The Fire and the Void

Our Land of Azurth game continued last night with the party in the midst of exploring the strange, ruined temple beneath the Crooked Hills. The party ran afoul of a group of skeletons that they quickly dispatched. They avoided a pit trap where they also found another strange item--a vial of silvery liquid. They were disappointed to find it wasn't magical.

They came to a room with a relief of a muscular, bearded man holding a scorched brazier. The group tried burning something in it and a secret door opened. On the other side was a room with a large oven with a roaring flame inside. They discovered the flame was a fire elemental who suggested it needed to be bribed to allow them to pass through to the run beyond the oven. Dagmar gave it gold pieces, which it melt in its flames. Then it parted like a curtain to allow them to pass.

On the other said was a wide, shallow bowl with a whirling void on the inside. As the party began to investigate, a group of the sleepwalkers came in. They largely appeared to ignore the party as one took a couple of items the party took to be trinkets and dropped them into the void where they disappear. When that was done, he extended a hand expectantly to the party.

They decided to give him a trinket to see what happened. He took it and put it in the void. They kept giving him the trinkets they had, even the newly acquired silvery vial, and they all disappeared. The sleepwalkers turned and left.

When they were gone, the party investigated the room further. Waylon figured out that the void was only an illusion. Items dropped into it went down a passage. Erekose found a secret lever to open a secret door. What they found, down a short passage, was essentially a glorified closet with a number of trinkets and other items that had been dropped into the void.

Mindful of the townsfolk's warning about the trinkets exploding, they cautiously experiment with putting groups of them together in the same place, but nothing seemed to happen. Eventually, they divided up the nonbroken items and took them with them.

The First Folk of the Wilderness

This is a follow-up to this post.

The First Folk were the earliest inhabitants of the Western Lands, that is certain. Their tradition holds that all people emerged from the navel of the Earth, somewhere in the far west, but that they, the Children of the Dawn, were specially loved by the gods who taught them their secrets, which the first Folks used to found the earliest civilizations in the world in the Eastern Lands.

Some human scriptures teach that the First Folk are the hybrid children of rebellious greater spirits, sometimes falsely called gods, and humans. They cite the Great Flood as the True God's punishment for the iniquities of the First Folk and their parents. This religious condemnation did not stop human tribes from studying under the First Folk and learning their craft and science. Of course, these humans, too, committed the same sins in the eyes of God, perhaps, for was not their island home destroyed in a cataclysm for their wickedness?

After the Flood, the surviving First Folk lords and their people returned to the shores of the Western Lands. There they found members of their own race, fallen in their own reckoning, living primitively in the endless forests. They sometimes met these kinsfolk in peace, sometimes in violence. They raised new cities, though perhaps not as glorious as those in the East. The barrows and ruins of these people are still found, though in the end a strange fall overcame them, so that they were only a shadow by the time the first humans came West. 

These human tribes sometimes warred with the surviving First Folk from the East, but over time became beloved of the the First Folk of the woodlands. Later human tribes would not be so receptive to the First Folk ways.

The Folk of Forests have receded ever further as human civilization has encroached upon the dark wood beyond the mountains. It is wise for travelers to abide by their rules and attempt to placate them, however, as they have be known to punish those who do not respect their ways.

The First Folk of the east were taller (perhaps as tall as 8 feet, with some of the ruling class of the great kingdoms of the East even taller) and in general, considered more beautiful than humans. Their lifespans were exceedingly long--before the Deluge they were immortal--and their physical capabilities exceeded those of man. Their eyes and sometimes their faces, were said to have a subtle radiance about them, perhaps a suggestion of their Celestial heritage. The Folk of the Forest are not as tall, and often more angular, but still strangely beautiful, possessed of a glamor, it is said.

Solar Trek Episode Guide - Updated

In honor of Star Trek's 55th anniversary (yesterday), it seemed like a good time to revisit my 2019 posts on Solar Trek, a solar system confined, more hard science fiction rationalized Star Trek. Here are all the posts to date, titled with the TOS episode/setting element that inspired it.

The introductory post
The Orion Syndicate
"Return of the Archons"
"That Which Survives"
"The Cloud Minders"
"The Trouble with Tribbles"
"Tholian Web"

"The Amok Time"

"The Way to Eden"

Wednesday Comics: DC, December 1980 (wk 1 pt 1)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of  September 11, 1980. 

