Gods of Eternia

Gods and titanic monsters are not uncommon in Eternia's Masters of the Universe mythology, but very little genuine Eternian religion is revealed in the stories. What little we know of what gods were actually worshipped only comes from the post-Great War epoch, though it sometimes purports to detail events from before that era, from the time referred to as "Preternia."

Trollans
Eternian myth is only passingly concerned with cosmogony. There is the vague notion of primordial, creator gods, but these are either destroyed or sacrifice themselves at the dawn of the universe. They leave things in the hand of custodial beings, which may in fact represent an advanced civilization the ancient Eternians encountered. These beings, called Trollans, occupy a space between archangels and trickster gods. By the time of the legends of the Randorian court, the Trollans had been diminished to elfin beings and comedy relief, perhaps a reflection their decreasing importance next to Goddess worship.

Serpos
Serpos was titanic, three-head serpent worshipped by the Snake folk, a people said to have been created by a renegade Trollan. The Snake folk are said to have unless their god to level entire cities in their bid for conquest. The Snake folk dominated much of Eternia in the Preternian period and after their defeat and purported exile, Serpos was reinterpreted as either a destructive primitive aspect of the Goddess or her offspring.

The Goddess
The Goddess was typically depicted wearing a cobra headdress and sometimes with green skin. While some scholars have connected the headdress with Serpos and the Snake folk, others view it as predating the Snake folk's arrival. The green skin possibly links her with vegetation and life, allying her with the forest deity who appears in the mythos as Moss Man.

The serpent-themed Goddess initially seems predominant in the Eternos region, but immigrants from the northern plains identified her instead with an Eternian bird of prey. By the Randorian era, the Sorceress of Grayskull, held to be the Goddess' living incarnation and oracle, was garbed in feathered raiment.

Art by Gerald Parel

Rabbits and Eggs in Azurth

This post has become my lazy Easter blog tradition...

There is, in the Land of Azurth, a magical treasure peculiar to the Hara or Rabbit Folk and celebrated in their legends. A number (though no one knows the exact number) of eggs in variegated pastels are forever being lost and rediscovered; they are objects of quests for great heroes and the catalyst for small folk to elevated their station. They are associated with both just rulers and holy madmen.

The eggs are said to have been crafted on the Moon by the rabbit goddess the Bright Lady as gifts to favored mortals or saints on the occasion of the birth of spring. The shell of each egg is held to not be mere eggshell but ceramic made from moonstuff. The eggs have moved down through history, sought, horded, and fought over for their beauty and their magic power--each egg has a unique arcane property. One might have the power to heal, while another the ability to command others to do the bearer's bidding. Still another might allow one to see the future.

The Rabbit Folk sometimes make their own mundane eggs for vernal celebrations in honor of the goddess, while unscrupulous relic-dealers occasional try to pass off fakes as the real artifacts. The abundance of imitations has only increased the difficulty of finding the real thing.

It is said that Lapin XXII, King of the Warrens of the Hara, has several of the eggs in his possession, stored in a ceremonial basket.

Eternian Armsmen

At the onset of the Eternian Dark Ages, warbands swept across much of the so-called Light Hemisphere, disrupting the struggling remnants of civilization and destabilizing fledgling powers on the rise. Their ranks were drawn from the displaced or rootless warriors of an entire continent. Their equipment came from salvage; these soldier-scavengers targeted the ruins and ruin-adjacent settlements with the largest deposits of metals and technology. Tools from the time before the Great War were reconfigured into weapons, and raw material were beat into armor, making the Armsmen, as they came to be called, the most formidable military force of the era. They struck quickly as savagely, some by aircraft ("the Wind Raiders") and others employing an assort of land vehicles.

Within two centuries the Armsmen underwent significant changes. While many still served as mercenaries, they had developed into a quasi-religious military order with the technology of the Ancients venerated as relics. Technical manuals were treated almost as liturgical texts. While the Armsmen were still formidable fighters, their focus was more on the location and recovery of lost technology.

By the time of the folk hero "He-Man," it is believed that the Armsmen no longer existed as a cohesive cultural group, but some families and small sects held to some or all of the Armsmen's practices. The Man-At-Arms of the Masters of the Universe legends represents a hermitic example of the dwindling, latter-day Armsmen.

The elite Eternian Guard of the Randorian era were depicted dressed in the "classical" armor of the Armsmen, though most scholars believe any lingering Armsmen belief were at best vestigial by that point, a testament to the Armsmen's enduring cultural cachet.

Wednesday Comics: Free Comics

While you're sheltering in place, some comics companies are making some titles available to you for free.

Humanoids has some comics this week you can read for free in memoriam of Juan Giménez. This includes the Jodorowsky/Gimenez epic Metabarons.

2000AD has made 400 pages of Judge Dredd available for free download!

Finally, Marvel Unlimited is offering some free comics in the Mighty Marvel manner for a limited time.

The Tower & the Shadow

Our Land of Azurth 5e game continued last night with the party pressing on toward the shadowy ruined tower (and forgetting their captive in the process). They made their way to the wall surrounding the tower's courtyard. It was made of an alien stone black as vantablack. As the party was peering over it to get a glimpse of structures on the other side, a monstrous black wolf whose breath was icy cold.

They found fire effective in combating the beast, but it seemed to be able to pass through other dimensions to move from place to place. It appeared behind the party and blasted them with its frigid, slaughterhouse-stinking breath. Most of the party went down under the assault; only Shade, Dagmar, and Erekose withstood it. Waylon had chanced to jump over to the other side of the wall, and so was unharmed. Dagmar did a mass healing, and the party dispatched the beast with fire based spells.

They moved into the courtyard and where drawn to a sinister looking stone shed. Waylon saw a treasure chest inside and was undeterred by the corpse of another of the wolf-things in front of it. He manages to pick the lock and get the platinum coins and opals inside, but then is trapped in the shed by a descending wall of shadow. He fills his life being drained away. He can't get through the door! He blasts it with an energy rifle and the shadow seems to weaken but doesn't give.

Dagmar uses a Sacred Flame against it, and again it weakens, but doesn't give. The rest of the part decides the evidence of radiant attacks damaging it isn't quite sufficient, and tries a series of other attack forms, as Waylon's life ebbs away. Eventually, they all switch to radiant attacks and the door is open and Waylon is freed.

The party moved on to the ruined tower and found several of the gloom elves waiting more them. They have a couple of captive members of the deer-centaur tribes folk caged with them, and then there's a door of purest shadow that writhes like a flame.  A Gloom elf huntress steps forward to parley. She suggests the party and the elves call a truce and go their own ways without further blood shed.

Shade demands the captives be returned. The elves are reluctant to do so; the captives "life energy" feeds the shadow and strengthens the connection to the Anti-Sun. The wish to extend the dark country of Noxia into this region. Shade holds firm and the Huntress agrees to consult their master. She walks to the door of shadow and calls out in a language the party doesn't understand.

The shadow of a man comes forth. It seems somehow familiar to them, but none of the party can place it. The shadow consults with the Huntress who bends her knee to it. She reports her Master agrees to their terms, but also wishes to speak with them. The party is wary, but agrees.

The shadow man writes upon a piece of the black stone of the ruined tower with his finger. The result are letters, black but now reflective and so visible. It reads: "You don't even know who your enemy is."

The shadow man leaves through the doorway.

The elves free the captives. The party also attempts to extract another promise that they won't disturb the villagers again. The elves reluctantly agree.

The party returns to the village for a rest with the grateful centaur-folk.

Eternian History Revealed

Eternian historians tend to agree that aspects of the Masters of the Universe myth and literary cycle are rooted in fact, though the historicity of any given aspect of the corpus is likely to be a matter of debate. There several recognized strata of textual sources forming the cycle, each paralleling a series of popular entertainments on Earth. Earth scholars have been slow to treat the Masters of the Universe mythology as an area of serious study, in part due to the bowdlerized form of its transmission, but also to the fanciful, even frivolous translations, done to serve the needs of a toyline.

The name of central figure of the mythos, for example, is risibly rendered as "He-Man." While this is not a wholly inaccurate, literal translation of his title^[1] in the earliest texts (which could be read as something like "Supreme Man" or "Male Exemplar"), it seems to have been understood as something more like "Powerful Hero" or "Mighty Person" at the time those texts were written. Such carelessness is rife in widely available translations.

The most widely known version of the mythology forms what is essentially the "Matter of Eternos," particularly focusing on King Randor and his court. The term "Masters of the Universe" arises from this era and refers to the elite warriors, comparable to the Knights of the Round Table, whose exploits are primary focus of the various epics and romances. He-Man is central to these stories, as the secret, heroic identity of Randor's son Adam, who is otherwise portrayed as callow or even foppish. He-Man's inclusion is unhistorical, but the Randorian Renaissance is a matter of historical record, and some of this Masters of the Universe are likewise attested.

The historical He-Man is believed to belong to the oldest strata of tales. These stories are simpler and portray a more primitive world still suffering the effects of the Great Wars, far removed from the technological rediscovery and courtly sophistication of Randor's time. This He-Man is a folk hero who leaves his tribe to began taming or reclaiming the wilderness. He contends with monsters and personifications of cultural competitors.

One of the key events in these early myths is He-Man's encounter with a green-skinned sorceress who gifts him with ancient weapons and armor from a cache hidden in a cave. In some myths of this strata, she is referred to as a goddess. The confusion regarding her identity likely later editing of the stories to preserve the importance of the Sorceress of Grayskull or her cult.

The earliest depictions of the Sorceress/Goddess show her in a cobra headdress. Many scholars believe this to be an important and revealing historical detail, reflecting the continued influenced of the Serpent centered religion of the conquering Snake Men. In contrast, by Randor's time, the Sorceress is clad in feathers and associated with the Eternian falcon, the Snake Men and their cultural having been thoroughly demonized.

______________________________________

1. Initially the title was thought to have been the character's actual name, but it appears in other records of that era clearly not referring to the hero. Perhaps the Eternian chroniclers were unaware of his original name among his tribe. This lack of identification is considered significant by those who doubt a single He-Man existed historically, instead viewing him at best as a composite of several real individuals, if not completely mythological. Some have seen Wun-Dar of Tundaria as the original of the He-Man character, noting the similar stories told about them, but it seems more likely some of He-Man's exploits were attributed by the Tundarians to their local hero.

Weird Revisited: The Ahistorical Historical Setting

This post first appeared in 2017...

Historically accurate Aristotle?

A social media thread about bad history in historical costume drama caused me to recall an idea I had years ago upon a re-read of Aaron Allston's wonderful Mythic Greece: Age of Heroes. At the time, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys was still in syndication, and while not particularly good, it did suggest the using of Greek Myth and geographic as a backdrop for a fantasy setting that might not otherwise have a lot of the trappings of Greek myth. For the most part, Hercules stuck to the big names, but there's no reason you couldn't get as detailed as Allston's book, but give it a wholly un-Mythic Greece feel.

The changes can be big. Reign: The Conqueror (based on the novel Arekusandā Senki by Hiroshi Aramata) re-imagines the life of Alexander the Great as a sort of science fantasy thing with giant Persian war machines and Pythagorean ninjas. Or, they can be subtle, like Black Sails weaving historical pirates with a sort of prequel to Treasure Island. (The difference I see between this last one and a standard historical setting which would generally tend to insert fictional characters, i.e. the PCs, into history, is the "high concept" of the literary/historical mashup.)

A lesson on Greek myth every week?

So I say go ahead and run a Kirby-esque space opera based on the book of Exodus. Recontextualize the War of Roses to have it take place in something like Warring States Japan. Or take the history presented in the Book of Mormon and turn it into a hexcrawl as Jeff Reints did.

Let history be your guide, not your boss.