Short People, Big Worm

The first known people from Ealderde, the Old World, to arrive in the environs of what is now the City, were the Dwerg-folk of Gulden. Though of human stock, the Dwergen are pygmies--the males less than five feet tall, and the women even shorter. Perhaps because of their unimposing stature, they devoted themselves to becaming wealthy through trade, and became a far-ranging mercantile people.

Over three hundred years ago, they struck a deal with the natives of the New World allowing them to build a fort and trading post that would one day grow into the City. The Dwergen were eventually outnumbered by immigrants from other lands, but people of Dwerg descent make up most of the "old money" families of the City. Today, they're generally of normal height, due to interbreeding with newer arrivals, but there's occasionally a throwback to the old blood.

The people of Gulden were never great wizards, and neither are their descendants. Historically, they lived in fear of the White Women--those born among them with the taint of witch-blood. These pale-skinned, ice-blue eyed, overwhelmingly female, infants were left exposed in the wilderness, where they were generally found and taken in by a sabbat of White Women. The White Women were said to torment isolate Dwergen, particularly males, and often visited curses upon rural villages that didn't pay them adequate tribute. Though the birth of a White Woman among modern Dwergen or their relatives in the New World isn't viewed with the superstitious dread it once was, it's still considered ill-omened and a source of family shame. Among the most conservative families, such children are still sent away or hidden from public view.

Despite their lack of aptitude with sorcery, and perhaps because of their conflict with the White Women, Dwergen traditionally were knowledgeable in regard protective circles, charms, and sigils. They also worked hard at perfecting alchemical arts--particular in the realm of the development of alchemical brewing and the thaumaturgically assisted growth of mushrooms with unusual properties. Unfortunately, these arts are mostly lost among those of Dwergen descent in the City, who tend exhibit only the shrewd-dealing traits of their ancestors.

Another reputed relic of the Old Dwerg days of the City, is the ancient wurm. The wurm is a dragon-like serpent, which dwelled in the streams and fens of the main isle of what is now the City, receiving the fearful deference of the natives. By draining the wetlands, and diverting many of the streams underground the Dwergen sapped the strength of the creature and drove it from the surface. City folklore holds that it still lives, nursing a grudge against the City that prospered in the wake of its defeat. It particularly yearns for vengeance against those of the old Dwerg blood, and devours all those that fall into its clutches. Rumor holds that the downtrodden and disenfranchised of the City--often recent immigrants--sometimes worship the wurm with hidden, and primitive rites, hoping to gain its favor by helping it in its vengeance and eventual return to the surface.

Bug Powder

Bill: What do you mean, "it's a literary high"?

Joan: It's a Kafka high. You feel like a bug.

- Naked Lunch (1991)

Bug Powder is a strange magical substance found in the City, and its world, and possibly elsewhere. It generally appears as pale yellowish powder, and its official use is as a professional-grade insecticide. It can be found in containers from several different and mysterious suppliers--"Benway Chymical", and "Voke & Veech", are prominent examples. Bug powder will indeed serve as an insecticide, but if nasally insufflated (snorted), or injected intravenously in small doses it has euphoric and mild hallucinogenic properties.

Long-term use generally leads to dependence, but also, like use of a large single dose, seems to open a doorway to another plane. Users report travel to an exotic, desert world under two reddish moons, were lies a sprawling pennisular city called Interzone, on the quivering banks of a gelatinous sea. The swarthy inhabitants of Interzone appear human in all respects, but have undefinable and unsettling air of strangeness about them. In addition to the natives, humans from many time periods and worlds, as well as alien beings, can be found sweating in Interzone, perusing their own agendas. There is a great deal of political intrigue in the city-state, and several different political factions--but the goals of these groups and the reasons for their conflicts often seem contradictory, if not outright nonsensical.

