Summer Reading

Looking for a good genre read for a summer vacation? Since I got a Kindle earlier this year, I’ve been able to buy books on even more of an impulse than before, since now I don’t have to find a place to physically house them. Here are a few, one digital and two physical, I’ve found particularly worthwhile--two just happen to be from the same author:

Fathom by Cherie Priest is the first Kindle formatted novel I purchased, and I was off to auspicious start. This is a modern fantasy, something like some of Neil Gaiman’s work,but who it reminds me of most is Tim Powers. It’s got the usual Powers elements--mythology reinterpreted, a bit of secret history, and obscure tidbits of the real world recast in a clever way. The story stars two young, female cousins on an island off the coast of Florida. They become involved in a battle between two powerful deities/elementals--one of water and one of earth. The water elemental has a plan to awaken the leviathan sleeping in the depths--and destroy the world. The young cousins are transformed into something other than human, and serve as pawns for the dueling supernatural beings.

Boneshaker is my second recommendation from Cherie Priest. This is what the kids are calling “steampunk” these days. Priest calls the planned alternate-history series “The Clockwork Century.” In a world where the Civil War still rages in the 1880s--abetted by superior transportation technology--an arrogant inventor's digging machine has turned Seattle into a no-man’s land, surrounded by 200 foot high walls. These walls are to hold in the blight--a gas, and one of those genre fictions substances that has an amazing variety of effects, all bad. The blight kills many that inhale it, and turns the rest into decaying zombies (“rotters”), and causes corrosion and decay of inanimate objects. Oh, and it can also be used to make a deadly and addictive drug called “lemon sap.”

When Zeke, the teenage son of the inventor responsible, heads into the blight-soaked city in a misguided attempt to clear his father’s name, Briar, his mother, catches a ride on an airship flying over the city to go after him. Yes, there are airships--this is steampunk, remember--so that’s a requirement. It’s also got another evil inventor in a sinister gasmask, an underground squatter society, inscrutable Chinamen, and the aforementioned zombies. What’s not to like?

My last recommendation is a work of nonfiction, but it does deal with magic. Spiritual Merchants by Carolyn Morrow Long takes on a fascinating topic I’ve dealt with here before--so-called spiritual supplies, used predominantly for African American folk magic. It outlines the history and origins of rootwork and related systems, and then details how the spiritual products industry went from local hoodoo drug stores, and small mail order operations, to major manufactures distributing products nationwide, with catalogs and the like. If you like to draw inspiration from real-world belief for your gaming, or just have an interest in real world magical systems, then its worth checking out.

That oughta do it for now.  It's only July, though, and I've still got a stack of books awaiting me.

If You Wanna Get to Heaven...

The dominant faiths of the City and the strange New World came were brought from Ealderde. The Natives had their own religions of course, as did the black folk, but their belief systems have either been persecuted out of existence (like some of the Native tribes) or forced to syncretize with the predominant religion (in the case of the black folk).

The Ealderdish colonists practiced a variety of faiths, but all of them were variations of a monotheistic religion which, like many things on the City’s terra inusitata (if my rusty Latin is still functional), it bears some resemblance to faiths of the world we know. The central holy writ of the religion is known as The Good Book. Many of the stories in it resemble incidents from the Biblical Old Testament or other works of the Abrahamic tradition, but tend to be less specifically placed in time or place and more “fable-like” or "folk-tale-like" in presentation. Likewise the New Testament analog with its “Redeemer,” is more of a series of parables, dialogues, and sayings, and less of a narrative.

There are numerous faiths based on numerous competing interpretations or variations of practice related to The Good Book. There’s the Old-Time Religion with very little church hierarchy, and a strong emphasis on good works, and on personal study the Good Book. Variant Old-Time ecstatics may experience glossolalia or other mystical manifestations. Such practices are seen as unsophisticated and rustic by City folk, but this sort of thing is common in the villages of the Smaragdines.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Oecumenical Hierarchate. This church is older that the so-called Old Time Religion, and has much more elaborate ritual and church structure. Its practitioners venerate a number of saints and keep a full calendar of ritual observances. Being less common among the Ealderdish who came to the new world, Oecumenicals are stereotyped as superstitious and foreign.

The people of the City’s world have a large amount of clear evidence of the existence of God or gods. After all, numerous adventurers have encountered angels from the Armies of Salvation or devils from the Hell Syndicate. A few have actual made physical journeys to Heaven or Hell. Confusingly, the Heavens visited and the monotheistic Gods encountered are not identical. In other words, multiple, competing sole creators seem to exist!

The number of heavens for these alternate Gods is generally given as “seven,” but its likely this is just a poetical convention. Some scholars believe there are as many heavens as there are faiths--each with a God that fits their particular belief. The devout are, of course, skeptical of this idea, and tend to view all Gods but theirs as false.

