Faceless Howl

Faceless Howl is an adventure from Kabuki Kaiser for the rules lite, dark Sword & Sorcery system Many Sought Adventure, but is easily useable with any D&Dish system with a bit of work and a lot of other systems as well given it isn't a rules heavy adventure.  I received a review copy of the pdf. I don't do a lot of reviews here, but previous publications from Kaiser have received praise from quarters I trust so I wanted to check it out.

The adventure involves "malign entities of pure oblivion" known as the Faceless who are devourers of information and have been drawn to an ancient repository. Not only is this bad for said repository, but it's also bad for the townsfolk of the neighboring of Bec de Corbin ("Raven's Beak") who have their identities and knowledge eaten by the Faceless, turning them (eventually) into Howlers. Complicating matters (if they were already complicated enough) are the Ragshadows, who are subterranean evil, fairy-tale-ish goblin sort of creatures who opportunistically operate alongside the Faceless to steal physical physical valuables.

That's the set up. The adventure is broken into two parts not counting getting the PCs involved: the village and figuring out what's going on, then a crawl through the repository. There's a clock to ensure the situation escalates. The presentation is fairly terse with prose that is informal, generally evocative and occasionally staccato delivery.

It's style and the overall graphic design place it in the tradition of things like Mörk Borg and the sort of NSR/OSR stuff you find on itch. Like those sorts of publications, it values brevity but supplies you with random tables and other necessary tools, and atmosphere, but expects the GM to bring it to life. Beyond aesthetic, this isn't standard, D&D fantasy either, so people looking for that find not find it's weird, horror sort of approach to their taste. 

For me, though, Faceless Howl, is the sort of adventure I tend to look for when I don't have any other particular thing in mind. It isn't particularly combat heavy, and its atmosphere and bit of mystery is the sort of thing that intrigues my players. Its brevity would make it easier to reskin to make it fit whatever setting I'm running at the moment.

If that sort of stuff sounds appealing to you, you should check it out. It's available on drivethu.

[Parsulan] Scavengers and the Field of the Fallen Colossi

Art by Guy Wurley

The ramshackle boomtown called Salvage by its inhabitants and the Scrapyard by outsiders is built amid the fallen combatants of an ancient battle. The colossi are named for their color. Red Knight lies on its back, reaching for a sword that is out of reach. Blue Knight fell forward. Its weapon is long gone, but one hand is raised. The plains have made half-hearted attempts to reclaim the giants, and the knives of time have marked them, but they remain, tempting those interested in making a quick fortune or simply curious about their enigma. The colossi are unusual treasure troves, or above ground mines, made as they are from rare materials and magitechnologies unreproducible in the current age. 

All the prospectors, adventurers, scholars, and thieves looking to claim their own piece of the colossi, and the merchants, dealers, entertainers, and bandits looking to get rich off them, crowd into haphazard buildings constructed along and amid the fallen giants. It's a dangerous place. There is no law in Salvage and plenty of desperate characters. Guns are more common that elsewhere given the relative abundance of both artificers and the raw magitech materials.

The danger isn't just from the inhabitants. There are caustic fluids, poison gases, and other environmental hazards to be sure, but also the colossi are not as dead as they appear. They haven't moved in ages, but not all of their internal parts have been stilled like their limbs. Component constructs, perhaps something like immune system elements, sometimes react violently to scavengers crawling through a colossus's insides. Some grow independent and feral and prowl outside the bodies as if their look for prey or raw materials to affect repairs.

Wednesday Comics: DC, August 1985 (week 2)

My mission: to read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to the end of Crisis. This week, I'm looking at the comics that were on stands in the week of May 9, 1985. 

Warlord Annual #4: This was the first Warlord Annual I bought off the stands, because it has a map of Skartaris in it, which will appear again in Who's Who. I reviewed this issue here.

Atari Force #20: Baron and Bareto/Villagran give the Martin Champion and by extension the rest of the Atari Force their day in court on New Earth. Thanks to Morphea and Targg the court gets a good look at the malevolence of the Destroyer through his psychic residue. Though they are exonerated, there are still powerful forces in New Earth society arrayed against them, so Champion and friends choose to use a device to jump to a new universe to see what else is out there. There's also another humorous Hukka story by Fleming/Giffen/Kesel.

