Weird Revisited: Space Fiends: Marauders from Hyperspace

This post original appeared in December of 2013. It followed  a post about using AD&D Fiend Folio monsters in a science fiction context. It's not set in any particular sci-fi universe I've presented, any more than the write-up of the monster that inspired it was. This was one of a number of posts over the years of monsters or setting trying to get at something that was Spelljammer but not Spelljammer.

No. Appearing:1-4
AC: 4
Hit Dice: 1 (or better)
Saving Throw: as per class and level
Attack Bonus: +2
Damage: 2d8+2 mag rifle, 1d8+1 monoblade
Movement: 30'
Skill Bonus: +1
Morale: 9

Gathyengi are a xenophobic humanoid species who act as pirates, striking from hidden bases within hyperspace. They are theorized to be descended from humans abducted by the psionic Masters from Earth millennia ago to serve as both labor and food source.

Gathyengi (sing. gathyen) are ectomorphic, almost skeletal in appearance. Their skin is dusty yellow to the color of parchment, and leathery. Their skull-like faces, solid black eyes, and pointed teeth (likely ritually sharpened) give them a fearsome appearance in keeping with their reputation for violence.

A gathyengi raider will have a crew compliment of various classes, similar to any human vessel. A raid will be led by a captain of 4-7th level, depending on the size of the ship. It is likely there will be at least one combat psychic among them.

All gathyengi can shift back into hyperspace at will. Whether this is an innate ability or technological is unclear. Dead gathyengi shift back into hyperspace as well, thwarting attempts at close examination.

Some Art from An Upcoming Superhero Thing

No stats today, but here's some spiffy new art for a planned supers project:

The villainous Dungeonmaster by Chris Malgrain, and

the Champion's wizardly mentor by Jeff Call.

More to come!

Wednesday Comics: Storm: The Living Planet (part 3)

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 Living Planet (1986) (part 3)
(Dutch: De Levende Planeet)
Art by Don Lawrence; script by Martin Lodewijk

Storm and Ember work at turning the great wheel, paying off their debt to the ship Salamander. Storm asks another man at the wheel where they are headed. His reply:

The ship hunts the great fire worm, a creature from whose glands a spice can be extracted that fetches a high price all over Pandarve. It's used for medicinal purposes but also in the manufacture of a love potion.

An overseer hears them talking and comes over to whip the man back to work. Ember stands up for the man and she trips the overseer.

Meanwhile, the ship has sighted a fire worm. Their bait ships are luring it closer to them with the beat of drums. The bidge wants to know why one wheel sector seems to be slacking in helping steer the ship.

In that sector, Storm and Ember are standing up to the overseer. The man backs up to a bulkhead to talk to his superior on the comm, when he's killed be a splintering wall. The fire worm has emerge next to the ship and heaved its bulk against it!

While the ship's crew frantically try to respond, the fire worm rises up and falls upon the ship again. The rocking of the vessel with the blows allows Storm to grab the dead overseer's keys. The debtors at the wheel all make their escape.

When they make it to the deck, the fire worm is still attacking. Storm sees a girl in the path of the rampaging worm and rushes to the rescue:

He returns the girl to her mother, who recognizes him as a debtor. Storm doesn't have time for any of that. He demands to know why they don't use their harpoons to kill the worm. The woman explains:

Storm realizes their is another place it must be vulnerable. He notices the flyers above, and quickly arrives at a plan:

TO BE CONTINUED

Weird Revisited: The Robots of Rome

The original version of this post appeared in December of 2013.

The Lokapannatti (an 11th-12th Century Pali cosmological text) tells the story of Ashoka obtaining Buddhist relics from the underground vault of King Ajatasatru. Like all good dungeon treasures, this one is guarded--by robots; bhuta vahana yanta, literally "spirit movement machines."  What's more, these robots are based on stolen Roman technology!

The thoroughness of this ancient text is such that it just doesn't drop a bomb like "Roman robots" and leave it at that. No, we get an origin story. See, Roma-visaya ("The Kingdom of Rome") has a class of skilled bahulayantakara ("machine-makers") who build these wonders for "commerce, agriculture, capturing, and executions."  These engineers are kept under close watch so that Roman technological secrets don't fall into the wrong hands. If they leave the city, they're chased down by a flying beheading machine!

An Indian entrepreneur from Pataliputra wants to get ahold of these marvels so bad he vows on his deathbed to get reincarnated as a Roman. Amazingly, that is exactly what happens! He then marries the daughter of a Roman inventor and when the time is right, snags some blueprints from his father-in-law. This is where his plan gets really complicated: he writes the secrets down and has the paper sewn into his thigh. Then, he tells his son to have him buried back in India when he dies. He leaves Rome and the robot executioner gets him.

His son takes his body (and the stolen secrets) back to Pataliputra and goes into the robot-making business for the king. The robots are still active a hundred years later when Ashoka shows up to reclaim the lost treasure. Lucky for Ashoka, the Roman that built them is somehow still alive and tells him how they can be disabled.

I got this story from Relics of the Buddha by John S. Strong, and with further details from here. Not that something so rife with gaming potential needs solid academic sourcing! It's just one step from this legend to a robot arms race between India and Rome and mecha battles across Afghanistan! 

