Paleomythic, Ewoks and Rats

 

by Michael Whelan

I recently picked up Paleomythic by Graham Rose, and it's a relatively simply but definitely flavorful "Stone Age" rpg--or "Stone and Sorcery" as the subtitle would have it. It's perhaps a little less Jean Auel and a little more Robert E. Howard than say Würm, but really I think you could do pretty much the same stuff with each system depending on your preferences.

One thing I've been thinking about this past week though is using Paleomythic for a setting where the characters are primitive, but not necessarily human. 

Without their toyetic, teddy bear looks, the story of the Ewoks is one of a "primitive" culture in a world of magic and exotic creatures (if we consider the cartoon and tv movies)--and then it's invaded by murderous aliens. Plenty of game fodder to be found in that, I think.

Simon Roy's Habitat and other Metamorphosis Alpha-adjacent stories feature post-technological primitive humans. Betram Chandler's "Giant Killer" is in no sense post-apocalyptic, but has a bit of the vibe of those settings--only with nonhuman protagonists. There are mutated rat tribes making their caves in the walls of a spacecraft and their "giant" antagonists are the human crew. The rat(ish) scale would make the sizes of generation ships more vast and add some interesting detail to those sorts of settings.

Weird Revisited: The Like You for Your Brains

The original version of this post appeared in 2011...

Bored with the standard monsters? Tired of the same old thing? Here’s a couple of mechanically-unchanged stalwarts with a shiny new finish:

Moon Men
Mysterious beings that appear by night and move silently to feed upon the minds of humans. Moon Men appear as tall humanoids whose heads are hidden beneath gleaming, featureless domes. These scientist-sadists rarely make any attempt to communicate, and treat other sentients with clinical detachment, as if they were mere cattle.

These are good ol’ mind flayers--because tentacles are so last year. The only change would be to dispense with the tentacle attack--or maybe keep it and have pseudopods emerge from a Moon Man’s liquid metal head. With that option, they might literally eat brains, but otherwise its the mind they’re after, not the meat.

Though the picture is Mysterio, the name was inspired by a pulp hero with a similar look.

Brain Parasite
“The brain was in a serious state of liquefaction. Only the brain-stem had any discernable structure. A puncture in the back of the skull likely indicates where the creature insert its venom...Yes, that’s the thing in the preservative vat there. It was completely invisible--or more precisely, simply, unseen--on the victims back until it was killed.  And by then it was too late.”

These reskinned intellect devourers look like the zanti from the Outer Limits and act sort of like the mutant spiders from Metebelis 3, the titular Planet of the Spiders in Doctor Who. I imagine they inject some sort of a toxin into the skull, dissolve the brain slowly, and suck out the sweet, sweet juice over time. 

Wednesday Comics: DC, October 1980 (wk 2, pt 1)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around July 24, 1980.

Action Comics #512: I have to hand it to Bates and Swan on this one. Here's one of the Bates "conundrum" plots where the ending works just as well as set-up. In fact, I think this is the sort of story (in basic concept) I could see someone like Grant Morrison doing (in their more Silver Age homaging moments), though the execution would have been different in their hands. Anyway, Luthor's reform is a ruse, as we knew all along. When Luthor's new bride asks to give Superman a kiss at the wedding, Luthor's robots show up and whisk him away. They take him back to the Nefarium where they remind him of the plan he made himself forget: Luthor cloned a dying woman in an overly elaborate plot trap Superman forever in the Phantom Zone. He even excised his own memories of the plot to pass any test Superman applied. Callously, he "disposed of" the young woman and cured her clone of the disease. Luthor sits impassively as these memories are returned to him and the robots explain to the reader. We do not see his expression.

Superman comes busting in, of course. He had seen through Luthor's plot when he noted the cells encoding Luthor's memories of his marriage to Ardora of Lexor were severed (so Luthor's a bigamist too!). Supes played along in the hopes that the young woman might still be alive, but when he heard she wasn't, it's time to end Luthor's game. In the end, we find that Luthor played himself. When we finally see Luthor's expression, he is in tears as he watches his clone bride forever trapped in the Phantom Zone--his sacrifice to trap Superman. He's forever separated from the woman he tricked himself into falling in love with.

