Can Willow be Redeemed by Moebius? Let's Take A Look

George Lucas's Willow is no Star Wars. Even though its made from the same sort of stock characters and the same sort borrowings from early sources, but it doesn't quite come together in the same way. At least it didn't seem to to my fifteen year-old self, and it doesn't seem to to me today.

Moebius's concept work, which I first glimpse in a magazine at the time, has only grown in my estimation since. Perhaps it doesn't suggest a weird fantasy Willow or anything that radical, but it does at least suggest to me a decent Studio Ghibli-esque film might have come from the material. Let's take a look and (re-)imagine:

Here's the titular hero and (I believe) one of his Nelwyn fellows. Nothing of the pastoral gentility of a Baggins, nor the too literal "small folk" of the film. These guys make me think of Howard's diminutive and declining Picts in "The Lost Race," but also aboriginal peoples like the Emishi (in Princess Mononoke) or Ainu. A sense of the Nelwyn threatned by humanity (or Daikini) would have been nice. I like the long earlobes, too.

Madmartigan is the rogue with the heart of gold Han Solo type, but with a bit more wastrelness, he could have been a wuxia sort of character, or Sanjuro from Yojimbo, or Mugen from Samurai Champloo--both of which are great swordsman, too. Moebius gives us a design that completely fits with those characters, suggests a world of ronin or wandering swordsmen of some sort.

So at this point, you might be thinking, "basically he's just going to say Willow should have been more Asian?" So now I'm going to throw you off:

King Kael here (General Kael in the film) is described as "bestial" in the third draft of the script, which he obviously is here. Perhaps he is a lover of Bavmorda transferred by her magic? A reverse Beauty and the Beast (there's maybe a bit of Cocteau's beast about him. Maybe)? Or is he the captain of the flying monkeys, so to speak? Anyway, he fulfills a bit of a Witch-King of Angmar role, so fleshing out his badass villainy would have been good.

Now, it's back to the Asian stylings. The mask suggests (to me) childhood mindwarping courtesy of Bavmorda for the warrior woman Sorsha. Maybe she's just go a slight blemish, but has been convinced its a horrible disfigurement a la (some accounts of) Doctor Doom? Maybe her inhuman beauty as a daughter of the Tuatha de Danaan-esque folk of Tir Asleen is her disfigurement to her witch queen mother? Note that the mask isn't just a human mask, it's go that single Oni horn. Probably means something.

Lastly, I believe this is one of two fairly divergent designs Moebius did for the brownies--but in an earlier script draft Willow and baby get captured by elves who are described as wearing "samurai-type outfits and angry little haircuts." These are guys who (in the script) collect baby tears as part of their gig. Now think of these sinister little guys, like a mashup of the Indian in the Cupboard and the evil faerie of del Toro's Don't be Afraid of the Dark remake. I think we could do without the French accent Lucas specifies for their leader, though.

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) (part 5)
(Dutch: De Sluimerende Dood)
Art & script by Don Lawrence

While Storm and Huatl are going through their travails, Ember has been left hanging without food or water for two days to weaken her resolve. When he think she might be ready to give in, Kai has her brought to him. He offers her a drink to toast their future as man and wife:

Ember is suspended over hot coals. Kai gloats that by the time the gods appear tomorrow, she will be charred to bone.

The next day, everyone is assembled and the missiles they call gods rise as usual--but with them are Storm and Huatl!

Storm demands Kai honor his father's agreement. Kai refuses and orders Ember's ropes cut so that she will fall into the pit, but Storm has a trick up his sleeve. He pushes the button on a remote control he had kept hidden, launching one of the god missiles.

The townsfolk fall prostrate with superstitious awe. Kai snatches up the axe to do the job himself, but Storm braces the falling Ember. Still, both are left defenseless against another attack from Kai.

At that moment Huatl challenges Kai and quickly kills him before he can react. Storm declares that by their law, Huatl is now leader of both tribes, and a new age of peace can be ushered in.

After a week of festivities where Storm and Ember are the guests of honor, the two set out again to see what unknown lands lie beyond the horizon.

THE END

Strange Stars Comic Inspiration

With Strange Stars OSR drawing near, I figure it was worth a look at some comic books/graphic novels that would make good fodder for a Strange Stars game. There are no Strange Stars comic per se, but the decades of comics reading influenced the setting--and their are new comics coming out all the time that continue to inspire. Here's a list of a few things currently in print:

Prophet: I've mentioned my admiration for this series before, so I won't dwell on it here. It's sci-fi superheroes, but much more Dune than Legion of Super-Heroes. It's finished now, and I believe all the issues have been collected.

Habitat: Is about life in an isolated orbital habitat, a bit like Starlost but with cannibalism. It's by Simon Roy, co-creator and sometime artist on Prophet. Roy has also done a number of other science fiction sorts that are suitable, some collected in Jan's Atomic Heart and Other Stories.

Dreadstar: This is another one I've mentioned before. Starlin's space opera is a science fantasy, but its visual style (and its Instrumentality!) influenced Strange Stars greatly.

Descender: While the aesthetics aren't the same, Lemire's tale of genocidal super-machines and the adventures of artificial intelligence is great inspiration.

Colonial 5e Fighting Men

This continues my look at adopting 5e for a "low/slightly-secret(maybe)" magic Colonial North America game:

Fighting Man (Fighter)
The 5e Fighter works pretty well were representing your standard warrior types from any of the cultures, though the Eldritch Knight will be out as an option. Maybe Adventure in Middle Earth's Weapons Master might be an archetype option.

