Sorcerer's Skull

Over at Enworld Chris Helton has a review of the Azurth Adventure Digest. Check it out if your still on the fence about purchasing it. You might want to hurry, though, I have less than 30 copies of the print copy left in this printing.

I spent the rpg-related portion of my weekend getting copies of the Azurth Adventures Digest ready for mailing (There are still copies available. Get yours today!). My work on the Ghostlight Fen thing got delayed, so it seems like a good time to talk about influences of the as yet nameless setting of which its a part.

Lord Valentine's Castle (Robert Silverberg): A distant planet settled by humans and other species long ago. Despite a science fictional underpinning, it operates much like fantasy with mostly primitive technology and things like the Lady of Sleeps that promotes moral behavior by sending dreams and a competing King of Dream that sends nightmares.

Planet of Adventure (Jack Vance): A Planetary Romance (or Planetary Picaresque) which stands above the myriad of planetary romances due to Vance's wit, interesting alien species/cultures, and quirky minor characters.

The Coldfire Trilogy (C.S. Friedman): A science fantasy that (like Silverberg's Majipoor) feels more like straight up fantasy. Friedman adds the innovation of a rationalization for the existence of "magic" (not unlike Jorune).


The Prime Mondeign stories (Rob Chilson): These are in the dying earth subgenre, perhaps a bit more science fictional than Vance's stories (something a bit like a more rationalized and less computer gamey Numenera). These stories haven't been collected, but you can read one of them, "The Wortling," here.

The Spire by Simon Spurrier and Jeff Stokely: A Medievalish society of various aliens and mutants on a planet long ago settled by humans.

Jack Shear wrote a post last week where he espoused a number of "heresies" regarding D&D. One of these was that he didn't like the World of Greyhawk or Faerun. This got me to thinking about what I feel about D&D's various setting and their pros and cons as I see it. I don't claim to be an expert in any of these settings, so if you think I don't get them because of a lack of knowledge you are certainly free to go on thinking so. I'm just calling it like I see it.

Greyhawk
Pros: At its best, it really sort of feels like D&D and it seems organic. It's worldbuilding may not go into the annals of literary fantasy best practices, but it has a certain charm in accordance with the charm of old D&D itself.
Cons: Maybe the downside of that organicness is a lack of focus that makes it hard to get a handle on. The World of Greyhawk box set really doesn;'t give me any hint about how I should approach the material and the Gord novels (yeah, I read a couple) are all over the place. We get a gritty sort of Lankhmar thing in the beginning, then we wind up whooshing through the sky on Chariots of Sustarre.
Verdict: Not a huge fan overall, but I have more of a positive feeling than does Jack.

Forgotten Realms
Pros: They're big and a bit more coherent, literary worldbuildery. The Dragon articles about "The Realms" back in the day really captured my interest.
Cons: Their literary worldbuilding models seem to be the hordes of bland trilogies that choke the shelves to this day. It's not just vanilla, it's kind of corporate bland. "The Realms" seem to have been lost in the translation to official product.
Verdict: Less interesting that Greyhawk, though there are aspects to recommend, I guess.

Mystara/Know World
Pros: Well-presented, with distinct cultures that are easy to get a handle on. It's got the Hollow World, too. I find Immortals over gods (in BECMI) a sort of interesting thing, if not as well-explored as it could be. Also: a whole lot of Stephen Fabian.
Cons: The cultures' real-world antecedents are pretty blatant, but that doesn't bother me as much as it does other people. Gritty it is not, particularly, or dark.
Verdict: It's kind of vanilla, but it's vanilla done well. I'm more into it than the two previous worlds.

Caldwell!Dragonlance
Pros: There are some interesting twists to the vanillaness here; it is somewhat successful at evoking the epic fantasy subgenre.
Cons: A setting made for one story never seems as good for stuff outside of that story. It still presents pretty standard D&D like the settings above.
Verdict: A good setting for bad novels isn't a particularly good setting for my game. It is more maligned than it probably should be for the railroadness of its modules, but they are pretty railroady and are emblematic of the missteps of an era.