Adventure Comics #476: DeMatteis and Giordano have not yet hit their stride (I'm being optimistic that they have one). Aquaman is still, I guess, on a quest to find Mera but he continues to he get sidetracked. This time he tangles with Neptune-or as he insists, Poseidon--merely so DeMatteis can give the story a clever title. It turns out that Poseidon's power to control sea creatures comes from his trident. When it's destroyed, he disappears without us finding out whether he was really Poseidon on not. The point of this story seems to be contrast Poseidon's manipulative control of sea life (including Aquaman) with our heroes friendship and cooperation. Considering the last two issues, the point of these stories seems to be rehabilitating the idea of Aquaman. A laudable goal, but it would be nice to have a better story as its vehicle.

In the Starman feature we reach a sort of climax with our hero confronting the throne-usurping Oswin. He's in a bit of a bind, though, because if he wins his sister the Empress (unaware of his identity) wants to marry him. When he reveals his identity, she might order his death as a threat to her throne. Starman makes a shrewd move and fakes his death after defeating Oswin. Plastic Man's goofy adventures from Pasko and Staton continues as he tangles with Cheeseface who has been killing execs in companies that manufacture nondairy creamers for revenge. 

Brave & the Bold #167: Wolfman teams up with Cockrum for what the splash page calls a tale of the "Golden Age Batman," which means a tale of a Batman active in WWII, because he meets the Blackhawks. It's interesting they say "Golden Age" instead of the diegetic "Earth-2." Is this indicative of Wolfman's dissatisfaction with the multiple Earths idea he'll get rid of in Crisis, or merely him not wanting to pin himself down since the most commonly appearing Blackhawks are the Earth-1 version? Regardless, the story is fun with Batman entering a boxing match as it's being broadcast over the radio to ruff up and interrogate a German boxer. There's also an appearance by the Hidalgo Trading Company of Doc Savage lore. Cockrum draws a good Golden Age Batman and Bruce Wayne that pays homage to Sprang's without aping the style. He also is good with the Blackhawk planes.

Detective Comics #495: The Crime Doctor story by Fleisher and Newton continues, picking up with Thorne realizing that Batman is Bruce Wayne. Batman gets knocked out by one of the thugs, but Thorne keeps them from killing him because "he's still a doctor." The cops are on the way, so they all run out, leaving Batman to wake up and rescue a doctor before a bomb goes off. Later, the thugs fill in crime boss Sterling Silversmith that the Crime Doctor may know Batman's identity and Sterling decides to have a chat with the doctor. Thorne is in disguise and trying to get out of the country, but gives himself away when he can't help but save a woman's life. Silversmith forces Thorne to drink some mercury ("quicksilver"--it's thematic!) and won't get him to a hospital if he doesn't give up Batman's identity. Thorne won't break confidentiality. Batman shows up to save him, but not before Thorne's mind is completely destroyed by mercury poisoning. A good, solid story.

The "Tales of Gotham" feature by Rozakis and Spiegle has a numbers runner desperate to get his mattress full of money out of a burning building. It's sort of clever, but I wonder who the audience was for this sort of thing? Burkett and Delbo continue the adventures of Batgirl, or the "Darknight Damsel" as this story puts it. This storyline isn't bad, but it suffers a bit by comparison to the better stories around it, which include the DeMatteis/Forton Black Lightning yarn. "Animals" has Black Lightning trying to resolve a hostage situation with a teen gang within the school without any of the gang members loosing their lives. It's 70s heavy handed, sure, regarding life in the ghetto and how it shapes youth, but it works pretty well. In the last story, Robin takes down a drug ring that is shipping the drugs to the campus under the guise of being an academic book publisher in Gotham. I bet the pricing was ridiculous.

