I've been playing in an ongoing campaign set in Urutsk, with The Grand Tapestry serving as referee, and Fantasy Heartbreak Workshop as my teammate. I like to take a few notes as we play, and I've had a little more free time lately, so I'm trying to turn a few more of my notes into session reports.
SESSION 3
Waking once more in the security office, Merope and Slunk decided to continue exploring the ship. By this point, they had deduced that they were on a vessel engaged in a generations-long voyage, that something had gone wrong causing at least the partial collapse of ship-board society, and that perhaps relatedly the ship had been invaded by monstrous outsiders. At this time, it seemed to Merope and Slunk that parts of the vessel's crew were still wearing the uniforms and following the rules laid down by their ancestors, but that other descendants of the initial travelers had fallen into savagery. They also assumed that the ship was still on its long journey, possibly traveling between the stars themselves.
Poking around a bit in the security office, Merope and Slunk found gas masks and canisters of some kind of crowd-control gas. Out in the hall, they met a badass warrior woman whose body was adorned with paint and tattoos and a scanty outfit made of colorful fabric that was also tied as streamers at her joints. The warrior woman wore a headdress of two wings that appeared to have been made by cutting up a metal can from one of the ration packs. Assuming that she was a native of the ship, Merope attempted to trick the warrior woman with one of her many failed gambits. (Throughout the time I played her, Merope's attempts at subterfuge never worked, usually because her lack of knowledge about her situation forced her to make many assumptions, and whenever one of those assumptions proved false, it also proved to the person she was talking to that she could not possibly be who she claimed.) Merope initially claimed that she and Slunk were part of the crew of the ship, but that they had become disoriented when the invaders attacked. The warrior woman said that was unlikely, since the attack had occurred before the ship crashed. Surprised to learn that the ship was no longer traveling, Merope tried to recover her lie by claiming that of course, it must have been the crash that confused her and caused her to forget that the ship was no longer being invaded. The warrior woman again demurred, pointing out that the ship had been crashed for a thousand years, and asking Merope and Slunk who they were really, and how they could be so unaware of their situation.
Slunk took over the conversation, using his smooth charlatan speaking voice to reveal how he and Merope had come to be aboard the ship. The warrior woman seemed impressed with Slunk's story, and introduced herself as Anjalik. When Slunk inquired how she'd learned these things, since the crew they'd met earlier seemed unaware, Anjalik revealed that the ship was not only crashed, it was broken open, and that she had enetered from outside on a scavenging mission. She was very interested to see the red cube that Merope and Slunk had arrived in, "the breach" as she called it. Slunk agreed to guide her to the cube in exchange for Anjalik guiding Slunk and his companion out of the ship when they'd finished. They successfully navigated their way back to the red cube's location, but when they arrived, it wasn't there anymore. Merope and Slunk expected a cube-shaped hole in the ship where it had been, but there was none. Somehow the cube had been able to pass through the solid matter of the ship as easily as two hair combs intertwining their teeth.
With "the breach" a dead end, they decided to consult Slunk's electronic familiar, Clippy, to find some high-value salvage to haul out of the ship. Clippy located a janitorial storage closet nearby. Their initial search of the room found mostly cleaning supplies, but on further questioning, Clippy pointed them to a pair of large boxes, which turned out to contain Sensoriums, ancient high-tech audio-visual entertainment units. Anjalik said she knew a place they could sell them, and thought that the pair of Sensoriums would fetch a pretty high price. Since the objects were fairly large, about the size of a small bookcase each, Slunk decided to test one before they went to the trouble of carrying them out. He found the interface a bit confusing, but was able to ask the machine to produce some "barbarian entertainment."
The three immediately found themselves in a cave, being attacked by neanderthals. Partway through the battle, Slunk was gored almost to death, and they realized that they were inside an immersive holographic illusion, and were able to shake off the most convincing aspects of the experience. They also realized that several animals had wandered into the open closet while they'd been experiencing the illusion, and that it was these alien beasts that had injured Slunk. Merope fired her handgun at the nearest one, and the super-heated projectile it fired annihilated one of the creatures ... and splashed enough molten metal around to set the whole room on fire. The other two alien quadrupeds broke morale and ran from the burning room. Anjalik managed to rescue one Sensorium, while Merope helped Slunk escape the room. In a moment, a fire suppression system turned itself on, dousing the room in wet foam. Slunk insisted on collecting a few cleaning supplies to sell from the now-soggy room, trying to salvage a few more coins once they learned that the second Sensorium had been rendered inoperable by being exposed to fire and then drenched in water and foam. Anjalik offered to carry the surviving Sensorium out strapped to her back, and encouraged her new companions to follow her to the "trade tower," where they'd be able to sell it.
