Hypnosnake Strikes!

Our Land of Azurth 5e game continued last night with the party moving on from the room full of zombies they slaughter last session. Moving cautiously through the underground area of the shrine, they made short work of most of the monsters they encountered: 2 gargoyles, a wight and the hypnosnake, above. Two ogres in cells (who loudly proclaimed wrongful imprisonment) they wisely chose to bypass.

Finally, they came to a chamber where a large, sickly green gemstone pulsated with evil energy. There Erekose laid low a specter with one action (and an action series) in a ferocious series of blows. The group gained the specter's not insubstantial treasure--and the gem, which they somehow recognized as the one containing the soul of Slekht Zaad.

They try to destroy it, but they can't. They decide they'll have to town and seek help from the Hierophant of Azulina.

But before then, emboldened by the relatively easy time they've had so far, they decide to explore a little further into the subterranean portion of the shrine.

Solar Trek: The Eden Trip

This is another post in this series that takes the "stars" out of Star Trek...

Thomas Sevrin (2219-2263) was an an expert in neurocybernetics and advocate for a rejection of physical existence for a purely digital one. Sevrin believed a technological singuarlity was swiftly approaching and only by forsaking the the limitations of human bodies and brains could "the new human"hope to continue to play a part in the coming order.

Sevrin and a group of his young followers (including the the son of a dignitary of an important colony) stole a spacecraft in an attempt to reach the Romulan Neutral Zone. A dangerous reactor malfunction would have likely been the end of them, had they not been rescued by Enterprise.

Interrogation revealed that the group hoped to reach Eden--the name for server running a simulated reality and the asteroid housing it built in the outer system in pre-Federation days. Eden was generally considered a myth of the counterculture, but Sevrin claimed to know its location.

Medical examination following their rescue revealed that Sevrin perhaps had other motives for wishing to find Eden: he was dying a neurodegenerative disease, the accidental result of some of his self-experimentation.

Ultimately, Sevrin's intelligence proved correct, at least in part. There was an ancient server. Unfortunately, the simulated reality within had long ago been corrupted. Sevrin's body died of his illness and any digital copy of his mind he hoped would live forever was also lost.

Weird Revisited: Reskinned!

The original version of this post appeared in May of 2012...

The usual D&D races getting more than a little stale? Just give them a makeover and keep the old mechanics.  Try these knew visuals on for size:

For Elves:

Insect(-ish) men.

For Halflings:

Satyr-like guys.

For Half-Orcs:

Hairy hominids.

For Warforged:

Spaceknights!

Okay, that last one may be a bit of a stretch, but only a little.

Wednesday Comics: Stardate Collection

As any Star Trek aficionado likely knows, the stardates given in the series are mostly for color and can't be used in the original series to order episodes at all, and are only a bit more consistent in The Next Generation.  So while IDW's hardcover Star Trek The Stardate Collections, say in their ad copy they are by stardate, they really just mean they're are ordering the stories from various Star Trek comic book publishers in the order they would have occurred.

There are two volumes currently--and that's likely it, since the second and latest came out in 2014. They cover the Christopher Pike's Enterprise related stories published mostly by Marvel, but there's a bit of IDW in there.  The 90s Marvel efforts are hardly the best of Star Trek comics, but the Pike issues here work a bit better than some of the others they did.

What's most interesting about these collections is the commentary from Trek experts Scott and David Tipton, and occasionally from the creators. That and the fact they are nicely put together collections makes them worth picking up cheap.

Weird Revisited: Four Nonhuman Species, Briefly Described

The original version of this post appeared the first of July in 2016.

They are all inhabitants of the same distant world.

Art by Jason Sholtis

Ylthlaxu: There are few of them left, and for that, a great many sophont beings are grateful. When they emerge from the shadows, tall and skeletally thin, too often it is to feed. Their tendrils snake out from their face that is not a face and devour the brains of humanoids. It is very unpleasant to see. They once commanded a vast star empire by mental domination, and they are accustom to being obeyed. They reproduce by turning other beings into more ylthlaxu by introducing a mutagen into the bloodstream and nervous system of their victims.

