Weird Revisited: Tome of Draculas!

An orphaned Secret Santicore request in 2013 was for “better draculas.” This cryptic request I interpret in as referring to D&D’s propensity of turning unique creatures from mythology or fiction into a class of creatures. This blogpost was the result.

A dracula then is pretty much like the standard D&D vampire--except that they have a whole “urbane foreign noble fallen on hard times” thing going for them.  For a standard dracula, simply use your vampire stats of choice: give him (it’s going to be a him, most of the time) a foreign accent, a stylish cape, and a dilapidated castle.

With that in mind, here are some dracula variants:

DRACULA, AQUATIC
Aquatic draculas haunt sunken funeral ships or castles submerged by some natural or manmade upheaval. Draculas are restrained by running water, but relatively still lakes, inlets or lagoons provide a place where they may be active at least some of the time. Aquatic draculas are unable to summon rats, bats, or wolves, but crabs, sentient seaweed, piranhas, and unsavory otters are an option.

DRACULA, ANIMAL
Merely vampiric animals (besides bats) are impossible, but the power of a dracula’s curse is such that even beasts must succumb. Dracula dogs are the most common variety, but even cows have been known. Dracula animals have HD 7 and all the usual vampiric powers and weaknesses, plus whatever innate abilities they possessed in life. Magical animals may not be dracula-ized. (An alternate version of the hellcow appears here.)

DRACULA, LOVELORN
Some draculas ache for a love lost and often mistake some woman or another for this long dead inamorata. The charm ability of the lovelorn dracula often convinces the woman in question that she is indeed a reincarnation. Lovelorn draculas are mechanically identical to the standard version, but they are often hunkier and have flowing locks and a penchant for going shirtless. They seldom bother with summoning vermin, though they probably can.

DRACULA, NOSFERATU
These draculas are hideous and vaguely rodent-like in appearance. They lack the suave demeanor other draculas affect: they are either testy and animalistic, or creep- pathetic and lonely. They have a special affinity for vermin and can summon twice the usual number of rats. They also tend to bring plagues where they go and can cause disease. When exposed to sunlight they fade away rather than turn to dust.

DRACULA, OTHERWORLDLY
This dracula violates the "mostly male" rule. These draculas are mostly female and their foreignness comes from being from another world or plane where blood flows like water. They have none of the shapeshifting or animal summoning powers of usual draculas, but make up for it with HD 9.

DUST OF DRACULA
After a dracula dies, they turn to a reddish powder. This dust can be collected and made into a beverage when mixed with wine and human blood. When this potion is consumed, the imbiber must save vs. polymorph or painfully transform into a duplicate of the dracula whose dust was used.

Dark of Space

With Mothership, an official Alien rpg, and probably some others I'm forgetting, the 70s "grubby future" sci-fi horror genre is quite well represented in gaming.

But sci-fi horror wasn't invented in the 70s. Alien borrowed a lot from the films like It! The Terror from Beyond Space and Planet of the Vampires, where gleaming spaceship hulls, shiny floors, and smart uniforms were the rule, but horrors still lurked in the darkness. When you think about it, Forbidden Planet is kind of horrorific if we ignore Anne Francis--and Robby the Robot.

The antecedents of this sort of "rocket horror" are to be found in prose science fiction. A.E. van Vogt short stories "Black Destroyer" and "Discord in Scarlet" were similar enough to Alien that 20th Century Fox settled a lawsuit. Reaching even further back, CL Moore's Northwest Smith short-stories from the '30s had a strong horror element.

It's time to get blood splatter on all that chrome! No one can hear square-jawed spacemen scream in hard vacuum, either.

Revisiting the Wild Wild West Continues

Since last I mentioned it here, there have been two more posts in our Wild Wild West series rewatch over at the Flashback Universe Blog.

See James West battle a house cat!