Ravenloft/Dark Sun/Planescape/Spelljammer
Pros: They all have interesting high concepts and are genuinely trying to do something different.
Cons: The high concepts are not always executed well or flavorfully. Corporate blandification seems to get in the way, as does bloat to ensure more supplements are made.
Verdict: I admire them all, but their specialized nature means they're sort of niche, and some of the niches I think I could do better doing my own thing. Planescape gets extra points for Tony DiTerlizzi.

Eberron
Pros: Pulp vs. fantasy is an idea I obviously like.
Cons: Despite all its talk of a different approach it seems to come out more like trad fantasy than any of the 2nd edition settings above.
Verdict: Maybe because it parallels my interest but does it in a utterly different way, I am predisposed not to like it, but it does generate more negative feeling from me than is probably warranted.

My favorite TSR published settings? Lankhmar, Empire of the Petal Throne, and (moving away from D&D) the Hyborian Age of Conan.

The first issue of the Azurth Adventures Digest is now on sale! Twenty-eight full color pages at 5.5 in. x 7.75 in. with art by Jeff Call and Jason Sholtis. There are random tables for the generation of quirky Motley pirates, a survey of interesting and enigmatic islands, and a mini-adventure on the Candy Isle. Plus, there are NPCs and a couple of monsters, all straight from my Land of Azurth 5e campaign.

Get the pdf here or go here for the print edition. (The link is also in the sidebar.)


For those of you interested in Mortzengersturm print editions: Once the first printing of the digest is sold and shipped, I'll again by selling Mortzengersturm. You can email me to get on the "waiting list."

While the English language Talislanta books are (currently) out of print (but official available for free here) the French translation of the game is still going strong, and apparently has some pretty cool art. Check these out:


The Ur

Phantasians

Mondre-Khan

The Hanging Tower is a short graphic novel (graphic novella?) by Sam Bosma. It's the story of "an old knight in search of a lost girl in a run-down fantasy world" according to the copy, but I might instead describe it as an aging adventurer facing her past (and some of her former comrades) in a world where magic is beginning to fade. The plot and the stories execution bear no small resemblance to the Western genre, an effect accentuate by the fantasyland's material culture, that's like the medieval world being quickly replaced by the turn of the (20th) century and a landscape reminiscent of the American Southwest. There's a bit of loss, a bit of regret, and a laconic over-the-hill badass with some good lines.

Oh yeah, and Sam Bosma's art:

Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued last night with the mysterious absence of Kairon the Demonlander Sorcerer but otherwise the usual crew. Their investigation of the rampaging iron woodsmen had led them to the mill, where they discovered an invisible imp. It got away before they could capture it.
Our heroes still had no idea what was going on, but they knew Gargam the misanthropic wizard had told them the Snarts were captives of the woodsmen, and that was not the case. They made their way back to his dilapidated house, giving the remaining woodsmen wide birth. Waylon the Thief spied on Gargam through the window and saw him writing in a great tome. They knocked on his door and told him about the absence of Snarts and the imp. 
Gargam was his usual charming self. He professed no knowledge of the imp, but didn't seem particularly surprised that his assertion about the Snarts proved false. He quickly shuts the door in the party's face, but they decide to put him under surveillance and camp out nearby. When nothing has happened by morning, Waylon and Shade move in to pull a breaking and entering. They are surprised by Gargam's cat, Orias.
Art by JarrodOwenThe cat creates an illusion of itself, then jumps at them, growing in size to over two feet long. Erekose runs in to help, and the three make short work of the fast moving animal. Gargam shows up to acid splash them before they can deliver the coup de grace.
With Gargam's feline familar as a hostage, they demand answers. The wizard reluctantly admits to botching a devil summoning spell he got in correspondence with the Warlock of Lost Lake (now deceased). Gargam hoped to summon a fiend to destroy the mill (he loathes the townspeople) and have the blame put on the Snarts (who he hates). Instead, he got a mischevious imp that promptly ran away and monkeyed with the iron woodsmen, making them cease obeying commands.

