Minaria: Immer

Immer is a hinterland compared to the grander, more civilized nations to the south like Mivior and Muetar. However humble its settlements, simple its castles, or rustic its lords, it still serves an important strategic purpose both as a buffer against the elves and goblins and as a rich source of natural resources.

The kingdom of Immer has its origins in the Vidvarnii adventurers who traveled north from Lake Lorimer to hunt and trap and trade with natives of the wilderness. They supplied the lands to the south with furs, honey, and beeswax. Eventually a stockade fortress and trading post was established at Muscaster, which would grow into the town as settlers followed the woodsmen north.

The nominal king (or Grand Prince, more accurately) of Immer is Euwint I, often called "Euwint of the Marshes" which he fancies as a byname to commemorate his dubious victory over a Muetarian sortie in the Wrogga Lowlands, but his detractors imbue his sobriquet with a different meaning entirely. Euwint is of the line of Hrorvikid warlords who beat back the encroaching Muetarians and subdued the northern tribes, establishing modern Immer. However, his upbringing was entrusted to the wizards of the Invisible School in the modern custom. They fostered him in the household of his more tractable cousin, a border lord of the Lowlands. The lords of the north and west consider him a bit effete, perhaps even soft. 

None would ever make such a claim regarding his wife, Igweena. Though she comports yourself in the required courtly fashion, she is the daughter of the Duke of Monen who holds Gap Castle and defends the land from the approach of the goblins of Zorn through the mountain pass. Igweena, it is known, has been counselling her husband in reinforcing the North, possible in preparation of seizing the land beyond the River Rapid to secure access to the gold found therein. 

It is also whispered that Igweena, like the peasantry of her mountain home, still holds to the tripartite goddess in secret--in fact, some claim she is even a priestess--despite public allegiance to the official Ansharite cult. 

The Small Setting

For some reason, the idea of a small setting has long had some appeal for me. Something like the British Isles or any other single country, sure, but also even smaller, like an single province of a country (Averoigne, Poictesme)--or smaller still, like an immense Gormenghast-esque castle and its environs.

Obviously, hexcrawling has limited to no utility in a setting like this, and it's probably not grist for a long term campaign, if you do the usual D&D activities. But you know, most campaigns I play in or run don't seem to be long term enough that that would create into a problem. My Land of Azurth campaign will be 7 years old this month, and while the players have now ventured beyond Yanth Country, I feel like we could easily still be in that terrain (roughly the size of the state of Georgia), allowing for the brief planar, time travel, and underground other-realm excursions they've done.

What's the appeal to me of the small setting? I'm not exactly sure. Perhaps it's the thought of accreting a lot of granular detail in one part of a setting in a way players will actually find interesting versus that detailed city supplement approach where most of it never gets used. There's also the possibility of developing more of a robust "supporting cast" and layering in mysteries big and small. It also makes adventure locales less likely to be one-offs, encouraging the portrayal of them as living, changing places.

In short, maybe, it's bringing some of the aspects of the megadungeon to a setting that isn't centered around a megadungeon.

Wednesday Comics: DC, January 1981 (wk 1, pt 1)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I start my second year (cover date-wise). I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of  October 9, 1980. 

Batman #331: Wolfman and Fleisher team-up on the writing credits (Fleisher is credited as "scripter." Maybe Wolfman is spreading himself thin?) with workmanlike Novick pencils. A lethal vigilante, The Electrocutioner, stalks the streets of Gotham killing criminals that got off on a "technicality" which there seemed to be a lot of in 80s media. These days, we tend to think of that as "due process" and "civil rights." Anyway, Batman wants to stop this guy, but almost gets electrocuted the first time he tries. The next time they fight, the Electrocutioner seems to die of his own gimmick, but we get the ol' hand reaching out of the water bit, so you know he'll be back. In the midst of all that Robin just wants to talk about their relationship, because he knows Bruce is mad at him for quitting college, but Bruce just wants to catch the bad guy. When Dick discovers Bruce is letting Talia stay at his place, he blows up and storms out. Honestly, Wolfman is really trying to make this riff between the dynamic duo a thing, but at all comes off so one-sided, like Dick is just spoiling for a fight with Bruce. 

