The Power of Faith

In response to my discussion of the predominant faiths of the City and its continent, Tom, chronicler of Middenmurk, asked about the role of clerics in the world--a topic I’ll take up today.

Many Oecumenical priests and monks, and Old Time Religion preachers and evangelists, have no magical powers whatsoever. The Good Book cautions against sorcery and witchcraft, and at various times and places throughout history its adherents have persecuted magical practitioners. Given the demonstrable reality of magic, and its obvious utility, this prohibition has had about as much success as the condemnation of prostitution or sexual promiscuity by religions of the world we know.

In fact, folk have continued to practice apotropaic magic to ward off evil through history. Even churches have been built with such workings placed on them. Folk-grimoires of Good Book-inspired magic have been used by rural magical practitioners and wise-folk for centuries. This has only sporadically been seen as “sorcery”, and seldom persecuted. The spells and rituals found in these grimoires are of protection for human or livestock from harmful magics or other sorts or harm, magical aide for everyday activities (agriculture, cooking, etc.), or the provision of luck. Many pious followers of the Old Time Religion, particularly in rural areas, are practitioners of this type of magic to this day.

The more centralized Oecumenical Hierarchate discourages this folk use (with only the mildest success) but has established certain religious orders whose goal has been the acquisition and mastery of magic for the greater glory of the Church and God. They tend to prefer the term theurgy ("divine-working"), and disparage the godless (and potentially soul-imperilling) thaumaturgy ("wonder-working"). These orders (both priestly and monastic) wield magics as powerful as any thaumaturgist, though their spells and rituals are somewhat different, having arisen by parallel development.

Despite the philosophical differences between these religious magic-users and their more secular rivals, there is no real functional difference between their two styles of magical practice.

There is a third type of religious magic-wielder who is fundamentally different. There are many names for such individuals but they're often called “gifted” or “miracle-workers.” Some thaumatological scholars have suggested that these individuals are actually mystics of some sort, but the gifted themselves believe their powers are granted by their Deity, or by their faith in the same.

Gifted manifest powers like speaking in tongues, healing, turning/destruction of undead, protection from evil, or supernatural strength or vitality. Some gifted have even been said to be able to appear in multiple places at once, or to fly. The gifted only have these powers when they are acting in congruence with the dictates of their god, or, as some scholars have pointed out, when the gifted person believes himself to be acting in accordance with his god’s will. These abilities tend to be activated by prayer, or song, or in some cases more extreme acts like self-flagellation, or ingestion of poison--any religious ritual to focus the mind and the spirit. These are idiosyncratic, varying from person to person.

Interestingly, the phenomena of those with gifts of faith is more common in rural areas than in urban ones, and more common among followers of more ecstatic sects than mainstream ones. It’s also in no way confined to those who actually have religious ordination or authority.

So those are the “faith-based” magical types of the City and its world. Exact game mechanics are yet to be determined (and open to suggestions), but I hope this provides the general idea.

Warlord Wednesday: Wolves of the Steppes

Due to blogger malfunction let's re-enter the lost world with a late installment of my issue by issue examination of DC Comic's Warlord, the earlier installments of which can be found here...

"Wolves of the Steppes"

Warlord (vol. 1) #19 (March 1979)

Written and Pencilled by Mike Grell; Inked by Vince Colletta

Synopsis: With the sky-sleds they picked up last issue, Morgan and Tara have taken their search for Joshua and Deimos to “the far corners” of Skartaris. Morgan says there’s only one place they haven’t looked that fits Saaba description of “half light, half shadow”--the polar opening where Skartaris meets the outer world.

In his lair, Deimos watches our heroes in a large crystal ball, Ashiya attending him, and oblivious baby Joshua playing nearby. Ashiya indugles her maternal instincts by playing wiht Joshua, but Demios reminds her the boy serves but one purpose--to allow him to enact his revenge upon Morgan, who destroyed his empire, killed him, and condemned him to a life in darkness.

Deimos’s inhuman servant brings him a goblet of fresh blood and he gulps it down before railing against his current state. His sorcerous vitality is only sustained by fresh blood, the decay of his body only slowed by remaining in darkness. And Travis Morgan is responsible.

