Late Era Role-Aids

Photo by Needles

I've been revisiting some late era Role-Aids (90s) products recently, some purchased at my only Gen-Con experience to date, the others a gift from Hydra compadre, Robert Parker. While earlier Role-Aids products are hit or miss, these are quite good, I think. 

One thing that immediately caught my eye was art by some comic book illuminaries: Arch Magic has a cover by Dave McKean, Demons II has one by Glenn Fabry, and a couple of Demons supplements have art by Alex Niño. Beyond that they seem to borrow both from innovations at TSR (the loose leaf monster format) and White Wolf (some of the subject matter and design), and in some minor ways anticipate the aesthetic and subject matter of Planescape.

The Demons related products (Demons and its loose leaf spinoffs, Demons II, and Sentinels and Apocalypse) suggest use in a campaign setting that is more a battleground for the forces of good and evil in a Heaven versus Hell sort of way than the standard D&D setting. The descriptions of it's demons are somewhere between Monster Manual and demonology book, both in terms of their physical appearance and what sort of requirements they have for the making of pacts. All in all, it provides a push more in the roleplaying than combat encounter direction for these beings (not that they are full stated for combat).

Arch Magic gives a whole new class (the Archmage) for sort of ultra-high level magic-users and some new, powerful spells, but the interesting part is the adventuring locales: a city built in the bones of a monstrous skeleton, The Macrodome, where a game controlling the destiny of the universe is played out, and the Red Room of madness (probably inspired by Twin Peaks).

These products feel like the creators had much more free rein than AD&D products of the era. The are no better executed--perhaps at times a little worse--but the imagination involved seems less fettered,

Weird Revisited: Midnight in the House Tenebrous

This post first appeared in 2011...

 

There are places in Nla-Ogupta--that ancient, decadent, Venusian Venice--where Terrans do not go. The Street of Blue Vines was one of those. The buildings along it crowded close, as if trying to conceal some secret. The uncanny glow of bioluminescent lantern-jellies that cling to haphazard lines seem dimmer than elsewhere--as if they too were conspirators. It's said that in millennia past, when Sumer was young, the Street of Blue Vines was a place where cultists trafficked with inhuman gods. Old Venus-hands, deep in their cups, spin tales of cannibalism, and alien sexual rites. That's what the rumors say.  No Terran knows, and if any polite Venusian knows, they don't speak of it to off-worlders.

But on this night, a Terran does wind his way down the serpentine Street of Blue Vines. His stride is unhesitating--he hasn't come this way accidentally. He moves purposely to the darkened, leaning structure which bears no sign or legend, but nevertheless is known to the denizens of Nla-Ogupta's underworld as the House Tenebrous. He has come seeking this house, and the service it sells.  He's come to buy a man's death.

The Street of Blue Vines gets its name from the eerie, electric indigo vines and foliage that entwine 'round its most infamous denizen, the House Tenebrous. The House only permits entrance at night--in fact, it may be that it can only be located at night.

A seated, robed figured, appearing as a short and portly man, his features completely hidden in a cowl, asks any visitor who he or she might wished kill, and why. The figure’s voice sounds distant, and tinny, and seems to emanate from all around. The man never moves, even in the slightest.  Sometimes visitors get the impression that there are others in the room--the feeling of eyes upon them, or the hint of motion in the shadows of the audience chamber. Psychically sensitive individuals report “hearing” distant, unintelligible, whispers, and an unpleasant mental sensation not unlike smothering.

If the man chooses to accept the commission, the price is variable, and not always in money.  If a goal can be discerned from House's representative's payment demands, it is that they seem to be aimed at reducing Terran influence on Venus.

Eventually, though a space of week or months may pass, all victims of the House Tenebrous are found dead somewhere in Nla-Ogupta (or in one case, on a ship having recently departed there) without any apparent signs of violence or physical injury. Victims always appear to have died in their sleep, though often their face and bodies are contorted as if in fear or pain.

