Hexcrawling Ghostlight Fen - Settlements

These relate to the hexmap presented here.

0503 Draum (pop. 80); no real leader but Godo Shrune is a likely spokesman): Actually an abandoned manor built by a successful treasure-hunter, Draum is haunted by squatters who spend their days in deep reverie brought on by use of the muhrdzu fungus that grows nearby (0505). The mushrooms are eaten directly, made into a snuff and then snorted, or for an even more potent effect, smoked. Some rooms in the manor house and in derelict outbuildings hold bodies with clusters of muhrdzu mushrooms sprouting from them. These are the remains of those who wasted away thinking their bodily thirst could be quenched by dream refreshments or starved disdaining the tastelessness of mundane foods compared with the viands of fancy. The living Draumites trade the muhrdzu for food and other necessities.

0207 Gamory (pop. 325; Glatis Malva, Matriarch of the Malva clan): The old, inbred, and sometimes feuding families of Gamory abide through canny exploitation of the grove of black hroke trees planted by their ancestors (0208). The trees’ blood-red sap is valuable in the manufacture of healing salves and hemostatic poultices. Ironically, the Gamoryites are secret adherents to an outlawed cult of human-ieldra transformation, that of the Night Carapaced Mother, that practices human sacrifice by exsanguination in a secret place amid the trees.

0211 Wollusk (pop. 550): Wollusk was built amid the ruins of an ancient fortification from a more lucent age when humankind still possessed much of its ancient technology. A large portion of a wall of some sort of ceramic stands between the town and the Fen,though the ends of its crescent seem to have been melted by some great heat. The town has a larger inn and better facilities for travelers than might be expected for its size, as it serves as a base for treasure-hunters, but none would be reckoned more than middling quality.

Zeniba by Jason Sholtis

Two factions vie for control of the village. Zeniba “the Shrewd” (Fighter 4) styles herself “Mayor-Prefect,” but was originally hired as a bodyguard for the last person to officially hold that office. Her gang is known as the Medioxumate Devils and is based in the cylindrical keep of the ancient fort. She is opposed by the faction of Sodmos Thalur the Vintner. He owns the inn, the tavern, and the brothel serving the two. No wine is consistently available in Wollusk, but Thalur has a monopoly on the sale of muhrdzu snuff and muhrdzu tea, which he adds to whatever spirits are available (typically the local beetle milk mead). Thalur has more men at his disposal (perhaps 20-25) but Zeniba’s 10-12 soldiers are more skilled (treat as Bandits).

Wednesday Comics: Storm Indexed (part 2)

Here's the second part of my index of Storm albums in the sequence called "The Chronicles of Pandarve"so far. Now's the time to catch up, if you missed them.

1. The Pirates of Pandarve 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
2. The Labyrinth of Death 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
3. The Seven of Aromater 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Hexcrawling Ghostlight Fen [Intro]

Features hex graphics courtesy of JDJarvis

Ghostlight Fen had an ominous reputation long before the first human colonists arrived on this world. Something about its metaphysical properties made it the site of an ylthaxu beachhead. Their black metallic obelisks irrupted from astral space in great numbers. The ieldri had encountered the ylthlaxu elsewhere and were swifted in their response. The resulting clash ylthlaxu technology and ieldri magic warped the area beyond repair.

These ancient battles create opportunity for human treasure-seekers today. The only genuine road into the area leads into the town of Wollusk (0211). In truth, it's only a village and a fairly meagre one, but shabby businesses have sprung up to accommodate the treasure-seekers.

A Ylthlaxu by Jason Sholtis

These seekers are few in number, but dedicated. The black obelisks of the ylthaxu are a vexing but seductive conundrum. Those that have been opened have yielded strange, alien wonders, and also, it must be said, sudden death at times. The base of these is only about 5 feet on each side, but the interior is often larger than the exterior. Some have been long ago looted, others continue to resist intrusion. Still others have been opened before, resealed, and now somehow present something new on the inside.

Beyond the obelisks, the fen itself is dangerous. Only ever sparsely populated, it remains a wild and uncivilized place of hunting skarzgs. roaming gog tribes and the like. Then, their are areas where the ambient fae is so dense than reality itself is untrusthworthy.

