Wild Wild West Wednesday: The Night of the Whirring Death

Let this re-posting of a Christmas-ish episode of Wild Wild West serve is a reminder that Jim and I are reviewing the series here on his blog...

 

"The Night of the Whirring Death" 

Written by Jackson Gillis
Directed by Mark Rydell
Synopsis (from IMDB): Jim and Artie are collect money from millionaires buying bonds to save California from bankruptcy. The problem is, Dr. Loveless is back and blowing up the would-be benefactors with booby-trapped toys to steal the money.

Trey: This is the closest WWW came to a Christmas episode. It isn't stated in the episode to be Christmas, but the winter weather, focus on toys, and other story elements give they vibe. It aired, however, in February of 1966.

Jim: It starts off with a nice tip of the hat to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol with Jeremiah Ratch taking the place of  Scrooge. Ratch is played by Norman Fell, aka Mr. Roper from Three’s Company. Fell’s comedy chops come in handy as he hams it up with the Ratch character for the short time he’s on the screen.

Trey: This is Dr. Loveless' third appearance and the first not written by his creator. It sticks pretty close to the established Loveless schtick though: he's still trying to carve his own kingdom out of part of California. Voltaire (Richard Kiel) and Antionette (Phoebe Dorin) are back, as well.

Jim: I believe this is the one and only time Loveless is ever shown smoking. It’s mostly for comical effect, admittedly, after he's revealed as the “child” who gifted Ratch toy soldiers.

Trey: Voltaire speaks for the first time, too. It's note as being a change within the episode. One Loveless related conundrum: Why does the brilliant doctor continue to employ lovely female assistants in his plans, who he knows by now are only going to fall for West's charms?

Jim: He tries to maneuver Priscilla away from it, but to no avail! She is the most wide-eyed innocent of the group, so far.

Trey: Unbelievably naïve is the better descriptor! I wonder if her toy maker grandfather raised her with no contact with the outside world?

Jim: A funny bit is the look of cynical disbelief on lovely Antionette’s face when Priscilla is convinced by Loveless that the exploding toy train is a perfectly fine toy.

Just putting this out there: with the naivete Priscilla displays, I think a nice plot twist for the episode would’ve been to have her be revealed as a human sized animatronic created by Loveless. 

Trey: I could buy that.

Jim: In general, I think the level of technology in this episode seems a bit advanced. We see electric trains and phonographs.

Trey: The phonograph was an anachronism noted in Loveless's first appearance. The electric train is similarly just a bit ahead, having been invented in the 1890s. Incidentally, this episode actually gives us an onscreen place and time: "San Francisco, 1874."

Jim: One of the unintentionally funny bits to me: After West is ground zero at the explosion in Ratch’s shop, Gordon proclaims that he's fine and just needs some rest. Supporting him in this dubious claim is a city cop who says, “He’s right lady. Working this beat, I’ve seen enough to know he’ll be fine.” Just how violent is this neighborhood?

Trey: Thinks are hard in California in this alternate 1874, apparently. I mean, the governor's plan here is explicitly laundering money for rich people with shady, possibly criminal, business practices to keep his state solvent. 

Jim: Vote Loveless! How could it be worse?

Reconquest of the Surface

The war, known now to the survivors as The Fury, was devastating. As many as could be saved were moved into underground habitations built for this very eventuality. Not everyone was lucky enough to have a place in the shelters, and when the leaded doors were closed and sealed, many people were left to fight for survival in the gloom, as the radioactive and mutagenic haze played strange tricks with the light of the sun and moon, and death burrowed into their bones.

The species survived, though, and in those underground redoubts, so did civilization. The old nations were forgotten with time and new ones formed, as fresh tunnels linked farflung bunkers. They only need to wait and endure. Eventually, the scientists said things might be safe, and so scouts were sent outside.

They were not prepared for what they found. The natural world, as they had hoped, had healed itself. There was no trace of the world that had been or the war that destroyed it. Things were lush and green--though that didn't mean all the horror or strangeness it was gone.

There were people on this new Earth, apparently the deformed descendants of those who had been left outside. Dwarfish ones one had perhaps come from makeshift bunkers not sufficiently sealed as they too spent much time underground. People of the forest, grotesquely thin and large eared, and then the most numerous people who lived in primitive cities. All of them were hideous. There was sometime neotenic about them in a way that made the skin crawl: their teeth were so small, their foreheads flat, their jaws receding.