Skarzg: Sometimes they run on four legs, sometimes on two. They are gaunt things, like greyhounds the size of men, if greyhounds had rubbery, scabrous hides, and long snouts faces full of nightmare teeth. They are very hard to kill, and they will eat anything. They live like animals, but they have the power of speech and are cunning and cruel.

Trell: Blueskinned, four-eyed giants from another world, the Trell came in great flying cities where the parties and symposia seemed not to end. They are now somewhat fallen and decadent--and sometimes more savage--than before. They can be hedonists or ascetics, but their personal desires tend to outweigh the desires of lesser creatures. Every non-Trell is certainly a lesser creature. In times past, they were often trendsetters and propagators of cult religions and faddish notions. Now, their dwindling race mostly keeps to their crumbling sky cities and celebrates the past.

by Ken Kelly

Ieldra: One of the native species of this world, ieldra are now only a remnant of what they once when when their sacred groves dotted the land and their queens fought Nest Wars for glory and territory. They remind humans of insects in many ways: antennae, large eyes, and peculiar movements.  Ieldra may be immortal, and their life stages are marked by instars named for the seasons. Summer wildings, their honey-colored adolescents, are savage things left to hunt and laugh and sometimes kill in what sacred groves and hidden grottoes are left to them. They seldom work stone or metal, but instead shape living things.

Cosmic Delving

"If you can leave your flat land thinking and think of many surfaces, one over the other, extending on and on under the water as well as under the land, you begin to understand. But you can’t really comprehend immensity, can’t comprehend a pioneer job that has been going on for hundreds and hundreds of years and is still only beginning."
- Richard Sharpe Shaver

Not all subterranean spaces exist wholly in this reality. The upper regions may be near mundane, and just beyond that merely stocked with the detritus of the visitor's own unconscious, but the deeper regions, the outer regions, bleed into the cosmic. These are the places that few venture purposely, but some freak pyschonauts do, risking sanity, body, and perhaps soul, for an elusive apotheosis.

One has to be prepared, of course. The delvers rely on protocols self-published and passed around by fringe theorists and weirdos. They hunt for cryptic hints in Forteana and pulp science fiction. The details are various, but in all regimens there must be some development of the avatar, the psychic projection of self that can slip from the mundane to the other realms. The avatars are themselves archetypes from the Jungian depths, ready for the hero's journey. Is your inner self Wizard or Warrior?

For the act of slipping itself, well, there's the chemical trigger.

The underworld isn't empty. It's populated by monsters to wound and frighten the delvers, and scattered with treasures to tempt them. Both the horrors and wonders are distractions to the true adept, though more than a few have contented themselves with some bauble from dream or nightmare, and an unbelievable story to tell.

The true seeker, however, keeps going. Down, down, down. And beyond.

A Report on Current Events in the Land of Azurth

The status quo of the Land of Azurth was laid out in my early posts on the it, but some things have changed over the years of the ongoing campaign. Here are some of the highlights:

Gladhand Out! Errol B. Gladhand, former Mayor of Rivertown in Yanth Country and patron of the PCs in my home group lost the most recent election to Drumpf, who's used his wizardly connections to turn Rivertown into something of an armed camp. Gladhand, convinced of electoral fraud, embroiled the PCs in a scheme to hire mercenaries to take back the city, but the results of that have yet to be seen.

The Unseen Princess. Viola, the Clockwork Prince of Yanth closed off her laboratory-palace and has been seen since before the election.

Under-Sea Revealed. The formerly half-mythical land of Under-Sea has been visited by the PCs and freed from the yoke of Toad Temple tyranny.

Cat Folk Do Exist. There were not supposed to be any Cat Folk in the Land of Azurth, but it turns out there is a small number. Calico Bonny of Rivertown's Floating World is one, as is her brother, the swashbuckling Calico Jack.

Wednesday Comics: Recent Collection Purchases

New comics have been pretty slim pickings over the pandemic, but I've still managed to pick up several collections over the weeks. Here are some high points:

Weird Western Tales: Jonah Hex
DC published two black & white Showcase Presents volumes (which are great), but this is the first time we've got these reprints in color.