In the Furnace

If some resolute pilgrim were to limp or crawl through miles of the sepulchral dust and crumbling, cinerous statuary of anguish of Hades, they might find the leaden skies giving way to a void of eternal night. They would see before them a landscape of tortured rock formations, and boiling, mephitic, salt-rimmed pools that make the lurid colors of the surrounding rock manifest with their wan glow. Beyond, they would see broken and lava-clotted crags rising ever upward, disappearing into distant darkness. They would have reached the border of Gehenna.

Those who don't succumb to despair in the gray wastes are potential fodder for the Devils' war against Chaos. But first, they must be broken and reconditioned to that purpose. Yugoloth patrol the border, and their press gangs conscript all available prospects. Captives are whisked off to a number of re-education centers. Under the conditioning of their fiendish captors, they become suitable, perhaps, for minor positions in the apparatus of Hell, or either for future service of the Yugoloth.

It is possible to scale the forbidden scarp of Gehenna. If one can avoid the plateau encampments of the Yugoloth, the monsters of the lava tube caves, and assorted natural dangers from jagged rock, blasts of toxic gas, and flows of lava, you can stand upon the mountains ringing Hell itself. It is not a trip anyone would wish to make except with the direst of need.

Wednesday Comics: DC, March 1981 (wk 1 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 December 11, 1980.

Justice League of America #188: Perhaps editorial--or maybe even Conway, himself--realized the Super-Friends level story of duplicated powers and JLA members turned into working stiffs was weak sauce for a two-parter. So it winds up a one-and-a-half parter with the cover this issue being taken by a Conway/Buckler joint about about malfunctioning killer-satellite that attacks the JLA's satellite, trapping the Leaguers not in the other story there. It's an interesting "race against time" problem-solving tale, superior to the other story. It weirdly tries to be a Hanukkah story too, with the Atom learning the meaning of the holiday and ends with him telling the other League members about it.

The first story sees the JLA coming to join Flash (who has evaded transformation into a normie himself) to defeat the counterfeit, jewel-thief League. Zatana, transformed into an old woman, doesn't make it back on her own, but the Flash goes to rescue her. Those two seen to decide to nip their romance in the bud and just be friends.

New Teen Titans #5: So much keeps happening in these issues, but not a lot of importance yet. The Titans abandoned Raven last issue after learning how she manipulated them--particularly Kid Flash, but when she's captured by Trigon, they come to her rescue. They defeat a minion of of Trigon's with teamwork, but then the main man show's up and they all go to Azarath. There the Titans are unable to defeat him and the pacifists of Azarath won't help, so Raven agrees to join Trigon to save everyone.

Secrets of Haunted House #34: In the first story, Destiny just kind of toys with an unpleasant blonde model who wants desperately to one up her brunette rival. Destiny seems to be granting her wishes, but whatever the she gets her rival receives double. She keeps trying to think of something good that either can't be doubled or will be bad when doubled, but she keeps being frustrated. On the last go-round, she asks for a handsome lover six feet tall, but then her rival gets two identical lovers meeting that description--except all three guys turn out to be vampires. Ms. Charlie Seegar and E Cruz were responsible for this nonsense. The next story by Wessler and Ken Barr isn't much better. It involves occupying Nazi forces suffering all sorts of calamities, and the source turns out to be--a group of Maquis dwarfs hiding underground, and I don't mean dwarfs of the fairytale kind.

The Mister E story by Rozakis and Speigle doesn't really redeem this issue, but it does have a kind of amusing ending, where Mister E uses acid to dissolve the stitching between parts in a Frankenstein's monster, causing it to fall apart.

Secrets of the Legion of Super-Heroes #3: After last issue's reveal that a Legionnaire may be Brande's kid (though it's not revealed how that know this), Brande's assistant and the doctors explain that Brande has a rare blood type, but he needs a transfusion to survive Yorssian Fever. They review the histories of the remaining Legionnaires, even the dead ones and the Subs! Then they get to the reservists like Jimmy Olsen and Lana Lang. It seems like just taking blood samples would be better than reviewing origin stories, but what do I know about the holistic nature of 30th Century medicine, right? Saturn Girl manages to telepathic pick up from Brande's unconscious brain that he once had powers. They realize they have made a mistake excluding nonhuman species and humanoid races that inherit powers.  In the end they figure it out: Chameleon Boy, of course. Brande is saved.