The backup story by Barr and Newton, has Batman disguising himself as a cop to infiltrate the GCPD and expose a corrupt cop who may be a friend to Gordon. It turns out there is a corrupt cop, but he isn't Gordon's friend, but one of that guy's colleagues. What's interesting about this story is Barr has Batman in disguise on a police firing range unable to shoot because he has a "psychological block" against using a gun. It's odd that Barr writes this, because in 1987 he'll write the infamous "Batman: Year Two" arc where a young Batman is forced to use a gun against the Reaper. He also will write other Batman stories post-Crisis where Batman will occasionally pick up a gun. I wonder what changed his mind?

DC Comics Presents #29: Starlin brings a bit of his cosmic flourish to an encounter between Superman and the Spectre. Picking up where last issue left off, Superman is trying to find his cousin, who went flying off to who knows where at supraluminal speeds. Superman goes faster and faster until he shifts into higher planes of existence. He sees Supergirl, but then the Spectre stops him. Spectre tells Superman that the one he works for has sent him to stop the Man of Steel, but just like in the recent Martian Manhunter issue Superman takes anyone telling him to hold on a second as an invitation to fight. Not that he can do anything to the Spectre who is by now in his cosmic being mode. Superman eventually gives up, and Spectre presents Supergirl, still unconscious. He explains that Superman's actions ripping the fabric of reality and all could have destroyed whole universes. Superman has learned his lesson, and he and his cousin head home. This issue reminds me a lot of an issue of Alan Moore's Supreme, with a Starlin-esque style and a run in with a Spectre stand-in that humbled the titular character.  

The backup is "What Ever Happened To..." Dr. Mid-Nite. Again, I feel like Rozakis and Saviuk just give us essentially another Dr. Mid-Nite adventure. It doesn't really live up to the title.  

Flash #294: Conway pinch hits for Bates and has the Flash fighting the Pied Piper in a story lame enough that it loses the cover to the backup feature. Pied Piper is blackmailing cities by leading hordes of exotic animals (from zoos or something? I don't know) to attack unless he's paid off to "lead them away." No one can figure out how he's summoning them, but Flash eventually does and uses the Piper's own trick against him.

In the Firestorm backup, the Flash accidentally causes a sonic boom beneath Superman's flying prison, and the Atomic Skull gets loose. The Flash actually hitches a hide on a jet liner then runs across the clouds to check it out. Anyway, a blast from the Atomic Skull irradiates him, and the Flash will be a swift moving hazard unless he can find some way to get rid of it. He goes to Firestorm for help who obliges, but then gets drunk off all the nuclear energy. The Flash has got to manage drunk Firestorm to get him to take out the Atomic Skull. It's goofy enough for a Bob Haney yarn, but it's just more Conway.

Ghosts #96: Doctor Thirteen keeps ghostbreakin' in a story by Kupperberg and Adams. An air show is apparently haunted by the ghost of a WWI pilot, but when a vintage biplane with no one at the controls shoots down another plane, killing the pilot, Thirteen is on the case. It turns out it's a guy with a remote control device and an overly complicated plan, hoping to crash the plane into an office to destroy records of his embezzlement. See, there's no such thing as ghosts!

Meanwhile, the rest of the comic is full of ghosts. Kashdan and Henson have two stories this issue. The first involves a criminal who can't escape from a train because the engineer he killed still has his ghostly foot on the deadman's clutch until the train arrives at the prison. In "The Phantom Strangler" a buffalo poacher is smothered to death inside the buffalo carcass he's sleeping in overnight by the ghost of the man he killed. Finally, Allikas and Landgraf reveal "Dread of the Deadly Domestic" which is really a cautionary tale about not taking a reference for a housekeeper from the sister of your dead wife who thinks your a murderer. While Rodney's away in Europe, the new zombie-like housekeeper with fuchsia hair terrorizes his wife who becomes convinced the maid's the ghost of Rodney's former wife. Rodney returns form Europe just in time to reveal it was all a ruse and the housekeeper is actually his former sister-in-law doing some sort of Scooby-Doo-esque scaring. How has Rodney deduced all this? Twist! His plane went down over the Atlantic, and he's a ghost. The ghost of his former wife told him.

