Shrouded Vurania

Distant Vurania is cloaked in impenetrable clouds, but is known from two recorded Terran expeditions to have a surface capable of supporting human life, at least for a time. It is warmed by volcanism and radioactive elements, and is aided in retaining the heat these produce by it's thick clouds. The light from these sources plays luridly in the gray-green fog, but only partially relieves the darkness. No light from the sun or stars penetrates the gloom, and indeed the atmosphere is opaque to sound and electromagnetic waves in a fairly sort distance. Vurania holds on to its secrets.

There is little life beyond the level of arthropods apparent on the surface of Vurania, though there is evidence that intelligent life once resided there in the form of crumbling monumental structures believed to be temple complexes. Some are decorated with images known from subterranean Precursor ruins on New Terra associated with the worship of the "Spider Goddess." The prevailing theory is that these were built by Precursor dissidents who fled to Vurania following a war, but why Vurania ought of all the worlds in the System is unknown. Scholars who disagree with this theory point to the lack of any apparent buildings beyond the temples in the (admittedly limited) explored areas of the planet, and suggest this was a religious site, and possibly the source of the Spider Goddess cult.

Vurania might be a tempting haven for interplanetary outlaws, but its environmental conditions and distance are factors against it. The everpresent fog has probably contributed to the frequent old spacers' yarns that paint it as a haunted world, a sort of purgatory where crews unlucky enough to stop there may be held forever by the ghosts of their own misdeeds.

Weird Revisited: Gods from the Comics Page

This post first appeared in 2011...

Fantasy rpg settings usually make-do with Bullfinch’s Mythology derived/inspired pantheons, monstrous deities of the Lovecraftian or Howardian variety, or the occasional monotheism. Nothing wrong with those, but looking to the pages of comic books suggests some interesting variations:

Space Gods
Kirby’s Eternals posits that those classical pantheons were just misidentifications of a subspecies of humanity uplifted enigmatic aliens. In the fantasy context, maybe the aliens are some sort of elder gods (recall that Lovecraft’s Elder Gods felt unaccountably protective to the gods of the Dreamlands) and the Eternal stand-ins could be something like the Menzter’s Immortals. The other option would be to play up the science fantasy aspects for the full von Daniken. “A sufficiently advanced technology, etc., etc,”--maybe the world only appears to be a fantasy world and alien super-science is the order of the day?

The Endless
Neil Gaiman’s Sandman strips down the pantheon idea with the Endless. Destiny, Death, Destruction, Despair, Desire, and Delirium are (as their names would imply) personifications of concepts. Marvel Comics has a similar (though less developed) class of beings like this: Eternity, Oblivion, Lord Chaos and Master Order, and again Death. The Endless fit into the mythologies of various cultures in various ways, but they don’t have mythology of their own really, just personal history. A group of beings like the Endless could be the sole deities of a world, just worshipped under different names by different cultures, or (like in Sandman) these sorts of personifications could be an order of cosmic beings separate and “above” the usual pantheons with whom PCs could interact.

New Gods
“There came a time when the old gods died!” as Kirby told us in New Gods #1. As the title suggests, Kirby started in with the exploits of the New Gods--and Grant Morrison gave us even newer new gods in Final Crisis. A world could be post-god shift, adding some interesting background, or the setting could be in the midst of the “godless” period, post-Götterdämmerung but pre-reemergence of the new gods. Players might actually have a roll in finding/shaping the new gods that would appear.

Wanaxar

 Further developing this idea.

Art by Matt Hilker

Wanaxar is the fifth planet (currently), and the largest in the System. The crushing gravity and terrible atmospheric pressure make whatever surface might exist inaccessible to most denizens of the System, but Wanaxar is not uninhabited. Floating cities drift through its colorful, poison clouds and ride its frequent storms.

The Wanaxarans (Giff or Giv, in their language) are a broad, powerfully built people, adapted to their homeworld's high gravity. It has been suggested that they resemble anthropomorphic hippopotamuses, but in truth, no living human has actually seen these fabled beasts as they did not survive Old Earth, if they ever existed at all. The source for this reference is a popular animated character inspired by archaic children's books.

The Giff are not native to Wanaxar. Their own legends say their ancestors came here from one of Wanaxar's numerous moons fleeing a rapacious invader that they never saw in the flesh but whose warships laid waste to several worlds. It is the memory of this event that likely led to militaristic bent of Wanaxaran cultural today. Indeed, the entirety of their society is organized along military lines, though obviously not all serve in a combat-related capacity. Still, Wanaxarans find it usual to contractors of other species to perform tasks they consider beneath them, and aliens on Wanaxar can be found in positions form menial laborers to city administrators.