SESSION 4
After finding an exit from the ship, Merope, Slunk, and Anjalik almost immediately found themselves in a humid jungle. The ground around the ship was swampy, the trees nearby had orange and yellow leaves. Over the course of the day, these changed to yellow and green, then green and blue, as they traveled away from the ship. Merope and Slunk were amazed by the double canopy overhead, and by the riot of life that buzzed around them. Merope saw six-legged lizards and furred snakes, alongside nearly every mundane variety of small forest creature she knew from the forests of her home.
Once in the morning, the trio crossed a game trail, but didn't see whatever beast had made the tracks. Around lunch, a mist of drizzle filled the air, and the group took shelter under a large tree. Anjalik explained that rain was common here. After the rain tapered off a bit, the group set out again, and crossed another game trail as they continued on their way. Late in the day, a heavy rain started, then deepened into a thunder storm. Anjalik spotted a treehouse, perhaps a hunting cabin, and the three took shelter for the night, a decision that seemed particularly wise as the storm worsened.
Partway through the night, the door to the cabin opened, and a figure let himself in. The figure turned out to be a short man, seemingly wizened with age, wearing only a loin cloth and teeth, revealed when he smiled, that had been sharpened to points. Anjalik seemed respectful, perhaps even frightened of the man, and explained that the cabin was available to any traveler, and that sharing during storms was not uncommon. The man seemed pleased to see the group, and cleaned under his sharpened, pointed nails with his wicked hunting knife. Slunk decided to offer the visitor a ration pack from the shipwreck. Merope debated trying to convince him to overdose on stimulants, but Slunk and Anjalik were both frightened of what the hunter might do if he became agitated from the stims. (This is another of Merope's failed stratagems.) Slunk managed to indicate how to open the can of potato crisps to the hunter, who seemed pleased by the popping sound of the lid, and by the salty flavor of the chips. Seeing that he was pleased, and hoping to avoid any violence, Slunk offered him a second ration pack, which the hunter happily accepted. Later, with his hunger sated, and the rain stopped, the visitor turned to leave, then turned back, and spoke to the group.
"It's interesting to see how people will treat you when they think you can't understand them," he said to the three, then explained that he and his brothers were master hunters, that they had killed many men, and become strong by eating the flesh of their enemies. The man also claimed that he had grown to become the strongest of all his brothers by hunting other versions of himself from other worlds, killing them, and eating their strength. Slunk hereafter dubbed this visitor "the fine old cannibal." (The referee also confirmed that this NPC was a fairly high level fighter, and that our only chance to survive the encounter had been to make nice. The world of Urutsk is filled with high HD dangers.) In the morning, the three friends prepared to head out again.
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Entering Castle Gargantua
I recently played a session in Kabuki Kaiser's Castle Gargantua, refereed by The Hapless Henchman.
I played Johanna the Giantslayer, a 3rd level DCC ranger, taken from issue 6 of the Crawl! fanzine. Johanna was a sort of mashup of Jack and the Beanstalk, Saint George and the Dragon, and Joan of Arc. She fought with a ranger's paired swords, but also wore chainmail with a red cloak, and carried a holy symbol and several vials of holy water in case she encountered the undead. I say "was" for reasons that will become apparent at the end of the adventure.
Johanna went to Castle Gargantua as part of a group of three, accompanied by Beadle Bailey, a former church guard turned sneak thief, and Rueng-ne'il, an elven demonologist with a Slavic imp familiar named Janush. The trio had heard rumors of an Easterling prince gone missing in the castle (and his retinue of 12 horsemen prepared to swear their fealty to anyone who could return his body to them), a magic mirror which would show its viewer their true self, and the Beadle had possession of a treasure map (unfortunately showing the treasure to be guarded by giant-sized wasps).
When the three summited the mount that held the Castle, they saw a storm in progress. The Castle itself reached almost to the clouds, which had opened up to reveal the spirit of Gargantua looking down on them. The Castle's grounds swirled with mists that seemed to brim with the souls of the damned. (The scene may have looked a bit like the Night on Bald Mountain sequence from Fantasia.)
Johanna brandished her holy symbol to try to repel the mist spirits, and the three made their way to the towering front door, only to find it already ajar. Although only cracked by giant standards, the door was open wide enough to drive an ox-cart through. Rueng-ne'il sent the grumbling Janush through to peek at the other side. The tiny demon disappeared for a moment, then reported back that there was a sporting event going on inside.