Superman #357: This story opens with both Superman and Vartox effectively prisoners on Tynola. Superman literally so, as he's gone "undercover" as a interplanetary criminal and has been imprison in a smallish sphere, which really is cruel and unusual punishment. Still, he's able to use his super-senses to suss out that the Tynolans derive their reality manipulating "chant" powers from Noxumbra, a space-traveling, god-monster. They plan to feed Vartox to Noxumbra in exchange for his continued blessing. They mostly seem to use their power to magic up things for Vartox to fight, so it all seems a bit circular to me, but anyway! Superman breaks out and gives Noxumbra indigestion by substituting himself for the hyper-power Noxumbra usual feeds on. With the god-monster, gone Vartox still agrees to stay and help the Tynolans and Superman goes home. There is some cleverness here in how Vartox and Superman use their super-powers to avoid their plotting being detected by the advanced Tynolans, but overall it's a better idea than execution.

The backup story is another "Superman of 2021" yarn. He fights a forgettable villain and gets a date with his boss.

Superman Family #206: Superman Family was just not what I needed this week. It feels like a step-down from last time--and that was not a comic I was dying to read. The okay stuff include the Harris/Mortimer Supergirl tale which i think has more scenes of Supergirl in lingerie than I've ever seen in a comic. It really has a romance comic feel at the beginning, which is not wholly out of place because it's about a lookalike (Lesla-Lar) trying to steal Kara's life--literally. The non-romance angle is that it revolves around her parents, not a beau. The "Mr. and Mrs. Superman" story guest stars Harlequin (the Earth-2 character) and briefly Green Lantern (Earth-2), but it's better than the rock-bottom silliness of "The Private Life of Clark Kent" bit by Rozakis and Calnan. 

The Lois Lane story is sort of a coda to the multi-part arc that ended last issue. Lois gets her memories back finally in the Fortress of Solitude, then goes off to say good-bye to the guy she fell for while amnestic. Superman is cool with all that, but I guess he would be, because he's Superman. The final story has Jimmy Olsen chased by yokels on the payroll of chemical polluters in the Poconos.

Weird War Tales #97: The Creature Commandos are back! This time, the story is a bit better, and the characters are less universal monster knockoffs. DeMatteis (credited as creator here as well as writer), focuses the dramatic core of this story on Lt. Shrieve and what appears to be a burgeoning attraction between him and a scientist, Dr. Frederique, the Commandos have rescued from the Germans. The Doctor argues against Shrieve's reduction of the Germans to simply faceless "Nazi Pigs" to be killed. Unfortunately, she isn't the scientist but a German spy. Though she leads the Commandos into an ambush, she warns them at the last minute, getting shot in the process. The Commandos prevail, but the fake Frederique dies after confessing her duplicity and her remorse to Shrieve. The Commandos ask about burying her, but Shrieve replies there's no need as she's just another Nazi Pig, but his face as he turns away from his men betrays his true feelings.

The second story by Rozakis and Spiegle is a mini-epic with a U.S. agent discovering a Nazi experiment in mind control via something like astral projection. They have already taken over Stalin. The agent infiltrates the Kremlin and frees Stalin with some judiciously applied electricity from a broken lamp. Back in London, he discovers that the Nazi scientist Kreuger has now gotten to Churchill. The agent steals an RAF plane and drops strips of tinfoil (used to block radar) over Parliament when Churchill is there, blocking the signal and freeing the Prime Minister. In the U.S., they recreate the German device with the agent as the guinea pig. It kills him--but his mental projection is freed to protect FDR from Nazi control. The thoughtforms of Kreuger and the agent do battle in the sky, until a lightning bolt destroys the Nazi. The agent goes into the scientist's body long enough to sabotage the German device.