The group forces Gargam to perform the ritual and summon the imp again. The imp admits to his had behavior, which he finds very amusing. He begs for his freedom and promises to leave the area. Shade is having none of it. This despoiler of the forest is facing his end. The party fries the imp with scorching rays, sending him back to the Nether Realms.
Next they track down the remains woodsmen and destroy those four, though as always they are tenacious opponents. Shade has a change to use the figurine of a bear she acquired back in the gelatinous dome.
After a brief talk with the townspeople, our heroes once again head out for Rivertown.

The Ghostlight Fen presents a feature common to this world, but a greater danger in this place, the substance the current human inhabitants often call "magic" but their ancient progenitors called "fae." In the parlance of the original human colonists fae is a system, perhaps even a network, that spans the entire planet and can manipulate matter and energy in accordance with the will of the user. The indigenous species are born knowing how to manipulate this system in various ways, but other can learn to control it. Control is the keyword, and the system is psychoactive and will respond to unconscious mind as easily as the conscious.

Indeed, theorists in ancient times speculated that the fae was a created rather than natural phenomena and the demons from the unconscious of its creators destroyed them, leaving only their creations (the ieldri and others) behind.

Fae permeates and surrounds the world, but in some places it collects and goes awry. Some of those bad places were caused by overstressing the system, as the ieldri sorcerers did in their desperate war against the ylthlaxu. Others may be places where it has just broken down with time. The Ghostlight Fen seems to be one of the former type.


This dysfunction manifests itself several ways, but most particularly: peculiars and visitants. Peculiars are small, discrete areas of reality distotions generated using these tables. Visitants are more pseudo-encounters of weirdness using these tables. The chance of coming across these in a given hex in the Fen per day is as follows:

Green Fen Hex: Peculiar - 20%, Visitant 5%
Pink Fen Hex: Peculiar - 60%, Visitant 30%

Spellcasters and Fae: All arcane spellcasters (not just sorcerers) are subject to something akin to a wild magic surge. After casting a 1st level or higher spell, a roll of a 1 on d20 requires a d100 roll on the table in the 5e PHB. In green hexes, this roll is only required for the first spell cast by an individual caster per hex. In the pink hexes it is required for the first spell of each spell level cast by an individual caster. Clerical casting is only affected in pink hexes and in the manner of green hexes for arcane casters.

Inspirations: The concept of the fae was inspired by C.S. Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy, but also borrows from the some of the rationalizations of magic in Hite's Trail of Cthulhu: Rough Magicks, details of  Forbidden Planet (1958), and Roadside Picnic.

Here are some monsters that will likely appear in upcoming posts on the Ghostlight Fen hexmap. Some of those, I'll probably give "official" stats at some point, but they can pretty easily be approximate (or replaced) with some existing monsters.

by Wayne BarloweSkarzg
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 beaked faces full of nightmare teeth. They are very hard to kill, and they will eat anything. They live like animals, but they have speech and are cunning and cruel. [Treat as a troll.]

Gog
Four-haired, fur-covered savages. Their faces are noseless and their skin hangs somewhat loose, which might have the effect of making them appear a bit comical--to someone unacquainted with their propensity to violence and rumored anthropophagy. The variety found in the Ghostlight Fen have indigo colored pelts. [Treat as orcs, with chiefs like bugbears.]

Matagot
Otherworldly creatures with disturbingly human faces and pantherine bodies. They are not to be trusted. [Treat as a Rakhasa, though on the lower end for hit point.]

by Tom KiddBandaryegs
Arboreal, lemurine creatures whose sneak-thievery is nuisance but whose mockery and incessant whispering has uncanny effects on the minds of humans. [Treat as a monkey or similar small animal, but that have an ability like the 5e spell vicious mockery and a troupe may cause an effect similar to dissonant whispers.]