The group entered to see a truly enormous entrance chamber supported by four pillars along each side wall, flanked by four large doors on each side, and at the far end, a truly massive door atop a staircase. The scene in the center of the room was no game though, but more like a riot or free-for-all battle. The three friends quickly skirted to a side wall in an attempt to avoid the attention of the orgy of reveling maenads.
The first door they came across was marked with images of gnomes and dwarves holding poses to make the letters of some illegible script, with more writing in the same barbarous tongue below. Although none of the three could read the writing, the wealth of the wee mining folk was well-known, so the party prepared to enter after Beadle picked the lock and swept the door for traps. As they opened the oversized portal however, they heard a sound like thunder - footsteps on the enormous stairwell in the great entry hall, and the rioters breaking up their melee and beginning to flee. The trio quickly entered the doorway and began searching for some way to block the door behind them.
Upon entering the hallway, the group was immediately confronted by the smashed-flat body of an armored man. Despite the damage, his full-body suit of plate armor still shined with its mirror bright polish. A quick search revealed that he was not the Easterling prince, but the knave Olaf Gunderson, a generally disliked local official of some sort. Gunderson had been an enemy of the Easterling prince, so Johanna took his wooden shield, emblazoned with his coat of arms to offer up as proof of his demise. Rueng-ne'il, perhaps inspired by the symbols on the door, rearranged Gunderson's crushed body to form a warding sigil, then offered the dead man's soul to his demon masters in exchange for blocking the door. Neither Johanna nor Beadle was entirely comfortable with abusing a man's soul in this way, but tried to tell themselves that Gunderson's soul would have been forfeit for his crimes regardless of Rueng's actions. Suddenly Gunderson's spirit appeared, mocked Rueng for his decision to trade his eternal damnation for a few hours of guard duty, but vowed that none would be able to pass by while his spirit stood in front of the door.
Safe from attack from behind, Beadle Bailey crept forward down the hallway. He spotted a glint at the edge of the shadows, and discovered it to be Gunderson's hunting horn. As he was pocketing the precious object, he heard marching footsteps approaching from further down the hall, let out a quick warning to his colleagues, and then melted into the shadows out of sight. Johanna and Rueng soon heard the marchers as well, and saw four pinkish giants who appeared to be made of wax. The giants demanded to know who Johanna and Rueng-ne'il were, and insisted on seeing a permit to gather treasures in this section of the Castle. Johanna quickly bluffed that they had permission from the King of Elfland, and offered the bureaucratically-minded creatures a few pages of Rueng's ephemera as proof. (This is the type of deception that Merope often tried, but that never worked for her in Urutsk.) Fortunately for the pair, the giants were illiterate and rather gullible, so Rueng's shopping list served to convince them of Johanna's ruse. The waxen giants initially insisted on leading the adventurers to the east wing, but finding the door blocked by an annoying ghost, offered to them via a back route that went further into the west wing. The trio followed behind, with Beadle remaining in the shadows.
The wax giants led the group into a round room, and apologized for the spikes that had recently grown out of the walls, cautioning them to avert their eyes. The room appeared to have been a statue gallery, although all the statues now too seemed to be looking away from the center of the room. Rueng noticed some sort of script written on each spike, and cast a spell to allow himself to read magic. As a side effect of the spell, the wax giants grew increasingly agitated, but just as he finished reading the script, each spike grew and opened an eyeball at its tip, and the giants turned to stone and shattered. Johanna and the Beadle were unharmed, and Rueng believed he would be able to cast a new spell a single time, one that would allow him to step across great distances without moving through the intervening space.
Continuing past their shattered escort, Rueng, Johanna, and the Beadle entered an anteroom with three exits leading down a furnished hallway, or up some rough stairs, or through another truly massive door left just ajar. The three elected to go up the stairs, and soon found themselves overlooking a crowd of fey mechanics hard at work on some large cylindrical metal contraption. The friends speculated that these workers might be the same ones depicted on the great-room door. Moments later, Beadle's highly-attuned senses warned him of an impending disaster, but Johanna and Rueng were caught off-guard when the contraption exploded and a torrent of water began pouring out of the top of it. A tidal wave washed the ranger and the demonologist back down the stairs, while Beadle used a grappling hook thrown to the ceiling to hang on above the crushing waves. Only a miracle (and a very lucky throw of the dice) prevented Johanna and Rueng from being killed or swept beyond Beadle's reach. As it was, Beadle soon rejoined his companions in the anteroom, fleeing from the giant octopus that had emerged from the pipe along with the water.
