Project(s) Update, Or I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends

Art by Jeff Call

I haven't done a general update in a while, so here's what Armchair Planet (i.e. me) has cooking with the Hydra Co-op:

• John Till's Strange Stars Fate pdf just got updated with some minor corrections. I am waiting to check the proof of the updates to the soft cover before releasing that.
• Work continues on Strange Stars OSR with several Hydra hands (heads?) pitching in to help: Chris Kutalik pitched in with Orbital Habitat Generation rules and Robert Parker is working on improving what I've done with hyperspace nodes. They're making me look like a slacker, but I'm working, I promise!
• Jason Sholtis is taking a break from work on his Operation Unfathomable to do a playtest of the mostly complete draft of the adventure Mortzengersturm, The Mad Manticore of the Prismatic Peak on Google+, and Jeff Call is hard at work on the art.
• Though Strange Stars is getting priority, I'm also working on The Cloud Castle of Azurth for which Joel Priddy is turning out some great interior art.

A lot of cool stuff to come in 2016.

Limbo: The Sargasso of Space

Any hyperspatial fissure can be a hazard to interstellar navigation, but a large, stable one like the irruption zone known as Limbo is to be avoided at all costs. Those vessels unlucky enough to have been caught in Limbo but lucky enough to escape report a strange world trapped within the borders of distorted, kaleidoscopic spacetime.

First and foremost, there is a graveyard of ships, some still inhabited, some partially cannibalized by the survivors of other vessels. Mutual distrust is the general rule, as resources are limited, but also because the bleed of reality warping hyperspace has deleterious effects on the human mind, leading to paranoia and often insanity. This may or may not explain the general xenophobia of the non-marooned races that make Limbo home.

by Tony DiTerlizzi

There are multiple species of the froglike humanoid Slaad existing in state of mutual hostility with each other and apparently every other sapient being. The Red are near bestial, the Blue are barbaric and more organized, while the somewhat more intelligent Green are merely narcissistic and sociopathic. All known Slaad are all the more unpleasant due to their parasitic or infectious means of reproduction. Both the Blue and the Green have human slaves indoctrinated to believe being used in such a way allows they themselves to be reborn as more evolved Slaad.

There is rumored to be a fourth Slaad race--the Gray or Elder Slaad--that created the others in a rash attempt at eugenics, but credible reports of encounters exist. The Slaad place almost religious significance on an asteroid they call "the Spawning Stone" that is purported to contain their ancient genetic laboratory-temple and the cloning vats from which all Slaad species were born. 

The so-called mad monks of Githzerai are sallow-skinned ascetics with settlements on various asteroids and dwarf planetoids. They are not hospitable, but neither are they as murderous as the Slaad. The Githzerai have protected themselves against "hyperspace madness" to some degree by mediation, physical discipline, and psychic links between abbots and their subordinates. Still they often swing between periods of religious ecstasy and intense emotion or dream-like dissociation. They believe such openess to the divine Chaos of hyperspace will allow their intellects to complete a cycle of rebirth.

This is a follow-up to this post.

Wednesday Comics: Storm: The Deep World

I finally broke down and ordered the Don Lawrence Storm hardcovers I had been eyeing for some times, so it seems like a good time to start a  retrospective of the long-running science fantasy series:

Storm: The Deep World (1978)
Art by Don Lawrence & Script by Saul Dunn

From a satellite in orbit around the planet Jupiter, a manned-mission to closely observe the Great Red Spot is about to be launched. The UN emissaries bid the astronaut Storm (that's the only name we're given) good luck before he enters his ship: the aptly named "Storm Probe."

Storm's ship gets a bit to close to the Spot and is drawn in by its hurricane winds. Storm blacks out from the G forces. Mission control is unable to save him. In fact, his ship seems to disappear into the Spot. Storm is lost.

