Weird Revisited: Hard Science Fantasy

This post first appeared in 2013, though I revisited the idea with some other details in the years since...

Art by Bruce Pennington

Genre titles are really imprecise things, so let me explain what I mean: A setting that looks like fantasy, but is in fact sort of post-technological science fiction. What would make it "hard" as opposed to the usual science fantasy is that it wouldn't resort to what are essentially fantasy concepts like extradimensional entities or psionic powers to do it. The fantastic would come from at least moderately more possible sources like near Clarketech ("any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic") nanotechnology, cybernetics, and bio-engineering.

I haven't really seen this out there in gaming. Yes, Numenera presents a world utterly drenched in nanotech that can be tapped like magic by the masses, ignorant of it's nature. But Numenera still has psychic powers and extradimensional monsters. What I'm envisioning is more like Karl Schroeder's Ventus (where the "spirits" animating the natural world are AI controlled nanotech) or the Arabian Nights-flavored Sirr of Hannu Rajaniemi's The Fractal Prince where spirits in ancient tombs are digital mind emulations and the jinn are made of "wildcode" malicious nanotech.

Beyond nanotech, monsters would be genetically engineered creations of the past or descendants thereof. Or perhaps genuine aliens. Gods would be post-human biologic or AI entities--or often some combination of both. Or figments of human imagination. Or leftover bombs.

Why a more "rigorous" science fiction masquerading as fantasy world than the usual Dying Earths or whatnot? No real reason other than it seems to me starting with far future science fiction and figuring out how it would be rationalized by a more primitive mindset might yield a fresher take on the standard fantasy tropes.

My Secret and Possibly Quixotic Yearning for Vanilla

Since I've entered the blogosphere (over 10 years ago now), I've imagined all sorts of variants of D&D-type fantasy from Weird Adventures to the cyberpunk planes City of Gyre, I've often even eschewed weird in the classic "Weird" sense. My takes were hardly even the most out there among the DIY crowd in which I have often found myself.

But there are times when I think back with nostalgia to a sort of game I never really played. Or games, I should say, it's not always the same. Sometimes it's nostalgia for fantasy before D&D was a thing, something like a mix of Byfield's The Book of the Weird, Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain, and the film versions of The Last Unicorn and The Hobbit. Other times, I think it should be a bit grottier, like the World of Titan, and the illustrations in the Fighting Fantasy books, and more adventure-y like select illustrations from the Moldavy-Cook editions and the earliest AD&D books. The rarest, least frequent itch is for something like the illustrations of the "High D&D" era defined by the likes of Elmore and Caldwell.

All very vanilla, I know. Our elves aren't different, they're just elves. Feudal Kingdoms, bearded wizards in towers. All the tropes!

I don't really know what the yearnings about. Some of these things were the inspirations of my pre-D&D days, so maybe its sort of the world that had moved on before I was old enough to take part in it. Others, well, they were maybe what was in the gamebooks I was playing with, but I was ignoring it in favor of the stuff I was reading--comics books, Edgar Rice Burroughs novels, Conan yarns.

Of course, its all relative. I'm sure some people think my Land of Azurth game is pretty vanilla,  but to me is too knowing to be that. Maybe that's why I never pull the trigger on a game inspired by one of these things. Still, it's something I think about.

Wednesday Comics: Suicide Squad Classic

There isn't a comic named Suicide Squad Classic, but I not the original Suicide Squad or to the recent incarnation that got a movie, but to the run that spun out of Legends in 1987. Written and created by John Ostrander and illustrated by several artists over its run, Suicide Squad (vol. 1) would go to 1992 and 66 issues. Ron Edwards has written some good essays about the series on his Comics Madness blog.

Anyway, all this is preamble to my wanting to clue you in to what I discovered this past week: Suicide Squad is now all available in trade paperback. The series of trades is as follows:

Trial by Fire (2011)
The Nightshade Odyssey (2015)
Rogues (2016)
The Janus Directive (2016)
Apokolips Now (2016)
The Phoenix Gambit (2017)
The Dragon's Hoard (2017)
The Final Mission (2019)

Weird Revisited: The Otus Pantheon

This Pantheon first appeared back in 2016.

Blame Chris Kutalik. He did a post back in the day about imagining a pantheon based on Erol Otus's strange evocative illustrations in Deities & Demigods. This is what I came up with:

Click to check it out in its enlarged "glory." The domains provided are for 5th edition.

Bronze Age Book Club: Young Love

A new episode of the Bronze Age Book Club podcast has dropped, just in time for Valentine's Day.

Listen to "Episode 14: YOUNG LOVE #112" on Spreaker.

Wednesday Comics: Wild, Wild West

The 60s spy-fi Western Wild, Wild West has had a couple of comic book adaptations. Gold Key Comics published 7 issues from 1966-69 (the span of tv series). The most recent series was in 1990 from Millennium Comics.

I've never read the Millennium series, but several issues of the Gold Key run are available on the Internet Archive. Check them out.

Shadows on the Hill

Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued last night with the party leaving Rivertown on their way to the Sapphire City and from there Virid Country. In the forests north of Rivertown, they encountered a an injured, cervine centaur-like creature named Tualla. Seeing the Sylvan Elf Shade among them, she asks for the party's help. It seems that something strange occurred in their ritual circle, and eruption of shadow, and the arrival of two umbral drakes.

The party agrees to at least investigate to see if they can help her people. After defeating a shadow-touched living tree, they around at the mound with its circle of standing stones. A fear grips a few of them, and all of them feel the touch of the unnatural, but they proceed.

Within the standing stones, they find a portal of roiling shadow, encircled by skulls--and the two wicked monsters. The mated pair of drakes taunt them, them knock over half the party unconscious with a breath weapon of cold shadow, then toy with them further, allowing the surviving members of the party to escape with their friends.

They rest with Tualla's people and strategize. The Sorcerer Bell recalls that Umbral Drakes are creatures of the Shadow Moon and are susceptible to celestial radiance. The party recalls that the shadow creature that might before was exquisitely susceptible to the energy weapons they carry. They begin to formulate a plan.

Fortified by the bards make (improving their constitutions), Waylon and Shade stealth into the cirlce of stones in an attempt to destroy the skulls around the shadow portal. The other party members spread out around the base of the mound, at the edge of the clearing to make distance attacks--or escape, if necessary.

Waylon and Shade walk right in the midst of the conversing drakes without being spotted, but Waylon's attempt to destroy a skull (a failure) brings their attention. The female attacks them viciously, but the group returns the favor with energy rifles and she only lasts two rounds. She does unleash her breath weapon on the two PCs in the circle, but their boost Constitution pulls them through.

As she dies, she warns her "toothless worm" of a mate that if he doesn't slay these "vermin" her ghost will haunt him forever.

Enraged, the male attacks. Dagmar uses daylight to disperse the shadows so he can no longer hide or travel between them. Kairon slows him to limit his attacks. The others focus their fire. Bell delivers the coup de grace with a chromatic orb.