Over the Garden Wall returns

 In case you missed it, last week was the 10th anniversary of Over the Garden Wall. They released this stop-motion short that was pretty cool:

Early Modern Magic

I read some interesting stuff this week on magical belief in the early modern era. Specifically, magic used for protection from weapons, surely a common interest of soldiers of the era and D&D adventures alike.

A Historical Fencer's Primer on Late Medieval and Early Modern Magic

From the German Wikipedia, the concept of "Gefrorner" which meant to be invulnerable to harm.

And finally, a scholarly article: "Invincible blades and invulnerable bodies: weapons magic in early-modern Germany" from the European Review of History.

Wednesday Comics: DC, February 1983 (week 1)

My ongoing mission: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics that were at newsstands on the week of November 3, 1983. 

Atari Force #2: After how good the first episode was, I suppose it's natural the second might be a bit of a letdown. We're still "getting the band together," so we check in on Pakrat and Babe who pretty much repeat their story beats from last issue. Tempest faces prejudice from his (former) girlfriend and her father due to his mutant powers. Morphea has a chat with Martin Champion, who we find out is viewed as a bit of a kook because he believes there's an evil force behind the strife and conflict in this part of the galaxy (spoiler: he's right). The real spotlight here is on Dart, though. She and Blackjack have taken up with the rebels after their former employer burned them, but she winds up having to go one-on-one against Warbeast, a creature sent by the Dark Destroyer. 

DC Comics Presents #66: Wein and Kubert bring in Etrigan the Demon for his last appearance before Moore gets ahold of him in Swamp Thing. And there's an interesting thing: Etrigan rhymes here. I had always thought that was a Moore invention, as it wasn't an original attribute of the character, but no, Wein does it first. Anyway, Prof. Lang unveils an ancient, wooden statue of a Druid at an event, but it turns out that it isn't a statue but the actual evil druid, Blackbriar Thorn, who was turned to wood for his crimes. He comes to life thanks to astrological conditions, and Superman and the Demon must do battle against his sorcery. He's defeated through cleverness as Superman lifts the group he is standing on, severing his connection with his elemental powerbase, and throws him into space.

Kubert is an unusual choice for the Demon or Superman, but he draws a great wooden druid. What this issue most makes me think about is the real lack of rigorous formula for inclusion in the Who's Who, at least around the edges, as Blackbriar Thorn (1 appearance) gets an entry while Black Eagle (strip headliner with 6 appearances!) did not. I suspect the fact that Wein was editor of Who's Who had something to do with it. 

Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld #10: Dark Opal is seeking fragments of various houses gems so he can usurp their magical power. He doesn't have them all yet but next on his list is amethyst. There is an amethyst gem fragment in his domain thanks to Granch, but Opal hasn't found it yet and Amethyst and friends want to retrieve it. Topaz goes to convince his sister to join the rebellion while Amethyst and Princess Emerald face Carnelian.

Blackhawk #267: The death of Blackhawk's doppelganger provides ad opportunity. He hatches a plan (with Churchill's blessing) to let the world believe he has died, then infiltrate Germany pretending to be the doppelganger, Agent Schoener, and kill Hitler. Beyond that, a lot of the issue is given over to exploring the Blackhawks' attitudes toward Germans. They tell us several times that the German people are fundamentally different from other nations, and that Hitler has them utterly in thrall. Blackhawk's assumptions are challenged when he meets and falls for a waitress in a German restaurant. She happens to be a "Helga," having the same first name as Domino. All of this is fine but poorly integrated thematically, I feel like, with the main story, involving Blackhawk's failed assassination attempt and swift escape. Still, I appreciate the depth Evanier and Spiegle are trying to give the title.

Fury of Firestorm #20: Conway and Kayanan/Rodriquez are mostly doing setup this issue. Firehawk (Lorraine Reilly) and Firestorm start their relationship, much to the discomfort of Martin. On the plus side for him, he gets his job back, though maybe it isn't so much of a plus since it's due to the machinations of whatever shady entity his ex-wife is working with. Then, Killer Frost escapes prison, kills a few people and comes for Stein. 