When Storm wakes up, his ship is still in Jupiter's atmosphere, but there is no Great Spot--and no satellite! Believing they gave him up for dead, he sets a course for earth and puts himself in suspended animation. The trip takes a year, and when he arrive the Earth has changed.

When, Storm comes out of suspended animation, he finds the Florida he thought he landed in to be frozen and airless. He dons his spacesuit and goes outside to investigate. He finds a house mostly covered by snow and at where he believes the coast should be, a cliff edge:

Storm climbs down into the valley. He finds the air is better there, but he gets an unfriendly welcome from sword-wielding warriors. He manages to kill one of them, but ultimately the other knock him out and steal his spacesuit.

The warriors take the loot to their king, Ghast. Ghast realizes the clothes are dwarfed in value by the strange man who wore them. The man who could tell him what these things mean and how they work. He orders him minions to go back out and get him! They do so, taking an iguana--one of the city's giant guardians:

They find Storm, now dressed and outfitted with the stuff from the man he killed, and capture him, thanks to the iguana beast's tongue. They take Storm into their ancient-seeming city to a prison where he see's a face looking out from him from a cell in passing:

TO BE CONTINUED

A Star Warriors Summary

Along with a new text block for the noble Star Knights and the nefarious Dark Star Warriors, here's a list of the posts I've done regarding this mini-setting so far:

The Azuran System - A map and brief gazetteer of where the action takes place.
STAR WARRIORS! - the introduction to the Star Warriors Universe.
The Bad Guys in the setting.

The Grim Frontier

After seeing The Revenant this weekend in all its visceral frontier glory, a setting idea occurred to me: Take the resource management of the dungeon and combine it with survivalist horror in an American-ish (though ahistorical) frontier setting: The Grim Frontier.

The bullet points:

Elements: Potentially easy death, resource management, and some horror elements beloved by many old school gamers; an evocation for modern audience of the strangeness or alienness of new environments through use of Roadside Picnic-esque zones elements (like my random tables for those); possible implication of post-apocalypticness of the level of The Gunslinger. The wilderness as an area of unsettled reality like the Weird of the Hill Cantons or the West in Felix Gilman's Half-Made World. Ancient mounds, giant skeletons or mummified dwarfs borrowed from the real folklore of the West; vaguely late 18th to first few decades of the 19th level of technology, probably with low magic.

Differs from: The Weird Frontier (more emphasis on horror and resource management, perhaps, hence the "grim"); Fantasy Western (earlier time period than the classic Western); Fantasy American Frontier (not specifically the American continent with the attending ethnic groups, political, and religious struggles).

Inspirations:
Film: Black Robe, The Revenant, Man in the Wilderness, Aquirre: The Wrath of God, Ravenous.
Comics: Manifest Destiny, Pilgrim.
Books: The Gunslinger, Roadside Picnic, Half-Made World and The Rise of Ransom City.

People of the Land of Azurth

Here's an excerpt from a reference I'm making for my players: A catalog of the NPCs they've encountered.

Aura: Princess of the Cloud Folk and daughter of King Cumulo. Like her father, she was held captive in the dungeon beneath the Cloud Castle so that Zykloon could insure the Cloud Folk’s loyalty.

Calico Bonny: The seldom-seen queen of Rivertown’s ramshackle flotilla red-light district, "The Floating World." Her palace is the Queen Azura where she also runs a cabaret. Most of her dealings are handled by her representative(s), Fleur.

Cheape, Aunder: A merchant from the northern Country of Yanth. One of the captives freed from the Cloud Castle’s dungeon, made it out of the ordeal alive and presumably returned home.

Cumulo: The boisterous King of the Cloud Folk. He was held hostage in the Cloud Castle’s dungeon by Zykloon to ensure the cooperation of his son, Prince Thunderhead, and the rest of the Cloud Folk with the giant wizard’s commands.

Fleur: A series of lissome, serene (or perhaps disinterested) young women who serve as the intermediaries for the reclusive Calico Bonny in her dealings.