Wollusk is the largest village on the outskirts of the Fen, but not the only one. Gamory (0207) with it's deformed folk and unsavory cult is just up the one road. Beyond that lies Draum (0503) with its drug-addled populace.

Hohmmkudhuk and Hwaopt

I presented these two races for 5e about a year ago, but since then I've colored the images by Jason Sholtis so I felt like I should highlight them again:

The smelly and scholarly hwaopt.

And the subterranean craftsmen, the hohmmkudhuk.

Zone Commandos!

THE SETUP: In 1985, a deep space probe returns to Earth after being thought lost in a spacetime anomaly. It returns to Earth, dropping otherworldly debris in its wake. Across the globe, zones on anomalous phenomena and monstrous creatures are created!

Twenty years later, only special UN troops stand between humanity and the destruction of civilization as we know it!

It’s Roadside Picnic meets 50s monster and sci-fi movies/kaiju and 60-70s action figures like G.I. Adventure Team and Big Jim.

THE HEROES are mostly buzz cut military men like the MARS Patrol but with code names and personalities more like 80s G.I. Joe. Their ranks many be augmented by beings that appeared from an anomaly (Kirby-esque amazons, aliens) or people enhanced by barely understood and dangerous technology acquired from them (Atomic Man, THUNDER Agent sorts)

THE DANGERS are strange environments, monsters of all sorts of 50s and 60s sorts, from Zanti misfits to human mutates to giant mutant dinosaurs.

This is a refinement/re-imaging of my Rifts 1970 campaign idea, just a little more militarized and more informed by the early 60s.

Wednesday Comics: Storm Indexed

I'll pause here in my review of Storm to index the albums in the sequence called "The Chronicles of the Deep World." Now's the time to catch up, if you missed them.

1. The Deep World 1, 2, 3
2. The Last Fighter 1, 2, 3
3. The People of the Desert 1, 2, 3
4. The Green Hell 1, 2, 3, 4
5. The Battle for Earth 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
6. The Secret of the Nitron Rays 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
7. The Legend of Yggdrasil 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
8. City of the Damned 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
9. The Creeping Death 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Maps of Four-Color Fantasy Lands

When secondary world fantasy made the jump from literature to comics in the wake of Tolkein and Howard it brought the tradition of the world-map along with it.  This was the 1960s, and comics books hadn't quite gotten the memo that fantasy was completely serious, as this first map shows:

"I feel like a character from Howard or Tolkein. Pretty soon, though, I'm gonna wake up and find this is a spaced-out dream. And I'm gonna swear off reading sword-and-sorcery sagas!"

-- Jim Rook, Showcase # 82 (1969).

Myrra is the fantasyland that rock musician Jim Rook, and his girlfriend Janet Jones, get transported to in Nightmaster, starting in Showcase #82 (May 1969).  Rook is revealed to be the descendant of Nacht, an ancient warrior of Myrra, and the only one who can wield his ancestor's Sword of Night, and save the world from the evil Warlocks.  Nightmaster was the of writer Denny O'Neil and artist Berni Wrightson.  As some of the place names on the map might suggest (Duchy of Psychos, for instance) there was a bit of a late sixties camp element to Nightmaster's adventures, but not as much as some of the names might suggest.  Nightmaster ran through just three issues of Showcase.

This next map is a bit more traditonal. It's notable how set the tropes had become by 1975:

"...On a nameless world in a forgotten time..." is a pretty typical beginning for these sorts of things, and that pretty much sums up Wulf the Barbarian (pretty typical).  The series was from Atlas/Seaboard Comics (helmed by Stan Lee's brother Larry Lieber) and ran for four issues in 1975.  Wulf is the son of royalty, orphaned when trolls in the service of an evil sorcerer, killed his parents.  Wulf spends the next decade training as a warrior to reclaim his kingdom.  As one might imagine, the road to reclaiming that throne is potholed with a number of fantastic obstacles.  Wulf was written and drawn by Larry Hama, and inked by Klaus Janson for his first two outings, with multiple creators pitching in on the last two.  This map is from Wulf the Barbarian #3.