Weird Revisited: Wild Wild West

Robert Conrad died yesterday at the age of 84. This post from 2015 is a tribute to what I think was his best role...

Wild Wild West was conceived as "James Bond on horseback." That was a just-about perfect genre combo for the 1965, and a damn good one for today. The actual show was even cooler, particularly when it went color; it was the Old West filtered through 60s spy-fi style with Jules Verne science fiction thrown in. It's practically begging for an rpg.

The show's James Bond of the 1870s was James West, Secret Service agent, who rode around in a private train with his partner, gadgeteer and master of disguise Artemus Gordon. Bruce Lansbury, producer of the show, described it thusly (as quoted in Susan Kesler's book):

"Jim's world was one of two-faced villainy, male and female, countless 'Mickey Finns,' and needle-tipped baroque pinkie rings that put him to sleep even as he embraced their dispensers. There were inevitable trap doors, hotel walls that ground their victims to dust or revolved into lush Aubrey Beardsley settings next door, lethal chairs that tossed occupants skyward or alternatively dumped them into dank sewers that subterraneously crisscrossed countless cow towns of the period. And then there was that old Dutch sea captain, leaning in the corner of the swill-hole of a bar, who inexplicably winked at Jim as he entered … Artemus, of course, in one of his thousand disguises."

Some highlights: a super-speed formula made from diamonds; an elaborate house full of traps made by a deranged puppeteer; a ground of assassins masquerading as a circus troupe; and of course, the genius dwarf, Miguelito Loveless.

(No doubt some of you remember the 1999 film of the same name. It's fine, in the way the 1998 Godzilla is fine.)

Anyway, in gaming Wild Wild West, a lot of folks would suggest Steampunk games first--but the Steampunk aesthetic is pretty much missing from the show, despite the superficial similarities in thumbnail description. Any Western rpg (or generic one) would work, I suppose--so long as it would support the Victorian super-science. The Western element is mostly cosmetic, though, Stripped of its trappings, it more resembles The Man from UNCLE at its core than say Wagon Train. I think a Western adaptation of the old James Bond game would be interesting with the spy-fi genre stuff it has built in. GUMSHOE might also be a good way to do it.

Gretel & Hansel

Oz Perkins' Gretel & Hansel is based on the fairy tale, but is a different story in many ways. This blogpost will contain some mild spoilers for the film.

Like most fairy tales, Gretel & Hansel takes place in a vague time period that is not the present or recent past. Also like many fairy tales, the place is vague, though it definitely has a old world feel about it. The film has none of the lush atmosphere often present in fairy tales, however. This isn't Sleepy Hollow or even Company of Wolves. Instead, it has the post-apocalyptic spareness of The Road (though it reminds me more of McCarthy's as yet unfilmed The Outer Dark). It's woods are gray rather than verdant. It's habitations are rundown and depopulated. The only place that looks really lived in is the house of the witch, and well, she's a cannibal.

Gretel and her little brother stumble through this wasteland, accidentally take psychedelic mushrooms, and are eventually bedeviled by a witch or witches--a child, a mother, a crone. Where this version differs from the traditional tale (well, besides all the stuff described above) is that this is Gretel's tale, or the tale of how the Gretel & Hansel duo split. The Witch sees something of herself in Gretel and is looking for an ally. There is no gingerbread house. No trail of breadcrumbs to lead our heroine back home.

Like Perkins' previous horror films it is a bit of a slow burn, so it may seem sluggish if you are looking for more jump-scares. Fans of The VVitch should find a lot to like.

Weird Revisited: Spacehunters

A variety of real life stuff has led to little time to prep the next installment of my Talislanta series. Instead, enjoy this post whose original version was presented in February of 2017.

Luis Royo

Watching The Expanse brought to mind a game I ran in GURPS perhaps decade ago. A "hard" science fiction thing using a lot of stuff from Transhuman Space put giving it more of a Cowboy Bebop spin: a little bit cyberpunk, a little bit 70s action film.

Howard Chaykin

If I ever ran a similar game again, besides using a system besides GURPS, I think I would draw more visually from '80s and 80's sci-fi, borrowing some elements from things like American Flagg! and 80s cyperpunk rpgs. The players' would still be ne'er-do-well, planet-hopping bounty hunters/troubleshooters but with a different skin.

Janet Aulisio

Thunder Bunny!

I new episode of the Bronze Age Book Club podcast dropped yesterday, this one about the Archie Red Circle comic Thunder Bunny #1! Hear it below or on your podcast app of choice.


Listen to "Episode 13: THUNDER BUNNY #1" on Spreaker.

Omniverse: Birds of A Feather

There is a lost city, hidden by the clouds, drifting slowly above the modern world, every bit as silent as the tomb it has become. This was the city of an ancient civilization of winged humanoids, the Bird People. It had existed for eons before the future king of Aquilonia, Conan, came to it some 12,000 years ago. It was called Akah Ma’at, and its people were at war with the bat-winged humanoids of Ur-Xanarrh, something Conan helped them with.