Deimos summons his magical powers and directs them into the crystal ball, calling forth a storm to torment Morgan and Tara. A lightning bolt strikes Tara’s sled causing her to crash, separating her from Morgan.

Tara awakens under the lecherous gaze of Torgash, the leader of a group of horsemen. He claims her as his own, but soon finds no man touches Tara without her consent, as the first hand he lays upon her is cut off cleanly at the wrist. Before the rest of the surprised tribesmen can respond, Morgan and Shadow attack.

In a few minutes, the horsemen are ready to retreat before the fury of the strangers, but fate intervenes. The flaming wreckage of Tara’s flyer explodes, knocking the heroes (conveniently) unconscious. Torgash wants to slit their throats, but his comrade Nikola reminds him that for slaying their brothers the whole tribe should decide their fates.

Tara and Morgan awaken in the horseman’s hall tied to a wooden pillar, amid feasting and revelry. Torgash tells them their fates have been decided, and offers a demonstration of what’s in store for them, by ordering Shadow, suspended in a net, lowered into a pit with two bears.

Morgan goes into one his berserker rages and bursts his bonds to fight for justice, and his wife’s dog. He goes for Torgash, but winds up tackling one of their other captors, sending them both into the pit. Morgan grabs the hapless man’s sword and tosses him into the waiting jaws of a bear.

Torgash tosses Tara into the pit, but Morgan catches her. The bears have finished off the other man, and are now eyeing them. Morgan and Tara share a tender moment, thinking that there deaths are near. Then Morgan, brandishing the sword, yells a challenge at the bears--then drop kicks one. Neither that, or any of his sword-slashes do any good. The bear swats him a aside, then moves in for the kill.

Just in time, A spear thrown from above kills the bear, then a rope drops down. Climbing up, our heroes are greeted by Mariah and Machiste, who it turns out have just returned--and are the leaders of the tribesmen.

As Morgan punches Torgash into the pit to settle the score, Deimos still watches through his crystal ball. He smiles as he proclaims the stage set for his final triumph.

Things to Notice:

• This issue isn't designated as part of "The Quest" like the last three.
• The strange color of Skartarian fauna is again on display with a lemon yellow stegosaurus and green bears.
• Ashiya, Deimos’s hag-disguised-as-hottie crony from #10, makes a return appearance.
• Deimos leaves human bones laying around his abode for little Joshua to play with.

Where It Comes From:
The title of this issue refers to the Cossack-like horseman--Morgan specifically calls them such in the story. It may have been directly taken from an older work with Cossack characters. Khlit the Cossack, star of several adventure stories by Harold Lamb, was often referred to as “the Wolf of the Steppes.” Robert E. Howard used the same phrase as this issue's title to describe his Hyborian Age kozaki.

After last issue's science fiction infused story, and the prior issue’s fantasy flourishes, this issue rounds out the review of Warlord’s influences with more a straight-on adventure yarn, if we ignore Deimos’s scenes.

Summer Reading

Looking for a good genre read for a summer vacation? Since I got a Kindle earlier this year, I’ve been able to buy books on even more of an impulse than before, since now I don’t have to find a place to physically house them. Here are a few, one digital and two physical, I’ve found particularly worthwhile--two just happen to be from the same author:

Fathom by Cherie Priest is the first Kindle formatted novel I purchased, and I was off to auspicious start. This is a modern fantasy, something like some of Neil Gaiman’s work,but who it reminds me of most is Tim Powers. It’s got the usual Powers elements--mythology reinterpreted, a bit of secret history, and obscure tidbits of the real world recast in a clever way. The story stars two young, female cousins on an island off the coast of Florida. They become involved in a battle between two powerful deities/elementals--one of water and one of earth. The water elemental has a plan to awaken the leviathan sleeping in the depths--and destroy the world. The young cousins are transformed into something other than human, and serve as pawns for the dueling supernatural beings.