A bitter combat ensued, with the weird mollusk catching Rueng-ne'il with several of its suction-cupped tentacles. Beadle Bailey used a device lifted from a previous adventure - a treasure chest trapped with a magical rune of sleep, the treasure still un-retrieved inside. Beadle opened the chest to show the octopus the sigil, but the strange creature was not affected in the way the thief expected. The trio managed to sever a few of the beast's limbs, but Rueng feared for his life and cast the spell he'd learned in the spiked room, transporting himself and his colleagues to a distant part of Castle Gargantua.
When the three recovered their senses, they found themselves in a room with a towering mirror in a golden frame. They suspected it must be the mirror Rueng had heard of, the one that would show them their true selves. Johanna blessed herself with holy water before looking, and saw herself as a giant cyclops. Johanna screamed and raged in protest, and then accepted the truth that she was descended from giants, from the noble cyclops of ancient Greece. Rueng looked eagerly and saw himself entirely given over to magical corruption, no longer even remotely elven. Excited to see his likely future fate, Rueng began to crow and shout in the demonic tongue. Seeing Johanna dissolve into screams and tears, and Rueng ranging in a guttural alien language, the Beadle wisely decided to turn his back on the mirror without looking into it, unwilling to risk learning the knowledge its magic might offer him.
Later, Beadle helped Johanna to construct a pair of stilts out of scraps of timber from around the room, allowing her to stand head and shoulders above her former puny human height. She gifted him with Gunderson's shield to thank him, and then, as though in a fugue state, wandered off and up, into one of the highest spires in the Castle. There she promised herself as devotee to Gargantua, promising to revere him in exchange for his blessing. She burnt her former holy symbol, and offered Gargantua one of her eyes, and an eye from her hex doll, and anointed herself and the doll with holy water to make it her new symbol. Somewhere high above, the storm raged, but Gargantua smiled, and Johanna was reborn. No longer a lawful ranger, she became a chaotic priestess in service of Gargantua. No longer Johanna the Giantslayer, she became Johanna the Giantess.
I played Johanna the Giantslayer, a 3rd level DCC ranger, taken from issue 6 of the Crawl! fanzine. Johanna was a sort of mashup of Jack and the Beanstalk, Saint George and the Dragon, and Joan of Arc. She fought with a ranger's paired swords, but also wore chainmail with a red cloak, and carried a holy symbol and several vials of holy water in case she encountered the undead. I say "was" for reasons that will become apparent at the end of the adventure.
Johanna went to Castle Gargantua as part of a group of three, accompanied by Beadle Bailey, a former church guard turned sneak thief, and Rueng-ne'il, an elven demonologist with a Slavic imp familiar named Janush. The trio had heard rumors of an Easterling prince gone missing in the castle (and his retinue of 12 horsemen prepared to swear their fealty to anyone who could return his body to them), a magic mirror which would show its viewer their true self, and the Beadle had possession of a treasure map (unfortunately showing the treasure to be guarded by giant-sized wasps).
When the three summited the mount that held the Castle, they saw a storm in progress. The Castle itself reached almost to the clouds, which had opened up to reveal the spirit of Gargantua looking down on them. The Castle's grounds swirled with mists that seemed to brim with the souls of the damned. (The scene may have looked a bit like the Night on Bald Mountain sequence from Fantasia.)
Johanna brandished her holy symbol to try to repel the mist spirits, and the three made their way to the towering front door, only to find it already ajar. Although only cracked by giant standards, the door was open wide enough to drive an ox-cart through. Rueng-ne'il sent the grumbling Janush through to peek at the other side. The tiny demon disappeared for a moment, then reported back that there was a sporting event going on inside.
The group entered to see a truly enormous entrance chamber supported by four pillars along each side wall, flanked by four large doors on each side, and at the far end, a truly massive door atop a staircase. The scene in the center of the room was no game though, but more like a riot or free-for-all battle. The three friends quickly skirted to a side wall in an attempt to avoid the attention of the orgy of reveling maenads.
The first door they came across was marked with images of gnomes and dwarves holding poses to make the letters of some illegible script, with more writing in the same barbarous tongue below. Although none of the three could read the writing, the wealth of the wee mining folk was well-known, so the party prepared to enter after Beadle picked the lock and swept the door for traps. As they opened the oversized portal however, they heard a sound like thunder - footsteps on the enormous stairwell in the great entry hall, and the rioters breaking up their melee and beginning to flee. The trio quickly entered the doorway and began searching for some way to block the door behind them.