Mystics and planar scholars believe Interzone to be an interstitial realm acting as a gate or "customs station" between the material world and the inner planes. Supporting this view is the presence of soldiers the Hell Syndicates, as well as miracleworking street-preachers and holy hermits professing the varied and conflicting "ultimate truths" of the Seven Heavens. A slight variation on this view, is that Interzone is not so much a part of the astral plane, but more an extension of Slumberland, the Dream-World, located in some seedy Delirium ghetto. Further exploration will be needed to determine this for certain.

This exploration isn't without dangers. While physical dependence comes from the bug powder's use, the thinning of the psychic barriers between the material world and Interzone serve to cause a person to involuntarily shift between the two. This tends to generate feelings of paranoia--and perhaps rightly so, as the more time one spends in Interzone, the more likely one is to become an agent (perhaps unwittingly) of one of its factions, and fall prey to its byzantine intrigues.

One final interesting bit of Interzone lower is that the natives hold that their city-state, was actually once six cities of very different mystic character, physically indistinct and loosely co-spatial, but still spiritually differentiated. The names of theses putative cities when uttered with the proper ritual, are said to be a powerful spell, though sources disagree as to what purpose.

Alternate Islands: Other Ways to Get LOST

"Guys...Where are we?"
- Charlie Pace, Lost

Well that seemed to be the question, didn't it? Now that Lost has finished its sixth and final season we still may not have a definitive answer. No reason, then, not to go looking for alternatives...

I've already suggested that Lost had parallels with the lost world genre, but we needn't stop there. Here are two more alternative islands for Lost-like shennanigans, suitable for gaming.


"Do that good mischief, which may make this island thine for ever..."
- Caliban, The Tempest

"I'm not a big believer in... magic. But this place is different. It's special."
- John Locke (Terry O'Quinn)

Not long after their arrival on the island, the survivors of Oceanic 815 realize they're not alone. There's a group of "others"--a strange society supposedly descended from shipwrecked Italian sailors, and two supernatural beings: a monster that appears as a cloud of smoke, and an entity which appears as ghosts of the dead. These are said to to be the servants of the mysterious and sorcerous ruler of the island--Prospero. One is Caliban, the rapacious son of the witch from whom Prospero wrested the isle and its wellspring of magical energy. The other is Ariel, a spirit of the air, Prospero freed in exchange for service. Which is which remains a mystery, as the actions of both are ambiguous. Then, of course, there's beautiful Miranda, the ingenue and daughter of Prospero--or is all of that just an act?

For extra fun, this Lost in the Tempest, comes with the optional Forbidden Planet--er, Island--add-on, where the Ariel and Caliban are just two aspects of Prospero's psyche, given form by ancient alien technology. Or maybe all the non-crash survivors are the productions of a deranged reality-warping alien AI, fixated on Shakespeare?


"It's an island, where I live. So far as I know, it hasn't got a name."
- H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau

"You taste like fish biscuits."
- Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly)

Let's call this one: Island of Lost Souls.  Turns out Wells's novel was true, but not the whole story. The unorthodox (read: utterly insane) experiments of vivisection enthusiast Dr. Moreau only worked on the island, where certain "anomalies" subtley bent the laws of nature. We all know how that ended, so when DHARMA arrives in the seventies to follow-up on those anomalies (Magic? Alien Nanotech? Both?) , they find the island inhabited by the tribal "others"--beast-folk descended from Moreau's experiments. The war between DHARMA and the beast men leaves the island mostly uninhabited by humans until the faithful plane crash.

Did Wells tell us Moreau died? Like I said, that's not the whole story. Somehow, the doctor either evolved himself (or degenerated) into a inky swarm of some sort. Still intelligent, Moreau means to regain control of the island, and his rebellious creations. And then, with the crash survivors, he'll start a whole new set of experiments.

Of course, there are others: Lost on Skull Island, Lost on Monster Island, Lost on Mysterious Island, maybe even Lost on the Isle of Dread?

Cthulhu Behind Glass

I got back from my conference last night, so I'll be back to my normal posting schedule anon.  One last filler post for today. 