Green Lantern #133: Wolfman and Staton get Carol and Hal back together around their mutual desire to not see Ferris Aircraft go under after several mysterious plane crashes. Things are complicated by Dr. Polaris whisking Green Lantern to the North Pole to try and kill him. Based on the trouble Polaris gives GL and the dialogue about the ring's power and magnetism, Magneto would be a deadlier foe for Jordan than Sinestro! The backup story by Laurie Sutton and Rodin Rodriguez has Adam Strange and friends fighting to save Ranagar from Kaskor the Mad. There's a lot of action, but it still feels kind of dull.

House of Mystery #285: Great cover on this one courtesy of Joe Kubert. I don't think any of the stories live up to it. The cover story by Wessler and Henson (in that it has a clown, otherwise it's unrelated) is sort of a Murder on the Orient Express riff set in a circus where the clown arrested for stabbing the lousy circus owner was actually the only member of the circus that couldn't have killed him because she stabbed him after he was dead at the others' hands! Kupperberg's and Cruz's "Cold Storage" has a soldier freaking out due to isolation in the arctic and committing murder, only to wind up infected by a deadly disease careered by a quarantined astronaut that will keep him isolated and in the extreme cold. Barr and Patricio deliver a tale of an overzealous vampire hunter who, after the accidentally murder of a boy just pretending to be a vampire, has a curse put on him by the child's mother. It causes him to develop a phobia that leads to his death when it manifests at a crucial moment: a fear of pointed objects.  Barr takes another swing, this time with Garcia, in a slightly better story of a robber and who plays his boombox at an annoying volume. The music allows the woman he injured in a jewelry store robbery to guess his identity. The woman's husband ultimately traps him in a basement under debris--and turns up his radio so that no one can hear his cries for help.

Random Dying Earths

Here are a few random tables to create the barebones of your own Dying Earth setting.

What's happening?

1 The Sun is going dark

2 The Sun is becoming a red giant

3 The Earth is just worn out

4 The universe is ending (the Big Crunch)

5 The universe is just worn out

6 Reality has changed in some way

What's the environment like on Earth?

1 Ok for now

2 Desert or becoming desert

3 Frozen over in ice

4 Dark and mostly barren of life

5 heavily polluted

6 overrun by some new/mutant lifeform

Art by Darrell Sweet

Earthly civilization is:

1 Dependent on magic

2 Post-technological and primitive

3 Primitive

4 Utterly reliant on machines they don't understand

Prevailing mindset?

1-2 Decadent and cruel

3-4 Fatalistic and world-weary

5-6 Innocent and ignorant

Dark Sun: The Pristine Tower

"The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you."

- Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer

The Pristine Tower is a mysterious structure in the deserts of Athas. It is first mentioned in Denning's novel Amber Enchantress, but later figures into an adventure Dregoth Ascending. I'm going to ignore for this post what the Tower is and the roll it plays in the history of Athas, as that's something one might or might not want to use in there own campaign, but I think the Pristine Tower as enough interesting things about it, it's worth including even without the backstory.

Tower is at least mutagenic, perhaps reality-warping. While the novel is disappointingly bland in the description of its environs, I think you can easily borrow strange details from Annihilation (the film or the novel) or perhaps Roadside Picnic, though with more emphasis on the biological rather than the technological.

We are told that anything that bleeds within the zone around the tower (perhaps anything that is injury) begins getting remade as some other creature. This is the source of the "new races" of Athas--like the nikaal or the humanoid baazrag. Also it creates unique mutations like Magnus, who was born of elves but looks nothing like one, and the half-human, half-insectoid Prince Dhojakt.

The fact that mutation only seems to occur after bleeding (or perhaps injury) is interesting. Is the Tower exerting some sort out of control healing field? Or is it trying to produce lifeforms better suited to survival on Athas and just needs better access to genetic material than intact skin provides? Or perhaps it's just a mutagen changing everything in range slowly, and natural healing just gives a more rapid avenue for that process?