These relate to the hexmap presented here.

0503 Draum (pop. 80); no real leader but Godo Shrune is a likely spokesman): Actually an abandoned manor built by a successful treasure-hunter, Draum is haunted by squatters who spend their days in deep reverie brought on by use of the muhrdzu fungus that grows nearby (0505). The mushrooms are eaten directly, made into a snuff and then snorted, or for an even more potent effect, smoked. Some rooms in the manor house and in derelict outbuildings hold bodies with clusters of muhrdzu mushrooms sprouting from them. These are the remains of those who wasted away thinking their bodily thirst could be quenched by dream refreshments or starved disdaining the tastelessness of mundane foods compared with the viands of fancy. The living Draumites trade the muhrdzu for food and other necessities.

0207 Gamory (pop. 325; Glatis Malva, Matriarch of the Malva clan): The old, inbred, and sometimes feuding families of Gamory abide through canny exploitation of the grove of black hroke trees planted by their ancestors (0208). The trees’ blood-red sap is valuable in the manufacture of healing salves and hemostatic poultices. Ironically, the Gamoryites are secret adherents to an outlawed cult of human-ieldra transformation, that of the Night Carapaced Mother, that practices human sacrifice by exsanguination in a secret place amid the trees.

0211 Wollusk (pop. 550): Wollusk was built amid the ruins of an ancient fortification from a more lucent age when humankind still possessed much of its ancient technology. A large portion of a wall of some sort of ceramic stands between the town and the Fen,though the ends of its crescent seem to have been melted by some great heat. The town has a larger inn and better facilities for travelers than might be expected for its size, as it serves as a base for treasure-hunters, but none would be reckoned more than middling quality.

Zeniba by Jason SholtisTwo factions vie for control of the village. Zeniba “the Shrewd” (Fighter 4) styles herself “Mayor-Prefect,” but was originally hired as a bodyguard for the last person to officially hold that office. Her gang is known as the Medioxumate Devils and is based in the cylindrical keep of the ancient fort. She is opposed by the faction of Sodmos Thalur the Vintner. He owns the inn, the tavern, and the brothel serving the two. No wine is consistently available in Wollusk, but Thalur has a monopoly on the sale of muhrdzu snuff and muhrdzu tea, which he adds to whatever spirits are available (typically the local beetle milk mead). Thalur has more men at his disposal (perhaps 20-25) but Zeniba’s 10-12 soldiers are more skilled (treat as Bandits).

Here's the second part of my index of Storm albums in the sequence called "The Chronicles of Pandarve"so far. Now's the time to catch up, if you missed them.

1. The Pirates of Pandarve 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
2. The Labyrinth of Death 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
3. The Seven of Aromater 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Features hex graphics courtesy of JDJarvisGhostlight Fen had an ominous reputation long before the first human colonists arrived on this world. Something about its metaphysical properties made it the site of an ylthaxu beachhead. Their black metallic obelisks irrupted from astral space in great numbers. The ieldri had encountered the ylthlaxu elsewhere and were swifted in their response. The resulting clash ylthlaxu technology and ieldri magic warped the area beyond repair.

These ancient battles create opportunity for human treasure-seekers today. The only genuine road into the area leads into the town of Wollusk (0211). In truth, it's only a village and a fairly meagre one, but shabby businesses have sprung up to accommodate the treasure-seekers.

A Ylthlaxu by Jason SholtisThese seekers are few in number, but dedicated. The black obelisks of the ylthaxu are a vexing but seductive conundrum. Those that have been opened have yielded strange, alien wonders, and also, it must be said, sudden death at times. The base of these is only about 5 feet on each side, but the interior is often larger than the exterior. Some have been long ago looted, others continue to resist intrusion. Still others have been opened before, resealed, and now somehow present something new on the inside.