Upon entering the hallway, the group was immediately confronted by the smashed-flat body of an armored man. Despite the damage, his full-body suit of plate armor still shined with its mirror bright polish. A quick search revealed that he was not the Easterling prince, but the knave Olaf Gunderson, a generally disliked local official of some sort. Gunderson had been an enemy of the Easterling prince, so Johanna took his wooden shield, emblazoned with his coat of arms to offer up as proof of his demise. Rueng-ne'il, perhaps inspired by the symbols on the door, rearranged Gunderson's crushed body to form a warding sigil, then offered the dead man's soul to his demon masters in exchange for blocking the door. Neither Johanna nor Beadle was entirely comfortable with abusing a man's soul in this way, but tried to tell themselves that Gunderson's soul would have been forfeit for his crimes regardless of Rueng's actions. Suddenly Gunderson's spirit appeared, mocked Rueng for his decision to trade his eternal damnation for a few hours of guard duty, but vowed that none would be able to pass by while his spirit stood in front of the door.
Safe from attack from behind, Beadle Bailey crept forward down the hallway. He spotted a glint at the edge of the shadows, and discovered it to be Gunderson's hunting horn. As he was pocketing the precious object, he heard marching footsteps approaching from further down the hall, let out a quick warning to his colleagues, and then melted into the shadows out of sight. Johanna and Rueng soon heard the marchers as well, and saw four pinkish giants who appeared to be made of wax. The giants demanded to know who Johanna and Rueng-ne'il were, and insisted on seeing a permit to gather treasures in this section of the Castle. Johanna quickly bluffed that they had permission from the King of Elfland, and offered the bureaucratically-minded creatures a few pages of Rueng's ephemera as proof. (This is the type of deception that Merope often tried, but that never worked for her in Urutsk.) Fortunately for the pair, the giants were illiterate and rather gullible, so Rueng's shopping list served to convince them of Johanna's ruse. The waxen giants initially insisted on leading the adventurers to the east wing, but finding the door blocked by an annoying ghost, offered to them via a back route that went further into the west wing. The trio followed behind, with Beadle remaining in the shadows.
The wax giants led the group into a round room, and apologized for the spikes that had recently grown out of the walls, cautioning them to avert their eyes. The room appeared to have been a statue gallery, although all the statues now too seemed to be looking away from the center of the room. Rueng noticed some sort of script written on each spike, and cast a spell to allow himself to read magic. As a side effect of the spell, the wax giants grew increasingly agitated, but just as he finished reading the script, each spike grew and opened an eyeball at its tip, and the giants turned to stone and shattered. Johanna and the Beadle were unharmed, and Rueng believed he would be able to cast a new spell a single time, one that would allow him to step across great distances without moving through the intervening space.
Continuing past their shattered escort, Rueng, Johanna, and the Beadle entered an anteroom with three exits leading down a furnished hallway, or up some rough stairs, or through another truly massive door left just ajar. The three elected to go up the stairs, and soon found themselves overlooking a crowd of fey mechanics hard at work on some large cylindrical metal contraption. The friends speculated that these workers might be the same ones depicted on the great-room door. Moments later, Beadle's highly-attuned senses warned him of an impending disaster, but Johanna and Rueng were caught off-guard when the contraption exploded and a torrent of water began pouring out of the top of it. A tidal wave washed the ranger and the demonologist back down the stairs, while Beadle used a grappling hook thrown to the ceiling to hang on above the crushing waves. Only a miracle (and a very lucky throw of the dice) prevented Johanna and Rueng from being killed or swept beyond Beadle's reach. As it was, Beadle soon rejoined his companions in the anteroom, fleeing from the giant octopus that had emerged from the pipe along with the water.
A bitter combat ensued, with the weird mollusk catching Rueng-ne'il with several of its suction-cupped tentacles. Beadle Bailey used a device lifted from a previous adventure - a treasure chest trapped with a magical rune of sleep, the treasure still un-retrieved inside. Beadle opened the chest to show the octopus the sigil, but the strange creature was not affected in the way the thief expected. The trio managed to sever a few of the beast's limbs, but Rueng feared for his life and cast the spell he'd learned in the spiked room, transporting himself and his colleagues to a distant part of Castle Gargantua.
