Way Up North

Art by Vsevolod Ivanov

While I was vacationing in Alaska a couple of weeks ago, I got though idea for a campaign inspired by the Klondike and other Alaskan gold rushes. To give something for fantasy rpg PCs to do besides turn prospector (though they could do that) I figure the forbidding northern wilderness would have once been part of a prehistoric empire whose great works and lost wonders have been buried.

To complicate matters and make for some interesting factions, there would be a current empire filling the "haughty Elvish jerk" niche that claim suzerainty over the region but spend most of their time fighting a rebellious faction of their own people. There would also be a more technologically primitive native people (maybe Neolithic dwarves or something) who naturally resent the invaders from afar.

Magic Like This

 I'd like to see a traditional fantasy rpg with magic like this:

Podmore picked up his fork and stood it on its end. Snaith stood, stepped over to the shelf behind Arthur’s head, and picked up a sharp knife. Moving by instinct, Arthur reached out and knocked over Snaith’s wine-glass. Snaith slipped on spilled borscht. He lay on his back looking confused, as if he had no idea what had just happened or why he’d stood up in the first place...

...Arthur said, “George—I’m sorry.” 

He snapped the stem of his wineglass, causing the leg of George’s chair to snap so that he fell on the floor and hit his head on the chair behind him. The dowager dame who’d been sitting in that chair gave a little shriek, then got to her feet and left, taking her party with her. A couple of waiters quickly came and led George off, bleeding from the head, in search of first aid. 

- Felix Gilman, The Revolutions

And this:

Her bedroom was still dark when Sadie woke up and there was a lump in her throat. She turned her head and coughed, and spat a stone into her hand. It was the size of her thumbnail, chalky white and light as a feather. Its dimpled surface was covered all around with tiny holes, and when she held it up to her ear she could hear wind in the treetops of a faraway forest.

She mixed a resin and coated the stone several times, until it was as hard and shiny as a nut, then took it outside where the morning sky had begun to turn pink along the horizon. She set the stone in the middle of the long trail that ran south from her house, through ruined cornfields and over the Arkansas River.

She left the stone there and went inside, laid back down in her bed and went to sleep.

- Alex Grecian, Red Rabbit

The last quote is the beginning of a sequence of events wherein the "stone" is picked up by a squirrel which is in turn carried away by a hawk, dropped and eaten by a fox, which is in turn killed and eaten by the man the stone is a message for. He chips a tooth on it before realizing what it is, putting it up to his ear, and hearing the witch's message.

In both of these works, magic isn't visually fantastic or flashy. Not at all like super-powers. But it is nonetheless powerful and mostly quick without a lot of ceremony. I suspect there are modern/occult rpgs with magic like this, but I'm unaware of any traditional, Medievalish fantasy with it, but I'd like to see it.

Wednesday Comics: DC, September 1983 (week 4)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics on the newsstand on June 23, 1983.

Sword of the Atom #1: After Ray Palmer discovers his wife Jean cheating on him with her new legal partner, he takes a trip to the Amazon jungle to give them some time apart in search of a White Dwarf Star Fragment. Unfortunately, the pilots of the plane he charters are also cocaine smugglers so when his explorations get too close to their facilities, they attack him. He fights them off as the Atom, but the plan crashes and he's stuck in his 6-inch size. Luckily, He meets a tribe of similarly sized, yellow-skinned people, citizens of the hidden city of Morlaidh. Unluckily, he takes the side of the condemned Taren, and is also condemned to death by rats. Meanwhile, in Ivy Town, Jean hears that Ray's wedding band has been discovered in the plane wreckage in Brazil and assumes her husband is dead. Strnad and Kane remake the Atom as a Lost World/Planetary Romance sort of hero, which is a combo Kane was born to draw.