The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire Volume One
I talked about Don Lawrence's Storm quite a bit here. This is a science fiction title he did for many years prior.

Flowers and Zombies

Last night's Land of Azurth 5e game found the party still in the hidden fane of the Black Lotus. The floral tiger creature that menaced them at the end of last session turned out to be friendly when Shade the Ranger used speak with animals to converse. The creature told her how it had been imprisoned by Zaad and its pollen stolen for the evil priest's purposes. The creature wouldn't take them there, but did clue them in that Zaad's "malignant heart" was on a upper floor of the fane.

The party went seeking the stairs. They discovered a room where some sort of wine was being made from the flowers they had found in the vats. They were confused by a weird hallway that seemed to reverse the direction of your travel. They sneaked past some arguing clerics in plate only to stumble right into a trap, when a portcullis came down on Dagmar!

The party was unable to lift it. They were all trapped when some guards attacked. Erekose's crossbow and Shade's bow won the day, though, and examination of their surroundings lead to the discovery of a secret door, though it was beyond their reach. Waylon's mage hand opened it and discovered a small room with a winch, presumably to lift the portcullis. Two mage hands in concert were able to turn it enough to give Dagmar space to crawl out. While she worked the winch, one of the enraged clerics attacked the party.

Erekose killed him, while Wayon took out another that emerged from a second secret door. Another guard had barricaded himself in a room, and bargained away a dead cleric's scroll to get them to leave him in peace.

The party turned their attentions back to the endless loop hall, and finally figured out the trick. They climbed the stairs to the second level and pretty quickly discovered a room full on zombies. They stood their ground, and soon piled up the newly un-undead corpses.

Valley of the Cracked Helm

Billy Longino has released a new adventure, Valley of the Cracked Helm. I haven't had a chance to run this one, but the pitch is:

Once a paradise at the heart of dwarfdom, the Valley of the Cracked Helm has lain forgotten for ages, lost to the vagaries of natural disasters, goblin invasions, and generational benders. Over the years since, its name has invoked only shame—furtive, deep-seated dwarven shame—for the valley is where the wild dwarves dwell. . .

For wild dwarves, you should read "dwarven nudists."

I have played in games run by Billy both at North Texas RPG Con and online. I feel confident this one is a good time. Check it out!

Dungeons of High Strangeness

Or High Weirdness, though that term might get it confused with "the weird," as in weird fiction, which is not wholly unrelated, but not exactly what I'm thinking of here. What I'm envisioning is a dungeon with a science fantasy bent, but not the typical pulp fiction ray guns thing. The dungeon here is a relic of the past, but something along the lines of the Dulce Base of conspiracy theory, or maybe a larger version of the underground facilities of Lost's Dharma Initiative.

Perhaps these bases are a relic from before some cataclysm, or maybe remnant of some intrusion from an alternate world (as recent or as remote as you like). Whichever, they represent something not as straightforward as the typical pulp science past because it's inspired by different material: Project Montauk, The Philadelphia Experiment, or an number of fictional weird conspiracy experiments.

The characters with their pseudo-Medieval perspective, probably wouldn't understand, but the players will, and the idea of unravelling just what the deal is with dungeons might appeal.

Return of the Space Wizards

This is another riff on a different sort of post-apocalyptic D&D.

There was once a human empire with dominion over many worlds. Despite its mastery of magic, the empire was eventually overthrown, but it's rulers made plans for its eventually return. They built the dungeons, caches of treasure and magic meant to tempt and challenge the humans who would come after, the unknowing heirs to a power that could be re-awakened, returning the long slumbering empire to its former glory!

Not only does this give a rationale for the existence of dungeons and a background that the players could uncover, but it potentially provides another ethical dilemma for the players. Do they support the re-awakening of the human empire or try to thwart it?

The Conquered D&D Setting

It's widely understood that the D&D is generically post-apocalyptic, but seldom is this fact exploited other than the existence of dungeons and treasures, or possibly some science fantasy stuff in old school games. I think more could be done with that idea.