Beyond the obelisks, the fen itself is dangerous. Only ever sparsely populated, it remains a wild and uncivilized place of hunting skarzgs. roaming gog tribes and the like. Then, their are areas where the ambient fae is so dense than reality itself is untrusthworthy.

Wollusk is the largest village on the outskirts of the Fen, but not the only one. Gamory (0207) with it's deformed folk and unsavory cult is just up the one road. Beyond that lies Draum (0503) with its drug-addled populace.

I presented these two races for 63 about a year ago, but since then I've colored the images by Jason Sholtis so I felt like I should highlight them again:

The smelly and scholarly hwaopt.

And the subterranean craftsmen, the hohmmkudhuk.

THE SETUP: In 1985, a deep space probe returns to Earth after being thought lost in a spacetime anomaly. It returns to Earth, dropping otherworldly debris in its wake. Across the globe, zones on anomalous phenomena and monstrous creatures are created!

Twenty years later, only special UN troops stand between humanity and the destruction of civilization as we know it!

It’s Roadside Picnic meets 50s monster and sci-fi movies/kaiju and 60-70s action figures like G.I. Adventure Team and Big Jim.


THE HEROES are mostly buzz cut military men like the MARS Patrol but with code names and personalities more like 80s G.I. Joe. Their ranks many be augmented by beings that appeared from an anomaly (Kirby-esque amazons, aliens) or people enhanced by barely understood and dangerous technology acquired from them (Atomic Man, THUNDER Agent sorts)

THE DANGERS are strange environments, monsters of all sorts of 50s and 60s sorts, from Zanti misfits to human mutates to giant mutant dinosaurs.

This is a refinement/re-imaging of my Rifts 1970 campaign idea, just a little more militarized and more informed by the early 60s.

I'll pause here in my review of Storm to index the albums in the sequence called "The Chronicles of the Deep World." Now's the time to catch up, if you missed them.

1. The Deep World 1, 2, 3
2. The Last Fighter 1, 2, 3
3. The People of the Desert 1, 2, 3
4. The Green Hell 1, 2, 3, 4
5. The Battle for Earth 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
6. The Secret of the Nitron Rays 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
7. The Legend of Yggdrasil 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
8. City of the Damned 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
9. The Creeping Death 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

When secondary world fantasy made the jump from literature to comics in the wake of Tolkein and Howard it brought the tradition of the world-map along with it.  This was the 1960s, and comics books hadn't quite gotten the memo that fantasy was completely serious, as this first map shows:


"I feel like a character from Howard or Tolkein. Pretty soon, though, I'm gonna wake up and find this is a spaced-out dream. And I'm gonna swear off reading sword-and-sorcery sagas!" -- Jim Rook, Showcase # 82 (1969). Myrra is the fantasyland that rock musician Jim Rook, and his girlfriend Janet Jones, get transported to in Nightmaster, starting in Showcase #82 (May 1969).  Rook is revealed to be the descendant of Nacht, an ancient warrior of Myrra, and the only one who can wield his ancestor's Sword of Night, and save the world from the evil Warlocks.  Nightmaster was the of writer Denny O'Neil and artist Berni Wrightson.  As some of the place names on the map might suggest (Duchy of Psychos, for instance) there was a bit of a late sixties camp element to Nightmaster's adventures, but not as much as some of the names might suggest.  Nightmaster ran through just three issues of Showcase.

This next map is a bit more traditonal. It's notable how set the tropes had become by 1975:

"...On a nameless world in a forgotten time..." is a pretty typical beginning for these sorts of things, and that pretty much sums up Wulf the Barbarian (pretty typical).  The series was from Atlas/Seaboard Comics (helmed by Stan Lee's brother Larry Lieber) and ran for four issues in 1975.  Wulf is the son of royalty, orphaned when trolls in the service of an evil sorcerer, killed his parents.  Wulf spends the next decade training as a warrior to reclaim his kingdom.  As one might imagine, the road to reclaiming that throne is potholed with a number of fantastic obstacles.  Wulf was written and drawn by Larry Hama, and inked by Klaus Janson for his first two outings, with multiple creators pitching in on the last two.  This map is from Wulf the Barbarian #3.

