Random Weird Background Trait Table

Too often, unusual backgrounds mean super-special abilities.  But they don't have to...

The character in question (1d12):

1. Once saved a magical creature from a hunter’s trap and received 3 wishes in gratitude but squandered them long ago, with nothing to show for it.
2. Was the sole survivor of the mysterious disappearance of all the other people and livestock in his or her home village.
3. Owns of a pouch full of seeds which family legend holds are magical. 50% chance they are--but only sprout if planted in a singular (and far away) location.
4. Is the victim of an unusual familial curse that causes sex change under the a particular phase of the moon.
5. Bears a prominent scar, but cannot remember when or where it was acquired.
6. Once had a brief--but torrid--dalliance with a personage of some prominence which he cannot forget, but the former paramour gives no indication that he or she remembers.
7. Has two shadows (slightly offset, so not immediately noticeable) owing (it’s rumored) to a demonic ancestor.
8. Feels a strange longing for the sea and bears a nautilus shaped birthmark.
9. Could pass for a twin for a person of some renown or infamy.
10. Was found as infant in ancient ruins by foster parents.
11. Had a twin that was stillborn but with whom he or she converses at times of stress. 30% chance the never born twin blames the character for his or her death.
12. Occasionally, at night, can catch a glimpse of large dog-like animal that seems to be stalking him or her, but never approaches close enough for clear identifcation, and disappears if approached.

Warlord Wednesday: Cry Plague

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...

"Cry Plague"

Warlord (vol. 1) #73 (September 1983)

Written by Cary Burkett with Jennifer Reinhold; Penciled by Dan Jurgens; Inked by Dan Adkins

Synopsis: When last we left our hero, Morgan was unconscious in the grip of a carnivorous tree, and Scarhart was approaching to kill him! Scarhart raises his axe to strike, but he’s distracted by the attack of flying reptiles.

Morgan awakens and manages to free himself. He decapitates one creature, but notices Scarhart is pinned by another. Before he can run to help, the plant grabs him again. Only one chance:

Scarhart returns the favor by cutting Morgan free. Morgan decides they might as well join forces—even though Scarhart wants to kill the plague unicorn, while Morgan wants to take it back alive so an antidote can be made from its blood.

Tracking the unicorn, Morgan and Scarhart come across the camp of the itinerant Kaash’Ban. The folk and their animal companions agree to help them track the unicorn. If they find it, it will be none too soon, as Morgan starts to show signs of sickness.

Shortly, they get word that the unicorn has been found:

They rush to place only to find the unicorn already being sucked into a bog. Morgan lassoes it, but he’s too weak to pull it out. He appeals to Scarhart for help, but Scarhart has other ideas:

Morgan is about to give in to hopelessness when he realizes that Scarhart hasn’t gotten sick. The Kaash’Ban girl (who has taken an interest in Scarhart) mind-melds with him again to find a clue as to the reason: Scarhart drank from a secluded forest pool that seemed to invigorate him.  He believed it to have healing properties as foretold by the legends of his people.

Our heroes return to Castle Deimos. Jennifer opens a portal back to Scarhart’s world. He and Morgan jump through, then quickly make their way to the pool. Morgan fills flasks with its waters. Suddenly, a reptilian guardian rises from its depths! Morgan doesn’t have the time…

Back in Castle Deimos, the water of the pool indeed cures Jennifer, Morgan, and Shakira.

Scarhart and Shakira take an instant shine to each other and decide to travel with the Kaash’Ban for a bit. Shakira tells Morgan: “Don’t worry, Morgan…our paths will cross again.”

Morgan smiles and replies that he’s certain they will.

Things to Notice:

• Not for the first time, Shakira leaves Morgan for another guy.
• Team Warlord seem awful quick to assume drinking some water in the forest is what kept Scarhart from contracting the plague.
• The Kaash'Ban make a return appearance after last being seen in issue #63.

Notes:
This was my first issue of Warlord.  At the age of 10, I bought it off a spinner rack at a Suwannee Swifty store in Southwest Georgia.  I still have the copy. 

Tales of Sword and Sorcery, Dagar Style

Run through your collections of Conan and Savage Sword of Conan, and even read a little Kull and Warlord?  Well, Dark Horse Archives has got more comic book Swords and Sorcery for you with Dagar the Invincible.

In the early seventies, Gold Key got in on the sword-swinging with Tales of Sword and Sorcery: Dagar the Invincible.  Dagar was the creation of Donald Glut (also author of the early Masters of the Universe mini-comics) and drawn by Jesse Santos.  The Dagar stories don't have quite the flash of Marvel's Conan efforts, but there are the industry standard werewolves, evil sorcerers, and single-horned apes a-plenty.  Check out these covers for hint of the sort of action Dagar gets into:

Undead smashing? Check.



Ape punching? Indeed.



So if that's the sort of stuff you're into (and I think you are) check out the Dagar the Invincible Archives.