Councils were convened to consider this information. The technological know-how of the people was superior to their mutated cousins, but they were limited in their access to resources and many of their machines had broken down. They were, ironically, fewer in number than those who had survived the terrors of fallout. 

The decision was made not to wage an all out war for the surface, but instead to look for out of the way places to recover resources. They would approach the mutants, when necessary using similar technology--they could not afford to have any more advanced devices fall into the primitives' hands. They could perhaps surreptitiously influence them, maybe create allies to prepare for their return. Some might have to die, of course, but perhaps the more could be shepherded toward civilization.

It would be a long project, but humanity was up to it. For now, they would have to embrace the name "orc" given to them by the mutants and play the expected role.

Christmas Special Reruns

Years ago, I managed to do three "Christmas Specials" in my two Weird Adventures campaigns (though I only did 2 write-ups): "Twas the Fight Before Yule," and it's sequel, and "Another Weird Yule." In 2016, there was a holiday related cameo in my Land of Azurth game.

I at one time considered doing the reskin of Slumbering Ursine Dunes involving the Weird Adventures version of the Tunguska Event, the mysterious Siberian cauldrons, a captive Father Yule, and talking bears. I never did it, but I still think it would be great.

Lumberlands

Erik Jensen's Zinequest entry Lumberlands delivered not too long ago. It's not yet available in physical copy, but that's coming.

Lumberlands is a region of Erik's Wampus Country setting, for which we are still, lo these many years later, awaiting some sort of overview setting publication. I had the privilege of playing a number of sessions in Erik's Wampus Country campaign back in the days of Google+, and so I was eager for Lumberlands.

Can it be you've never heard of Wampus Country? Well, allow me to sketch it in brief: It's an old school D&D setting that borrows its visual trappings from the American history, folklore, and fakelore to a large degree. Its fighters might be more Mike Fink or Davy Crockett (subject of the Disney series, not the real-life Congressman), than Aragorn or Conan. Still, it would be a mistake to think of it as merely "Frontier Fantasy." It has that as it's base, certainly, but Wampus Country exploits the fruitful incoherence that is D&D at its core and weaves in all sorts of sources, so that many sorts of character types and potential adventures are possible.

But anyway: Lumberlands! Lumberlands narrows the Wampus vibe geographically to a fantasy take on the Pacific Northwest and Paul Bunyan-y concerns, while in no way being bound to the imaginative parameters of that inspiration. It details the differences between the version of the classes in the setting (i.e. the traditional ones with a lumber- prefix and flannel-centric illustration). It sketches the human habitation of Squeemish, but also the squirrel city of Baudekin and the dimensionally unstable region of Portal-Land. 

There are monsters with pun names (clever ones!) and a selection of humorously sketched hench-folk available for hire. And Sasquatches, which are actually arachnoid aliens. 

As you may have guessed Lumberlands does not take itself to seriously, so if grim is your only mode of roleplaying well it isn't for you. But the rest of you, I urge you to check it out.

Wednesday Comics: DC Through the 80s

 

Somehow, I missed the original solicitation of this one, though I did see what is presumably the follow-up: DC Through the 80s: The Experiments. It was tempting, but ultimately I thought it was too scattershot to warrant a purchase.

DC Through the 80s: The End of Eras, despite it's to my ear awkward title, seems more like one for the shelf. Many of the good comics reprinted here I already own, but there are others I have never read and there's some interesting supplemental material, including (supposedly) Moore's proposal for Twilight of the Super-Heroes.

What's in here that I would recommend? Well, there's Moore's and Swan's "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" Of course, you've probably already read that one. There's also story I recall fondly from my childhood: A crossover of the Earth-Two and Earth-One Batmen by Mike Barr and David Gibbons from Brave and the Bold #200--the final issue of that title. There's a less good, but still fun crossover between Lex Luthors of those same Earths from DC Comics Presents Annual #1 by Wolfman and Buckler.

Pulling from some non-supers titles of the era, we have Blackhawk #258 by Evanier and Spiegle where the Nazis destroy Blackhawk Island with an atom bomb. This whole run is probably under-appreciated. 

There are a number of DC horror titles and the sci-fi anthology Timewarp represented. And there's war comics, including Weird War Tales #93--the first appearance of the Creature Commandos. 

And there's a random issue of Warlord! 