Justice League of America #223: Months back, I said Conway's work on the JLA was underappreciated, and I stand by that, but this arc has been a counter-argument. Conway and Patton/Tanghal bring the Beast Men storyline to an end, and I'm not sorry to see it go. Given the number of heavy-hitters on the JLA, it stretches credulity that Maximus Rex and his cronies get the better of them at every turn, yet they do. Somehow Dr. Lovecraft is aware of Superman's power loss under a red sun and exploits it. Somehow, he knows Firestorm will get a power drain if he tries to use his power against organic material, and he exploits that, too. While the League takes out some of the Beast Men, it is Reena that does battle with Rex, and in the end, it's their continuing mutation into pure animal forms that dooms them, not the League's actions.

Wonder Woman #311: Mishkin and Heck continue the gremlin storyline, and we learn some of the history of the alien species. It turns out the bigger aliens from last issue are really just replicas used by the gremlins to throw off suspicion. Anyway, they agree to return Wonder Woman's invisible jet, but Wonder Woman and Trevor manage to make off with the robot plane too before the gremlins' ship returns to the stars. Meanwhile, Circe gets ahold of Major Griggs.

In the Cavalieri and Speigle Huntress backup, Nedra Borrower and Terry Marsh have stirred up public animosity toward the Huntress. It's so bad that the cliffhanger ending sees the Huntress in the grip of an angry mob. We also learn that Marsh is in the employ of Earthworm, and his moves against the Huntress are to get her out of the way to help Earthworm's baby-selling ring.

Vigilante #3: Wolfman and Pollard/Marcos figure having a guest star from the popular New Teen Titans can't hurt. Vigilante is chasing Cyborg and an organized crime figure, Stryker, through a forest with the intent to kill Stryker who was only found guilty of a firearm possession charge due to a "technicality." Cyborg is trying to get the guy to prison alive. There is a lot of back and worth about Vigilante's philosophy and he (multiple times) justifies killing the guy, but when he gets the change, he can't do it. When Stryker kills somebody and takes a hostage, Vigilante kills him. Vigilante's ideas about exactly what the parameters of his mission are seem to be evolving; he certainly is willing to kill, if necessary, but he isn't an executioner. We also get an indication that some shadowy organization trained him, which was something I had wondered about. Chase also mentions that "somehow" he got years of training in months, which lampshades why he's suddenly so formidable, but I wonder if that's ever really addressed?

Kiss of Blood (part 1)

 We had our first session of They Came From Beyond the Grave! last night adapting the Call of Cthulhu adventure, Kiss of Blood.

The cast:

• Tony Kovac - San Francisco cop whose vacation in the Old Country is anything but relaxing. (Jason).
• Jess Barrow - Half of the occult folk-rock duo, Fata Morgana, gifted with second sight. (Andrea)
• Dean Starkey - The other half of Fata Morgana. A guy used to gettin by on his wits.

The three Americans arrived in Karloczig, Wystdovja Vale, (in Slovenia, on the Adriatic) for different reasons. Kovac was going to get a vacation and help local cops out on a case as a favor for a friend. Dean and Jess had been booked to play the local festival around Walpurgis Night. None of them imagined they'd wind up working together to find a missing girl. Well, the players did, the characters, not so much.

While Kovac discovered Inspektor Hochmair wasn't exactly overjoyed to have his help. Jess and Dean met Gustav Homan, the father of the missing girl, Matilda. They also heard that there were a lot of disappearances around the village of Karloczig, but the local Burgomeister doesn't take them seriously. There are legends about the castle Heidenstein up on the hill. It's cursed, it's said.

That night at the festival, Jess sees an eerie, mysterious woman, perhaps watching her, but the woman disappears before she can point her out to Dean.

After a night of attempting to out-drink Hochmair, Kovac is awakened early by a knock on his hotel room door. There's been a body found. Hochmair takes him to the office of the coroner (and doctor) von Kluge. The woman is young and brunette, but she isn't Matilda, but someone from out of town. She has been mutilated, as if by some animal, her throat ravaged and her body partially exsanguinated.

They Came From Beyond the Grave!

This weekend, in the spirit of Halloween, I plan to run a one shot (well, probably two shot before it's over with) of the Onyx Path game They Came From Beyond the Grave! It's part of their series of They Came From games, each made to sort of emulate some cinematic genre from 50s to monster movies, to Italian Sword and Sandals pictures, to (in this case) 60-70s horror films of the Hammer, Amicus, or AIP variety.