As a follow-up to my photo of my Howardian bookcase, I thought I'd show my Lovecraftiana bookcase, which includes not only works by the master, but allied works as well as references and commentaries.  The lower shelf (not fully pictured) holds the complete supernatural fiction of the Robert W. Chambers, who of course was one of Lovecraft's inspirations.

Probably the most obscure (though still readily available) volume here is Richard Tierney's Drums of Chaos wherein his historical Sword & Sorcery character, Simon of Gitta, teams up with his pulp sci-fi character John Taggart.  Oh yeah--and Jesus makes an appearance.  Other more off-beat titles include the flawed but entertaining Shadow's Bend, in which Lovecraft and Howard go on a road-trip to save the world, and Nick Mamatas's Move Underground, which is a Lovecraftian tale as written by Jack Kerouac.

Some of the Chaosium volumes are out-of-print, though, so maybe they're the hardest to come by, these days.

Warlord Wednesday: Skartaris Revealed

I'm taking a break from my issue by issue examination of DC Comics' Warlord, to offer the offical map of Skartaris.  This originally appeared in Warlord Annual #4 (1985), but essentially the same map was feature in DC Who's Who.

This was, of course, after the end of Grell's involvement in the series.  Grell has said interviews that he always resisted mapping Skartaris, as he felt that would impair the sort of fantasy-land nature of the place: "Why would you put boundaries on your imagination?"

I imagine a lot of fans felt otherwise, and it appears DC editorial staff did, as well. 

Here's the map as it appeared.  Many of the places have already appeared in my review--Kiro, Bakwele, Bal Shazar, and the forest of Ebondar.  Many others though, lie ahead.

A Brief Programming Note

I'm out of town conventioning for the next few days--navigating the Scylla and Charybdis of Big Pharma and the occasional protester--so my posts may be thinner.  By the end of the week, I expect to be back to my regular schedule.

For today, please enjoy this interesting bit of Bronze Age comic book cartography from Atlas Comics' Wulf the Barbarian #3 (1975):

Of Drifting Inspirations

For me at least, ideas tend to drift a little with time. Case in point: the setting idea I introduced as a "hard-boiled fantasy" sandbox has moved a little from the mean streets walked by Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe. Not that the City doesn't have those streets--it certainly does, but consideration of the wider, weirder, world, and thinking about all the disparate elements of fantastic Americana I'd like to include has caused a shift in tone, or at least a broadening. Of late, I've been thinking of the ironic humor of perennial favorite (of mine anyway) James Branch Cabell, or, more apropos to this setting--Damon Runyon.

Anyway, with all that said, here are the current major ingredients of my strange stew of American fantasy/pulp weirdness:

Literature:
L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: American fantasy at its most quintessential. W.W. Denslow illustrations help, but the classic film versions are probably influential, too.

Dashniell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon: I didn't say the hard-boiled influences were totally gone. It's got tough guy dialogue, a femme fatale, and double-dealing to get an ancient artifact.

Manly Wade Wellman, the Silver John, Judge Pursuivant, and John Thunstone stories. Fantasies that draw on American traditions--but also aren't afraid to make things up.

Comics:
Max Collins and Terry Beatty, Johnny Dynamite. The 1994 limited series.  A private dick out of Mickey Spillane takes on a criminal Faust, in a psychotronic yarn.

Eric Powell, The Goon. The title character and his side-kick against zombies and other weird menaces in a fictional (and somewhat surreal) American city in a period vaguely between the Depression and the 50s.

E.C. Segar,  Popeye. Fisticuffs, quirky characters, a Sea Hag, and a Goon (no relation ;) ).

Animation & Film:
Baccano! (2007) anime (based on the light novel series by Ryohgo Narita) about warring criminal families, immortal alchemists, and a host of other quirky characters vying for an elixir of immortality in the 1930s.

Carnivale (2003): HBO series about a secret battle between Manichean forces coming to its resolution in the Depression-era dust bowl.

7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964): An mysterious Chinese man brings his fantastic circus to a small Southwestern town. Plenty of weirdness in an American setting.