How this arrangement came into being, and what it says about the nature of the universe is subject of a lot of debate, but no clear answer.

It should be noted that “pagan” gods and goddess are also known to exist, but these beings typically seem weaker and closer to human scale in terms of power--though wielding magics well beyond mortals. They’re sometimes referred to as “small” gods, by thaumaturgical practitioners who are more accepting of their existence than the faithful.

There are also concepts personified (called eikones by scholars), seeming existing on a level equivalent to the greatest small gods, or between the small gods and the singluar [sic] God(s). One theory holds that the eikones are powerful spirits created by God to help in the day to day managment of the world, while another holds they are the product of the human mind and its inherent tendency to anthropomorphization.  Interestingly, the general populace is mostly unaware of their existence, despite the fact their lives are affected by them daily. More on this class of beings in a later post.

Seeds of Revolution

Happy Fourth of July to everybody who celebrates such things.

The holiday has got me thinking about revolutions and how they might be used in gaming. Just a glance at the Wikipedia page listing revolutions and rebellions shows that there are a lot of real world examples to draw inspiration from. If the leap from real to imagined is to great, they’ve also got a page of fictional rebellions and coups to help you out--though they seem to have fairly broad definitions of what constitutes such.

Revolutions/rebellions can provide a lot of material to work with. They can be positive or negative, or both, at different times--the term can encompass everything from the Star Wars trilogy to the Reign of Terror. There are counterrevolutions and competing revolutionary forces (The Mexican Revolution of 1910 being a great model for this--and James Carlos Blake’s The Friends of Pancho Villa being a great fictionalized view of the whole bloody affair). The highest ideals and the basest acts of humanity are on display.

Revolts in fantastic fiction show most of the characteristics of real world ones. Conan takes part in a coup largely free of ideology and gets himself a kingdom. The supposed democratic revolt of John Farson, “The Good Man”, against the feudal rule of the gunslingers in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series is a horrible farce, and representative of the greater dissolution of the world. The communist-by-way-of-the-French-Revolution nation of Quatershift in Stephen Hunt’s steampunkish novels has the absolute worst elements of the real revolutions that inspired it--from purges to nonsensical ideologic policies that cause massive death.

Well, you get the idea. Maybe amid the monarchies, magocracies, and decadent republics of the standard fantasy world there's room on the map for a land in the midst of revolution, or recently recovered from one. Maybe PCs are based in such a country. That would be put an interest spin on standard adventuring, and provide potential fodder for a lot nonstandard ones.

Weird Weapons, Weird War

“The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."

- Gen. George S. Patton

When the crazy-quilt patchwork of nations that was Ealderde erupted in the Great War, a number of new technologies were brought to bear. Thaumaturgical and alchemical weapons and "weaponizable" advances were among these, and were utilized on a scale never seen before--with long-lasting, and terrible consequences.

First among these was the use of alchemical weapons, particularly gas. The forces of Neustria were the first to utilize them with fragmentation shells filled with stinking cloud potions. The Staarkish army soon escalated to lethal chemicals. Their "Magic Corps Men" cast cloudkill which, as a heavier than air gas, was ideal for filling enemy trenches. Since mages are a quirky lot, generally ill-suited to military discipline, their numbers in the Staarkish forces were small, and it proved expedient to replace them with thaumaturgic shells which could be fired from artillery at a greater distance.  The gas could also be pumped out of tubes, if the wind directions were right. Soon these methods were adopted by all the larger nations.

Other, more exotic chemicals were tried. Acid fog was released from sprayers to discourage attackers or soften defenders. Yellow musk, the pollen of the eponymous creeper, cultivated in secure greenhouses, was used to entrance enemies and make them easy targets. Amorphing solutions delivered via artillery shells sowed terror by making flesh malleable, dissolving limbs or even melting soldier's together. The only limits were the imaginations (and funding) of the alchemists and thaumaturgic engineers.

Magical weapons of mass destruction were also employed, and could be delivered to distant targets through the use of artillery and airships. Thaumaturgical explosives and blights laid waste to cities and farmlands. Rays of searing light, or jets of intense cold fired from zeppelins cut swaths of destruction across enemy trenches. Implosive weapons literally collapsed fortifications--or hapless troops--in on themselves.

Then there were the weapons calculated to cause as much terror as direct damage. Teleportation beams were turned upon population centers. Fear rays lead to mass panic. The battlefield fallen were briefly animated to turn on their grieving comrades. This is to say nothing of the even more exotic reality-warping weapons which, though rare, were powerful enough to disrupt the elemental fields to this day.