Invading Mars

The first thing that strikes any Earthling visiting Mars for the first time is that Mars is old. The seas and lush vegetation of its youth have given way to anemic canals and barren rock and sand. Many of its canal cities are more ancient than Sumer--and even these are young compared to the ruins that dot the dust-choked wastes.

The Great Powers of Earth came to Mars hoping steal knowledge and wealth from the dying world. It was the first planet to be conquered with the arrival of the Age of Space and with good reason. The 1898 invasion that had nearly ended the human race had come from the red planet, after all. When man mastered the psychic technologies of the Invaders, it was only natural to want to strike back.

The Invaders weren’t actually from Mars, of course. That had only been a staging point. But the old canal cities of the true Martians had been waystations for space travelers in the past, and they still held ancient secrets. In the arid wastes there were underground complexes, the abandoned redoubts of ancient Martian civilization, constructed when they burrowed in to survive their world growing inhospitable. These subterranean ruins contain treasures both magical and mundane.

Treasure-hunters, thieves, and spies flock to the colonial cities. The British and French have governmental presences and peacekeeping forces. The Americans are represented by soldiers of fortune and freewheeling traders. The Russians are divided between White Russian spies, dreaming of a czarist resurgence, and Communist agitators, looking to make Mars more Red. German agents of the Nazi Ahnenerbe or the more shadowy Vril Society search out secrets for their mysterious “Aryan” masters in Agartha.

The Martians themselves tolerate these new invaders like all the others over the millennia. The canal and Lowland dwellers are generally solicitous and eager for Earth coin--though there are occasional small scale uprisings, and always there are rumors of murderous cults that wish to purge Mars of alien influences. The grim highlanders, however, seldom recognize colonial authority. They act as bandits and are often organized around fanatical ghazaerai monks.

Post-Apocalypitc Drive-In

Pull in at A Field Guide to Doomsday (remember to let your ticket-dodging friends out of the trunk) and get ready for Devastation at the Drive-In--a free pdf collection of posts by Justin Davis fashioning Mutant Future monsters from shlocky films:

Your Blood Will Chill...When faced with the Cinderkid from The Children (1980).
You'll Feel A Bit Unconformtable...As you learn the horrible truth of the Fangbaby from It's Alive (1974).
You'll Be Confused...By the Bleast from God Monster of Indian Flats (1974).
You'll Be Amused...By the improbability of the Ro-Man from Robot Monster (1953).

Check it out at Justin's site.  Bring your own popcom.

Veterans Day

In honor of Veterans Day here are a few of comics' stellar servicemen...

Where else to begin, but with Sargeant Joe Rock? The Rock of Easy Company fought his way through World War II--and beyond.  Brave and the Bold #108 had him teaming up with Batman to take on the Devil.

Captain Simon Savage may not be as well known as Sgt. Rock or Sgt. Fury, but he also led an eccentric commando squad known as the "Leatherneck Raiders." Those soldiers knew how to surf--which puts them one up on the Howlin' Mad Commandos.

Captain Ulysses "Gravedigger" Hazard outdoes them all.  He overcame polio and racism to become a one-man special forces unit and even led Easy Company briefly--but only after he broke into the Pentagon just to prove himself!

Happy Veterans Day to all the nonfictional veterans, too.

Beneath Rock Candy Mountain

It’s imparted by the sagacious urban druids that contemplate on street corners and rumored by stoned hobogoblins that pass canned heat ‘round campfires that there is an earthly paradise hidden in the great mountains of the West. The wondrous land’s fame has even spread to the world we know, where balladeers longingly recount the virtues of the Rock Candy Mountain or the Hobo’s Paradise.

The hidden mountain valley (so the tales claim) sits in the benevolent shadow of a mountain of candy (or at least with the appearance of such) and boasts trees which grow cigarettes, whiskey running in streams, and ponds of hearty stew. The inhabitants of the valley comport themselves like those in small towns elsewhere, but they are unfailingly friendly, even deferential, to the lowliest of visitors—perhaps especially the lowliest. No crimes against property are prosecuted; in fact, everything is given freely.

Adventurers, notorious hard cases (or thinking of themselves as such), scoff at those yarns. Calloused to eldritch horrors and exotic treasures alike, they’re disinclined to get misty over vagrants’ fairy tales of a hobotopia. Still, a few have caught the fever and gone looking over the years. As far as is known, none have returned.

Even in the tales, the way to the Hobo’s Paradise isn’t easy. Though the trail’s exact location is unknown, it’s believed to run treacherously through the cold heights of the Stoney Mountains. Mine slavers and road agents haunt the lower parts of the trail, while apemen guard the more remote passes.

These may not be the only dangers. Certain heterodox urban druids believe that this Paradise may not be what it appears from a distance. The air that should be fresh and sweet is instead choked with the stench of an abattoir. The whiskey streams are spiked with methanol and cause blindness, delirium, and death. And the smiling, wooden-legged constables and comic railyard bulls, aren’t benevolent—and aren’t even human behind their skin masks.

Could be that more than teeth rot in the shadow of the Rock Candy Mountain.

For the Garrisons at the Old School Heretic family of blogs.