In the novel, the area around the Tower is inhabited by rather normal creatures, but I think the chimeric creatures of the Annihilation film are more appropriate. You could also use my Random Zonal Aberrations tables. Of course always keep in mind that "weird for Earth" isn't necessarily weird for Athas.

Weird Revisited: Aboard Aureate Majestrix on the Occasion of the Panarch's Anniversary

The airship Aureate Majestrix is a wonder, even by the standards of airships. It was carved by the hands of the Ancients from a single, massive stone of an unknown variety. Fitted with mirrors which serve as sails, it is pushed to its destination by concentrated magical energy beamed at it. Long ago, it was claimed by the Panarch, and now it is operated mainly to transport those of means from Imbis to the Panarch's capital. Today, it carries various dignitaries, courtiers, and seekers of influence to the celebration for the anniversary of the Panarch:

by Jason Sholtis

A hohmmkudhuk stone-shaper whose name is actually Mmungmatukt but he is not offended when called "Mung Matuk." His clan wishes to send a new Princess to establish a descendant warren in wilderness controlled by Omunth-Ech and wishes the Panarch to support their settlement. Mung Matuk bears a tableau vivant in stone that enacts a fanciful version of the Panarch's victory over the Great M'gog and the Gog Horde as a gift.

Yreul Dahut, Galardinet Officer of the Daor Obdurate armed with customary punishment rods. Her presence suggests there is a defector from her city-state's tyranny among the celebrants, and one formerly highly placed, as the Obdurs are notoriously frugal with state funds and disdain public spectacle.

Pwi dwek Abth, hwaopt senior scholar sent by the Library to record the events in that pedantic and overly detailed way hwaopt are famous for. He wears heavy perfume to mask his odor in deference to the "simplistic and unrefined" olfactory preferences of humans, but it is not quite sufficient to the most sensitive noses.

Zira Si, ostensibly a demimondaine in the entourage of--well, one noble or another, depending on who you ask. She is actually a powerful Green sorceress and prized agent of secretive Yzordadreth, Mountain of Wizards. When her mission is done, her confederates will swoop in under cover of darkness and spirit her away on a swift-winged and silent thrykee, and no one will remember she was ever there.

(more from this world.)

Wednesday Comics: DC, October 1980 (week 1, part 2)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm continuing my look at the comics at newsstands on the week of July 10, 1980. 

Justice League of America #183: This issue is mostly setup--but it's an enticing setup! Conway and Dillin have the JSA and JLA getting together, only to be whisked away to an empty New Genesis. It seems that Apokolips is ascendant and the remaining free New Gods (Metron, Mr. Miracle, Big Barda, and Orion) need the help of the greatest heroes of two Earths. The end reveals Darkseid (presumed killed at the end of the Adventure Comics revival of the New Gods) to be back amongst the living. While Superman has interacted with the Fourth World mythos before, this is the biggest step to integration in the wider universe DC has taken since the New Gods' creation. It's the harbinger of what's to come.

Secrets of Haunted House #29: The first story here illustrates the sort of "twist that doesn't really work" ending that these horror stories sometimes fall prey to. An old magician, angry at the praise being given a young upstart, reveals that he truly possesses magical powers by kidnapping the young magician and his girl and putting them in the grasp of a demon he summoned. The young magician defeats the demon who seems to declare the young magician really has magical powers too before taking the old wizard's soul. The girlfriend queries the young magician about his powers, and he sort of shrugs it off with a vague answer. The second story by Gill and Henson has a classic suspense radio program vibe. A nephew ingratiates himself on his elderly uncle, then once he discovers the old man's secret vault, kills him for the inheritance. A police lieutenant knows the nephew is guilty, but can't prove it, so harasses him for years hoping hill slip up. He assumes the nephew got away with it, until when the old house is demolished and his corpse is found in the vault. He knew how to get in but not how to get out!

