Verdis

Verdis, second planet from the sun, is closest in many respects to New Terra (and Old Earth), but has a slightly thicker atmosphere, higher average temperatures, and more area covered by water. Its polar continents (without ice caps) are the most comfortable place for human visitors. Though there are reasons for humans to visit the marshy, equatorial islands (the collection of plants for sale to pharmaceutical companies being a major one), the climate and local lifeforms insure that few reside there longterm.

Though Verdis has at least two intelligent species, it is the hadozee humans think of as Verdisians. They are tall, thin humanoids who largely resemble earthly primates except for the flying squirrel-like patagia. The cradle of hadozee civilization is centered in the forests of massive trees on plateaus on the south polar continent. These trees dwarf the mighty redwoods of Old Earth. The the hadozee have built cities among there branches.

The hadozee were mostly pre-industrial at the time of first contact with humans but with some advanced knowledge they claimed to have acquired from the "Sky People" from New Terra, presumably the Precursors. The hadozee clans were frequently at war with each other, but gradually formed regional leagues to protect certain sites of significance. These leagues eventually coalesced into larger structures and eventually a council of leagues, loose enough to bring in more clans as time went on. The death of council leaders as a potential  a loss to all the clans of in a dissolution of the council has insured that any attempted violence on their persons is punished severely. Despite the volatile (from the human perspective) nature of hadozee, this system has worked.

The vast seas of Verdis are home to an aquatic species, called Mer-folk by humans and "Deep Hunters" by hadozee. Little about them is known, as they have mostly resisted communication, though some hadozee island dwellers have been known to trade with them.

Art by Tony Moore

A Rough Planet of the Apes Chronology

I was talking with Jim Shelley of the Flashback Universe blog yesterday about the Planet of the Apes franchise (a not uncommon occurrence), and I suggested to him a way though prequel series from the 21st Century could be merged with the original series of films. Well, actually a couple of ways, but I'm only going to talk about one here.

The "original" timeline, is the story presented is definitively present in Rise of the Planet of the Apes through War for the Planet of the Apes. An experimental Alzheimer's drug inadvertently leads to an increase in simian intelligence and a super-flu. These events lead to conflict between humans and apes.

In the end, the apes have defeated their foes and migrated to an isolated place to build their city. Their leader, Caesar, first of the intelligence apes, dies.

Rise in passing mentions the Icarus spacecraft was lost, allowing for the possibly that it will return to earth at some point in the far future and events similar to Planet of the Apes and Beneath the Planet of the Apes play out. Not identical perhaps, but similar.

Somehow, Cornelius, Zira, and Milo manage to go back in time as shown in Escape the Planet of the Apes to 1973. Much of what was depicted in this film would work exactly, as it posits an Icarus which had launched prior to '73, but a group of apes coming to Earth in an advanced spacecraft and revealing things about the future could. These events change to timeline.

This altered timeline ironically accelerates some events people were trying to avoid, leading to the events depicted in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and Battle for the Planet of the Apes and limited nuclear war.

So there you go. Like I said, it's rough, but it works if you don't sweat every detail. For a much more detailed timeline (though not taking into account the newer films) check out Timeline of the Planet of the Apes by Rich Handley.

Wednesday Comics: Marvel Treasury Edition #28

Since my goal is to read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis, why am I talking about Marvel Treasury Edition #28? Well, that's because the title of this issue is Superman and Spider-Man. Released around April 28, 1981, this is a follow-up to Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man #1 from 1976. It is the last issue of Marvel Treasury Edition.

Jim Shooter is the writer here and John Buscema is on pencils, embellished by a whole slew of inkers, on backgrounds mostly, with Joe Sinnott handling the figures. 

Spider-Man inadvertently interferes with the plans of Dr. Doom, but Doom's got even bigger plans. It involves inducing the Hulk to rampage in Metropolis where we get to see some Superman vs. Hulk action. Spider-Man (Peter Parker having been sent to Metropolis to take photos) gets to stand around and watch the titans tussle. Superman locates and destroys the Doom device enraging Hulk.

All this rampaging releases the Parasite, though, which was apparently what Doom planned. While he's breaking out, Peter and Jimmy Olsen are paling around (which makes sense), and Superman is confronting Doom, who tells him "we're a lot alike you and me." Sure, this shows Doom's ego, but he also has a not crazy point that Superman's inaction on any number of things decides the fate of any number of people as much as him taking action would. Then he blasts Superman with Kryptonite.

Superman beats that trap, but Doom pulls the ol' diplomatic immunity thing, and Supes leaves. Parasite comes out of hiding. The two villains are already in cahoots.

Superman gets to meet the Daily Bugle staff and take care of some street crime in New York. Spidey can't catch a break in Metropolis, getting turned down by Lana Lang, and being thought of as a criminal by the police. Even Wonder Woman calls him "creepy." 

Superman and Spider-Man meet up and compare notes from their investigations on Doom's world conquering plan (which is so bold and so ridiculous I'm not going to go into it, but suffice to say it involves destroying all the world's energy resources and all the worlds weapons). Superman says it's all too dangerous for Spider-Man and heads in to tackle Doom and Parasite alone, but he gets into trouble, so it's a good thing Spidey didn't listen to him. He doesn't help much though, and Superman and Spider-Man are both captured.

Now it's time for the villain betrayal. It turns out Doom doesn't want Parasite as a lackey, but instead needs him to get crystalized by absorbing too much power (Hulk, Wonder Woman, and Superman). This crystal is integral to his plan because without it, well, his device will blow up and destroy the planet.

But Parasite now has spider-sense, and gets forewarned of the danger. A fight breaks out and the device gets damaged, so now it's going to destroy the planet. Doom tries to escape in a spacecraft. Superman and Spider-Man try to stop the reactor build up, and Spider-Man saves the day with a bit of spider-sense gifted intuition.

The villains defeated, the heroes return to their respective towns.

A goofy Bronze Age story, admittedly, but it's sort of fun. Buscema's Superman is not the best, but that's the only character that seems slightly "off model."

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.