Ronin #2: The samurai reborn in a cybernetic body in the 21st century spends most of the issue looking for a sword, encountering Miller's phantasmagorical underbelly of future Manhattan. He final gets one, and violence ensues. Well, there was violence before that, but now the samurai is getting his licks in. Meanwhile, an AI catches a corporate security leader up on everything that went down last issue, she sends her men to start looking for the samurai. The demon is lurking in the background, also. It's inhabiting the body of the corporation's CEO. Again, while the similarities to Miller's later work like Dark Knight Returns is clear, I'm struck by how much this seems like something that could have been serialized in Heavy Metal.

Action Comics #547: Rozakis, Kupperberg and Swan/Colletta/Marcos complete the Planeteer story arc. Superman keeps flying around the world, rescuing the kidnapped world leaders and unknowingly doing exactly what the Planeteer wants to power him up to Superman(ish) power levels. It isn't enough though, and after a goofy but not unappealing combat where they keep punching each other around the globe into landmarks (the Redwood of California, the Great Wall of China, the Sphinx), Superman defeats him at the North Pole. 

All-Star Squadron #25: Thomas and Ordway/Machlan add some new complications to the Ultra-Humanite arc. The JSA splits up as they are wont to do and encounter duos of new powered beings (the Infinitors from the future, it turns out, but you'd only know that from the cover) who seem convinced by Ultra that the JSA are working with the fascists. These combats end with a number of the JSA disappearing mysteriously. Meanwhile, Amazing Man has decided with work with the All-Stars to save Detroit as his parents are there. Infinitor Brainwave, Jr. wakes up and realizes he may be too late to stop his friends who are inadvertently going to cause a catastrophe.

Arion Lord of Atlantis #11: Moench and Duursema/Mandrake work in some stuff borrowed Blavatsky. An reveals an underground passageway beneath the palace, leading to the ruins of an ancient city of the Rmoahals. Arion and friends discover a being encased in a block of ice, and they bring tit to the surface for study. Ar

Arion is training with Calculha's crystals to try to reclaim his magic, but the psychic energy awakens the creature trapped in ice. It's a mutant created by the Rmoahals to remove their need for traditional food, as it feeds on psychic energy. After rampaging for a bit, the creature targets Mara who has the most powerful energy. She changes form into a chimera with doesn't have the level of mental energy the creatures needs and fights it tooth and claw. Arion then arrives and kills the creature who actually wishes to end its existence with a sword.

Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew #19: The cover proclaims Thomas and Hoberg as the creators, but the actual credits list Shaw as the plotter and Cavalieri as the scripter. The Zoo Crew goes on a cruise and once again encounter Frogzilla who is in cahoots with a shady landcrab real estate speculator. Cavalieri's scripting as opposed to Thomas's or Shaw's is decidedly less pun heavy, which seems to me a bit of an improvement. 

Detective Comics #530: Moench and Colon/Giordano continue the story of Nocturna from this month's Batman. The Thief of Night is in custody after his last encounter with Batman. Justice is swift in Gotham because he's about to get his day in court, except Batman convinces the DA to hold it at night so he can show up to testify. Before that, however, Jason Todd who's running away to return to the circus happens to encounter Nocturna. She actually advises him to stick with his foster parent. She makes a good point, but Jason ultimately decides to go through with his plan.

Nocturna attends the hearing in disguise, then attacks the transport van taking Thief of Night to prison using her hot air balloon and some weaponized jewelry. Batman foils the escape attempt and captures both criminals.

All the time this has been going on, Bruce has been absent from his relationship with Vicki Vale. Fed up, she asks for an assignment out of the country and plans to leave town.

In the Green Arrow backup by Cavalieri and Gonzales/Magyar, the Russian embassy in Star City is attacked by 1983 topical right-wing paramilitary nuts led by the Survivalist. Ollie happens to be there for his paper, so Green Arrow is able to stop the attack, but he can't do anything about the suspicious the Soviets have that the U.S. government was behind events. GA shows one of their captured weapons to a General at the local army installation, who confirms it's of an advanced type, not a standard issue. They're interrupted by an attack by the Survivalist and his followers, who are using a device to start raising nuclear missiles from their silos. Their plan is to precipitate a nuclear war as they feel they will be prepared to take over in the aftermath.

Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #2: Giffen is still involved as co-plotter here with Levitz, but he hands off art chores to Gibbons, which isn't as good as I might have thought. Gibbons just doesn't seem to have a real handle on some of the character designs. Anyway, the Projectra and Karate Kid are married in a ceremony unmarred by super-villain attack. The only wrinkle being that several of the Legionnaries got accidentally marooned in the past where they encounter Durlans masquerading as the Greek gods and have to rescued. It's an odd interlude, but not a bad issue.

Jonah Hex #76: Another nice cover, this one by Jim Aparo. Emmylou is back she issue, so I guess Fleischer hasn't forgotten her. She's still traveling with Jonah (and still dressed in Native American garb) though she's once him to settle down, and Jonah frets he's misleading her, because he isn't in love with her. Turnbull has hatched another plan for revenge on Hex. Does it have something to do with the governor requesting Hex undertake a secret mission going undercover in the territory prison? Hex's cover has him branded a criminal (and Mei Ling sees the charges in a newspaper), and things are pretty grim in the prison thanks to a sadistic and corrupt guard.

New Adventures of Superboy #45: A change in the art time this issue as Saviuk is on pencils and Schaffenberger inks. Despite everything going on in Smallville with Clark now dating Lisa, his father being asked to run for political office, and some sort of shennanigans at the local paper, Superboy finds time to head to Japan to help the authorities against Sunburst, a tokusatsu movie hero who apparently has real super-powers and seems to be behaving like a villain. We're left with a cliffhanger.

In the Dial H backup by Bridwell/Rozakis and Bender/Jensen, Chris and Vicki tell Nick Stevens about how they got the dials and he wants to see the mysterious box in Chris' attic himself.  They figure out a way to witness a past battle between the Master and a super-hero called the Wizard which leads to the creation of the dials and allows Nick to get over his mental block in drawing a sketch of the Master's appearance.

World's Finest Comics #295: This one is from a plot by Kellogg and script by Kraft with art by Moore/McLaughlin. With a setup that would seem strange with the "creature of the night" Batman post-Crisis, Batman is called to Cape Canaveral to investigate the possibility of sabotage of a new space weapon satellite. Batman has only begun to consider suspects, when there's an attack by the Moon Dancers, a very 70s Marvel Two-in-One team of themed adversaries. They manage to escape by incapacitating Batman with a gas bomb which turns out to contain a deadly alien virus. Superman strives to save his friend, and after traveling all over space finds the cure in the burning heart of a comet. (Yes, I know comets don't have burning heats. Tell Kellogg and Kraft!) 

Batman is cured, but this turns out to (amazingly) by exactly what the mysterious mastermind behind the Moon Dancers intended, because it involves Superman making a device with the cometary energy source. He sends the Moon Dancers to steal it, and Batman is too weak to fight them off. Superman shows up, and the heroes track the thieves down, discovering that NASA scientist Nakamura is the mastermind. A survivor of the atomic bombing of Japan he wanted to end the nuclear threat forever. The Moon Dancers wanted the same end, but were in the dark in regard to his means. The heroes defeat Nakamura and the Moon Dancers repent--in fact, the heroes just let them get away, despite their crimes. 

Superman III (Superman Movie Special #1): Weirdly, although the title on the cover is Superman III: The Official Adaptation of the Movie, the indicia for the book says the title is "Superman Movie Special, Vol. 1, No. 1." I wasn't able to get ahold of a copy to read, but I remember the movie and there's a review of adaptation here with some sample pages.

Amid the Kobold Parts

Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued last night with the party searching the room they fought the spider god in, then wedging shut the exits so they could take a much needed rest.

Once that was done, they explored beyond a secret door they had found. They gave goodberries to a troop of white apes to avoid conflict and then a suit of extra leather armor to a small party of rebel goblins. They took a seemingly magical crystal from the hands of an ensorcelled dwarf who appeared to have had his memories stolen by it, but unfortunately that led to his death despite the party's best intentions.