Batman #330: A gangster on death row sends assassins to make sure Batman dies before he does. Meanwhile, Batman and Robin are trying to find Lucius Fox's son, who's gotten tangled up in a plot by the crime lord Falstaff to get at Bruce Wayne. Wolfman has Batman and Robin disagreeing over how to deal with the the confused, young Fox, an extension of their disagreement over Grayson quitting college. This is consistent with Wolfman's portrayal of their relationship in New Teen Titans, but he doesn't show up outside of his stories. Talia also appears here, but doesn't do much. The last assassin, a guy with an Old West gunfighter theme is an interesting character, but I suspect he doesn't appear again.

DC Comics Presents #28: Wein and Starlin continue the story of Superman's fight against Mongul and Warworld. Here, Superman teams with his cousin, Supergirl. They are presented here as much more powerful than we typically see them portrayed today (this is sporadically true of other Silver Age heroes, like Flash, as well, in this era). The Super-cousins use "microscopic vision" to follow the trail of subatomic particles to Warworld and telescopic vision to surveil it. We get Mongul's tragic origin, which is basically that he's a former dictator kicked out by his people in favor of a dictator who was just as bad (in Mongul's opinion). The Kryptonians hold their own against what Warworld can throw at them until Mongul's brain burns out commanding the station. They finally defeat it by having Supergirl fly at superluminal speeds and smash a path straight through the station, which Superman uses to enter and reprogram its systems at super-speed. But where does Supergirl end ip?

The backup story is perhaps the first genuine "What Ever Happened to..." in the series. Tiefenbacher and Kane have the Old West hero Johnny Thunder and his sometimes competitor, Madame .44 teaming up and revealing their true identities--and true feelings--for each other. Then they get hitched! Kane's not at the top of his game here, but he still draws great Western action.

Flash #292: Either some time has passed since last issue, or Fiona Webb got over her fear that Barry Allen was trying to kill her really quickly after learning the truth, because Bates and Heck have the two on a date at a carnival. A carnival where the Mirror Master gloats over his plans to defeat the Flash. The Flash's foes seem to physically warp/transform his body a lot, and Mirror Master is no exception. He makes Flash uncoordinated by mirror-image reversing his body! The Flash figures this out and manages to save himself then Central City. He outruns a reflected "solaser" beam and has time to paint a building in silver nitrate before the beam arrives. During all this Fiona Webb is on again, off again, based on perceived slights on Barry's part due to his distraction while dealing with Mirror Master. Sometimes she has a point, but it makes her look really high maintenance! Nice to get a "done in one" story.

In the back up story, Conway and Perez have Firestorm tangle with the Hyena, who attacks a police station because they are corrupt and not doing a good enough job, I guess? Then, he heads off to stop a robbery. I had no idea the Hyena was a vicious vigilante until this story.

Ghosts #95: The first story goes back to a schtick Ghosts hasn't played up in a few issues: the idea that the stories are real, but gives it a bit of a "meta" bent has it purports to be the story of why the author (Kashdan) didn't write the story the editor assigned to him about Gurney Castle, which includes a meeting with a ghost in that castle. Clever, but there isn't much to the story beyond the conceit. "Spectral Bullets Cannot Kill!" by Wessler with that distinct Henson art I've come to appreciate is better. A mobster sends a hitman to kill a guy with a gambling debt. The man pleads his inability to pay due to his recent car accident, but the mobster has no pity. In anger, the man puts a curse on the hitman's gun. When the time comes for the deed, the bullets don't hurt him. He taunts the hitman that their "spectral" nature. The hitman returns to the mobster to admit failure to find the man already there. The mobster demands he shoot again, but when the hitman does, the bullets pass through the other man and hit the mobster. The twist: the bullets were ok, but the man was a ghost, having died in the car accident. The next Wessler yarn isn't quite as good. A man plots the murder of his friend in a cave so he can get the girl, but rainwater erases the paint trail he had left for his own exit. The only trail he can find proves to be blood leading him back to the scene of his crime.

In the last story by Kupperberg and Adams/Blasdell, Dr. Thirteen the Ghost-Breaker returns, having last been seen in 1977. This story also features an appearance by Rutland, Vermont. Thirteen has retired from the fraud-exposing business to write books and make the talk show circuit, but a mysterious man named Kowalski asks him to take a case in a Rutland community theater where unusual occurrences are being blamed on the ghost of a playwright, Tilson. Thirteen quickly discovers it's all being faked by an actress who's trying to get out of her contract, but it turns out that Kowalski was the real name of Tilson.