Helfer tells us in the editorial that Atari Force isn't getting canceled because of sales (it's a middling seller) but because it was decided this was the right ending for the characters. I have to say, I'm a little skeptical. I buy it's middle of the pack on sales, but it is a licensed book. Surely a middling wholly DC owned book would be better for the company than having a publishing slot taken up by a licensed book? I do think, though, that the creative teams they've put on the book couldn't figure out anything more to do with the characters. Conway's later issues and Baron's entire run have mostly relied on them being on the ship but not encountering much interesting. No "strange new worlds and civilizations" here. The only mystery is why they didn't have anyone would better ideas, particularly when they were giving the book great artists?

Crisis on Infinite Earths #5: Wolfman and Perez/Ordway open with the Antimatter a bit confused. He thought he destroyed Earth-One and Two, but he hasn't gotten the victory he should have gotten. He lets Psycho-Pirate play the Flash while he investigates. Earth-One and Two have sort of merged and different eras in time are bleeding over. Harbinger and Alexander Luthor assemble a group of heroes to explain what is happening: the Monitor gave his life to power a transfer of the Earths to a netherverse to hide them from his Adversary, but now they now are trying to occupy the same space which will destroy them anyway. The only choice is to re-integrate them as a single universe as it was in the beginning.

We get a lot of cameos, and Travis Morgan, the Warlord, even gets some dialogue. 

The Adversary adapts to these developments, though. He takes control of Red Tornado (In a limited series on sale now! Or then, I mean.) and transforms the android for his own purposes. Flash briefly breaks free of the Psycho-Pirate, and we get a glimpse of the shadowy Adversary's face, and he names himself as the Monitor, though he doesn't look like the Monitor we have seen.

Fury of Firestorm #38: Conway and Kayanan/Akin/Garvey have Stein arriving at Vandermeer University in Pittsburgh to start a new position only to find the campus afraid and under siege due to mysterious and vicious killings of facility members. Stein is in danger of becoming the next victim as he is attacked by the Weasel in his apartment. The Weasel keeps ranting about once he kills Stein, he'll be out of danger. Ronnie is out for a date with Doreen where Cliff accuses him of cheating, thanks to his uncharacteristically good grade on a test, when he is summoned to form Firestorm.

Thanks to poor vision and bumbling, both Stein and Raymond are captured by the Weasel and put in a deathtrap with molten steel about to pour on them.

Jonni Thunder #4: Thomases and Giordano bring this detective story/superhero hybrid to a conclusion. First, Jonni has a confrontation with "Slim" Chance which she only wins by wielding the power of the Thunderbolt without the idol. Then after some uncertainty and romantic tension with Harrison Trump, the rival PI, they are ambushed by Red Nails and her crew. Luckily, Jonni has now figured out that the power is in her, not the statue, which gives her the element of surprising, keeping them alive along enough for Detective Sanchez to swoop in with the police. The series ends with a hope for more Jonni Thunder adventures. We'll see how that goes.

Justice League of America #241: The Tuska/Machlan combination on art doesn't do this issue any favors, but mostly it's tough to get back into the New League after the disruptions. A conversation with Vixen prompts Aquaman to head out without telling anyone to find his estranged wife, Mera. Vibe agrees to let Steel date his sister then gets a new less garish (slightly) costume. Then the team under J'onzz's leadership heads off to Canada where Amazo is on a rampage. J'onzz splits the party, and he and Dale are almost immediately attacked by the android.

Tales of the Teen Titans #56: Wolfman and Patton/DeCarlo bring Raven and the Fearsome Five (minus 1!) into the story. Agents of Gizmo assault STAR Labs to steal Neutron who has been brought in in a containment capsule. Raven shows up and deals with them ruthlessly, but when she realizes what she's doing, she instead uses her power to heal the patients there. Meanwhile, Gar greets Jericho and his mom at the airport to bury the hatchet, and Cyborg undergoes surgery to replace his obviously mechanical limbs with more natural looking ones. The rest of the Titans deal with an attack by the Fearsome, uh, Four, and are defeated in two engagements. The Fearsome Folks make off with a another encapsulated super-being from Tri-State Prison.

