Wednesday Comics: Storm: The Seven of Aromater

My exploration of the long-running euro-comic Storm, continues with his adventures in the world of Pandarve. Earlier installments can be found here.

Storm: The Seven of Aromater (1984) 
(Dutch: De Zeven van Aromater) (part 4)
Art by Don Lawrence; script by Martin Lodewijk

Nomad wakes up on the beach of the Red Tear, the weird low hanging moon, amid the wreckage of the ship. Ember appears from the water. Too heavy to float in her new form and not needing oxygen, she walked across the bottom of the ocean.

The oppressive gravity leaves Nomad unable to move. Ember says she'll come back to get him later and heads off to find Storm. His calls for help bring her back.

Ember scatters the creatures. She decides to pick up Nomad and the Prince and carries them with her. The heavy gravity means the Seven have left an unmistakable trail for her to follow. They pass through storms, but Ember's body absorbs and dissipates the lightning. They cross a desert of glass caused by some unimaginable explosion.

As they near the equator of the Red Tear, the gravity lessens. Nomad is able to walk now, as they approach a structure of rock:

Traveling down a passage, they pass the bones of the beings they assume built this place. The come to a stairway going down. At its bottom is a thick yellow-green fog, a poisonous atmosphere. Entering it nearly kills Nomad and the Prince. They will have to stay while Ember goes on.

After what seems like hours, she gets through the fog and enters a passage with what appear to be dead snakes on the floor.

They aren't dead, and they aren't snakes!

TO BE CONTINUED

If You Go Down in the Woods Today

Yesterday, our Land of Azurth 5e campaign continued last night...

ROLL CALL: Kully the Bard, Shade the Ranger, Dagmar the Cleric, Kairon the Sorcerer, Waylon the Thief, and Erekose the Fighter!

The riverside village of Lumberton has fallen on hard times. The owners of the local sawmill bought some automatons from a mysterious traveling salesman and now the things are running amok! Day and night, these Iron Woodsmen are clearing the forest and killing anyone that gets in their way.

Our heroes happen upon a desperate discussion between Mayor Bole Wood and his advisors, and succumb to the Mayor's desperate plea for aid (and promise of compensation). Eavesdropping on the conversation, the ranger hears mention of someone or something called "snarts" and is immediately suspicious they aren't getting the full story.

A talk with the alehouse matron, Burl, reveals that Snarts are in fact small, mischievous fey that the townspeople believe have cursed them and made the Iron Woodsmen go crazy. Armed with this knowledge they set out to find the hidden Snart village.

Just outside of town, they find a dilapidated manor inhabited by the wizard Gargam. Gargam is not the most pleasant of wizards or a great conversationalist, but they discover (a) that he hates Snarts, but wishes to use them for some undisclosed magical purpose, and (b) he says they have been captured by the Iron Woodsmen and taken to the mill.

The party heads toward the mill and comes upon an Iron Woodsmen work crew. A battle is joined. and our heroes discover that the Woodsmen are tough opponents--and they explode in steam and shrapnel if they are too heavily damaged. Destroying the 4 automata, but bloodied and battered themselves, the party retreats to town, where they confront the Mayor, who also believes the Snart curse levied due to their extensive clearing of the forest is the cause of their misfortune.

The party resolves to locate the Snarts and set this problem right.

Azurth Adventure Digest

Here's the cover for the upcoming Azurth Adventure Digest (still a couple of months away). Jason Sholtis provides a great rendition of some angry Candy Islanders.

The planned contents of the digest are: Random tables for generating Motley Pirates and pirate captains, random weird encounters in the Boundless Sea, thumbnail descriptions of a handful of interesting islands, a few NPC write-ups, and the Candy Isle adventure locale. Internal art and cartography will mostly be Jeff Call, who did Mortzengersturm. It will be available in pdf and print at 5.5 x 7.75" size.

Here's part of the Candy Island Temple as rendered by Jeff

Valerian

Luc Besson's new film Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets is based on the French comic book series Valérian et Laureline by by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières (The film seems largely drawn from the sixth story in the series, Ambassador of Shadows). It's good source material for Besson, has the exotic locales of the comic and multitude of aliens give plenty of opportunity for him to engage in the in the stunning visuals that have been part of his previous science fiction efforts.

Valerian and Laureline are special agents of the Federation, with a bantering, unresolved sexual tension thing going. After acquiring a cute and valuable alien organism, the Mul Converter, to the massive, multi-species space station Alpha, to save it from a mysterious threat. All is not as it seems, and Alpha's Commander has secret plans of his own. Our heroes make their way through the alien locales of the station to solve the mystery and save everybody.