Jonah Hex #43: Marshall Jeremiah Hart takes a look at the body of the businessman Hex supposedly killed and something doesn't add up. Still, he sets out after the bounty hunter, only stopping to contend with the Spast Brothers who want their sibling out of jail. Instead, they wind of joining him. Meanwhile, Hex is again promising Mei Ling he'll put down his guns as son as he gets this last bounty, the man who shot the banker. On the trail, Hart gets the drop on Hex. He tells him that something about the alleged crime does add up, but he still has to take him in. Unfortunately, Apaches get a drop on them both. They bear a grudge against Hex going back to the incident where his face was scarred. Working together, they manage to escape, but then the Spast Brothers prepare to spring an ambush.

Weird War Tales #95: "The War That Time Forgot" is back for the first time since 1976. This story by Kanigher and Reyes is typical of the WTTF sort in that the dinosaurs are Godzilla-sized, far bigger than they were in reality. The Devil Dinosaur-red tyrannosaurus carries around a Sherman tank for much of the story after the tank crew rescues the native woman that was intended to be a sacrifice to him. The crew booby traps their tank and blow up the monster. This is by far the best story of the issue. 

The next by Kashdan and Ayers/Adkins has an Imperial Japanese experiment to breed a voracious insect to act as a defoliant going wrong when the insects decide to dine on their creators. The next story by DeMatteis and Forton has a wealthy businessman, Geller, hounded by people accusing him of being Nazi war criminal Geisen. A Holocaust survivor claims to recognize from the camp. That night, Geller seems to awaken in the concentration camp. He is beaten and tries to escape, then is taken to the showers. As he screams and cowers in terror, it's revealed that this all has been a bit of theater. He's been drugged and brought to a movie set by the Holocaust survivor to torture him into confessing, but--oops--his assistant comes running in with a message from Israel clearing Geller of being Geisen. He's actually the camp doctor, Reinhart, who was sympathetic to the prisoners and was tortured by his superiors for his actions. The trauma caused him amnesia. Now, the camp survivor remembers why his face was so familiar! The final story by Kanigher and Carrillo is a riff off the "Angel of Mons." Both the Brits and the Germans troops glimpse what they believe to be the flowing robes of an angel leading them to victory, but it turns out to be scythe-wielding death for all.

Weird Revisited: Herculean Labors on Labor Day

Labor Day is a good time to take a look back at a post I did back in 2013 on the Labors of Hercules (the link there will refresh you on the background) through a science fantasy lens in the Gods, Demi-gods & Strangeness setting I did some blogging about back then.

1: In the first labor, Hercules killed the Nemean lion. Given the Olympians penchant for genetically reviving extinct species, this was probably a cave lion of some sort. Perhaps a specimen of Panthera leo fossilis as big as Panthera leo atrox, the America cave lion: something like 8 ft. long and 4 ft. tall at the shoulder. The being invulnerable thing is probably just fanciful exaggeration--or is it?

2: Next, Hercules and Iolaus took on the Lemaean Hydra. A multiheaded serpent is the sort of creature spawned by Echidna.

3: Hercules only captured the Golden Hind of Artemis (the Cerynitian Hind). This was one of a group of specialized genetically engineered deer of genus Eucladoceros kept by Artemis. They were engineered so (like modern reindeer) the females had antlers.

4: Next Hercules captured the Erymanthian Boar. I've written about these "giant boar" previously.

5: The stables of Augeas were really, really disgusting. Why were his livestock immortal?

6: After that, Hercules slayed a group of Stymphalian birds--which of course aren't birds at all.

7: Hercules captured the rampaging Cretan Bull. As previously established, this creature wasn't the father of the Minotaur. Instead, it was a large auroch as enraged and violent as that big buffalo in White Buffalo (1977).

8: Capturing the Mares of Diomedes was difficult because they were carnivorous. They must have been some mad creation of Olympian science.

9: Next Hercules stole the belt of the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta. This belt was a gift of Ares and a symbol of her authority, but didn't have any particular powers. Probably.

10: For his next labor, Hercules does a little cattle-rustling. He goes to an island of Erytheia far the the West (probably modern Spain) and steals special cattle (likely bioengineered to produce something for the Olympians--perhaps a component of nectar or ambrosia?) from Geryon. Geryon is said to have three bodies, which probably means his consciousness runs in three duplicates. He also had a 2 headed dog.

11:Returning to the far west and still messing with Olympian pharma, Hercules stole the Golden Apples of the Hesperides. He had to kill a dragon (or a guardian of some sort) and dealt with Atlas, who was the artificial intelligence of an installation that protected against threats from space.

