Off to the Printer: Azurth Adventures Digest

The first Azurth Adventures Digest is going off to the printer today. It's full color, 28 pages, featuring art by Jeff Call and Jason Sholtis. There's a ten page mini-adventure local: The Candy Isle, random tables for generating colorful Motley Pirates and some flavorful tidbits on other islands, suitable for inspiring adventures.

Art by Jason Sholtis

Wednesday Comics: Moving Fortress & Subterra

Moving Fortress by writer Ricardo Barreiro and artist Enrique Alcatena first appeared in the comics anthology Skorpio in Argentina. In 1988, it was translated into English with the help of Chuck Dixon. It tells the story of Bask De Avregaut who is making his way across the desert in an aerostat when he comes upon, and is captured by a warlord commanding the titular moving fortress. The Warlord is out to defeat a rival and reclaim his bride. De Avregaut is initially made to feed the fortresses boiler, but after proving his skill with gunnery in battle, he comes to play a more pivotal role in what follows.

Subterra is the sequel, picking up with Bask following the events of Moving Fortress. This time he crashes in uncharted mountains and is taken prisoner by a weird and decadent subterranean civilization.

Both volumes are weird fantasy brought to life by Alcatena's artwork. With designs, a little bit Gothic, a little bit Lovecraft, and a little bit Asian, his pencils are an integral part of bringing the weirdness.

Eclipsed

Bruce Gordon was wanted to watch a solar eclipse in Africa, but the locale sorcerer Mophir tended like his intrusion and cut him with a mystic black diamond. When the eclipse occurred, Gordon was replaced with Eclipso, a shaded faced Hyde to his Jekyll. This all went down in House of Secrets #61 (1963). Eclipso has stayed around as a DC Comics villain ever since, despite the fact you'd think the rarity of eclipses would limit his power.

This would make an interesting lycanthropy-like curse in D&D, as well. Under dim lighting (say twilight, maybe, or a facsimile thereof) an infected demihuman becomes its evil/chaotic counterpart: elves become drow, dwarves duergar, halflings black hobbits, etc. with associate abilities. Humans would become orcs, maybe? I don't know.

Hydra House Ads

The Azurth Adventures Digest (and hopefully more products to follow where appropriate) will have some house ads in the style of those you might see in comics books of the Bronze and Silver Age. Here are the preliminary versions of some of those that will be in the digest:

Artwork here by Jeff Call and Luka Rejec.

Art you may recognize from Weird Adventures by Adam Moore, newly colorized.

Weird Revisited: The Stalker

This post is originally from late August 2011. I don't think this monster made it into Weird Adventures or into one of my games, but conceptually it's one of my favorite Fiend Folio re-imaginings.

If you should find yourself in the City on a lonely railway platform in the wee hours or taking a night train across the dark countryside, you may happen to get the sensation you’re being watched. That may mean you have reason to be afraid.

Travelers in similar situations have looked to see the vague shape of what might be a fellow traveler clinging to the shadows of the platform, or have seen a gaunt figure receding in the distance as the train passes, its eyes glowing like signal lights.

The rail stalker appears to select his prey at random, but once he has done so he always lets the hapless traveler glimpse him at least once. The next time the victim sees the creature’s pale, naked, and emaciated form may be when he strikes.

The creature (it is unclear if there is more than one) attacks by opening his mouth absurdly wide in a caricature of a scream and emitting a sound or vibration. Things directly in its path may be damage as if thousands of years of erosion took place in a single moment, concentrated in a narrow area. Those nearby but not directly in the path describe a sudden wave of fear and a mind numbing hum. The stalker prefers to kill by embracing his victim and deilvering a kiss—a kiss that sends his deadly vibration through the victim’s body, turning bone to powder and liquifying organs.

Some thaumaturgists believe the sound made by the rail stalker is a sound from the end of the material universe, the wail of of inevitable armageddon that the rail stalker somehow carries in his withered frame. And aches to share with others.

[The rail stalker is, of course, a modern/near-modern horror riff on Fiend Folio’s Dune Stalker and resembles that creature in game particulars.  'Cause a naked, clawed dude trying to kiss you in a subway station is scarier than one in a desert, maybe.]

Something Rises from the Prismatic Hole

Layout continues on the Azurth Adventures Digest. It's looking like it's going to shape up to 28 pages.

Anyway, here's another excerpt. The stats of the frogacuda from the Prismatic Hole:

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 6)
Art by Don Lawrence; script by Martin Lodewijk

Fearing the worst, Ember is elated when she hears Storm call her name. Storm remembers nothing of what happened. After Ember explains, Storm hypothesizes that perhaps the fact they are not of Pandarve somehow made her power affect them differently.

Now that they've changed back to human, the noxious atmosphere begins to take its toll. They move as quickly as possible through the yellow fog. Choking, they stumble back to the stairs where they left Nomad and the Eternal Prince. When they relate the story to the two of them, the Prince can't accept he can't have the brain coral. He runs into the poison fog.

The other three leave to find a way off the Tear.

They find the frog-things gathered outside!

They can't go back the way they came and they can't go back into the temple. Luckily, Storm spots a crack in the cliff face. They stumble onto an ice slipway and go sliding down with the creatures falling after them.

They finally land in a place where the gravity is less, perhaps near the equator. With the creatures on their heels, they run toward a forest that looks like its made of giant dandelions. They notice the winds are blowing the massive florets a way and see a possible way out.

Climbing a tree with the creatures behind them, they grab hold to one of the seedlings. The wind carries them out into the atmosphere around Pandarve--and in the path of a ship.

END OF THE SEVEN OF AROMATER