All these games use the Storypath system which is basically a descendant of the old White Wolf d10 dice pool system, but lighter and with some mildly narrative mechanics, like Rewrites which players can use to change the results of bad rolls or get a bit of narrative control. One of the things Rewrites can be spent on (though this is an optional rule) are Cinematic Powers which imbue the game world with the elements of the low budget films it's emulating. For instance, there's Dangerous Liaison wherein a player can pay for an awkwardly inserted scene (utterly free of danger!) to romance an NPC.

Players have other, less game-reality bending extras to employ like Tropes, Trademarks, and Quips that lend bonuses in specific situations. In fact, if I have any criticism, it's that the system is perhaps a little overstuffed with options for an otherwise "at the light end of rules medium" game.

Anyway, I plan to run to run Cthulhu Dreadfuls Presents #1 - Kiss of Blood, which is a very Hammer Horror flavored scenario. It seems easy enough to adapt.

Wednesday Comics: DC, January 1984 (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 October 27, 1983.

New Adventures of Superboy #49: Nice Kane cover. Kupperberg and Schaffenberger have Clark and Lisa go on a date to see a Smallville performance by Zatara. When the magician's magic accidently opens a portal allowing the barbarian warrior, Turlock the Berserker, to invade Earth, Superboy's and Zatara's powers combined aren't enough to stop him. Luckily, Johnny Webber, the former Dyna-Mind, has genuinely reformed and surreptitiously renders aid.

In the Dial H backup, Bridwell/Rozakis and Bender/Giacoia reach the end of this arc and with it the entire series. The Master remains confused as to his goal in all of this, and our heroes can't help him. When the Wizard that created their dials shows up, he merges with the Master, and it turns out they were actually two parts of Robbie Reed, the original Hero Dialer from the 60s. He tells the kids how he got split and how he lost his original dial. Thanking the kids for their good deeds, he decides wisely to retire from hero-ing and gives his dial to Nick. The Dial H kids get one last appearance in Crisis.

Ronin #4: Miller really takes his time with this one. It looks good but not a lot happens. In one half of the story, the Ronin gets around (eventually) to rescuing Casey from an underground cannibalistic tribe. In the other, where things happen at a bit of a quicker pace, Peter McKenna, concerned about Aquarius' move into weapons manufacture, comes to believe Taggart isn't himself. That's true, but McKenna is unprepared when he discovers the truth about what's behind Taggart's sudden personality changes.

Arion Lord of Atlantis #15: Picking up where last issue left off, Mara attacks Chaon with predicable results. The god of Chaos gloats for a little while, but then Chian senses the danger and comes to Arion's aid too. She rescues Arion from the sewers, but Chaon (disguised as the priest Trykhun) slaps a spell on Mara so she can't say anything. He urges Arion and Chian to go back to the sewers. They fight a gang of mutant folks of some sort then reach something called the Flame of Hjerta.  Chaon tricks Arion into thinking Chian is dead to goad him into attacking. Somehow, if Arion strikes him, he'll achieve victory and be able to destroy existence, but this isn't clear to me. Anyway, thanks to Mara's ingenuity in discovering she has telepathy (not just in animal form) and her persistence, Arion gets wise to Chaon's plan, and instead strikes the Flame, ending Chaon's threat for now.

Action Comics #551: Kane is on art and Wolfman is back as the writer. With him, the simmering Vandal Savage storyline gets mentioned again, but it's mostly it's just background. Two children are going to die without an experimental medication from the Soviet Union, but the supply is being held up due to an attack by Afghan militants. Superman races to get the drug in time but is held up by emergencies around the globe. 

All-Star Squadron #29: The Shining Knight has just finished a sortie against German raiders over Britain when he gets a request to assemble with all the All-Stars back in America. Pondering whether to leave his native Britain, he tells Churchill of an adventure he had with the Seven Soldiers of Victory, which is essentially a retelling and expansion of Leading Comics #3, where all Seven Soldiers get a solo mission in Golden Age team comics fashion.

Detective Comics #534: Moench and Colon/Alcala continue the story from this month's Batman. The captured Dr. Lignier refuses to give up anything to the police, and Jason doing his own investigation can't turn up Ivy's location. When the Wayne Foundation execs that visited Exotica get up and walk out of the office though, the situation gets more urgent. Ivy calls them to her, and her plants and machines steal their brainwaves to create more of those plant men. 