Jonah Hex #44: The story continues from last issue, with Hart and Hex having escaped the Apaches, but now facing the Spast Brothers. The Brothers crease Hart's scalp, knocking him out, and Hex gets shot in the shoulder. They make it to the river where they hide out until the Spasts are gone. Hex takes Hart to a farm house to heal while he sets out to clear his name. Mei Ling, meanwhile, has recuperated and gone to a saloon to try to find Hex, only to find the Spast Brothers. Hex shows up and guns them all down when they threaten his girl. Back at the farm, Hart reads the message Hex left for him, then helps the family fight off an attack by the bandits sent to run them off by the land-grabbing, wealthy cabal in town. That cabal hears that Hex is still alive when he and Hart appear to be facing off in the street. Hex outdraws the marshall, then goes to negotiate with the businessmen. They confirm his suspicions about their misdeeds and offer to cut him in if he'll finish running off the homesteaders. Marshall Hart, very much alive, has heard their confession and arrests them. He and Hex had planned a ruse to flush them out. DeZuniga joins as inker here. He'll be on this title for quite some time.

Next issue, Hex is to be married to Mei Ling. I'm sure that will go off with no problems.

G.I. Combat #225: As usual, there are two Haunted Tanks stories written by Kanigher with art by Glanzman and Ayers. The first is the best of the two, with the tank crawling through a cave on the lookout for a secret weapons cache, which Prussian military officers plan to use to start another world war after Hitler's inevitable defeat. Thankfully, the cave has tunnels big enough for the tank crew to complete their mission, and the leader of the cabal is fortuitously killed in the Allied bombing of Dresden. The second story sees the Haunted Tank damaged, without working weapons and forced to tow a Stuart tank with weapons but no functioning treads, becoming a "2 for 1 Tank." We get a flashback to the early days when the Haunted Tank first became haunted and they had another loader before Gus named Arch.

The others stories include an O.S.S. tale, where in a departure, the protagonist survives. He gets close enough to kidnap a German scientist working on chemical weapons in Italy by taking a sedative and playing a corpse in a coffin. He smuggles the scientist out of the country in the same way. Boltinoff and Matucenio deliver a perfunctory story about a glider crew in the Invasion of Normandy. Haney and Evans present a yarn about a wheelchair bound vet who deserves the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions in the war, but nobody survived to write the report to get him one. One day, after a chance encounter with the Japanese ambassador in Washington, the soldier accompanying the ambassador reveals he was the enemy commander on that island that day and confirms the vet's story. The short yarn by Allikas and Amongo has a salty old British fisherman getting the better of a German frogman with a bucket of chum and a hungry shark.

Justice League of America #186: This issue is dedicated to Dick Dillin. Conway is again joined by Perez for the return of the Shaggy Man. Or rather return of one of the two Shaggy Men. The Shaggy Man is rampaging through Moscow and the JLA, absent their heavy-hitters have to rely on Batman's planning to stop him. After leading the Shaggy Man where they want him to go, Batman lures him onto a rocket and they blast him into space. Maybe not as epic as the New Gods arc, but I feel like Conway is getting a much better feel for the JLA now and delivering solid, Bronze Age stories.

Minaria: Half-Elves

This continues the series on my version of the world of Minaria, extrapolated from the map, manuals, and pieces of the boardgame, Divine Right.

In my post about the elves of Neuth last week I neglected to discuss the Ercii or Half-elves. The name comes from a contraction of the Elvish term for "mixed blood." Half-elves have faced persecution within the forest of Neuth, alternately being expelled or limited in terms of their movements and activities.

Some Ercii, however, do perform an important function within Elven society, and members of that select group have even managed to prosper. Elven nobility finds direct engagement with financial matters beneath their station. Unwilling however, to leave these matters strictly to elves or lower station, have brought on individual Ercii or sometimes groups of them as factors or bookkeepers. Some of these have become prosperous enough to be able to act independently acted as moneylenders to other noble houses.

The Elvish Crown has also employed Ercii as ambassadors or diplomats to other lands or and allows them to operate as money changers (so long as the Crown gets its share of the profits). Some of the these Ercii have not only become wealthy but able to wield (discretely) a great deal of political power. Perhaps some times more power than the Elves know, as they are the conduit through which the kingdom interacts with the outside world.

Still, their status as second class citizens is something they are unlikely to forget. Many Ercii in service to Elven nobles were taken from their families as infants and raised as servants to the noble house. More than one has had their fortune seized by a covetous noble who claimed it was their due. Others have lost their lives for their effrontery of being a noble's creditor.

Minaria: Elfland

This is the first post in a series, perhaps. My version of Minaria, extrapolated from the map, manuals, and pieces of the boardgame, Divine Right.

Humans are not welcome in the shadowed and quiet forests of Elfland. This antipathy is ancient. In the age following the fall of the Lloroi Empire, the Elves of Neuth (as they call the great forest in their own language) viewed the primitive tribes that they encountered as they ventured from their home as little more than clever beasts. The years have taught them that those beasts can be dangerous; they have learned to be wary of humans, but not to respect them.