12: Finally, he captured Cerberus. This guardian of Hades is a nanite swarm often taking the vague form of a large three headed dog.

Have a good Labor Day!

A Different West

 Being in sort of a Old West/Frontier mood of late, I got around the checking out a couple of things that had been on my list for a while, but I just kept never getting to.

The Nightingale (2019) is an Australian revisionist Western from the director of The Babadook. In it's basic plot, it's a tale of revenge, not unlike Hannie Caulder (1971), but the resemblance to traditional revenge Westerns, even revenge Westerns based around women, really ends at the plot synopsis. It's more interested (like many revisionist Westerns) in examining the plight of indigenous peoples, but it takes the particular angle of the allowing its oppressed Irish woman protagonist to develop empathy, through recognizes the points of similarity between her experience and that of her Aboriginal guide. While perhaps not as brutal the last Australian Western I watched, The Proposition (2006), it is tough viewing in places, particularly the assault on the protagonist and her family. Still, it's a good film on its own terms, and it's always interesting to see Western film tropes and themes played out in places besides North America.

The Wind Through the Keyhole is the last book (to date) written by Stephen King set in the Dark Tower universe. It's outside the main story of that series proper, but includes those characters in framing device. While sheltering from fantastical storm, part tornado and part polar vortex, Roland relates a tale of his youthful days as a gunslinger to his friends. Embedded in that story is another story, a Mid-World "fairytale," that his mother had read to him as a boy, "The Wind Through the Keyhole." This story within a story tells the tale of a young boy living on the edge of the Endless Wood who must contend with a malign fairy, a swamp (complete with a dragon), and his own encounter with that same sort of storm, in a trek across a dangerous wilderness to get a cure for his mother's blindness from the wizard, Maerlyn. 

King's feel for his fantasy world keeps getting stronger. While there are clear points of intersection with our history, he relies less on characters or incursions from our reality (or realities like ours). The Dark Tower novels that were mostly about Mid-World (Wizard and the Glass, Wolves of Calla) were my favorites of the series, and I think this short novel does what they do even better. I wish King would write a collection of other Mid-World tales.

Wednesday Comics: November, 1980 (wk 2, pt 2)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around August 28, 1980. 

Legion of Super-Heroes #269: This is one of the best Conway/Janes issues so far, which is not to say it's spectacular, but it's better than Space Genies. It's approaching election time for Earth's new President, and Colossal Boy's mother gets drafted to run. There's the relationship stuff LSH is known for, but as Shadow Lass and Mon-El are pitching woo, others are celebrating with Colossal Boy's family, and Timber Wolf is moping, the Fatal Five (in league with the mysterious Dark Man) attack. I'm looking forward to the next issue of Legion for the first time in this experiment, I think.

Mystery in Space #113: This continues to be pretty good. The first story by Kashdan with art by Michael Golden and Bob Wiacek has 3 earthlings answering a want ad for computer specialists on a mysterious world. They find the planet to be a paradise, but something about it seems almost to good to be true--and sure enough it is. The inhabitants all have computer brains so they can be immortal, but for some reason they need old fashion human brains to direct their society. When the computer specialists (now prisoners in a gilded cage) have to get computer brains to keep from dying of old age, they place an ad for new specialists. 

The next story by DeMatteis and Grandenetti, has a 2000 AD sort of vibe. The absurdly violent General Windsinger looks into the eyes of a strange alien on the battlefield and is transported to an alien menagerie and what he takes to be a gladiatorial contest. He slaughters his opponents, but then discovers he was the one that lost. The aliens were offering souls ready to leave violence behind in an eternal paradise, but despite his subconscious yearnings, his actions prove he isn't ready. He's returned to the battlefield where he sheds a single tear. "Gremlins" has great Kubert art and a script by Wein. It involves stranded spacemen mistaking the intentions of creatures that look like small, neotenic versions of xenomorphs. The final story by Kashdan and von Eeden, has mankind discovering a species of four-limbed ape-creatures that are highly trainable. They plan to have these creatures replace robots as domestic servants and menials. You know this is going to end badly, but the how is surprising. When the creatures rebel and start killing their masters, they are regrettable exterminated. It turns out the robots used a poison to make the creatures violent because they didn't want to be replaced!