In a clearing at a crossroads A Llanowauk warrior, bloody-eyed from overuse of stimulants harvested from Ancient caches, stands atop an overturned, giant, green stone head of a scowling god or demon. He loudly proclaims his strength and puissance at arms and calls for challengers. Despite well-worn state of his other possessions, his sword has an uncanny gleam.

On shores of the Lake of Vermilion Mists nearly naked female divers are inspecting their haul of rare ultramarine scintilla. Here and there their bodies bear what appear to be wave-like, mauve tattoos, darkened to the color of fresh bruises in the lake’s lurid, roiling glow, but are actually scars from the lash of urulu tentacles. The divers become tolerant to the hallucinogenic effects over time but not the pain, so they try to snatch the scintilla when the urulu are lost in courtship combat dances.


A gigantic fallen tree serves as a bridge over a deep ravine, but an arachnoid free manshonyagger makes its lair on the tree's underside and on occasion will catch and devour passersby. It cannot but heed it's Ancient deep programming, so a human or humankin may command it, but only with the proper codes. The bottom of the gorge bears the possessions and bones of those who have passed before and not recalled them.

A domed inselberg rising from the forest is reputed to be haunted. Daily at solar noon, two identical angelic combatants, milk-white with prismatic-feathered wings, and large, bird-like eyes, grapple in the air above. Neither is ever able to overcome the other, and though their blows land with such force that onlookers claim they can feel shockwaves from them, there is never any sound. When the hour passes, they shrink and fade like shadows before the moving sun.

These are from this world.

ANTIGENCON, GenCon's online evil twin, is going on right now on G+ and as a part of that Jeff Call ran Mountaintop Chalet of the Frost Giant Czar. Jason Sholtis, Michael Gibbons, Chris P. and I played secret agents of the Lawful Church (the Radio Church of Pelor) sent in the rescue a missing bishop.

It was all very James Bond (in the 1967 Casino Royale sense). We pretended to be a wealthy foreigner (Sheik El-Ruptor) and his entourage to gain entrance then proceeded to find our contact and the bishop. We alas did not discover the Czar's evil scheme, but we did set the chalet on fire with dynamite and escape via a ski-lift handcranked by one of our team with a Girdle of Giant Strength and a Haste spell caste on him.

The Czar escaped to no doubt menace parties in the future!

The first Azurth Adventures Digest is going off to the printer today. It's full color, 28 pages, featuring art by Jeff Call and Jason Sholtis. There's a ten page mini-adventure local: The Candy Isle, random tables for generating colorful Motley Pirates and some flavorful tidbits on other islands, suitable for inspiring adventures.

Art by Jason Sholtis

Moving Fortress by writer Ricardo Barreiro and artist Enrique Alcatena first appeared in the comics anthology Skorpio in Argentina. In 1988, it was translated into English with the help of Chuck Dixon. It tells the story of Bask De Avregaut who is making his way across the desert in an aerostat when he comes upon, and is captured by a warlord commanding the titular moving fortress. The Warlord is out to defeat a rival and reclaim his bride. De Avregaut is initially made to feed the fortresses boiler, but after proving his skill with gunnery in battle, he comes to play a more pivotal role in what follows.


Subterra is the sequel, picking up with Bask following the events of Moving Fortress. This time he crashes in uncharted mountains and is taken prisoner by a weird and decadent subterranean civilization.


Both volumes are weird fantasy brought to life by Alcatena's artwork. With designs, a little bit Gothic, a little bit Lovecraft, and a little bit Asian, his pencils are an integral part of bringing the weirdness.