The Elves believe themselves to the heirs to the Lloroi, possibly even a direct continuation of that great race. They take pride in being the only culture to withstand the Cataclysm without a reversion to barbarism. They prefer not to discuss the crumbling spires of their half-buried, ancient capital of Letho or the much reduced extent of their lands.

The Great Forest is relatively unspoiled by human standards. Their craft and science (they do not call it magic) is such that their communities often blend into their surroundings. Only another elf might know that they were there.

Humans who have dared to enter the forest easily become lost and often have returned with their memories completely gone. Those are the ones that return at all. Elven rangers patrol the wood with hounds whose howls are uncannily like human voices in lamentation and whose all too human faces hold horror in their eyes. Few elven settlements would give shelter to human stranger, raised as every elf is on tales of the malice of the beast Man.

"One day," say the elven lords to their knights when they are feasting in their hidden halls. "One day our host will ride forth and scatter the human rabble before us."

Wednesday Comics: DC, December 1980 (wk 2, pt 2)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around September 25, 1980. 

Legion of Super-Heroes #270: Conway's and Janes' story continues with most of the Legionnaires in the hands of the Fatal Five. Timber Wolf warns the others, but Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl are captured when the villains assault the Legion headquarters. Only Light Lass and Timber Wolf remain free to come to the rescue. The Fatal Five, however, are at least somewhat distracted by their resentment at having to take orders from the mysterious Dark Man. Timber Wolf discovers the identity of the Dark Man at the end of the issue: he's an unbifurcated Tharok! Another solid issue from this creative team.

Mystery in Space #114: This issue is a mixed bag. The first story by Wessler and Craig has a couple trying to find a refugee from their world that's imperiled by an imminent collision with another planet, only to fall into the hands of a planetary despot. The woman appears to choose to marry the despot and have her former lover exiled, but that's only a ruse to allow him to escape. The planet they arrived on is the planet their homeworld is going to collide with! The next story by Levitz and Spiegle is slight, but a little more clever. We follow a day in the life of a really nice guy in the future, only to find out it is only for the sake of this good-hearted guy that tentacled, extradimensional horrors haven't yet destroyed the Earth.

The co-creators of Blue Devil and Amethyst, Mishkin and Cohn, team-up with von Eeden for a kind of shaggy dog story about a man escaping a future conquest of Earth in a vessel with a damaged warp drive. It sends him back in time to...Ellis Island. Skeates and Ditko team up for a cynical, EC-esque story about a loving couple leaving a time capsule to be found by future generations. Their heart-felt expression of love only becomes another reason for people to kill each other in the primitive, post-apocalyptic future. Conway and Yeates finish out the issue with a time travel yarn about an attempt to kill Hitler that leads to a worse consequence--which precipitates a chain of assassinations as successive time travelers try to fix the failures of the past.

New Adventures of Superboy #12: The lead story here is weird because Bates seems leave the primary conflict unresolved. A harried Superboy still dressed as Clark Kent winds up saving a rich man from driving off a cliff. The man uses his resources to track Clark down and begins publicizing his heroism and putting down Superboy as not as heroic because he has powers to protect him from danger that the man assumes Clark does not. Neither Clark nor the Kents like all the attention he is getting. This plotline is never really resolved; Instead, the rich man's nephew and heir tries to kill Clark and Superboy stops him. Maybe they're going to deal with Clark still being famous next issue, but I kind of doubt it. The backup by Bridwell and Tanghal relates Superboy's first meeting with Perry White where he reveals to the world in an interview that he's an alien. This story is mainly interesting because Superboy says he revealed his origins to President Eisenhower, thus setting these events somewhat specifically in time.

Sgt. Rock #347: This issue opens with one of Kanigher's blunt and simplistic, but not ineffective, anti-war tales. Easy is saved from a tank by the heroic actions of their CO, but the man is left blind and dumb, if not in something of a vegetative state. With the Germans advancing, the staff plans to leave him in the hospital for the Germans to find and move to one of their hospitals as the rules of war dictate. Rock isn't having any of that, so he personally drives the mute and expressionless officer through a forest, avoiding a German personnel carrier, and nearly getting blown away by a artillery. On the way, Rock talks of his father (dead in a steel mill accident), his brother (dead in a daredevil dive off a bridge), and his other brother (missing since the Japanese took the Philippines). Rock sees his company advancing into the range of the artillery and takes what action he can to save them. After the battle, they find the CO was killed by shrapnel in the drive over. Rock opines he bled to death without a word, as if perhaps that was a measure of his mettle, but the man hadn't spoken since his original injury. It was unclear if he could. Anyway, Easy Company buries him and moves on to the next battle.