Boneshaker is my second recommendation from Cherie Priest. This is what the kids are calling “steampunk” these days. Priest calls the planned alternate-history series “The Clockwork Century.” In a world where the Civil War still rages in the 1880s--abetted by superior transportation technology--an arrogant inventor's digging machine has turned Seattle into a no-man’s land, surrounded by 200 foot high walls. These walls are to hold in the blight--a gas, and one of those genre fictions substances that has an amazing variety of effects, all bad. The blight kills many that inhale it, and turns the rest into decaying zombies (“rotters”), and causes corrosion and decay of inanimate objects. Oh, and it can also be used to make a deadly and addictive drug called “lemon sap.”

When Zeke, the teenage son of the inventor responsible, heads into the blight-soaked city in a misguided attempt to clear his father’s name, Briar, his mother, catches a ride on an airship flying over the city to go after him. Yes, there are airships--this is steampunk, remember--so that’s a requirement. It’s also got another evil inventor in a sinister gasmask, an underground squatter society, inscrutable Chinamen, and the aforementioned zombies. What’s not to like?

My last recommendation is a work of nonfiction, but it does deal with magic. Spiritual Merchants by Carolyn Morrow Long takes on a fascinating topic I’ve dealt with here before--so-called spiritual supplies, used predominantly for African American folk magic. It outlines the history and origins of rootwork and related systems, and then details how the spiritual products industry went from local hoodoo drug stores, and small mail order operations, to major manufactures distributing products nationwide, with catalogs and the like. If you like to draw inspiration from real-world belief for your gaming, or just have an interest in real world magical systems, then its worth checking out.

That oughta do it for now.  It's only July, though, and I've still got a stack of books awaiting me.

If You Wanna Get to Heaven...

The dominant faiths of the City and the strange New World came were brought from Ealderde. The Natives had their own religions of course, as did the black folk, but their belief systems have either been persecuted out of existence (like some of the Native tribes) or forced to syncretize with the predominant religion (in the case of the black folk).

The Ealderdish colonists practiced a variety of faiths, but all of them were variations of a monotheistic religion which, like many things on the City’s terra inusitata (if my rusty Latin is still functional), it bears some resemblance to faiths of the world we know. The central holy writ of the religion is known as The Good Book. Many of the stories in it resemble incidents from the Biblical Old Testament or other works of the Abrahamic tradition, but tend to be less specifically placed in time or place and more “fable-like” or "folk-tale-like" in presentation. Likewise the New Testament analog with its “Redeemer,” is more of a series of parables, dialogues, and sayings, and less of a narrative.

There are numerous faiths based on numerous competing interpretations or variations of practice related to The Good Book. There’s the Old-Time Religion with very little church hierarchy, and a strong emphasis on good works, and on personal study the Good Book. Variant Old-Time ecstatics may experience glossolalia or other mystical manifestations. Such practices are seen as unsophisticated and rustic by City folk, but this sort of thing is common in the villages of the Smaragdines.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Oecumenical Hierarchate. This church is older that the so-called Old Time Religion, and has much more elaborate ritual and church structure. Its practitioners venerate a number of saints and keep a full calendar of ritual observances. Being less common among the Ealderdish who came to the new world, Oecumenicals are stereotyped as superstitious and foreign.

The people of the City’s world have a large amount of clear evidence of the existence of God or gods. After all, numerous adventurers have encountered angels from the Armies of Salvation or devils from the Hell Syndicate. A few have actual made physical journeys to Heaven or Hell. Confusingly, the Heavens visited and the monotheistic Gods encountered are not identical. In other words, multiple, competing sole creators seem to exist!

The number of heavens for these alternate Gods is generally given as “seven,” but its likely this is just a poetical convention. Some scholars believe there are as many heavens as there are faiths--each with a God that fits their particular belief. The devout are, of course, skeptical of this idea, and tend to view all Gods but theirs as false.

How this arrangement came into being, and what it says about the nature of the universe is subject of a lot of debate, but no clear answer.

It should be noted that “pagan” gods and goddess are also known to exist, but these beings typically seem weaker and closer to human scale in terms of power--though wielding magics well beyond mortals. They’re sometimes referred to as “small” gods, by thaumaturgical practitioners who are more accepting of their existence than the faithful.