Maybe the apocalypse involved conquest? This could have been a long time ago, explaining a decline in technology (if you wanted to have a decline in technology) or maybe some degree of pseudo-Medievalism is enforced by the conquerors. (This is the case in Divide And Rule by L. Spraque de Camp, and The Tripods series by John Christopher.) The technology level could be more mixed due to temporal proximity to the apocalyptic event like in Killraven (Thundarr appears to be close, though canonically it's been 2000 years!) Another possibility is a society that was not really that advanced when it got conquered, like Lord of the Rings if Sauron won or there was some sort of faerie apocalypse.

There are at least couple interesting elements to this sort of setup. One, is it would set up a world where humans weren't the dominant culture, which would be fairly novel for D&D. Too, it would provide background for PC adventures beyond just treasure hunting. Vance's Planet of Adventure would be instructive with this last part.

Weird Revisited: Akakor

The original version of this post appeared in 2011...

Following up on the weird South American jungle map I presented earlier, today we'll veer off the map entirely into the wilds of crazy von Däniken land and visit a “lost” city--one that got famous enough to appear under a weak pseudonym in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I refer of course to Akakor.

Von Däniken started talking about underground city complexes beneath Ecuador in 1974’s The Gold of the Gods, but one of his sources, German journalist Karl Brugger, got to tell his version in 1977 with The Chronicle of Akakor. Both accounts start with the same basic story: In 1972, Brugger met a Native Amazonian (who spoke excellent German) named Tatunca Nara, who claimed to be a member of a hidden tribe that kept a great secret.  This secret involved ancient astronauts from a solar system named Schwerta, and a network of underground cities these space travellers built beneath South America. The most important of these cities was known as Akakor.

It all sounds fairly unbelievable, true--and it becomes even more so with the revelation that ol’ Tatunca Nara was really Günther Hauck, an alimony-dodging German ex-patriot. But the important thing from a gaming perspective is that these guys gave maps.

One of these is the upper (above ground) Akakor, and the other is the lower subterranean portion. Different websites disagree on which is which, so take your pick--"entertainment purposes only," and all that:

Here’s a nifty cross-section showing the underground portion, and one of the Star Trek-esque hallways:

Read more about it here, and find these maps (and more) here. Add some bullywugs, maybe some yuan-ti--or Nazis if your tastes run to pulp--and you’re ready to roll.  Crystal skulls strictly optional.

Fourth World Apocrypha: Steve Gerber on Mister Miracle

As an addendum to last week's post, I found this great post on Diversions of the Groovy Kind that reproduces Gerber's and Golden's Mister Miracle #24.

What's Up, Tiger Lily?

Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued last night with the party having the proverbial tiger by the tail in the form of the evil high priest Slekt Zaad. They killed his wizard acolyte, but by that time, the Guard Commander Draco Battles and his troops had the temple surrounded. The only choice they had was negotiated surrender, which they agreed to with the understanding that Slekt Zaad will also be arrested and his insidious, flower-related plot investigated.

Once they're in a cell, they discover they've been tricked. Draco is working with Zaad. Zaad taunts them with a riddle regarding the source of his nigh invulnerability, but it's little help to them while they're imprisoned. Lucky for them, Waylon and Bell had not turned themselves in, but instead were hidden invisible within the temple. They slip out and make their way to the inn where the party was staying.

There, they strike up a conversation with a mysterious, hooded man with a luxuriant beard. They discover he's the local hierophant of the shrine of Azulina, Erik Goodbeard, and he's willing to help them to get the Duke out from under the thumb of Draco and Zaad. His plan involves a seldom invoked, local sanctuary custom.

The party has to forfeit their worldly possessions, but soon they are on their way to a monastic life in the service of Azulina. Which means, they slip out of town the next morning in a wagon full of food for the poor to locate a lost Black Lotus Fane hidden on a vine-covered hillside.

They find a tower nearly consumed by vines. Its insides are gutted, but there is an entrance to a cave. Within they find the hidden temple, including a laboratory facility where numerous exotic flowers are being grown. Marveling at an avian flower thing, they almost miss the floral tiger sneaking up on them and preparing to pounce!

Art by Iguana Mouth