Wanaxarans can be rather stiff from the human perspective, governed as they are by complicated system of military courtesy, but they can be quite affable once initial formalities have been honored.

Merkuro

 This is a follow-up to this post.

Merkuro is the closest planet to the sun and tidally locked, so that it has a searing Dayside where temperatures climb high enough to melt lead, and a frigid Nightside that's cold enough to chill oxygen to a liquid. Only the narrow band of the Twilight Belt is close to habitable, and it is a badland riven by canyons and caves, wracked by storms. 

Human explorers would have been surprised to find life here, had the Vrusk of Marva not tipped them off. Liquid gases flow underground from the Nightside and melt to provide breathable, if rarified, air for cave complexes and even deep canyons in the Twilight Belt. Here peculiar invertebrate life developed, amorphous like amebae, but multicellular. One species (if such a term has any meaning with these lifeforms) developed sentience. These unlikely, elastic creatures, the plasmoids, would become one of humanity's best allies in the System.

Plasmoids are somewhat mysterious in that while they did not have particularly advanced technology at the time of human first contact, they possessed the theoretical framework to understand advanced concepts, and took to modern technology easily.  Some have proposed that plasmoid knowledge, perhaps even plasmoid sentience, may have come from consuming earlier interplanetary explorers (perhaps members of the Precursor race that inhabited New Terra before humanity's arrival) and absorbing their knowledge. It is a credit to plasmoid broadmindedness (and perhaps their renowned sense of humor) that they do not find such speculation offensive.

There is a human-operated spaceport in the Twilight Belt, called Solar City. This is a mining and broadcast power planet for New Terra. Most of it's inhabitants are roughnecks, miners, and technicians who do their hitch and then return to New Terra with a big paycheck. There are naturally ramshackle saloons, gambling houses, and other places of entertainment that tend to grow up around such camps to separate the workers from their money.

Wednesday Comics: DC, July 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 April 9, 1981.

Justice League of America #192: This is a pretty good issue from Conway and Perez. Red Tornado shows up and tries to kill the JLA, injuring Batman (imagine a Justice League issue that treats Batman as more fragile than the rest of the team!) and the Flash. They destroy that one, but then another attacks and this one has Kryptonite, and is only defeated when the Flash gets out of the bacta-tank (well, that's what it looks like) to save Superman. All of these Reddy duplicates come from T.O. Morrow who retcons eh, explains, why it is he's still alive when we saw him die a few months ago in World's Finest. It's Marvel retcon convoluted. Anyway, it turns out none of these Red Tornado's weren't the original, but now Morrow has gone after him, too.

New Teen Titans #9: HIVE is out to steal promethium from Changeling's adopted father's company, and they send the Puppeteer/Puppetmaster (not the one you're thinking of) to take out the Titans. Over half the team is controlled by the Puppeteer, but the other manage to defeat. Nothing noteworthy about this issue, but it's not bad.

Secrets of Haunted House #38: This is a pretty good issue art-wise. Story-wise, it's lackluster. In the first story, a Native American legend about a cave full of gold where a demon was unleashed draws in two criminals. In the end, it turns out the legend had a kernel of truth as the men are killed by a torrent of oil unleashed by their searching. The second story, written by Ms. Charlie Seegar, doesn't make a lot of sense, but has grotty art by Jodloman. It involves a sweatshop owner making a deal with the Devil for slave labor, only to have men wearing the Satan-imbued jackets his factory made come to kill him so the Devil could claim his due.

The Mister E story by Rozakis and Spiegle has E on the trail of Judge Kobold from his first appearance, but Kobold has apparently disguised himself as one of a group of business men. This installment is probably the weakest Mister E story was far.

Superman #361: Captain Strong (DC's Popeye stand-in) guest stars, which distracts a bit from the fact that this is yet another "never to be seen again alien coming to Earth with a problem" story from Bates and Swan. The alien is transforming into all sorts of creatures, including a Kryptonian beast Supes needs Strong's help to defeat, but ultimately she's just trying to feed her starving people. It turns out Strong's sauncha seaweed that gives him his strength is just the thing.

The backup is more forgettable than the main tale, as most of these "Superman of 2021" stories seem to be. Superman has a second secret identity as some sort of future sports star. Step up your game, Rozakis!