When the three recovered their senses, they found themselves in a room with a towering mirror in a golden frame. They suspected it must be the mirror Rueng had heard of, the one that would show them their true selves. Johanna blessed herself with holy water before looking, and saw herself as a giant cyclops. Johanna screamed and raged in protest, and then accepted the truth that she was descended from giants, from the noble cyclops of ancient Greece. Rueng looked eagerly and saw himself entirely given over to magical corruption, no longer even remotely elven. Excited to see his likely future fate, Rueng began to crow and shout in the demonic tongue. Seeing Johanna dissolve into screams and tears, and Rueng ranging in a guttural alien language, the Beadle wisely decided to turn his back on the mirror without looking into it, unwilling to risk learning the knowledge its magic might offer him.
Later, Beadle helped Johanna to construct a pair of stilts out of scraps of timber from around the room, allowing her to stand head and shoulders above her former puny human height. She gifted him with Gunderson's shield to thank him, and then, as though in a fugue state, wandered off and up, into one of the highest spires in the Castle. There she promised herself as devotee to Gargantua, promising to revere him in exchange for his blessing. She burnt her former holy symbol, and offered Gargantua one of her eyes, and an eye from her hex doll, and anointed herself and the doll with holy water to make it her new symbol. Somewhere high above, the storm raged, but Gargantua smiled, and Johanna was reborn. No longer a lawful ranger, she became a chaotic priestess in service of Gargantua. No longer Johanna the Giantslayer, she became Johanna the Giantess.
Friday, March 27, 2015
Adventures in Urutsk
Over the past few weeks, I've been playing an online game that takes place primarily in The Grand Tapestry's world of Urutsk.
Urutsk is a couple of things. First, it appears to be one of only a handful of examples that I'm aware of, of a person having a particularly well-developed fantasy world as a child that they never abandon, and that they continue growing and expanding and creating for into adulthood. Other examples of such worlds, and their creators, are the Brontë sisters' shared worlds of Gondal and Angria, Henry Darger's worlds of Glandeco and Angelinia and his Realms of the Unreal, and MAR Barker's world of Tékumel. Like Barker's Tékumel and JRR Tolkein's Middle Earth, Urutsk also seems to include one or more constructed languages that seem to be more or less linguistically complete.
Second, Urutsk is a post-apocalyptic science fictional game setting. Information I've learned in-game suggests that the time period my sessions have been taking place in are approximately a millennium after some kind of interstellar cataclysm. In this way, too, its similar to MAR Barker's Tékumel and to his Empire of the Petal Throne game, to Kevin Crawford's Stars Without Number game, and I'm sure to any number of other stories that take place on an alien planet amidst the post-cataclysmic civilization of human(-ish?) people whose ancestors once built societies on dozens or hundreds of planets across the galaxy. Luigi Serafini's Codex Seraphinianus, Larry Niven's Integral Trees and Smoke Ring, and Jack Vance's "Miracle Workers" are also all set under similar conditions, and so by a process of convergent evolution or multiple discovery, have noticeable parallels to the world of Urutsk.
I'm creating a bit of a record now, because when I started this online game, I expected it to be a one-off, or to last only two or three sessions. That's been the general fate of the online games I've played in, where either scheduling problems or the difficulty of arranging and running online sessions has led to something more like tournament-style play than to ongoing campaigns. We've played ten sessions together so far though, and we seem likely to be able to continue for awhile. As a result, my memories of the earliest sessions are now a bit sketchy. I'll probably keep the more recent session reports brief as well, but since this is going so well, I wanted to preserve a small portion of it.
SESSION 1
The first session begins with Merope the troglodyte-speaking woodcutter, Fantine the sickly guild beggar, Magdalene the grave digger, and Florence the poison-resistant healer awaking inside a large red box along with a dozen or so other 0th-level commoners. The box is something like 20' to a side, and its occupants awake lightly dressed and entirely un-equipped.
In this session, Fantine was initially my favorite character, so she led most of my team's actions. Knocking on the walls of the red box quickly revealed that doors would appear when searched for, and the first door opened into what looked like an alleyway, facing a brick wall. Fantine was the first of several brave souls to venture outside, revealing a world of great brick buildings, smoke stacks, and plumes of black industrial smoke. Fantine felt comfortable in this familiar-looking world, but the many of bewildered commoners wondered if the other walls would open into the same world, or even if this door would reliably lead back to the seemingly-Victorian realm, so they all returned into the box and shut the door.
When the door was re-opened, it was not into a Victorian alley, but instead into a strange open roadway. Several wheeled metal carriages sped past at unbelievable speed, and I believe that at least one peasant was lost when he stepped outside and was struck by one of the horseless carriages. Other carriages veered out of the way, trying to avoid the box that had suddenly appeared in the middle of their path, and a spectacular collision and explosion resulted. The peasants noticed that they were surrounded by some kind of coliseum filled with a great audience, and that they were being approached by shouting men in some kind of black uniforms. If my memory serves, another peasant was lost to a gunshot wound delivered by one of the uniformed men, although he may have been saved by first aid after the door was closed.