Having explored this level of the mind of Gob, they took the stairs down the the next level. In in the stairwell, they could hear the clamor of battle. They explored in a direction other than toward those sounds at first and came upon a pair of villainous Phanfasms gnawing on the choice bits of a wheelbarrow full of dismembered kobold corpses.

These guys the party fought and their numbers quickly won the day. Within the corpse wagon, they found a glittering gauntlet, one of the pieces of armor they sought!

John Benteen's Fargo

On my recent vacation, I decided to check out the men's adventure paperback series Fargo by John Benteen after discovering the whole series was cheap on Kindle. I became aware of the series thanks to the upcoming graphic novel adaptation, Fargo: Hell on Wheels, by Howard Chaykin.

Amazon bills the series as a Westerns, and I suppose some of them are, in the same way The Professionals (1966) or Fist Full of Dynamite (aka Duck You Sucker) (1972) or other adventure films in Western locales are considered Westerns. They take place in the early 20th Century (1912-1915 in the ones I've read so far) and involve imagery and action out of Westerns (tough men in wild country on horseback with guns), but they involve a range of locales more again to traditional adventure pulp. They range to the jungles of the Philippines and Panama, as well as the more traditional Mexican desert or Yukon.

I've read blogpost reviews that refer to Fargo as sort of a "Western Conan." I can see what they mean in that Fargo is tough as hell, irresistible to women (apparently due to sheer manliness, as he is described as unhandsome and hardly has a scintillating personality), and good at most everything in his warrior and outdoorsman purview. However, Benteen's attention to detail regarding gear and preparation for obstacles his hero faces, and his penchant for pitting Fargo against enemies that appear to be a match for him, serve to make the series feel more grounded and realistic. Only slightly pulpy instead of completely so.

Benteen's prose is lean in the mid-Century way, not pulp purple. His action and dialog are punchy and mostly effective but without any lyricism or descriptive vistas despite their natural locales. Unfortunately, but expected given their genre and when they were written, they carry a streak of misogyny, some of the volumes moreso that others. There is likely some cultural and racial insensitivity lurking in their too, but in the volumes, I have read the narrative is not unsympathetic to both Native Americans and Latinos, and Fargo himself doesn't exhibit any prejudice that I recall--though some of the villainous characters use racial slurs. 

They're all quick reads (under 200 pages) and fast-paced. So far I've read:

• Fargo (vol 1): Set in 1914 during the Mexican Revolution, Fargo is hired to rescue an engineer (and his mine's haul of silver) from deep inside that war torn and escape bandits with revolutionary pretensions.
• Panama Gold (vol 2): A prequel set in 1912. Fargo is asked by Teddy Roosevelt himself to investigate and thwart an attempt to foreign powers to use a mercenary army to sabotage the nearly completed Panama Canal.
• Alaska Steel (vol 3) In 1914, Fargo is hired by a movie starlet to find her wayward husband so he can claim his oil money inheritance. The problem is, he's disappeared in the Yukon where he was seeking his fortune as a prospector.
• Apache Raiders (vol 4) Just started this one, but Fargo is back in Mexico in 1915, smuggling guns for Pancho Villa. Presumably there are Apaches.

Wednesday Comics: DC, September 1983 (week 3)

My mission: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around June 16, 1983.

Warlord #73: This was the first issue of Warlord I ever bought, at the age of 10. I reviewed the main story here. In the Barren Earth backup by Cohn/Randall, Jinal and her allies make an assault on the Mulge ritual site to get their friends back. The mushrooms have already gone through the chest of one of the men, so they kill him out of mercy, but Skinner they are able to save after painfully removing the fungi.