Another technological change in the Great War was touted as potentially rendering the human soldier obselete. Constructs and automata have been used before, but never in such a scale. "Land ironclads" or "landships"--now colloquially called "tanks"--were an innovation by the army of Grand Ludd on thaumaturgical techniques used to make anthropomorphic golems. Some tanks required human operators, but others were automonous to a degree, like the golems. This proved to be another one of the mistakes of war, as man-hunting kill-machines still roam the blasted former battlefields and depopulated wastes of Ealderde.

Man-shaped golems were still used--largely for their flexibility and, in some cases, greater psychological effect on the enemy--but these were produced with greater mechanical skill, giving them a wider variety of uses. Once again terror was a prime goal, as squads of murderous constructs with the appearance of children's toys were sent into unsuspecting villages in the dead of night. 

It's the hope of many that the most lasting innovation of the conflict will be that man has finally had enough of war. Certainly, the devastation wrought in Ealderde, and the refugees that still pour into the New World to escape the post-war horror, ought to be powerful reinforcers for such a lesson. Still, as the cynics among us would point out, no one has ever lost money betting on the short-memory or long-term foolishness of mankind.

Trouble So Hard

The so-called black folk are old acquaintances of hardship. From ancient slavery to modern discrimination, mistrust, and even sporadic pogroms, they have endured--even prospered--still clinging to their old customs. The Ealderdish-descended majority stereotype them as lazy, ignorant, and superstitious. It's a common belief that they are cursed as a people.

Ironically, the ancient stories and songs of black folk might agree, after a fashion.

Black folk are found throughout the continent, but are most common in the South, where they were once enslaved by the giantish Ancients, and the City and the Steel League, where they have migrated in more recent times to find work. The City neighborhood of Solace in particular is the cultural capital of the Black New World.  They remain something of a people apart, and tend to settle in their own enclaves, in no small part because it provides them some degree of protection from wider society. There, in secret, they can tell stories of the ancient days, before the calamity that befell them.

Long ago when the black folk spoke one tongue--and not the tongue of the Ealderdish invaders--they called themselves "The True People." They first enterered Ealderdish history when merhcant-explorers came to their continent and named it "Ebon-Land," not for its peoples' skin tones, but for the strong, dark wood they found there. The folk were primitive, though there were scattered, enigmatic ruins of a more advanced culture--one the Ealderdish were certain couldn't have arisen natively.

They met them again on islands off the New World, and in the South, where the black folk had been brought by the Ancients to toil in the construction of their tomb-mounds, and underground cities. The ancients were gone, and the black folk, like the Natives, were seen as squatters in the ruins of a greater race. The Ealderdish tolerated them (mostly), but didn't trust these people who kept to themselves, and knew powerful magics.

The Ealderdish may have not remembered the black folk, but the black folk remembered them. Their old campfire tales and songs recalled what they see as the true history of the world, a history the infant cultures of Ealderde have never known.

Once Ebon-Land held the greatest civilization in the world, their tales say, but that civilization was at war with the rapacious people of now sunken Meropis. Though Ebon-Land was more advanced in art and philosophy, Meropis surpassed them in the arts of war. Their wizards worked mighty magics not just to destroy Ebon-Land, but to wipe it from history. Even with Ebon-Land's strong defenses, the ritual was horrifically effective. Only a few now-anomalous ruins were left of a once mighty culture. And only the strongest willed of the black folk even remembered the past that had been taken from them.

So those who remembered told their people's stories, and saw to it that they were passed down over the generations. The stories also warned of the results of the depraved experiments of Meropis--where its sorcerer-scientists had sought to create a race of soldiers by crossbreeding humans with the subhuman stock of the northern forests. With Meropis gone, the savage, half-human tribes spread out over the land they would come to call the Old World, Ealderde, never guessing how young it truly was.

Warlord Wednesday: Blood Moon

And now, let's re-enter the lost world with another installment of my issue by issue examination of DC Comic's Warlord, the earlier installments of which can be found here...

"The Quest, Part III: Blood Moon"

Warlord (vol. 1) #18 (February 1979)

Written and Pencilled by Mike Grell; Inked by Vince Colletta

Synopsis: The desert behind them, Morgan and Tara now ride through the jungle, still on their quest to find Deimos--and Joshua. Morgan hopes that the magical crystal he took from Timgad will be helpful in defeating the power of Deimos--though he doesn't know how.

Such thoughts will have to wait, however, as the riders come upon (yet another) orange carnosaur. Morgan's horse gets spooked and throws him, so Tara pulls him up behind her. The hungry dinosaur is close behind.

When they ride into a wide swath of destruction cut into the jungle, the carnosaur inexplicably gives up and turns tail. That's fortunate for our heroes, because Tara's horse steps in a hole, and breaks a leg. Morgan is forced to put the horse out of its misery with his pistol.  So occupied, our heroes don't notice the incredible thing coming up behind them, until it is all but upon them.