The next door that was opened led into a bright and vividly colored jungle, but the first two commoners who stepped out of the cubed were burned by the heat and acidic humidity of the air, and one of two possibly died after being touched by a poisonous leaf that wafted down from one of the many trees. Once their companions were back inside, the group quickly closed the door on those inhospitable environs. Florence the healer may have attempted to save one of the injured explorers.
The following door opened only a crack into a world of waist-deep snow. The peasants feared they were too lightly dressed to survive the frigid cold of that world, as their initial glimpse showed lights only in the far distance. Unfortunately, the weight of the collapsing snow kept the door from closing properly, and the cube itself began to grow uncomfortably chill. Another door was opened, revealing some kind of cave. Fantine and her companions joined an expedition into the cave, while another eight or so peasants stayed behind in the cube to try to re-close the door leading into winter.
The cavern Fantine and her friends entered was poorly lit, but a tunnel that possibly led to the surface was visible across a great crevasse. The peasants decided to attempt to descend into the canyon, in the hopes of ascending the other side, and then taking the tunnel to the surface. They located a wooden scaffolding that might have been left over from some kind of mining operation, and began climbing down. As they did, they were assailed by a dozen or so blue creatures that had bodies like monkeys, but with beaked turtle-like faces. Merope the wood-cutter acquitted herself admirably in combat, but Fantine the beggar, having only 1 hit point, was felled by one of the weird beasts. First aid, possibly delivered by Merope or Florence, resuscitated her from her injuries. Fearing that this cave was too dangerous, the commoners returned to the red cube to check on their friends.
They arrived to find that their fellows who had stayed behind had managed to close the door on the icy realm. The snow turned out to be only frozen water, fortunately, and not frozen methane or helium, and so the commoners had been able to brave it for a few moments to hand-shovel the snow back out of the doorway and shut the door firmly.
Another door was tried, this one leading into the interior of a building. When Fantine and some other peasants found a window, they soon realized they were hundreds of feet above the ground inside a tower so tall it scraped the sky itself. They also soon met a balding man with injured feet who called himself "John McClane" and who appeared to believe that he was hallucinating the peasants. The peasants followed McClane as he explored the hall and adjoining rooms, but after more gunfire from McClane's enemies, they decided to return once more to the cube.
The final door the peasants tried opened into a fairly featureless white hallway, but quick exploration turned up a locker room. Each peasant pressed their palm to a door to open a locker, and each found supplies related to their profession, including some white coveralls, a computer tablet, and a gun.
At this point, the session ended and we all leveled up. Merope became a fighter, Fantine and Magdelane became thieves, and Florence became a cleric.
SESSION 2
In this session, and for the rest of the sessions that take place in Urutsk, I was one of only two players. We each chose one character to advance. I chose Merope, whose 0th level characteristics reminded me of JK Rowling's depiction of Voldemort's mother, and my fellow player chose Slunk, a wood-elf charlatan and snake-oil salesman. Merope graduated from being a 0th level Dungeon Crawl Classics woodcutter to being a 1st level 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons fighter. She also rolled for a random characteristic on the Arduin Grimoire's "Special Abilities" Chart. She got +1 with all axes and -3 against all dragon's breath, which seemed appropriate for some kind of reptile-loving forest-dwelling recluse. Slunk became a warlock and swore a pact of allegiance to Lord Worm, a demonic entity aligned with elemental silt. (I later learned that all magic users and magical creatures in Urutsk are associated with one of a few dozen elemental bloodlines.) Slunk also acquired a familiar in the form of a holographic projection of a woman from his tablet computer, quickly dubbed "Clippy."
Shortly after deciding his intention to make a pact with a magical entity, Slunk received a vision of Lord Worm, a silt-blooded demon king. Slunk discovered that he too had an elemental silt bloodline, and soon swore a pact to Lord Worm, gaining various magical abilities in the bargain.
Merope and Slunk exited the locker room and began exploring. In one room they found some emergency rations and ration cards as well as some med kits. They also found evidence that the crew might be abusing stimulants, and a quick peek inside a ration revealed twice the safe daily limit of stimulants available alongside one day's worth of food. In another room they found some humans in similar white coveralls who revealed that they were on a ship, and had been for their entire lives. Merope and Slunk decided that they were dealing with the degenerate inhabitants of the original crew of a generation ship and decided to look for some form of shuttle craft or escape pod. Consulting both Merope's tablet and Clippy soon revealed that the crew only controlled a relatively small area of the ship. They also discovered that Merope's handprint would open any door with palm-reader, while Slunk's elven hand was denied access for some reason.