Vigilante #20: Wolfman/Kupperberg and Smith/Maygar reveal that giving up the Vigilante identity may not prove so easy for Chase. The Vigilante is still in the streets, more violent than ever, including killing a cop. Meanwhile, Chase seems like he's having a nervous breakdown as he is tormented by nightmares where he is the Vigilante committing these acts. He wonders if he might somehow have lost his mind and actually be responsible. Nightwing fights with the murderous Vigilante in the streets, but winds up getting thrown off a bridge. Later, he crawls in through Chase's window to confront him.

[Parsulan] The Weird Wood

The Weird Wood of southern Parsulan is an ancient forest infused with potent arcane energies. In halls of Magical Academy at Abraxad, surrounded and protected by the wood, it is labelled as Forbidden and students have been disciplined or even expelled for entering it other than by the proscribed paths. Treasure seekers and adventures from other places sometimes travel the forest, however, but many don't return.

What is known from the reports of those that enter it is that the forest is a place of unusual magical power. At the very least, it alters a visitor's perception of time and distance. The wood is also said to be the abode of strange spirits, beings inhabiting both biological and mechanical forms.

Faerie woodlands are hardly a rarity in Parsulan, but somehow, the Weird Wood has become infected or entwinned with technomagical devices in addition to its natural, elemental powers. Some point to its relative proximity to the Field of Fallen Colossi and suggest some stray, animate portion of the giant combatants may have made its way to the forest. Others argue that given the sheer number of constructs and amount armament debris found there, moss covered or half-buried, it must be the remnant of an assault by a substantial force. Perhaps in times past someone marched against Abraxad, and this is the result? If that is true, then Abraxad would surely have record of it in its extensive libraries, but those remain closed to outsiders.

Whatever their origins, it is these artifacts that draw the scavengers.

The commonly encountered fae of the forest are mostly harmless and appear as small, crude figures or vaguely animal or insect shapes of metal. They seem to mimic biological life in a rough but analogous way to the manner Meks resemble humans. 

The larger, more dangerous entities are harder to describe with certainty. Some appear as beasts with mechanical and biological parts. Others are shifting shapes of churning metal, churning storms of fury and blades.

Weird Revisited: The Ahistorical History Setting

This post first appeared in 2017, but I think a trotted out back in 2020 as well. The occasion of the double repeat is discovering a post on RPGnet forums about a cool Hellenistic setting by Kenneth Hite I remembered from Supressed Transmission coming to Kickstarter, only to be disappointed to see the post was from 2018 and the projected abandoned...

Historically accurate Aristotle?

A social media thread about bad history in historical costume drama caused me to recall an idea I had years ago upon a re-read of Aaron Allston's wonderful Mythic Greece: Age of Heroes. At the time, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys was still in syndication, and while not particularly good, it did suggest the using of Greek Myth and geographic as a backdrop for a fantasy setting that might not otherwise have a lot of the trappings of Greek myth. For the most part, Hercules stuck to the big names, but there's no reason you couldn't get as detailed as Allston's book, but give it a wholly un-Mythic Greece feel.

The changes can be big. Reign: The Conqueror (based on the novel Arekusandā Senki by Hiroshi Aramata) re-imagines the life of Alexander the Great as a sort of science fantasy thing with giant Persian war machines and Pythagorean ninjas. Or, they can be subtle, like Black Sails weaving historical pirates with a sort of prequel to Treasure Island. (The difference I see between this last one and a standard historical setting which would generally tend to insert fictional characters, i.e. the PCs, into history, is the "high concept" of the literary/historical mashup.)

A lesson on Greek myth every week?

So I say go ahead and run a Kirby-esque space opera based on the book of Exodus. Recontextualize the War of Roses to have it take place in something like Warring States Japan. Or take the history presented in the Book of Mormon and turn it into a hexcrawl as Jeff Reints did.

Let history be your guide, not your boss.

Wednesday Comics: DC, August/July 1985 (week 1)

My mission: to read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to the end of Crisis. This week, I'm looking at the comics that were on stands in the week of May 2, 1985. 

Sword of Atom Special #2: This issue actually has a July cover date, but there is some discrepancy in the sources regarding when it came out. Anyway, Strnad and Kane are back with another Lost World/Sword & Planet-ish tale. A bird-riding group of raiders called Skul-Riders attack New Morlaidh and kidnap women, including Laethwen. At around the same time, Paul Hoben and Norman Brawler have arrived with an accidentally shrunk Jean, intending to find Atom and get his help to restore her, but she too is kidnapped by the raiders. Atom, Voss, and Paul join forces to track the riders to their city where it turns out a dictator using mind control technology is responsible for the raids as he seeks breeding stock to bolster his cities ranks to realize his dreams of conquest. When his people are freed from control, they kill the tyrant themselves, and our heroes return home. Atom gives Jean and Paul the shrinking belt as he can't use it anymore.