The Land of Azurth Year in Review

While we have one more session of our Land of Azurth campaign before the end of the year, it's a good time to look back at what the "Masters of Mayhem" (as the party calls themselves) got up to in year six, game sessions 53-69.

The Vault Job
The party returned from a trip to a dark future to find the Clockwork Princess of Yanth Country in seclusion, and Drumpf the new, authoritarian mayor of Rivertown. The lure of gold convinces the party to help the former mayor Gladhand liberate some of this gold, currently being held in the vault of Sly Took, member of the Raccoon Thieves Guild and banker to the underworld. The party hatched an elaborate scheme involved a magical armoire and succeed in getting Gladhand's gold.

With the heat on, and wanting to talk with the Queen of Virid about events in the future anyway, the party headed out on the road.

Servants of Shadow

Near the northern border Yanth Country, they party stopped to help a village of cervid centaur folk who are being menaced by a bickering couple of Umbral drakes who emerged from a shadowy vortex within an ancient ritual circle. The party kills the drakes, but it turns out they are only the first incursion of agents of Umbra, the Shadow Moon. A group of Gloom Elves are inhabiting a half-dilapidated tower.

Uncharacteristically, the party winds up reaching a compromise with the elves. They hold a cryptic conversation with a vaguely familiar shadow man who steps through a door opened by the elves.

Shkizz

Further down the road, they decide to spend the night in the town of Shkizz. They discover the townsfolk are priggish and uptight in the day, but wild libertines at night. The discover a cult worshipping a pig demon, but it turns out he is only taking advantage of the situation, not its cause. He blames it on the High Priest of the Church of the Dark Flower in the neighboring Duchy of Dhoon.

Slekt Zaad

The party finds Dhoon suffering under a series of nonsensical decrees of from the Duke, who no one has seen in some time. The party confronts Zaad who reveals himself as some sort of plant being. He also reveals he's allied with the captain of the Ducal guard and they have the Duke ensorcelled. After busting out of jail, the party makes there way to an ancient fane hidden by kudzu, where discover Zaad's magical botanical laboratories--and they recover the gem that holds Zaad's soul. With that gem, they defeat him and lift the curse on the Duke.

The Demon Barber of the Sapphire City

Finally, the party arrives in the Sapphire City and become intrigued by a series of disappearances and mysterious, magical tonsorial makeovers. It turns out to involve dopplegangers of magic hair and the machinations of a hag and her adoring humanoid tribe. 

The party is reunited with their old comrade Calico Jack who was being held captive beneath the barber shop.

A Famine in Ffalgo

As word of their deed spreads, two teens from the village of Ffalgo on the Sang border seek out the party to request their help in journeying to an ancient castle in Sang, said the magical produce an endless supply of chicken...

The Metaphysics of D&D

"The wearer of the amulet is filled with Chaotic Evil, which is how I grew up so…"
    - Hunson Abedeer, Adventure Time!

In L. Sprague de Camp's 1942 novella The Undesired Princess the protagonist is transported to a world that follows Aristotlean logic, where everything is either one color or another with no mixing and shapes, besides the animals are all simple: The princess has hair that is primary color red; tree leaves are regular polgons of blue or yellow.

D&D as written often describes a world just as foreign as that. Even ignoring things that you could argue are merely abstractions for the sake of the game (like movement), you still have things like alignment (and in some editions alignment language), leveling, people with classes vs. nonclassed NPCs, clerical healing and the like.

I've read things in the past that posited a world where D&Disms got rationalized a bit (I've maybe written one), but discussion yesterday with a reference to the perennial "baby orc" argument made we think it would be interesting to throw rationalization somewhat out the window and play in a setting where the world just sort of runs on D&D (meta)physics.

We're talking about a world where some people start to develop superhuman resistance to injury and various abilities--and these keep increasing so long as they acquire treasure from underground hordes. Where there's some sort of metaphysical orientation to the universe that leads people to automatically acquire a language recognized by every member of the club when they join up. A world where sentients with lifetimes much longer that humans just can never learn to be better than humans in arms or magic. Stuff like that.

"But no!" You'll protest. "That would be really silly!" 

Sure, but isn't that often the case with D&D?

See?

And this would actually elevate the silliness by making it a thought experiment.

All kidding aside, it perhaps wouldn't be the stuff of a long campaign, but I don't think the implications of that sort of thing would be interesting to think about.