Gladhand, Yrrol B.: Mayor of Rivertown and the self-appointed patron of our heroes.

Gritz, Lumpley: The Vagrant-ambassador of Lardafa, the City of Beggars. For weeks, he had been in Rivertown awaiting an audience with the Princess Viola (and panhandling to make ends meet), when he and his attache, Mister Jipp, were kidnapped by the Burly Brothers and held for ransom. After he was freed, he got his audience, and left to return to Lardafa.

Inkwell: Mayor Gladhand’s harried chief clerk and accountant. 

King Kuel: The unflappable, Fagin-esque mentor of Waylon and his childhood band of thieves.

Llailogan: A hermit and druid living in a cabin in the Enchanted Wood. He acts as the Wood’s protector, but was tricked and drugged by Ursa so that he wouldn’t interfere in her schemes.

Man in the Metal Suit: On level “L3” beneath Castle Machina, our heroes encountered a man-shaped constructed that they discovered had an old man pierced with various tubes encased within. They delivered to him a velvet bag containing tiny metal sculptures, apparently game pieces of some sort. The man seemed to be playing again with a person never clearly seen whose voice emanated from a large lens of some sort.

Mister Jipp: A well-dressed and (when moved to do so) well-spoken monkey who attends the Lardafan ambassador, Lumpley Gritz.

Nimbus: A callow and not terribly bright youth of the Cloud Folk. 

Pryce, Hyram: A merchant from the northern Country of Yanth. He was one of the captives freed from the Cloud Castle’s dungeon, made it out of the ordeal alive and presumably returned home to resume his rivalry with his more successful brother, Loward.

Thunderhead: Son of King Cumulo and Prince of the Cloud Folk. He enlisted the help of our heroes in freeing his father and sister from the dungeon of Zykloon.

Tubbs, Leakey: Captain of the keelboat Venture that transported our heroes from Rivertown to Ianthine.

Waylon's Childhood Bandmates: Wendle (a raccoon folk jug player), Herv (a human bass player), Emmy (a Renert singer and washboard player).

Woggin: A muscular Frox thief held captive in Zykloon’s dungeon beneath the Cloud Castle. He was freed by our heroes and aided them in their attempts to steal back the magic mirror containing the light of the Whim-Wham Stone.

The Galactic Great Wheel

Looking at my Azuran Sysem map and its conspicuous shape, an idea occurred to me: the AD&D "Great Wheel Cosmology" adapted to a science fiction setting. I've sort of toyed with that idea before in a science fantasy multiverse kind of way, but now I'm thinking more classic space opera in the vein of the things that inspired Traveller, but a bit more Vancian--as is appropriate to its AD&D roots.

So here's the pitch: Sometime in the future, an early spacefaring humanity encounters a gate and gains access to a system of FTL via hyperspace (or the astralspace) and gets its introduction to an ancient, galactic civilization with arcane rules and customs a bit like Brin's Uplift universe. At the "center" of the gates is Hub, a place with a gigantic neutral territory station--like Babylon 5 on a grander scale. Hub connects to all the various worlds. Here's a short sampling:

Archeron: A war world, possibly one where a decadent civilization has kidnapped warriors form different times and worlds to battles for their entertainment.

Baator: The world of beings who (like the Overlords in Childhood's End) look suspiciously like devils from Earth belief, and indeed act very much like them, destabilizing worlds with Faustian bargains somewhat like in Swanwick's Jack Faust.

Beastworld: A planet where many animal species share a group intelligence.

Carceri: An environmentally hostile ancient prison planet.

Limbo: A world in an area of reality warping "broken space" where hyperspace spills in leading to a graveyard of ships.

Mechanus: Robotic beings out to bring order to the galaxy via assimilation. A somewhat (maybe) more reasonable Borg.

Pandemonium: A world only inhabitable in subterranean caverns, but even those are swept by winds that generate infrasound that can drive humanoids insane like the titular Winds of Gath.