Batman figures out the fire was ruse, and Ivy is still at the site of her "old" Crime Alley hideout, just underground. He and Jason go there, but Ivy throws a vine rope around Jason's neck and Batman has to fight the plant men. It's Jason that saves the day by turning the tables on Ivy and getting the garrot around her neck and forcing her to call off her minions. Later, with Ivy in custody, Batman announces Jason is ready to be his partner, and they humorously discuss possible codenames.

In the Green Arrow backup by Cavalieri and Patton/McManus, the Werewolves of London motorcycle gang make off with the black box everybody's after, and The Detonator also escapes. Green Arrow gets a captured gang member to tell him where they're holed up. When he goes to the Werewolves' hideout, another of their crew gets the jump on him before he can do anything.

Jonah Hex #80: Fleisher and Ayers/DeZuniga pick up where last issue left off. Hart rescues Jonah but the arrival of the sheriff means Hex has to do his recovering in jail. Hart agrees to go retrieve the letter which will exonerate Hex--though not from this most recent false charge--but he's captured by Turnbull's men who also want the letter. Emmy Lou (dressed like a "Sexy, Native American Princess" Halloween costume) is at the jail at the same time Mei Ling visits making things awkward. Man of Two Bloods shows up that night and busts Hex out of jail. Meanwhile, Hart has escaped the goons, but Turnbull is off to get the letter.

Hex and Turnbull have a confrontation at the place the letter is hidden. It ends up with Turnbull getting rattlesnake bit. Dying, he still aims a pistol for Hex's back...

World's Finest Comics #299: The intriguing cover only barely has any connection to the interior. I have to hand it to Kraft here: This story is a really modern-seeming condemnation of colonialism for something from 1983. Superman and Batman (still tense with each other over the Markovia incident) follow Zeta into the tree. Zeta, still pondering his place in the cosmos, plans to send them to two different places where they will be individually tested. They agree.

Batman meets the aliens at the top of the Cosmic Tree who tell him that their world is in danger of over-population. The Cosmic Tree is a portal to other worlds that they use to seek out new colonies for their people. They claim their enemies at the bottom of the Tree are impatient with the pace of things and want to commit genocide on Earth to hasten colonization. Superman arrives at the bottom of the Cosmic Tree, and he meets a group called the Sensitives who can see through time. They claim that the aliens at the top of the tree are dooming their race by preventing them from colonizing new worlds. Superman is lied to by the "Present" who was creator of the Pantheon. 

In the end, the problem is communication. Both sides of this struggle have stopped talking. However, both plan to exploit the Earth and destroy humanity. It's only the timeframe and means they are arguing about. We are told their society is nothing but consumers who produce nothing,

Batman and Superman manage to trick the aliens, allowing Superman to get back to Earth where he can stop Mu of the Pantheon from executing his plan. But the portal closes and Batman seems trapped on the alien world.

A 10th Azurthversary

This week marks the 10th anniversary of our Land of Azurth campaign using 5e. While nothing's for certain, I suspect we will "finish" in this year as the big conflict with the Wizard of Azurth that simmered in the background for several years and finally boiled over the last two will come to a conclusion.

I wrote a post on the last anniversary which felt necessary not only because nine years is a nice run (though it is), but because we had faced adversity due to the pandemic and the loss of two members of our group--Eric due to burnout on tele-anything and Jim to cancer--and I felt like our perseverance needed to be commemorated. 

I don't want to just repeat what I said there, so I won't. Instead, I will say that 10 years of a an elfgame with a group of friends which now includes a new addition, Kathy, who plays the Mortzengersturm pregen, Zabra, gives me completely different insights and perspective on gaming than my nearly 15 years of blogging or the latest wisdom dropped on social media. 

Games are a social activity. While rpgs are fun to theorize, write, or argue about, the real alchemy comes in the playing of them. And, for me at least, the playing of them not mainly in pickup games with strangers, though I don't discount the fun in that, but with the same crew, repeatedly.

Thanks to Andrea, Bob, Gina, Kathy, and Tug, for still being here, and to Eric and Jim who came most of the way. Azurth wouldn't be the same without you.