There are also concepts personified (called eikones by scholars), seeming existing on a level equivalent to the greatest small gods, or between the small gods and the singluar [sic] God(s). One theory holds that the eikones are powerful spirits created by God to help in the day to day managment of the world, while another holds they are the product of the human mind and its inherent tendency to anthropomorphization.  Interestingly, the general populace is mostly unaware of their existence, despite the fact their lives are affected by them daily. More on this class of beings in a later post.

Seeds of Revolution

Happy Fourth of July to everybody who celebrates such things.

The holiday has got me thinking about revolutions and how they might be used in gaming. Just a glance at the Wikipedia page listing revolutions and rebellions shows that there are a lot of real world examples to draw inspiration from. If the leap from real to imagined is to great, they’ve also got a page of fictional rebellions and coups to help you out--though they seem to have fairly broad definitions of what constitutes such.

Revolutions/rebellions can provide a lot of material to work with. They can be positive or negative, or both, at different times--the term can encompass everything from the Star Wars trilogy to the Reign of Terror. There are counterrevolutions and competing revolutionary forces (The Mexican Revolution of 1910 being a great model for this--and James Carlos Blake’s The Friends of Pancho Villa being a great fictionalized view of the whole bloody affair). The highest ideals and the basest acts of humanity are on display.

Revolts in fantastic fiction show most of the characteristics of real world ones. Conan takes part in a coup largely free of ideology and gets himself a kingdom. The supposed democratic revolt of John Farson, “The Good Man”, against the feudal rule of the gunslingers in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series is a horrible farce, and representative of the greater dissolution of the world. The communist-by-way-of-the-French-Revolution nation of Quatershift in Stephen Hunt’s steampunkish novels has the absolute worst elements of the real revolutions that inspired it--from purges to nonsensical ideologic policies that cause massive death.

Well, you get the idea. Maybe amid the monarchies, magocracies, and decadent republics of the standard fantasy world there's room on the map for a land in the midst of revolution, or recently recovered from one. Maybe PCs are based in such a country. That would be put an interest spin on standard adventuring, and provide potential fodder for a lot nonstandard ones.

Weird Weapons, Weird War

“The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."

- Gen. George S. Patton

When the crazy-quilt patchwork of nations that was Ealderde erupted in the Great War, a number of new technologies were brought to bear. Thaumaturgical and alchemical weapons and "weaponizable" advances were among these, and were utilized on a scale never seen before--with long-lasting, and terrible consequences.

First among these was the use of alchemical weapons, particularly gas. The forces of Neustria were the first to utilize them with fragmentation shells filled with stinking cloud potions. The Staarkish army soon escalated to lethal chemicals. Their "Magic Corps Men" cast cloudkill which, as a heavier than air gas, was ideal for filling enemy trenches. Since mages are a quirky lot, generally ill-suited to military discipline, their numbers in the Staarkish forces were small, and it proved expedient to replace them with thaumaturgic shells which could be fired from artillery at a greater distance.  The gas could also be pumped out of tubes, if the wind directions were right. Soon these methods were adopted by all the larger nations.

Other, more exotic chemicals were tried. Acid fog was released from sprayers to discourage attackers or soften defenders. Yellow musk, the pollen of the eponymous creeper, cultivated in secure greenhouses, was used to entrance enemies and make them easy targets. Amorphing solutions delivered via artillery shells sowed terror by making flesh malleable, dissolving limbs or even melting soldier's together. The only limits were the imaginations (and funding) of the alchemists and thaumaturgic engineers.

Magical weapons of mass destruction were also employed, and could be delivered to distant targets through the use of artillery and airships. Thaumaturgical explosives and blights laid waste to cities and farmlands. Rays of searing light, or jets of intense cold fired from zeppelins cut swaths of destruction across enemy trenches. Implosive weapons literally collapsed fortifications--or hapless troops--in on themselves.