The Hawkmen of Mongo may well be the descendants of an abducted group of Bird People. The cannibalistic hawkmen Travis Morgan encounters in Skartaris are certainly of the same lineage.

It may be that Akah Ma’at meant “Sky Island” and eventually came to mean “Aerie,” because when they clouds recede again, and the city appears in the modern historical record, those are the names it is given in translation. In the 1920s, an airplane because lost in a storm and crashes into the Sky Island. A young boy was the only survivor. He was taken in by the Bird People and would be the costumed hero Red Raven¹.

It is possible that the hero Black Condor (Quality Comics) represents the same individual, since the Black Condor’s origin as related in the comics of being raised by condors in the Gobi seems implausible--and not just because condor's are native to the Americas. Perhaps the Bird People were in the habit of taking in foundlings?

Red Raven eventually had to turn against his adoptive people when their warrior class, under the influence of the Bloodraven Cult of demon-worshippers, sought to make war on the surface world. The ensuing civil war destroyed part of the city and ended with population either fleeing or placing themselves in suspended animation. The city was left in the charge of two android Bi-Beasts who would later encounter the Hulk.

There is some confusion regarding the origins of the Bird People. Accounts suggest that are an offshoot of the Inhumans, but this ignores the prior existence of Akah Ma’at. Rather, there is an Inhuman offshoot people with more avian features. These are the Feitherans, the people of the superhero Northwind, who lived in a hidden city in the Arctic Circle, and also probably the Aerians that live near the South Pole in the Savage Land.

¹Red Raven’s flight costume was made with Cavorite, which may or may not be the same thing as nth metal, but certainly as similar properties.

Wednesday Comics: Barbarian Life

I can't believe I haven't mentioned it before, but I couldn't find it in a search, so here goes Roy Thomas's Barbarian Life is subtitled: "A Literary Biography of Conan the Barbarian," but what it is a sort of a "director's commentary" on Marvel's Conan the Barbarian series.  It's two volumes, both now available in Kindle and soft cover. The first volume covers the inception and first 51 issues of the title, while the second goes up to #100, and Thomas and Buscema's final issue together.

Talislanta: In Zandu

Art by P.D. Breeding-Black

The land Zandu and it's people are relatives of the Aamanians, but the opposite side of the coin. Tamerlin tells us they are "eccentric and uninhibited" and "enhance their features with vividly colored pigments, adorn their hair with silver bands and dress in flamboyant apparel" to express their individuality. Where Aamanian society is uniform except for class, several factions of Zandir are described.

The entries on Zandu are no help with the Aamanian skin-color dilemma, however. The archetype descriptions across most editions say they have "topaz skin" (as they do for the Aamanians), but the setting text only says they "bear a marked physical resemblance to the Aamanians, both being descended from the copper-skinned Phaedrans." As mentioned before, the 4th edition attempts to resolve this by given the Zandir "copper or cinnabar" skin, and the 5th edition just says copper for everybody.

"I respond to three questions," stated the augur. "For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue." - The Dying Earth, Jack Vance

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Zandu is its state religion, Paradoxism (or Paradoxy, as Tamerlin would have it). The Paradoxists  "profess to be mystified by their own existence." The central text  of the faith is "The Great Mysteries (author unknown), a lengthy book filled with over 100,000 questions, and no answers." The Paradoxist writ is named The Book of Mysteries from the Cyclopedia vol. 4 on. There are no Paradoxist priests, but wizards serve as seers for the faith. Outside of Zandu, these wizards "are largely thought of as frauds and impostors."

French Talislanta art

Paradoxy gets most detail in CTv4. It may contradict Tamerlin's original account by naming the founder of the philosophy as Zand, though this is ambiguous. I suppose he might not have been the author of the foundational text. While Paradoxy has no central deity or Pantheon, CTv4 introduces the idea of the Ten Thousand, which is the poetic name (there number is unspecified and ever changing) of the syncretized "saints, heroes, and deities" incorporated into Paradoxist practice.

"No fear of that. Cath has no laws, only customs, which seems to suit the Yao well enough."
- Servants of the Wankh, Jack Vance

All of that is the good stuff in the noncanonical CTv4, but it also has a tendency to present Zandu as the good guys with Aaman as the villains. There are hints of this in other Talislanta products, but it is the most present here. I think this is a mistake. Zandu is certainly more into personal freedom than Aaman, but it's ruled be an absolute despot and a capricious one to boot! It's a place where disagreements are often handled with duels.

I think Zandu works best if it is as frightening as Aaman in its own way. The culture of the Yao as presented in Vance's Planet of Adventure series would certainly be a strong inspiration. The libertarian, but baroque culture bound society of Sirene in Vance's "The Moon Moth" would be an influence here, too.

Paradoxy is, in many ways, more interesting than Orthodoxy, because it seems like it could come in so many flavors from absurd ascetism (not very popular) to lampoon's of New Age-y faddishness. I imagine variants of Paradoxy rise and fall like gods in Lankhmar (see "Lean Times in Lankhmar.") As to its seers being charlatans, well, I mostly take that to mean they have no more spiritual connection than anybody else, but their wizardry is likely real.