The plot is perfunctory, its drama is simplistic, and the characters are thin, but the sort of science fiction films Besson makes have never particularly focused on those things. The Fifth Element had an breeziness about some of the core dramatic elements, but did a lot with action, humor, and a Heavy Metal visual sensibility. Valerian may not become a the cult classic it has, but would make a good double feature with it.

In rpg terms, the visuals in Besson's film will likely give plenty of fodder with sci-fi gaming. Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets: The Art of the Film, is worth picking up for that purpose, even if you don't like the film.

Wednesday Comics: The Seven of Aromater

My exploration of the long-running euro-comic Storm, continues with his adventures in the world of Pandarve. Earlier installments can be found here.

Storm: The Seven of Aromater (1984) 
(Dutch: De Zeven van Aromater) (part 3)
Art by Don Lawrence; script by Martin Lodewijk

Ember and Nomad watch from hiding as the Prince's steamship launches a smaller boat with the Seven or Aromater aboard. As they head toward the waterspout beneath the red, Ember realizes in horror what they plan.

She breaks from hiding to try to reach Storm. She is quickly captured and the former Storm, now the Seventh, ignores her cries. The ship sails on:

The Prince has Ember and Nomad in changes. He plans to keep them alive until the the survivors of the Seven return from the Red Tear with the Brain Coral. Until then, his ship will circle the waterspout and wait.

Ember and Nomad don't plan to be idle. They have hidden the remainder of the potion that converted Storm into a monster. Ember drinks it quickly and:

With enhanced strength and resistance to harm, Ember makes short work of the sailors. She and Nomad take over the ship. Ember isn't mindless like Storm and the others, she guides the ship toward the waterspout! The ship rides through the Storm--and is ultimately smashed!

TO BE CONTINUED

3 Pitches, 4 Colors 3: Agents of A.X.E.

This is the third in a series of posts with brief campaign pitches for superhero games. This one is written by Jason Sholtis of  The Dungeon Dozen:

(based on a rejected proposal found in a briefcase left on the subway by Steve Ditko
in 1968...)

Dateline 1999: Thirty years after the total victory of the hippie counterculture,
a unilaterally disarmed America watches helplessly as nation after nation falls before an unstoppable blitzkrieg of super soldiers, futuristic war machines and weapons from newly independent Transylvania.

Shocking the world in a live press conference, President Tom Hayden unveils the existence of the Agents of A.X.E., secret defenders of America. These highly trained super-operatives, each a paragon of American virtue, are entrusted with the use of super-devices derived from the technology of an alien civilization (details still classified) such as the Gauntlets of Potential, the Girdle of Density, and the Eye of Mastery.  

Moments later, the secret headquarters of the National Institute of Xenostudies beneath
Mt. Shasta falls to a sudden strike by Transylvanian stormtroopers, the scientists and leaders
who created A.X.E. all either dead or missing. If only the Agents had been there to help instead of
a Washington dog and pony show! How can you Agents ever forgive yourselves?

There is only one way: Defend America from the Transylvanian menace until they have to peel the Girdle of Density from your cold, dead midsection.

Style/influence: In a nutshell, THUNDER Agents vs. MARS Patrol written by Pat Mills in the 80's as reactionary silver age satire but drawn by Wally Wood and Steve Ditko in their prime, so it looks cool. Old school in tone, emphasizing all-out super-hero war on beach head America, so there will be black humor, super mayhem, and super death. But fear not, when Captain Density perishes, sidekick girl is there to pick up the girdle.

War for the Planet of the Apes

It's five years after a brief and unease truce between humans and apes in Northern California led to war.  The latest films is at turns The Outlaw Josey Wales and The Great Escape rather than a war film unless the title is more clever than it appears and references a war where the apes or not the primary combats--and gives a sly hint to its outcome.

Andy Serkis is again great as Caesar, and so are the other motion-capture actors. The special effects have gotten so good the apes don't really seen CGI at all, other than of course they are. Steve Zahn sort of steals the show here is the new character "Bad Ape" adding a bit of tastefully done levity to otherwise fairly grim precedings. Woody Harrelson is playing crazy, as usual, in the flavor of Kurtz from Apocalypse Now.

If you liked the previous installments in the current trilogy, you'll like this one. If you haven't seen any of this current series, you should start with Rise.

One thing I've noticed, when the first film came out it was widely commented that it was essentially a reworking/re-imaging of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. This is sort of true and viewed from that perspective Dawn and War are then a two part reworking of Battle for the Planet of the Apes. (Dawn, particularly has a lot of specific scene parallels to Battle.)