Atom will appear in several issues of Crisis but that's it until 1988.

DC Comics Presents #83: Rozakis is the writer on this team-up of Superman and the Challengers of the Unknown. The artists are a bit of a puzzle: We have both Kirby and Toth, both with inks by Theakston. Toth's work only appears over a couple of pages in a flashback sequence. It seems weird to engage two such celebrated artists in this way, which makes me think the issue as we got it was a "plan B." Anyway, this is Kirby's last major work for DC, though his last actual work (a cover) won't come until after Crisis.

Zo-Mar, a Kryptonian criminal from the pre-Phantom Zone days, escapes from a prison space capsule and infiltrates the Earth with a mystic card that gives him the power of mind control--including those of Superman and the Challengers of the Unknown. It also (handily) keeps him from developing Kryptonian super-powers. Our heroes manage to get the card from him, but then he gains powers! They ultimately use a trick to defeat him and destroy the card. Zo-Mar is sent to the Phantom Zone.

Shadow War of Hawkman #4: The limited series comes to a close just as it seems it was getting started, but Isabella makes it clear at the end that this was merely the first battle in a potentially longer war. We open with several examples of the Absorbacon being used to still secrets from humans, and thus economic and political spoils. The Shadow War is to be an infiltration and covert coup rather than a fledged-fledged invasion.  The Hawks are still in the fight, though. They sneak back onto their own ship, defeat the Thanagarian agents, then destroy the ship so it can't be taken again. They track down the Absorbacon, but fate takes a hand as Rab Mekir, enslaved to the machine, takes his revenge on Fell Andar, leading to his own death. This vanguard defeated, Katar and Shayera can return to their secret IDs and cover lives, but we see there are still Thanagarian deep cover agents on Earth.

Wonder Woman #326: This one has a July cover date, too, though likely released in May. Newell takes over as writer with Heck still on art, and we're back to the stuff that was going in back in issue 316. Wonder Woman follows Keith Griggs and Lauren Haley back to the Central American nation of Tropidor and again encounters the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca. Also, Etta is really angry with Diana for some reason.

V #6: This is another issue with a July cover date. Bates and Infantino/DeZuniga wrap up the whole Meagan arc. The rebellion rescues Meagan, ironically to keep him from blowing up the alien mothership as they fear the severity of reprisals, and they are helped by a scheming faction of Visitor leadership looking to undercut Diana. Unfortunately, Meagan's head-bomb starts to malfunction, so he takes a ship and heads back toward the Mothership on his own. He explodes before he gets there, though, taking out some Visitor fighters and thwarting Diana's plans to recapture him. She remains unaware of the bomb throughout the whole incident. 

On Earth, the Visitor experimentation facility is taken out, and Ham and friends force the lead scientists to inject themselves with their own mutagen.

In Alignment

Mostly discussions about alignment (probably since time immemorial) seem to circle around 3 opens about it: it is just a suggestion for roleplay; it represents cosmic teams of some sort and isn't about character morality; and most commonly its bad and we just ignore it. 

Gareth Hanrahan's The Gutter Prayer suggests to me an interesting tweak to idea 2, one I haven't seen before. I mention previously the saints in that world who were empowered by the gods not due to faith or ideals, but rather due to be somehow psychic compatible with the deity, making passing divine power through them possible. You might say the saints are in alignment with the deity.

So, what if alignment was a bit like that? It does present being on a cosmic team but not a team the character chose, a team that they were born into. This connection would allow the character to speak alignment language and to be recognized as "marked" by that team, perhaps. Characters are free to behave whatever way they want, but they can't (or at least can't easily change) this affinity any more than they could change their bloodtype. It should probably be randomly generated or determined by class, I suppose.

For most characters, a lack of affinity with the ethics of the deity wouldn't be an issue under most circumstances, though for people like clerics and paladins who get more out of the connection, it would matter.

The metaphysical implications for a setting with this would be really interesting, I think. There are a lot of ways it could be operationalized.