Then there were the weapons calculated to cause as much terror as direct damage. Teleportation beams were turned upon population centers. Fear rays lead to mass panic. The battlefield fallen were briefly animated to turn on their grieving comrades. This is to say nothing of the even more exotic reality-warping weapons which, though rare, were powerful enough to disrupt the elemental fields to this day.

Another technological change in the Great War was touted as potentially rendering the human soldier obselete. Constructs and automata have been used before, but never in such a scale. "Land ironclads" or "landships"--now colloquially called "tanks"--were an innovation by the army of Grand Ludd on thaumaturgical techniques used to make anthropomorphic golems. Some tanks required human operators, but others were automonous to a degree, like the golems. This proved to be another one of the mistakes of war, as man-hunting kill-machines still roam the blasted former battlefields and depopulated wastes of Ealderde.

Man-shaped golems were still used--largely for their flexibility and, in some cases, greater psychological effect on the enemy--but these were produced with greater mechanical skill, giving them a wider variety of uses. Once again terror was a prime goal, as squads of murderous constructs with the appearance of children's toys were sent into unsuspecting villages in the dead of night. 

It's the hope of many that the most lasting innovation of the conflict will be that man has finally had enough of war. Certainly, the devastation wrought in Ealderde, and the refugees that still pour into the New World to escape the post-war horror, ought to be powerful reinforcers for such a lesson. Still, as the cynics among us would point out, no one has ever lost money betting on the short-memory or long-term foolishness of mankind.

Trouble So Hard

The so-called black folk are old acquaintances of hardship. From ancient slavery to modern discrimination, mistrust, and even sporadic pogroms, they have endured--even prospered--still clinging to their old customs. The Ealderdish-descended majority stereotype them as lazy, ignorant, and superstitious. It's a common belief that they are cursed as a people.

Ironically, the ancient stories and songs of black folk might agree, after a fashion.

Black folk are found throughout the continent, but are most common in the South, where they were once enslaved by the giantish Ancients, and the City and the Steel League, where they have migrated in more recent times to find work. The City neighborhood of Solace in particular is the cultural capital of the Black New World.  They remain something of a people apart, and tend to settle in their own enclaves, in no small part because it provides them some degree of protection from wider society. There, in secret, they can tell stories of the ancient days, before the calamity that befell them.

Long ago when the black folk spoke one tongue--and not the tongue of the Ealderdish invaders--they called themselves "The True People." They first enterered Ealderdish history when merhcant-explorers came to their continent and named it "Ebon-Land," not for its peoples' skin tones, but for the strong, dark wood they found there. The folk were primitive, though there were scattered, enigmatic ruins of a more advanced culture--one the Ealderdish were certain couldn't have arisen natively.

They met them again on islands off the New World, and in the South, where the black folk had been brought by the Ancients to toil in the construction of their tomb-mounds, and underground cities. The ancients were gone, and the black folk, like the Natives, were seen as squatters in the ruins of a greater race. The Ealderdish tolerated them (mostly), but didn't trust these people who kept to themselves, and knew powerful magics.

The Ealderdish may have not remembered the black folk, but the black folk remembered them. Their old campfire tales and songs recalled what they see as the true history of the world, a history the infant cultures of Ealderde have never known.

Once Ebon-Land held the greatest civilization in the world, their tales say, but that civilization was at war with the rapacious people of now sunken Meropis. Though Ebon-Land was more advanced in art and philosophy, Meropis surpassed them in the arts of war. Their wizards worked mighty magics not just to destroy Ebon-Land, but to wipe it from history. Even with Ebon-Land's strong defenses, the ritual was horrifically effective. Only a few now-anomalous ruins were left of a once mighty culture. And only the strongest willed of the black folk even remembered the past that had been taken from them.

So those who remembered told their people's stories, and saw to it that they were passed down over the generations. The stories also warned of the results of the depraved experiments of Meropis--where its sorcerer-scientists had sought to create a race of soldiers by crossbreeding humans with the subhuman stock of the northern forests. With Meropis gone, the savage, half-human tribes spread out over the land they would come to call the Old World, Ealderde, never guessing how young it truly was.