Tales of the Green Lantern Corps #3: After their defeat last issue, the Corps is ready to pack it in and go home to spend the last days of the Universe with their families, but Jordan rallies them to do their duty to the last. The Corps arrives at the riff to Nekron's realm and the battle is again joined. One of Krona's minions is inspired to by the Lanterns and is given a ring by Jordan to become one himself. Jordan flies through the riff and recruits dead Lanterns to fight, and they over-power Nekron, but Jordan is trapped in his dimension. The other Lanterns get him out, and the day is saved. The Guardians offer to make Jordan head of the Corps, but he declines. A satisfying finale from Barr/Wein and Staton.

Weird War Tales #101: G.I. Robot makes his debut in a story by Kanigher and Casares. In the standard "robot partner" sort of story, a loner sergeant is initially skeptical of having a robot partner, but learns the power of buddy-dom from his more-human-than-expected companion. It's the best story of the issue for all its formula.

Kashdan and Taberna present a story of child soldiers, who it turns out are only taking part in a game to scare (more like traumatize) them away from war forever. A ex-Nazi gets what he deserves as a member of the French Foreign Legion when he is betrayed by the ghost of a man he spared in return for betraying his neighbors in a Jewish ghetto. Kashdan returns for the last story with Vicatan Jr. It's a story of a calculator device found by some G.I.'s that seems to predict successful battle tactics, but in the end only brings misery.

Wonder Woman #281: Conway and Delbo/Hunt send Wonder Woman and the Demon through a weird, mystical dimension to rescue Etta Candy from Baal-Satyr. Delbo does okay mystical realms, but his Demon his pretty rough, which brings down the issue for me. In the end, they rescue Candy, but they appear to be trapped in the netherworld. 

In the Huntress backup by Levitz and Staton/Mitchell, it turns out Helena Wayne's DA beau wasn't killed by the joker venom, but he's in the hospital. Next, the Joker gets Commissioner O'Hara. The story ends with one of those nonsensical hero moves you sometimes see in comics: Huntress breaks her own dart-firing crossbow in half--because the Joker is firing darts at people? Doesn't make much sense to me. Anyway, she vows "the gloves are off!" There's also a panel in this issue where he appears that Staton has drawn Helena Wayne in a parted robe that appears to show public hair. Surprised he got that one by the Code Authority!

Rockets , Rayguns, and Other Worlds

I've been thinking about a campaign setting that would utilize a bit of material from Spelljammer, a bit of material from Star Frontiers, and then some reconfigured stuff from D&D in general. The ruleset would be 5e (it's what the group I would likely play it with knows the best), but that would allow me to draw from Rocket Age 5e and other sources saving me some work. 

I sketched some of the bones last week, and it would conform to some of the particulars I outlined in this alternate Spelljammer idea, here. The basic idea is that humanity, fleeing some cataclysm on Earth, wind up either in a distant star system or either an alternate universe (I don't know if the players will know which or if it will matter) where the solar system is uncannily like a pulp version of our own. The laws of physics will obviously be somewhat different here, but I don't expect that to be a focus of play.

Technology will conform to pulp sci-fi standards, with rockets with some sort of atomic powered aether drive playing their way through the system. Swords of some sort will be present side-by-side with rayguns, but I haven't decided whether they will be or everyone or particular characters, or whether they will be normal swords or something special. Psychic powers will take the place of magic.

Azurth Revisited: The Glamour of Virid

Since the party in my campaign has finally gotten to Virid, it seemed like a good time to revisit this post from 2015...

"Virid, the Western Country of Azurth, is the place where magic of the faerie is the strongest. There are a few mundane places there. Or perhaps it is truer to say the fantastic is the mundane in Virid. It's Queen Desira is called an Enchantress by those of other countries, either for her beauty, her sorcery, or perhaps both. Certainly, she has ensnared the hearts of her people, though they speak of her compassion and fairness, and the brave deeds she performed in her youth."

-  A History of the Land of Azurth

High Concept: A patchwork fantasyland ruled by a faerie-descended Enchantress, brave and beautiful, who with her companions sought adventure and love in her youth.
Conspectus: an inland sea of mists with a castle beneath its roiling color; creatures of myth and legend abound: mermaids, centaurs, unicorns; many of the rulers were once friends and companions on adventures--but also rivals for the affections of Queen Desira.
Media Inspirations: Wonder Woman comics in the Golden Age and her imitators; She-Ra: Princess of Power and her rival Golden Girl; the various incarnations of Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld, some magical girl anime and manga projected into the future when the magical girls are adults.