They turn to see a red, crater-pocked planetoid--a moon--filling the sky as it travels the path it cut in the jungle. Before the two can react, men on sky-sleds emerge from it, and start firing energy blasts at them. Our heroes manage to destroy a few of the craft, but first Shadow falls, then her owners. Beams from the remaining sleds lift them and carry them into the moon.

They awaken in the presence of the eccentrically dressed Bornaa. He explains that what Morgan took for a moon is actually the cratered, protective shielding of a starship from the planet Alces Shirasi. The crew is all that remains of their billion year-old, interplanetary civilization, destroyed when their sun went supernova. In truth, they are the descendants of those last survivors, who were forced to cross-breed with humans, captured and genetically transmutated for that purpose. Now, they are close to being able to breed with unaltered humanity, and then they will be able spread their civilization and culture throughout Skartaris. Bornaa expects Morgan and Tara to take part in his people's plan.

Morgan declines--and not so politely, as he leaps forward to throttle Bornaa. Our heroes try to flee, but Bornaa manages to trap them in a force field. They lock Morgan in their transmutation machine. "If he insists on acting like a savage beast," Bornaa explains to Tara. "It's only fitting that he look the part as well." Bornaa leads the horrified Tara away, and the machine turns Morgan into a bull-headed creature. As his rational mind slips away, his strength surges and he breaks free.

Meanwhile, Bornaa is putting the moves on Tara with lines like: "I am much higher on the evolutionary scale." Tara plays along only long enough to steal his pistol and blast him. She runs back to save Morgan, and finds him fighting the crew, raging bull style. The voice of his beloved Tara soothes the savage beast and gets him back into the machine so the technician (at gun-point) can return him to normal. The two free Shadow from a nearby cage, then escape on sky-sleds.

An overzealous guard tries to stop their escape, but misses and hits the ship's reactor instead. Morgan and Tara escape, but the starship explodes as they look on from a distance, marking the final end to the Shirasi people.

Things to Notice:

• Tara misquotes Saaba--she says the witch told them they could find Deimos "in a place of eternal shadow," but what she actually said was "a place of half-light, half-shadow."
• Shadow, Tara's dog, is still with the pair.
• The Shirasians may have pioneered that fundamental of United Federation of Planets chronometry--the stardate. 

Where It Comes From:
"Blood moon" is another name for the "hunter's moon" which is the first full moon after the harvest moon (the full moon nearest the autumnal equinox).

The use of a stardate in the Star Trek style, points to this issue's possible inspiration in the original series episode "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" which features a generation ship that appears to be an asteroid.

It's also possible that the idea that our moon is actually an alien spacecraft was at least part of the inspiration. This is the so-called "Spaceship Moon Theory" proposed by Vasin and Shcherbakov in a 1970 article, and popularized by Don Wilson in the 1975 book Our Mysterious Spaceship Moon.

Grell engages in a bit of a joke with the name of the alien invaders. "Alces Shirasi" is the species and subspecies name of the Shirasi Moose (Alces alces shirasi), the smallest species of moose--native to Morgan's home state of Wyoming. Perhaps this is sly reference to their penchant for human-ungulate mash-ups, or either Grell just thought it sounded cool.

Morgan's quip about being able to do beer commercials in his minotaur form references the famous Schlitz Malt Liquor TV ad campaign, beginning in 1972, that features a black Brahma bull rampaging through any place a Schlitz is opened. Morgan, having been in Skartaris since 1969, would be unaware of this bit of pop culture, but his line is not necessarily an anachronism since Schlitz Malt Liquor had featured a Minoan-esque bull-head on its label since its inception in 1963.

Sanity Loss at 24 Frames a Second

In my post last week on the dread anarchists of the world of the City, I mentioned that certain strange cartoons might serve as some sort of awakening to mindwarping alien influences. 

One of the classic cartoons I had in mind when I wrote that was "Bimbo's Initiation," a 1931 Fleischer Studios  "Talkartoon."  It tells the story of Bimbo's unfortunate fall down a manhole, and subsequent encounter with an underground secret society--with a strong interest in corporal punishment--bent on recruiting him.  I had wanted to include the above picture in that post, but at the time, I couldn't think of the name of the cartoon! In the intervening time, not only did I eventually recall it, but I managed to found it online:



Other cartoons of the era that are no doubt symptomatic of chaos god-thing intrusion into our plane (in the most entertaining way) are "Russian Rhapsody" (1944), "Porky in Wackyland" (1938) and its color almost- doppelgänger "Dough for the Do-Do" (1949), to name only a few.