Ranger (Wanderer)
The AiME Wanderer class can represent the historical units known as Rangers, but also the general wilderness scout type. The Hunter of Shadows Archetype is out, but the much maligned Beast Master archetype of the 5e Ranger will work. I might also replace Trackless Step with the Ranger's Land's Stride, but this isn't a big issue. Interesting historical tidbit: the terms for skilled firearms marksmen: "crack shot" and "sharp shooter" (the latter a calque from German) are both attested to from only the 1790s.

art by Tim Truman

Slayer (Barbarian)
Though the name is borrowed from the Adventures of Middle-Earth class, I think 5e's Barbarian works better. This will represent the fierce, rustic warrior, including some Native American warriors, but also some of the frontiersmen or proto-Mountain Men with which they contended. Weapons would be similar for both: muskets, tomahawks/hand axes, and knives, though some Natives might still employ the bow.

Colonial Era 5e Class Musings

On breaks from getting other projects done, I've been working adapting some of the classes in Adventures in Middle-Earth (due to their low magic setup) for a hypothetical 5e game set in a game in the America Colonies just before the Revolution War. Thinking the fighter classes will (hopefully) but pretty straight forward. I've started with the (quasi-)magc-using classes.

AiME has the Scholar, which is mostly a healer. While conceptually, I might have wished for a nonhealing scholar, the rules sort of require some healing, and this class can reasonable reskinned as the Enlightment version of a sort of Paracelsus alchemist-physician type, possibly with a little of the faith healing aspect of a Valentine Greatrakes, or pseudoscience theorists the likes of Mesmer. I plan to make the two different specialties of the class Master Healer and Master Alchemist (or something similar), which would require a bit of a change.

The Scholar's abilities are easy enough to reskin. "Hands of the Healer" becomes "Curative Arts," "News from Afar" becomes "The Republic of Letters," and "Tongues of Many Peoples" becomes "Able Linguister."

The only class that may need to be largely made from whole cloth is a sort of magic-user to represent the esoteric magic tradition, likely taking advantage of 5e's ritual magic rules, the Magus. These guys will probably have Lodges or Societies to join.

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) (part 4)
(Dutch: De Sluimerende Dood)
Art & script by Don Lawrence

Storm and Huatl, back in the hands of the Manatecs, will be forced to face someone named Kuadro in the duel. At the appointed time, they are led into an arena where ancient missiles risen--worshipped as gods by these people too.

Kuadro awaits the two prisoners on the opposite end of a narrow walkway across a pit filled with mordillos. It's time for the fight to begin, and Kuadro drops his poncho:

Storm is overmatched by a foe with four arms. He's knocked from the walkway but manages to hang on until Kuadro stabs him in the hand. Storm's other hand reaches for something to save him. He grabs a metal bar--which turns out to be a lever. The platform begins to turn. Kuadro is thrown off balance and falls into the pit.

Storm is declared the victor and the new leader. Storm demures from the office, offering Huatl in his place--after he returns. Before the Manatec people can respond, the two race into the tunnel the god-missiles emerge from. The two jump on the transports that carry the missiles along a track through the subterranean tunnel. Huatl thinks this all is the work of the gods, but Storm explains that ancient humans made this (though he wonders at what the power source must be).

The two reach an area where the air is thick. Vegetation has grown over the ventilation. The two lose consciousness. When Storm awakens, the transports have stopped in a massive assembly hall, and a horror is in front of them:

The spider grabs Huatl and begins to enrapt him in webbing. Thinking quickly, Storm wipes grease from the transport's axle so he can climb over the web without sticking. He manages to do that without drawing the attention of the spider and free Huatl.

No sooner is that done than the two have to sprint after the transport, which has began moving again.

TO BE CONTINUED

TPK for the In-laws

We spent New Year's with my wife's parents, and she really wanted to introduce them to D&D. They are avid gamers of the Catan/Carcassone/Pandemic sort but had never played an rpg. On the way to their place, we bought the 5e Starter Set (mainly to get ahold of the Lost Mines of Phandelver intro adventure), but also for the sample characters.

I'm sorry to say Squire Bill the Dwarf Cleric, Maggie the Elf Wizard, and Sara Longstreet the Fighter, were all lost in a goblin den. It was the first TPK of the new year. Hell, it's my first one as a DM in decades, perhaps.

While this was sort of on the fly and an introductory game not the start of a campaign, I did reskin a few thinks to make them more in line with my sensibilities, taking some suggestions from Gus L's critique of the adventure here. The PCs started in media res walking along the road from Knarr to Fandlin, where they know there is to be a festival honoring St. Frithona. I vaguely had in mind a Canterbury Tales riff, and I may differ a bit from Gus in my stance on funny names (I want them to be consistent in a way that suggest culture and interesting, but I do not necessarily see facility of player use as primary concern. If they can't remember them, they can take notes.) so I actually added more than are in the adventure while I altered the ones they were there. So the PCs soon encounter the gruff dwarven outfitter with a secret, Rockseeker Gev, and his associate, Silfer, and soon after, a pilgrim camp with Maudrey (a corpulent merchant), Eilmer (a used car salesman-esque relic seller), Bregwin (a taciturn female fighter with a hatred of goblins), and Karthusa (a nervous tinkerwoman).

After Gev and Silfer are apparently kidnapped in a goblin attack--and the player's find a tantalizing but unreadable map to the ruins--they track the goblins back to their lair.

In the end, it was mostly bad rolls that took them down and even then it was a close thing: the last PCs was felled by the last goblin in a room who was himself hanging on only by 1 HP. I suppose I should have had the goblin flee at that point to raise alarm (and give the PCs time to maybe attempt escape), but it happened relatively fast and the contest was so close. In any case, the player's seemed to enjoy the game, despite feeling they had "lost" in the end. Being more conformable with boardgames with role-playing the combat was more to their liking than the NPC interaction, so this introductory thing suited them better than one of my adventures might have.