New Adventures of Superboy #11: Lex plots revenge against Superboy, but his device malfunctions and just causes Superboy to develop the power of "bio-magnetism," which really just means he attracts objects to himself he wants to attract (so more selective bio-gravity, but anyway). Eventually, the power grows beyond Superboy's control, and he steals Lex's notes to see how to stop it. Flying out into space to a "cosmic whirlwind" or "space vortex," which pretty much a black hole, but it looks like a whirlpool in space. He uses it to siphon off the "bio-magnetic" energy, but then it traps him--just like Lex always intended. Superboy escapes, of course, by going limp and riding waves of swirling gas. Lex is so angry he says he would rip his hair out--if he had any! In the backup written by Rozakis, Lana's father seems to have found a real genie, but it's really only a over-helpful Superbaby making the wishes come true. Pa Kent instructs his son on how to set it right. This is one of those stories where the toddlers (Superbaby and Lana) talk like fictional cavemen not actual children.

Sgt. Rock #346: This lead story is one of those Kanigher yarns that drives home the point over and over. He also engages in some parallelism between the wisdom of Sgt. Rock and the German unit commander, which is another thing Kanigher falls back on a lot. The conceit here is you don't see the enemy, but he's always there, and a few new recruits learn that lesson the hard way.  The other stories are all over the place, uncredited and often not particularly good. We get "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the narration to a battle with aliens, a former "Water Boy" finally getting the chance to man the machine gun in War World II, a Confederate cavalryman and his horse from artillery fire, and finally (best of the bunch) "Detour" by Kelley and Bissette, where a German tank commander takes out a U.S. bomber and tank in North Africa, only to fall prey to carelessness when his cigarette butt ignites the oil on the ground, and immolates both sides in a funeral pyre.

Super Friends #38: The alien Grax is back and he's teaming up with criminals and helping them commit crimes by using a device to make the Super Friends insubstantial. Soon, our heroes are insubstantial enough they risk floating away. Luckily, the Wonder Twins figure out a way to utilize their powers and with Wonder Woman's lasso, come to the rescue. These stories have more to them than the cartoon episodes, but not much more. Fradon's art helps, though.

The backup story by Bridwell and Oskner is actually more interesting. It's a solo story for Seraph, hero of Israel from the Global Guardians. He's visiting a settlement when it's attack by bikers posing as "Arabs." They are actually thieves after a treasure of Solomon, but they figure the PLO will take credit for the attack anyway. Seraph stops them but gets so worked up that he almost kills one of them after the guy surrenders. God takes away his powers and speaks to him in a booming voice (or either Fourth World Source writing, it's not clear). Seraph has to go and pray and repent to get his powers back.

Unexpected #204: The first story by Case and Calnan is an unusual (for DC horror titles) psychological horror piece. A child star is pushed by her overbearing stage mother to appear and stay child-like even as she becomes a teen. Eventually the girl snaps and kills her mother, then retreats into child-like fantasy. The next story by Ms. Seegar, Newton and Blaisdell has a philandering magician casting spells to woo a young woman away from her beau, but the magician's witch girlfriend has other ideas. In "The 13 Hex" by Wessler and Payne a man's date to a carnival is troubled by the continued reappearance of the number 13, convinced it harbingers bad luck. The man is too pre-occupied with his debt to organized crime and the hitman that's after him to worry about that. In the end, the date is the assassin, and the number 13 is unlucky for her, but not for her intended victim!  

Unknown Soldier #245: Kanigher and Ayers have the Unknown Soldier in occupied France trying to protect a blind Allied agent who knows the whereabouts of German missiles armed with a deadly chemical agent. The agent's beauty and kindness has the Unknown Soldier lamenting his own disfigured features. They are captured, but when the Unknown Soldier escapes and goes to rescue the woman, he discovers she's really German agent, and essentially a female version of himself, her face having been scared by Allied incendiary raids. Next comes a chase down snowy mountainside. The Soldier's toboggan jump across a crevasse fortuitously allows him to drop explosives on the German rockets below. The German agent dies in the explosion presumably, and despite her attempt to kill him, the Unknown Soldier feels regret.

In the backup story "The Vanishing American" by Kanigher and Yeates, a cavalry patrol, eager to wipe out an Indian tribe whose warriors they have already killed in reprisal for Custer's Last Stand, is led into an ambush by the tribe's women. In the Dateline: Frontline story by Burkett and Estrada, the reporter, Wayne, makes the decision to take an assignment in Bataan, while the woman he's been dating decides she has to volunteer to become a nurse in the European Theater.

Warlord #38: Read more about it here. The OMAC installment continues the battle between the IC&C and Verner Bros. I don't know if my supposition last month regarding these being Marvel and DC stand-ins is right, but it's amusing in the light of our era where AT&T owns Warner Bros. Anyway, Starlin definitely delivers the action in this installment.