Wonder Woman #277: If you've ever wanted to see a group of Kobra agents shake themselves until they explode in a pile of goo when compelled to tell the truth by Wonder Woman's magic lasso, well Conway and Delbo made this issue for you! Wonder Woman is on the trail of Kobra who has the Cobalt 93 bomb and is holding the world's oil fields for ransom. She consults an old voodoo practitioner for some reason and gets to hear the Kobra cults origin and that of King Kobra (though minus Jason Burr). She heads off to Delhi and winds up falling into Kobra's hands.

The Levitz and Staton Huntress backup has Helena worrying over the fact that her DA sort of boyfriend has figured out her secret identity. Lucky for her she lives next to a woman being blackmailed by her estranged husband, which allows her to distract herself with a little easy crimefighting.

A Stop in the Planar Tour

I've done enough posts in this series on the Outer Planes that I thought it was time to stop and collate them so folks could catch up.

The Planes of Pure Law
The Planes of Chaos
Hell
Carceri

Hades

Arborea

Elysium

Beastlands

Showdown with the Cyan Sorceress

 

A week ago, our Land of Azurth 5e game continued a week ago with the party coming to what they had initially take to be a hill at the center of the forest of stone shapes, but was actually a circle of close standing forms. There was one stone toppled over to form a platform over a deep abyss chasm beyond where floated the Singing Monolith. On this platform, the Cyan Sorceress had made her camp. 

She tried to shoo the party away, but when they weren't having it, she threw a trinket into their midst that suddenly cause gravity to intensify, slamming them to the ground. Obviously, the time for palaver had passed!

The Cyan Sorceress had powerful magic and several strange devices at her disposal, but in the end their was only one of her against the entire party. With Dagmar's healing keeping Erekose and Waylon able to attack, the Sorceress was subdued. Belatedly some of the weird cyber-zombies attacked, but they were easily dispatched.

With a spell to compel her truth-telling, the party got down to questioning the Sorceress. They found out she and the other Chromic Witches were agents of Queen Desira of Virid, but they had become concerned that the Wizard of Azurth was exerting a strange influence over her, and struck out on their own to find magics to potentially counter his. Somewhere along the way, she fell under the influence of a Shadow. Who or what the Shadow was, she had difficulty describing she seemed to indicate that somehow it was displayed in time and possible world. It was somehow related to the book which was sometimes the Wondrous Wizard of Azurth and sometimes the Marvelous Monarch of Mu. The Shadow wished to use the book to remake the world, or perhaps had done so already. Somehow the revival of these action devices were going to help the Shadow do this. When the Cyan Sorceress was defeated, the Shadow seemed to have lost its influence.

The party was unable to stop the Monolith's emergence, meaning an increased revival of the ancient trinkets and related artifacts, but since the Sorceress was unable to complete the ritual it had been a less significant event than it might have been. The group emerged on to the surface of the Crooked Hills, more informed than before, but perhaps no more enlightened.

The Call of the Wild

The Beastlands is the plane of idealized nature. The prevailing theory is that it was formed by the will of the Titans, the proto-gods born of chaos, blamed for the creation of material world, as a conceptual model of the Material Plane, though this is perhaps an anthropomorphic misapprehension, attributing as it does rational, fathomable motives to alien their minds.

It's location (if a conceptual realm can truly be said to have location) between Arborea and Elysium has been ascribed to mere sympathetic aggregation (owing to all three evoking the natural world), though some have argued equally persuasively that it partakes of both the harmony of Elysium and the carnal nature of Arborea. 

The Beastlands is primeval wilderness, unspoiled by the action of thinking creatures. Its inhabitants are are animals--or rather the iconic spirits of all wildlife, fierce and beautiful. These animals may speak if they wish to do so, but it is wrong to imbue them with human characteristics beyond this or processes of thought. At all times they are wild beasts, and are not given to acting outside their natural roles.

Travelers who spend time in the Beastlands will feel the call of the beast within. Lycanthropes are empowered by the realm, and other humans may be susceptible to being transformed into animalistic forms the longer they stay. The partaking of certain foodstuffs within the Beastlands hastens this transformation, and varieties of Bestland fungi are sought for ritual use on the Material Plane for their potent connection to this realm.