Death and Time

Saturn moves in the furthest sphere from the Sun reachable by the starships of Man. Beyond, the Cosmos is more chaotic and the laws of Nature are strange. Saturn and those more distant spheres are remnants of a renegade cosmos that was or perhaps might have been. In that world, Saturn would have been the sun and a source of life instead of a graveyard and place of death.

Unique among the planets are Saturn's great rings made of the petrified remains of titans and monsters and the dust and remain made from their collisions in the void. The greatest of these pre-Creation monsters form the moons of Saturn. Men sometimes find treasure among these cold, sepulchral bodies, but ancient and malefic intelligence still lives in some, and there are tales of the dead becoming animate in their influence.

Some seek riches within Saturn itself, but its sickly yellow vapors streaked with dull gray can only be safely penetrated in thick, lead diving spheres that afford voyagers protection by alchemical affinity from both the crushing pressures and the saturnine radiations. Without them, living things petrify then turn to dust and other metals and materials corrode or decay. Travelers have recounted hearing the voices of souls, and ancient and damned, raging or crying in the dark mists, but whether these things are real, no one can say.

At Saturn's north pole, there hangs a great cube of stone like black onyx. Inside, dwells the Oyarses spirit of Saturn, long-bearded Aratron. He has made a great study of time and death, and is to possess a laboratory where he grows new physical forms for himself that he transfers his intelligence to him the old one succumbs to death. As well as being Aratron's palace, laboratory, and treasure house, the cube is said to be the tomb of the rebellious titan that created this world--or at least what is left of him. Though his giant, apparently-dead form has been accreted with stone, he is still well bound and meant to be for eternity.

The Sea of Stars and A Free Adventure

Fellow blogger Sean Holland over at Sea of Stars RPG Design Journal has launched a Kickstarter for The Sea of Stars Campaign Sourcebook for Pathfinder. the Design Journal blog is always a good read with spells and magic items that come with interesting and flavorful backstories making them at once integrated into Sean's setting, but also eminently usable in any setting. He also does write-ups of his campaign sessions that always sound like a great time.

If you're not already a fan of the blog--you should probably rectify that by checking it out--but you can also get a taste of what Sean has in store for us in the sourcebook with this handy sheet of introductory facts and this free 1st level adventure.

Check out the Kickstarter page for the artists Sean has lined up. Also, you'll not that stretch goals include companion pieces written by folks like Benjamin Baugh and Brandes Stoddard--and somehow I slipped in there, too.

36 days to go, but don't wait around. Go check it out.

When Noom Comes

There is one holiday in the Land of Azurth that can never be scheduled because it comes when it will. Loonsday, it is called, and on Loonsday, Noom, the shy, hidden face of the Moon, turns toward Azurth. When the light of smiling Noom shines down, many strange things have been known to happen.

Here are ten strange visitations that have occurred on a Loonsday, under Noom's beaming face:

1. Street cobblestones are disturbed as by ripples in a pond.
2. A strange, scintillant mist attaches itself to a person and follows them around for sometime making a soft sobbing sound.
3. People don strange hats and spontaneous start a parade, winding through the streets of the city, as if in some ecstatic trance. At some point, they cease their marching. The participants throw their hats aside and return to their previous business. They profess no memory of the events.
4. Inanimate household objects have come to life and demanded their freedom from enslavement for perhaps an hour before returning to normal.
5. A rat-king and its retinue emerge from the sewers to hold court in a city square. He will answer 3 questions about the future, promising that at least one prediction will not be a lie.
6. Someone finds a kazoo whose sound will banish lesser devils.
7. Shadows take on weight and texture of a thin piece of felt and detach from their owners with a bit of tugging.
8. A rain of frogs occur over an area of the city, but each frog drifts down slowly under a tiny parasol.
9. A swarm of small, translucent portuguese man-of-war fly through like balloons in a strong wind. They strike anyone in their path like thrown boxing gloves.
10. Small groups of people in odd clothes with their heads replaced by glowing orbs are seen in the streets. If accosted or hindered in their obscure tasks, they will search their pockets or purses and produce a few alien coins and give them to the person confronting them. The coins hum and writhe gently in the hand.

Loonsday inserts itself into the more sensible and regular calendar of Azurth without warning. The appearance of Noom in the sky will always signal that it has begun. When Noom has set (and not in the normal way but by simply drifting away like a handful of sand blown on the wind) Loonsday is over and the normal precision of time resumes.

The Best of 2014

...Otherwise known as a lazy holiday post with no new material. Here's a selection of posts that you guys liked (based loosely on number of comments and G+ pluses) and posts that I liked. Sometimes they coincide; sometimes not. I stirred away mostly from Strange Stars art posts, though, to focus more on the text content. (A Strange Stars note, since I mentioned it: after holiday delays, the book is in the hands of the last proofreaders, with hopes of submitting the pdf very soon.)

So without further ado, here they my picks:

"Strange Stars Covered": 2014 was the year Strange Stars moved forward. Lester B. Portly's retro-cover designs with Eric Quigley's art made this post garner the most pluses of the year.
"Old Soldier": The lives and wars of Hannibal Tecumseh Early in the Strange Stars.
"In the Days of the Archaic Oikumene": Strange days, indeed. One of the "picture and description" posts that I did a lot in the early days with Weird Adventures, but this is the only one this year.

Moving away from Strange Stars, my current  "Oz by way of Dunsany and Smith" 5e setting, The Land of Azurth, got a number of posts:

"Witches of Ix": My most popular Azurth post, and I think one of my best.
"Azurthite Bestiary": Manhounds: This beastie was elevated above the others by Jeremy Duncan's great art.