Omega Men #6: Courtesy of Silfer and Giffen/DeCarlo, Tigorr and his forces continue their assault on the Citadel, and it all goes pretty well despite the concerns of Primus, which has the effect of making his conservative leadership look bad. Silfer tries to ameliorate this by hinting multiple times that something bad will come of all this. The reveal of the first Citadelian as kind of a serpent in the Eden of the Vega system, a source of aggression that will continue after the defeat of his forces, is deployed in the service of this idea, but all in all it looks like a victory for Tigorr and the forces of freedom, despite some dialogue to the contrary.

Arak Son of Thunder #25: This issue feels like it culminates in a bit of a new direction for the series, though whether that goes at a natural turning point in the storyline or as an attempt to attract new interest is hard to say. Not long after leaving White Cathay, Arak and crew are attacked by Tartars led by Xadox, son of Xadox who is understandably upset Arak killed his dad in Hell. A spell from Malagigi drives off the tartar horde, and Xadox is captured. The group takes refuge in a cave for the night and Arak and Valda get some private time in a hot spring.

Xadox escapes and releases a dragonish salamander from a cocoon, which immediately attacks. Malagigi is able to turn the creature back on Xadox, and Arak kills it with a stalactite.

The next morning the company splits up, with Arak and Satyricus setting out the journey back to North America and find the surviving members of his tribe, and Malagigi and Valda heading back to Frankland.

Batman and the Outsiders #2: Barr and Aparo pick up where last issue left off with Batman, Black Lightning, and Metamorpho prisoners. Baron Bedlam gets to tell his side of things, and it reveals him to come from a family of Nazi collaborators and to be an abuser of women, just in case there was any doubt he's bad.  

When left alone, the heroes combine their powers and break free. They meet up with Katana, Halo and Geo-Force and together they thwart Baron Bedlam's army, and Metamorpho rescues Dr. Jace. Geo-Force goes one on one with Bedlam and tosses him to the peasants of Markovia for suitable punishment. Batman approves.

With the battle over, Batman suggests the group to return to Gotham City with him to find new purpose and work together as a team, and the Outsiders are born. All and all, a serviceable origin story.

Camelot 3000 #8: Barr and Bolland/Austin finally have Arthur betrayed as they have been teasing. Merlin is the removed, thanks to a magic item, but who did the it? Arthur devotes his attentions toward finding the traitor. Of course, the story leads you to believe it was Tristan as he even agreed to help Morgan in exchange for being returned to his male body, but through psychological trickery Arthur discovers the traitor is Kay. Kay misguidedly was trying to lift Arthur from his funk and rouse his to action but misunderstood the gravity of his actions. Arthur sentences Kay to death, but before he can carry out the sentence, aliens attack. Naturally, Kay dies in battle, but Tom Prentice is also wounded. Arthur elevates him to knighthood.

Daring New Adventures of Supergirl #11: Kupperberg and Infantino/Oksner pick up where last issue left off with Supergirl presumed dead by the Prof. Drake, the scientist working for the nefarious Council. Of course she isn't, and she breaks out of the cloning chamber just in time. Despite her weakened state, she manages to battle her way out of the laboratory and head for the Fortress of Solitude. Drake, at the Chairman's command, sends the six mini-Supergirl clones after her. In her current state, the clones defeat her, and begin dragging her toward a disintegration pit!

Green Lantern #168: Cavalieri and Tuska/McLaughlin continue the saga of the improved power rings. Jordan heads to D'xe to confront Kaylark who has taken over her homeworld and declared herself Empress Surrenda. The Free Lancers who started this whole mess show up to make Kaylark fulfill her bargain by giving them the improved power ring to copy, but she reneges as is the privilege of Empresses. She throws them in a dungeon. They get out later to fight Jordan but get defeated. These guys are weird; they're distinct enough and important enough to the story it feels like Cavalieri is trying to make them a thing.

Anyway. Jordan makes Kaylark see her past and feel the fear of being unloved and unrecognized, which similarly to the others, was powering the ring. With her defeated, he retrieves the ring and destroys her fortress. He heads back to the Guardians with the recovered rings and Dorine fretting over the fact Hal thinks of everyone but her.

