchmen associates. These guys look like the "White Feather Warriors" (the human ones) from 2nd Edition Gamma World module "The Cleansing War of Garik Blackhand":

The name "Wardude" is an homage to a hireling in Chris Kutalik's Hill Cantons campaign.

The group also found out that the warwheel apparently came from a Kreeg installation in White Sands, though their main base is somewhere farther to the West, and are also "deadly gunmen" in that direction.

Wednesday Comics: Holiday Gift Guide 2016

Give the gift of comics this year. Here are my admittedly idiosyncratic suggestions. You could do worse!

Tiger Lung: Step back to the Paleolithic this collection of shorts by Simon (Prophet and others) Roy for the exploits of the titular shaman. I reviewed Tiger Lung more fully here. Want still more shamanic action? Check out Terry LaBan's Muktuk Wolfsbreath, Hard-boiled Shaman.

Valerian & Laureline: The Empire of the Thousand Planets: With the upcoming movie from Luc Besson, now is a great time to check out the long-running Franco-Belgian comic by Jean-Claude Mezieres and Pierre Christin. The title of the film makes it seem like this volume was a strong inspiration.

Head Lopper: Badass, bearded warrior with a flair for decapitation takes a job to kill a wicked sorcerer. He's accompanied on his quest by an unconventional companion: still-animated (and talkative) severed head of a witch he decapitated in the past!

My recommendations from last year are still good too!

Alchemical Dwarves

The Dwarves of desert Country of Sang are not like the Dwarfs found elsewhere in the Land of Azurth or any other worlds. Most noticeable, they appear to be made of metal, one of the seven metals of antiquity, and they metals character informs that of the dwarf made from it. The dwarves of each metal are identical to each other, or very close to it.

Dwarves of Gold are the wise and just rulers.
Dwarves of Silver are the Priestesses, Keepers of Mysteries.
Dwarves of Mercury are the cunning mages and tricksters.
Dwarves of Copper are the healers and tenders of home and hearth.
Dwarves of Iron are the soldiers and warriors.
Dwarves of Tin are merchant, traders, and seneschals.
Dwarves of Lead are the labors and workers.

Return to the Planet of the Apes

After a few weeks hiatus for holiday stuff and other obligations, my Hexcrawling the Planet of the Apes will resume this week. For myself, the players, and any readers it might interest, I figured now would be a good time to collate links to what has come before:

Here was the initial player setup. When we started, they awoke from suspended animation to find the world they knew gone. After a trip to a plague ridden space station they made it to Earth (New Mexico). They encountered apes, human tribesmen, and (perhaps) a more technologically advanced enclave. That enclaved turned out not to be salvation, but a strange ghost of the past. The struck out across the desert to find the human tribes and wound up along the Rio Grande. They made a tentative alliance with the tribes and learned of their war with the more technologically advanced mutants--who staged a sneak attack. They managed to rout the mutants and defeat their fearsome Warwheel.

Here's the map of their travels to far: