Hero Forge in Color

The beta of the color version of Hero Forge is available to those of us that backed the Kickstarter, and I have been having fun playing with it. It really has a lot of options. Here are some of things I've done so far:

This is a Demonlander (Tiefling) Sorcerer from my Land of Azurth campaign.

Here's another character from that campaign. He has a shield with a hole to a void between dimension affixed to it. Maybe once the decals are added, I'll have a better way to represent that.

This is a recreation of an 80s Remco action figure, The Jewel Thief (part of there Conan line). The toy was made of translucent plastic, so I gave his body a red jewel color/texture, which turned out pretty well but may not come through so well in the picture.

I'm interested to see what the color will look like printed for the characters from my game.

Strange Days and Nights in Shkizz

Our 5e Azurth game continued last night with the party still on the road to the Sapphire City at the center of the Land of Azurth. After several days on the road, they were now near the northern border of Yanth Country. Tired of sleeping by the roadside, they decided to spend the night in the sound of Shkizz. Kully has heard through on the bard circuit that Shkizz is a really boring town, but a safe one.

Emblazoned on Shkizz's walls are the motto: "Blandness is Next to Godliness." The party finds out the town tries their hardest to live that by that creed. All the food is bland, the clothes unisex and colorless, and there is no alcohol to be had.

The party gets rooms at the Tranquil Glenn Inn, where they are in bed by curfew. Several hours after they are in bed (but not sleeping, suspicious of this town), they are awakened by sounds of merrymaking, and wild abandon. The people of Shkizz have traded their drab clothes for colorful carnival attire (when they are wearing clothes at all), consuming massive amounts of alcohol, and generally engaging in wanton hedonism and even criminality.

The party doesn't understand what's going on, but they do a little drinking and play some music to blend in. After a few hours, the revelers were either passed out, concussed, or secluded for amorous activities. The party took up strategic hiding places to see what happened next. As dawn begin to break, hungover workers arrive in their daytime attire to clean up the the detritus of the night's debauchery.

When the party tried to question the townsfolk they were met by icy stares--and then they were approached by guardsmen who arrested them for not disturbing the peace the night before! They were swiftly taken before a judge and found guilty of not committing any number of crimes. They're sentenced to two days in jail.

The party plans to break out at night time, thus committing a crime and obeying Shkizz's rules, but before they do, they see robed figures descending down a hidden stair in the back of the court building.

Their curiosity piqued, once they escape, they follow the mysterious figures below.

Weird Revisited: Over There

Take the fairyland across the border of Lud-in-the-Mist or A Fall of Stardust. In between it and the "real world" there is a wall or barrier-- let's say an "Anti-Alien Protection Rampart" in official terminology. Instead of England on the real world side there's East Berlin and the GDR or some sutble Eastern Bloc stand-in. Drüben indeed.

While "Workers of the World, Unite Against the Faerie!" would be interesting enough, recasting the fairy presence with some Zone phenomena-like details out of Roadside Picnic and a bit of the seductiveness of the Festival from Singularity Sky: "Entertain us and we will give you want you want." Faerie should be weird and horrifying but also weird and wondrous--in a horrific way, naturally. Miracles, wonders, and abominations.

Of course, the authorities don't want anybody having interaction with the faerie, much less smuggling in their reality-warping, magical tech--and maybe they have a point. But if PCs did the smart thing they wouldn't be adventurers, would they?

The Sons of Hercules Against the Giants

I have discovered that Prime Video has a decent number of Italian Sword and Sandal/peplum available, and I have been availing myself of them. It has me thinking that a D&D game with a muscle-bound heroes would be an interesting change of pace. What better place to deploy those mighty thews than--against the giants!

The king of a city-state beset by giants sends a small band of heroes to put a stop to this. The Steading of the Hill Giant Chief could be reimagined as some fortress of ancient world Mediterranean "barbarians," (though in the realm of Sword and Sandal films, there's no need for strict historical accuracy!) but beyond the trappings everything else could pretty much go the same way.

Maybe using something like Exemplars & Eidolons would be suitable to give the heroes the right amount of muscle?

Wednesday Comics: Dreadstar Returns

Hot on the hills of the Dreadstar Omnibus, there's a new Kickstarter for a continuation of Dreadstar by Starlin himself! Check it out.

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.