Sometimes, my best (and most popular) posts are unrelated to my current setting obsession:

"Ruritanian Rogues": suggested picaresque adventure in faux Europe. People liked it. Jeremy Duncan has picked up the ball and really run with it.
"Baroque Space": I've made Spelljammer weird before, but this post gives it an age of sail and filigreed plate armor spacesuit weirdness.. More posts to come in this series, but this was the first.
"The Finer Points of Inner Planar Adventuring": Are the elemental planes boring? Not if you do something interesting with them.
"A Traveller's Life": Inspired by the Dumarest saga by E.C. Tubb, ideas about how you could run an interesting sci-fi game without FTL and limited to relativistic speeds.

Wednesday Comics: European Fantasy

I've done several posts on American fantasy comics, but haven't really touched on fantasy comics from across the Atlantic--with the exception of Thorgal. There's a good reason for this: Most of them are in French not English. There are some, though, that have gotten official English translations.  Here's a sampling:

Crusade
A somewhat gritty historical fantasy about a fictitious Crusade to reclaim Jerusalem that's manipulated by a demonic plot. The first 3 volumes (of 6) has been republished in English (even for Kindle) by Cinebook, but they are expurgated versions, removing some nudity.

Lanfeust of Troy
A longrunning series with several spinoffs and an rpg tie-in, the main series tells the story of Lanfeust and his companions on the planet Troy, a world of magic. Drawn in a bit of  a cartoony style, the Troy series has a fair amount of humor and a little bit of cheesecake.

Only the first two volumes of the first series are officially available in English from a South African publisher.

Millennium
In 1000 AD, a relic trafficker and his companions combat monsters and solve a mystery. Humanoids (the French and English publisher) says it's like Name of the Rose meets The X-Files, which I think is pretty reasonable. It's available in digital but a nice collected edition is coming from Humanoids in February.

Roxanna & the Quest for the Time Bird (La Quête de l'oiseau du temps)
From 80s (so out of print), a sword & sorcery-ish yarn about a young woman, Roxanna (Pelisse, in French) sent by a witch (her mother) to prevent to resurrection of an evil god. It's got great art by Régis Loisel. It was published by NBM in English in 3 volumes.

History, Real and Otherwise

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of this blog. it started all right here. I don't know that anyone has been reading that long, but how ever long you've been coming here: thanks for reading.

I've done a number of setting riffs related to alternate history over the years. In case you missed them or just forgot about them, here's the list:

"Alien Underground": In a 1981 other than our own, Centralia, Pennsylvania was where the world became aware of monsters underground. An alternate history, modern day, conspiracy dungeoncrawl.

"The Weird Frontier": Put Gygax's whole civilization versus strange wilderness theme back where he got it: the American frontier. A Colonial era, points of light fantasy.

"Gods, Heroes & Super-Science": What if the Greek myths were real? And by real, I mean tales of Bronze Age humans having contact with Kirby-esque science fantasy, Chariots of the Gods-style. This one got a number of posts. A Greek mythology science fantasy for Mutant Future.

"The Muvian-American War": In the aftermath of the Spanish American War, a more arcane threat looms. An alternate history, early 20th century, Guns & Sorcery setting.

Pulp Space: The War of the Worlds was only the beginning. By the 1930s, occultism and alien science have taken the empires of Earth to other planets--carrying their volatile politics with them.This one got multiple posts, too, but it started here. A science fantasy, alternate Spelljammer.

The Hanna-Barbera Superhero Universe

Art by Carlos Mota

I've played superhero rpg campaigns set in the Marvel and DC Universes and even considered one set in the Atlas-Seaboard Universe (that never happened, unfortunately). Recently, though I've given consideration (probably not seriously, though, but as a thought experiment) to a campaign set in the universe of Hanna-Barbera's superhero cartoons.

One notable thing about Hanna-Barbera's supers characters is that when you leave aside the licensed properties (Super Friends, The Fantastic Four) and the completely comedic ones (The Impossibles, Atom Ant), very few of the characters follow traditional superhero conventions. Few are set on modern day Earth or have a stable base of operations and supporting cast. The only one that does (Birdman) is a bit unsual because he's more of a superhuman agent of a governmental organization.

Despite this different in focus and presentation, I think many of them could be adapted to a more traditional superhero mold. Call it "Ultimate Hanna-Barbera," if you will.  Let's run the list:

Art by Alex Ross

Space Ghost: A very superhero-y and well realized character as-is. Perhaps like the Legion of Super-Heroes he is a futuristic character in the same universe. A future Phantom/Batman in the same way Captain Future is kind of a futuristic Doc Savage. The other option would be to make him sort of Green Lantern-like. A space cop assigned to protect earth. Or some combination of the two?

Young Samson: (Also known as Samson & Goliath) A teen with a Captain Marvel schtick who wanders around Route 66 or Incredible Hulk style, getting into adventures, works pretty well as-is. As suppose, it would be better to have him settled down and become more of a Peter Parker.

Shazzan: The cartoon has two kids transport to an Arabian Nights fantasy-land after finding their genie, but they could have just as easily stayed in the modern day. Two teens sharing a genie to fight evil would be an interesting concept.

Mightor: A Stone Age Thor, essentially. There isn't any reason a worthy successor couldn't find the magic club and become Mightor in the modern day. Of course, the character is a bit on the silly side and would probably work best for a Silver Age vibe rather than a Modern Age one.

Herculoids: In a comic book universe, the Herculoids could be sort of Ka-Zar type characters where their Savage Land is a world in another dimension, or they could be treated like a primitive Forever People and have them arrive on Earth to be super-powered fish-out-of-water.

Art by MarioPons

The Galaxy Trio: These teen heroes are probably better candidates for Forever People stand-ins. You can transport them to the modern day and have them be alien heroes stranded on Earth for some reason.