Return to Wermspittle

If you like early modern/modern fantasy cities like Jack Shear's Scarabae or Umberwell or the City of my Weird Adventures (if you recall back to 2012 and before), then you will want to check out Hereticwerk's Wermspittle. I did an introduction to that setting once upon a time. Go read it. We'll wait.

After a several year hiatus, new Wermspittle posts have begun to appear, including some actual play reports. Slowly, admittedly, but proof of life. Check it out.

Again, Random Ultra-Warriors!

Interested in generating the sort of visually distinct science fantasy characters of the sort found in Masters of the Universe? I've got a set of random generators for you, just in case you missed it the first time I posted about it a few years ago. Pair the Random Ultra-Warriors Creator with your favorite science fantasy/post-apocalyptic rpg and your ready to create characters so distinctive they ought to be sold separately in their own blister pack.

Wednesday Comics: More Metabarons

I heard there was a Metabarons comic on Free Comic Book Day, which precedes a new Metabarons series. I've mentioned Metabarons on this blog before, but for those unfamiliar with it, it's the Greek Tragedy by way of Space Opera generational saga by  Alejandro Jodorowsky that he came up with riffing off ideas from his aborted attempt to get a Dune movie made.

The original "Saga of the Metabarons" was published, complete, in English in the early 2000s. In 2014, there was a sort of prequel Metabarons Genesis: Castaka published in 2014.

Hearing about this new series, I went looking to see if I had missed something, and what do you know? I had. There are already two volumes in a series called The Metabaron. Now, I haven't read these yet myself, so I can't comment on them (though I'll have them in hand this week), but I wanted you guys to know they were out there:

The Metabaron Book 1: The Techno-Admiral and the Anti-Baron

The Metabaron Book2: The Techno-Cardinal and the Transhuman

Misty Isle of the Meanies

Our Land of Azurth 5e campaign continued last night, with the party and friends still lost at sea after displeasing the Sea King. Their submarine had wondered into strange, dense fog. Kory Keenstep recalls legends of the mist-enshrouded paradise of Cucana and is sure they have found it. When Captain Cog sights a green and pleasant isle in his optics, it seems that Keenstep may becorrect.

When Waylon, Dagmar, and Erekose go ashore, they find the pleasantness to be an illusion. The island is gray and mostly barren and cloaked in gray skies and a sulfurous stench. Going ashore, they find paths strewn with the pulverized bits of broken toys, and occasional gray statues that look more like petrified people.

They made their way past the giant, sessile worms with lolling stripped tongues to the Blue Pagoda City. There they encountered the disagreeable blue meanies--and ended up slaughtering them in fairly large numbers. The party wandered through the bunker encountering and defeating a number of odd and violent people before apparently reaching the inner sanctum of "His Blueness."

This adventure began a loose adaptation of Chris Kutalik's Misty Isles of the Eld, liberally mashed together with the film Yellow Submarine.

Mecha & Cavemen

The physical copies of the the English translation of the French prehistoric rpg Würm finally arrived last week. I got the main rulebook and the Voice of Our Ancestors  magazine with rules and adventures. I taked about the main rulebook pdf before. On of the Voice of Ancestors issues has rules for the benefits conferred by ritual cannibalism, which is an interesting edition. I don't know if I can convince my group to play it, but I'm not sorry I backed the Kickstarter.

Tom Parkinson-Morgan, the author of Kill 6 Billion Demons, released the latest iteration of his mecha rpg Lancer for free. I confess I have not read through it yet, but hey, it's free.

Underground Comics Contents

Solo-parenting of a sick infant has kept the blog silent this week, but I wanted to share a bit of what I've been working on just prior to all that happening. Here's a glimpse of the most interesting part of the contents page for the forthcoming Underground Comics with work by Jason Sholtis, James V. West, Stefan Poag, Luka Rejec, Jeff Call, and Karl Stjernberg.

FASERIP Black Void

BLACK VOID

STATISTICS
F                 RM   (30)
A                 GD  (10)
S                 IN  (40)
E                 AM   (50)
R                 EX (20)
I                   EX   (20)
P                  AM   (50)
Health: 130
Karma: 90

BACKGROUND
Real Name: Ted Crawford
Occupation: Former petroleum engineer
Identity: Known to authorities
Legal Status: Citizen of the United States
Place of Birth: Hagerstown, Maryland
Marital Status: Single
Known Relatives: None
Base of Operations: Mobile
Group Affiliation: Masters of Menace

KNOWN POWERS
Amorphous Form. Outside of his containment suit, he is a mass of protoplasmic entity.
Telepathic Link. Black Void has Monstrous rank telepathic communication with the black mass entity that he is an offshoot of.
Conversion and Draining: Black Void can heal himself by touching his victims, which alters their cellular structure, converting it into more Black Mass Entity like himself. He gains health equal to the targets health or material strength. He does this with Monstrous ability and the target can attempt an Endurance FEAT to avoid.

Equipment:
Containment Suit. Made of Incredible material. Providing:
Body Armor: Excellent rank.

History: Ted Crawford was a petroleum engineer for Hexxon Oil, tasked with exploring a deep underground pocket wherein a material with unusual properties, dubbed the "black mass," had been found. Upon opening the chamber, the Black Mass was revealed to be a vast sea of protoplasm with an alien intelligence. Telepathically communicating with Crawford and his team, it asserted it was the first living thing on earth and all other lifeforms were ultimately derived from its substance. It absorbed all of Crawford's team, but left him with part of his intellect intact and animated his partial absorbed corpse within his environmental suit, so it could use him to explore the outside world.

The Crawford-Black Mass hybrid soon came in contact with Subterrans, who had long been aware of the entity they called the Black Void and had sought to contain it. The prince of the underground civilization, the Subterranean, battled Black Void and forced him back into the chamber then resealed it.

Later, the Black Void escaped again and was brought by agents of Hexxon to its board, who were revealed to all be members of a secret cult that worshiped the Black Mass and sought to use it to gain power. Black Void killed most of the board members and more a time took secret control of Hexxon.