Lasky and Rubeny's "Master of the Double-Cross" has a tabloid reporter stealing the typewriter of a deceased mystery author after a seance and finding out it will magical type manuscripts in the vein of its previous owner. He uses this to get fame and fortune, but then the seance crowd discovers a cache of unpublished manuscripts of the deceased author and the former reporter gets arrested for fraud (?). It appears the ghost double-crossed him. The last story by Kellay and Henson has nice art, but that art doesn't convey some of the story beats it was supposed to, I guess. An aspiring model is snooping around the chateau of a reclusive, but very successful modelling agent and discovering--well, something that shocks her about the models, but there are a couple of panels where I can't tell what they are trying to convey. It's clear it has something to do with plastic surgery, though, and the young woman begs to get in on it. The agent and the surgeon agree, and the woman is transformed into their star model. Apparently, the surgeon somehow did his job too well, because all the assembled press rush up to touch the woman and all the rough handling makes her dissolve into a "putrescent," "crumpled mass." I don't think that's how plastic surgery works, but the story doesn't explain any more than that. 

Superman #352: Wolfman and Swan bring in Destiny (later "of the Endless," but in 1980 he's just a horror host) for a guest appearance, and he drains Superman's powers and restrains him by mystical means to keep him from helping people. Superman even goes on TV to announce his retirement to the world. This is all to teach Superman a lesson to let people save themselves from time to time so they don't become dependent on him. A dubious moral makes for a bad story. 

The backup introduces the "World of Krypton" feature. It has the simple but more reasonable moral of "stay in school, kid." Newman and Buckler have Superman relating the story of Kandorian citizenship classes to a potential high school dropout. Based on the story, Kandorian citizenship classes teach an unusual amount of wilderness survival, but then Krypton can be a pretty harsh environment so maybe that makes sense. It did cross my mind that Superman was just making up this story to keep the kid in school, but surely he wouldn't do that, right?

Weird War Tales #92: The first story by Burkett and Sutton is set during the Crusades. A Christian knight and a Muslim warrior must put aside their hatred to defeat the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The second story by Kashdan and Redondo is the obligatory World War II piece. Here a Nazi experiment that turns soldiers in giantish, purple troll sort of creatures is uncovered. So has not to leave the Allied troops at the mercy of the monster, an American soldier bravely volunteers to have the procedure done to him. Neither of these stories are spectacular, but they're also not notably bad either. Meat and potatoes Weird War stuff.

Wonder Woman #272: Conway and Delbo reset Wonder Woman in the last issue and the cover to this one trumpets: "A brand new start for the amazing Amazon--against her greatest foe!!" Which is Angle Man. A brand new start to just to fight Angle Man? He's her "greatest foe?" It's not a bad Angle Man story, but it's an Angle Man story! The Huntress backup by Levitz and Staton features Solomon Grundy, and is pretty good.

World's Finest #265: Five features, and none of them particularly good. The Haney/von Eeden is the best of the lot, though it has an over-complicated plot involving roses, an obscure point of Star City history, an evil twin, and the kidnapping of Dinah. Equally confusing but less enjoyable in the end is the Superman/Batman and Robin cover story. where old JLA villain Simon Magus returns with a plot to siphon science energy to bolster his power in Earth's universe as well as the magical universe he comes from so he can take over both. Maybe he's siphoning magical energy from the other universe too? I don't know. Anyway, it's got Superman fighting what he calls a Balrog, for what it's worth. The Hawkman story by DeMatteis and Landrgraf works a Star Trek-esque "alien rebels with a legit grievance but deplorable immediate aims/methods" plot, but with less skill. The Red Tornado tale by DeMatteis and Delbo is just a recap of his story thus far to set up conflict with a new villain" T.O. Morrow, who has now transformed himself into a buff, nongreen Leader-type with bulbous cranium and moustache. Bridwell and Newton continue their Marvel Family yarn with conflict with Kull (not that one, the other one) and Mr. Atom is sort of a modern take on the Monster Society of Evil, I think.