Star Trek Ranger: Patterns of Vengeance (finale)

Player Characters: The Crew of the USS Ranger, Federation scout ship:
Aaron as Lt.(jg.) Cayson Randolph

Andrea as Capt. Ada Greer

Dennis, as Lt. Osvaldo Marquez, Medical Officer
Paul as Cmdr. D.K. Mohan, Chief Helmsman

Supporting Cast:

Ensign Elana Duffy, Security Officer

Lt. Theras ch'Reith, Security Chief

Chief Petty Officer Grex, Transporter Chief

Synposis: Captain Greer, still stranded on the Brackett, must defend herself against Lt. T'Sar who is possessed by the Unity, a group mind created in a transporter research accident. The Unity want Janet Hester, the researcher they hold responsible for their creation. On the ice moon of Mycena, Marquez, Duffy, and Theras, go looking Janet Hester and discovered her remains in a crashed shuttlecraft, buried in the snow. 

When shown Hester's body, the Unity dematerialize into subspace with it, freeing the possessed crewmen.

Commentary: This adventure was based on Marvel's Star Trek (1980 series) #8 written by Martin Pasko with art by Dave Cockrum.  

There's a good rundown on the issue here.

Weird Revisited: Bugbear Nightmare

In dark places where nightmares thicken and curdle, bugbears are born. They're gangling things with burning coal eyes that stare out of snarled fur, black and featureless as the night sky between the stars. They haunt abodes of fear and shadow: abandoned houses, ancient ruins, sunless forests; they even squeeze into the recesses of children's closets and the forgotten world glimpsed in the gaps between floorboards. Any dark corner is a door to a bugbear. They crawl out with great sacks clutched in their spider-fingered hands. Snickering, murmuring, they snatch up children and small folk in their sacks and kill those who try and stop them. They drag the children back to their damp, subterranean otherworld, and what happens there is best not discussed.

Besides (one presumes) their kidnapped victims, bugbears subsist on such inedible provender as glass shards, potash, and the heads of rabid bats. They consider certain venomous toads an utter delicacy.

Azurthite bugbears are statted like regular 5e bugbears with the following differences:

Skills Stealth +6

Special Abilities:

Plastic. Bugbears can squeeze through spaces as small as 1 inch.

Shadow Stealth. While in dim light or darkness, a bugbear can hide as a bonus action.

Sunlight Weakness. In bright sunight, bugbears have a disadvantage to attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws.

Universal Monster Ravenloft

Over at at Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque, Jack points out that it would be trivially easy to have Strahd meet Dracula given the underlying conceits of Ravenloft. I wonder why we need Strahd at all? Why not replace the Darklords with the Universal Studios classic monsters? We might call this version Karloft because... well, why not?

The Mummy, Dracula, and Frankenstein (the Darklord would probably be Victor rather than his monster), would fit right in. The Invisible Man and the Phantom of the Opera ought to have their place too. The realm of the Creature from the Black Lagoon would be a bit of departure from the usual Gothic horror trappings, but I think it could be done.

Hair-Raising Horrors in the Land of Azurth

Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued last night, with Kully and Shade plunged beneath the shop of the Demon Barber of the Sapphire City. They encountered a number of ill-tempered purple creatures, before the chair Kully was trapped in was whisked to a lower level: a subterranean barbershop of horrors!

The rest of the party saw the events upstairs through the eyes of Waylon's familiar and rushes in. Just in time, too, because the Evil Tom's assistant, a redheaded little maniac with a straight-razor had knocked Shade out. Under the assault of the full party, he was soon dead, as was Evil Tom. 

Kully was rescued, but he was behaving in a more bombastic fashion, and the party was concerned. Shade became convinced the barber had done something to him.

The party explored the various rooms in the barber level, discovering magical pomades and hair-dyes--and eventually, stone stairs descending in darkness. Also, hair like vines hanging over it. Hair that sometimes attacked. Knoggin's Pomade helped tame it, and the party descended without further trouble.

They encountered more of the purple creatures, this time with one of their witchdoctors, The party overpowers then pretty quickly, though, and takes a captive to interrogate.

The creature tells them he is a Znarr and his people serve a a beauteous female of their species named Zarvoola. Zarvoola is holding some very hairy creature captive and orchestrating everything that has happened in a bid for conquest...

TO BE CONTINUED