Bhuta vahana yanta, go!

Professor Fright [FASERIP]

PROFESSOR FRIGHT

STATISTICS
F                 TY   (6)
A                 GD  (10)
S                 TY  (6)
E                 GD   (10)
R                 EX (20)
I                   EX   (20)
P                  EX   (20)
Health: 32
Karma: 60

BACKGROUND
Real Name: Zachary Graves
Occupation: Former psychology professor, former television personality, criminal
Identity: Known to authorities
Legal Status: Citizen of the United States with a criminal record
Place of Birth: Erie, Pennsylvania
Marital Status: Single
Known Relatives: None
Base of Operations: Mobile
Group Affiliation: Masters of Menace

KNOWN POWERS
None.

Equipment:
Mind Control: Professor Fright has the ability to manipulate and control individuals made susceptible by his broadcast with Remarkable ability. Since a victim's suggestibility arises from their fear, His mind control is limited to the sort of actions a fearful person might make.
Fear Broadcast: Monstrous rank, requires a person to see or hear a powerful broadcast. Victims must make an Intuition FEAT or suffer neuro-muscular spasms, cardiac arrhythmia and panic attacks. The effects last 1-10 turns per exposure.
Hallucinations: Monstrous ability to fill a victim’s mind with fearful illusions with lower exposure to the fear broadcast. The hallucinations will be particular to a victim, unless Professor Fright has suggested otherwise (see below).Victims may dispel the illusion by making an Intuition FEAT.

History: Zachary Graves was fascinated with fear from a young age. He pursued a career in psychology  was a specialty in research into fright. Though concern about the direction his studies were taking drove him from academia, he found work as a horror movie host on a local television station, creating the character "Professor Fright." There he perfected his broadcast device for causing frightening hallucinations in the viewer, but was he fired when an intern was injured tampering with the device. Graves attempted to sell this invention to a defense contractor, but reputation as a television personality led them to dismiss him as an eccentric. Angered at the world he perceived as failing to reward his genius, Graves used his device to get revenge on those who wronged him as Professor Fright/

Rocket [FASERIP]

Art by Dean Kotz

ROCKET

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

BACKGROUND
Real Name: Kelli Cross
Occupation: College student, roller derby player
Identity: Secret
Legal Status: Citizen of the U.S. with no criminal record
Place of Birth: Los Angeles, California
Marital Status: Single
Known Relatives: Walter Rush (grandfather)
Base of Operations: Sparkle City, California
Group Affiliation: Super-Sentinels

KNOWN POWERS
Hyper Speed. The magic roller skates increase her reaction time to an Unearthly degree, allowing the following abilities:

• Delivering one hundred Good blows per turn.
• Perceiving an catching high velocity objects with Unearthly ease
• Airskating: Remarkable speed by rapidly fanning her feet and arms.
• Waterskating: Unearthly speed by skimming along on surface tension
• Extra attacks with Unearthly ability or multiple attacks that inflict up to Unearthly damage, ignoring body armor (only one to hit roll is made).
• Create cyclones for Excellent damage and Unearthly stunning or slamming
• Wallskating (500 feet with a 1000-foot approach)
• Invisibility by moving extremely fast, Red intuition FEAT to notice
• One must make a Red FEAT to hit Rocket with anything other than an area effect or Psychic attack. If he is making multiple attacks against the same target the FEAT is reduced to Yellow.
• Considered Amazing rank for Fighting for multiple attacks and evading.
• Considered Amazing rank for Agility for dodging and catching projectiles.
• Considered Monstrous rank for Intuition for initiative.
• She may perceive any object's momentum as though it were 14CS slower than it's actual movement speed. E.g: Arrows and bullet sized objects appear moving at 5 m/ph
• Rocket is considered to have Unearthly Endurance for movement and tiring purposes, while wearing her skates.
• Unearthly resistance to friction

History: Kelli Cross was a college student, but what she was really into was roller derby. When she discovered her grandfather Walt had been a costumed crime-fighter during World War II with a set of magical roller-skates that supposedly came from an extradimensional imp—well, it all sounded pretty hard to believe, but skating and fighting crime just seemed like the thing to do!

Kelli began fighting crime in Southern California as the new Rocket and later became a member of the Super-Sentinels.

Wednesday Comics: Comic Book Kickstarters

Kickstarter doesn't make it easy to find stuff just browsing, so as a public service, here are a few Kickstarters that I have backed in the past week or so that might be of interest to comics fans:

Aztec Ace: The Complete Collection: Eclipse originally published these adventures of a Native American time traveler doing the sort of Doctor Who save the timeline thing back in the 80s. This is the first time this Doug Moench/Dan Day work has been collected, as far as I know.

Cosmic Master Jim Starlin's Art Book and Illustrated Novella: Readers of this blog likely know I am a big fan of Jim Starlin and his Bronze Age of Comics cosmicism. It's great to see he's getting a nice artbook. The illustrated Hardcore Station novel interests me less, but it's a nice extra.

Scout:Marauder: Scout was another Native American hero published original by Eclipse. It was set in a dystopian future where the United States had been crippled after its ecological excesses led other nations to turn against it. Scout was the creation of Timothy Truman. He promises this adventure is standalone, so familiarity with the previous series isn't necessary.