In the Tales of the Green Lantern Corps backup by Harris and Moore/Trappani we begin the story of Lysandra. She is bequeathed the ring by a dying lantern but her people on the planet Zinthia have a religious taboo against even looking at the stars, much less traveling in them. The Guardians are surprisingly cool, though, and let her be the lantern of her single world, but then she discovers her world's star is going to go nova. If her people won't leave, she'll have to move the planet!

House of Mystery #320: The Kaluta cover on this issue has nothing to do with this issue's contents. In the first story by Kashdan/Catan, a murderous, would-be thief finds himself condemned to work as a slave on a Chinese junk where even death provides no escape. Barr and Harris present a tale of a Nazi agent in London working as a DJ, who gets her comeuppance when the ghost of the woman she murdered calls down a German airstrike on her.

The last story by Jones and Morrow is interesting in that it is unpredictable. An underground, post-nuclear war society is still plagued by racism. However, the sole black member of an expedition to the surface gets to shed his second-class citizen status when rain reveals the white members of the group are actually unaccountably ease to corrode robots and he is the only actual human among them.

Sgt. Rock #380: In main story by Kanigher and Redondo, Easy gets 3 new troops. Two are seasoned fighters, the third is the untried, nervous sort. Easy tries to make the kid feel at home, but ultimately when his two friends are injured, he steps up to save the day. The issue is filled out with a short about a WWII aviator that goes from the frying pan to the fire has he encounters a dinosaur after a crash, a sci-fi piece about robot gladiators in an alien arena, and features on WWII era pin-up girls and atomic war.

Legion of Super-Heroes #303: The Emerald Empress has taken command of Weber's World and sets the artificial planet on a collision course with the United Planets' fleet. The Legionnaires she captured manage to break free, though, and Brainiac 5 comes up with a plan for Supergirl to knock the planet off course. In defeating Emerald Empress, Shrinking Violet demonstrates she has knowledge of a Durlan special move. Could be important later. Brainiac 5 tells Supergirl why his thinking has been so muddy lately: she's too distracting for him. Also: Jecky and Karate Kid get ready for their wedding. 

Night Force #14: This is the final issue, and it feels a bit rushed. Katina plans to take on the Beast in the present, while the Baron and Gowron go for a little father-son bonding to confront his minions in the past. I don't feel like we're given a clear indication of who the nefarious players are here and how they got the power they have. I suspect it's because Wolfman was perhaps forced to shorten it. Anyway, despite it beating them before and them talking about its power, they manage to beat it with a point stick in the 1930s. The good guys are victorious, and the house is free of malign spirits. A new status quo is established with Katina and Gowron moving into Baron's house, as well as an accidentally time displaced young woman from the '30s. So long Night Force. It feels like your potential was unrealized. 

Weird Revisited: Untrue North

My recent trip to Alaska brought to mind this old post from 2011...

An arctic of only (melting) ice is sort of boring, don’t you think? At least in comparison to the flights of Age of Exploration fancy. Why settle for mere ice when you could have a magnetic Black Rock, a swirling whirlpool, and islands of pygmies? Check out this 1595 map:

Gerard Mercator based his maps and his descriptions (in a letter to John Dee in 1577) off older works. He describes a landmass divided into four lands by channels through which water rushed into the whirlpool surrounding the Pole, and "descends into the earth just as if one were pouring it through a filter funnel.” This unusual geography supposedly led to the deaths of 4,000 men from the expedition King Arthur sent to the island, according to Mercator's report. The ultimate source of this version of pole is believed to be the account in the Inventio Fortunata, a 14th Century work which is unfortunately lost.

At the pole itself, in the center of the maelstrom, was a giant, black mountain, Rupes Nigra--the Black Rock or Black Precipice. Mercator writes: “Its circumference is almost 33 French miles, and it is all of magnetic stone. And is as high as the clouds...” Its magnetism was said draw ships made with iron nails to their doom.

A really interesting adventuring site, I think.