In the next story by Kelley and Severin, a bomber going down under fire thinking it's mission to destroy a German refinery was a failure lucks up and hits the real refinery. We get a second Sgt. Rock story or vignette about the Easy Company member Little Sure Shot. There's a one page profile on the Seneca war chief Cornplanter, then a story by Eads and Veitch about the only woman "who ever lead an American armed expedition against enemy forces," Harriet Tubman.

Super Friends #39: The Overlord decides to send evolved clones after the Super Friends. The first proves too powerful for them until they use his advanced traits against him, finally weakening him with concentrated exposure to a trace element in the Earth's atmosphere--krypton. A clever, though perhaps goofy, turn in a definitely goofy story. The Bridwell/Tanghal backup story has the Wonder Twins at a disco and tangling with a DJ and lightning tech using their powers for no good. These Wonder Twin stories are mildly interesting (mildly!) if you think about the roundabout ways they defeat villains. Who would ever think "form of a peacock" would be the right call?

Unexpected #205: This one is pretty good. First up, we get a Johnny Peril story by Barr and Sparling. Young Angela Lake has apparently been possessed for a second time, but Peril smells a rat, not brimstone. It turns out the exorcist is also a hypnotist and has faked Angela's possessions. The story ends with the possibility the exorcist himself might be possessed, though Johnny doesn't buy it. "A Match Made in Hades" by Kashdan and Rubeny has a lovelorn businessman buying a love potion from an old witch. When the object of his affections becomes positively obsessed and scary, he pays a hefty price for the antidote. Only then do we discover that the young woman is the witch's daughter, and it has all been a con. The last story by DeMatteis and Catan winds up getting reprinted in the Best of DC digest in 1981. Bruce used occultism to literally retreat into a psychic realm of fantasy after Cornelia dumped him. But he can't escape reality entirely, and his efforts to do just that cause him to confuse the two, resulting in the tragic death of Cornelia. To pay for his crime, Bruce sends himself to a Hell literally of his own imagining.

Unknown Soldier #246: Haney and Ayers/Tlaloc have the Soldier in Egypt, trying to help defeat Rommel. He winds up chasing a spy named with stolen war plans from Cairo into the desert. There are sandstorms and bandits-- and then the Soldier finds out it was all a trick! He unwittingly delivered the plans to Rommel himself. Luckily, some quick improvising on the Soldier's part makes Rommel think the plans are misdirection, so the Desert Fox is defeated in the Allied offensive, though he escapes to fight another day. Kanigher and Yeates give us a tale of the Vikings where an aging Chieftain discovers his greatest warrior in a recent raid was actually his daughter in disguise. The final story by Burkett and Ayers is continued, but starts off with a classic war comic opening: U.S. aviator is disparaging the "ruptured duck" B-17 he's forced to fly. When they reach the bombing target the bay doors won't open. They are unaware one of their crew (captured after the last raid) is being held in the German installation beneath them.

Warlord #40: Read more about it here. No OMAC back-up in this issue. Instead we get a "Tale of Wizard World."

Minaria

Thanks to everyone who came to my aid after Friday's post and offered suggestions of settings to riff on. I actually might wind up dabbling in more than one as so many good suggestions were offered. First though, I think I'll start with Minaria, the setting for the Divine Right board game.

It turns out there is actually quite a bit of background for Minaria if you take into account the articles written by the game's author in Dragon. I've only read a little bit of that, but there's good stuff there. Still, I think I would like to go with the map itself--evocative of so much "pre-D&D as genre" fantasy--and the slim setting information in the rules and game components.

The art on the personality cards supports the older fantasy feel of the map. None of the characters look "cool," rather the art makes me think of classic illustration in older fantasy works like the works of Cabell, Dunsany, or Eddison. Also, the humor in some of the naming in the map puts me in mind of some of those works as well.

So in broadstrokes, Minaria (from this material) strikes me as a place of Medieval(ish) lords and nations jockeying for power through warfare and intrigues, not unlike Game of Thrones, but with the slight humor Dunsany or Byfield's The Book of the Weird.

More to come!