A bit more exploring revealed a kind of interstitial space, a kind of scaffolding of walkways the appeared to run behind the walls and between the levels of the ship. Slunk and Merope tried climbing down a couple of levels, outside of the crew-controlled area, in search of valuables. I think our reasoning was that anything salvaged from an abandoned portion of the ship would be valuable to the occupants who no longer had access to that particular supply. Once in the uncontrolled portion of the ship however, they were quickly set upon by a towering centipede-like robot. Slunk was injured, while Merope was quickly felled and had a near death experience. She used what she thought was her dying breath to tell Slunk to run. Slunk decided to stand his ground however, and fired an overloaded blast from his stun pistol, seemingly knocking the robot out of commission. Slunk's CPR, and a bit of good fortune, brought Merope back from the brink of death.
Slunk helped Merope into the first room they could find on this lower hallway, where they found a number of crates labeled "Cedar." With Merope still at death's door, Slunk opened a crate and found a foil packet filled with some kind of glowing liquid, which he poured into Merope's mouth and encouraged her to drink. Merope did, and recovered a bit of her health, she also mutated becoming mildly radioactive. Her physical stamina permanently increased, and she became mildly resistant to injury. She also gained a kind of Ren-and-Stimpy-style detail vision that allowed her to inflict more damage with her attacks by striking her enemies' weakest points. The mutagenic liquid frightened both Slunk and Merope, so they decided to look for treasure in another room.
As they re-entered the hall, they saw that the giant robot was reviving itself. Merope put her newfound detail vision to work and fired her security gun at the robot. The super-heated round splashed liquid metal after striking the creature, revealing the source of the strange damage to some of the walls Merope and Slunk had seen earlier. Slunk called upon his patron and shot malevolent blasts of elemental silt at the centipede. Between these two attacks, the robot deactivated again, although this time the pair was unwilling to believe that it was permanently disabled. They continued attacking its prone form for another 20 minutes before rolling it off the walkway and into the bowels of the ship below. Merope managed to break off a few of the creatures legs to use as a short sword, a long sword, and a pry bar. Slunk was able to pocket a few of the shinier bits of the machine to try to trade later.
Concerned that the noise of this encounter might bring additional combatants, the pair abandoned their plan to look for valuables and re-ascended to a higher, and safer floor. They located a security office and used Merope's clearance to enter it. Inside they found a variety of colored jackets that seemed to reveal one's crew rank, along with a couple of gas masks and tear gas canisters, and a safe place to rest for the night. Merope settled on a purple command jacket, although a panel of the jacket, located where a name-badge might be placed, turned orange to identify her as security personnel. Slunk discovered when he wore a blue jacket this panel turned green, and in a green jacket it turned blue, so he left the green jacket on. The pair felt a bit better disguised and protected in their new jackets, and decided to take a long rest to recover from their injuries.
Urutsk is a couple of things. First, it appears to be one of only a handful of examples that I'm aware of, of a person having a particularly well-developed fantasy world as a child that they never abandon, and that they continue growing and expanding and creating for into adulthood. Other examples of such worlds, and their creators, are the Brontë sisters' shared worlds of Gondal and Angria, Henry Darger's worlds of Glandeco and Angelinia and his Realms of the Unreal, and MAR Barker's world of Tékumel. Like Barker's Tékumel and JRR Tolkein's Middle Earth, Urutsk also seems to include one or more constructed languages that seem to be more or less linguistically complete.
Second, Urutsk is a post-apocalyptic science fictional game setting. Information I've learned in-game suggests that the time period my sessions have been taking place in are approximately a millennium after some kind of interstellar cataclysm. In this way, too, its similar to MAR Barker's Tékumel and to his Empire of the Petal Throne game, to Kevin Crawford's Stars Without Number game, and I'm sure to any number of other stories that take place on an alien planet amidst the post-cataclysmic civilization of human(-ish?) people whose ancestors once built societies on dozens or hundreds of planets across the galaxy. Luigi Serafini's Codex Seraphinianus, Larry Niven's Integral Trees and Smoke Ring, and Jack Vance's "Miracle Workers" are also all set under similar conditions, and so by a process of convergent evolution or multiple discovery, have noticeable parallels to the world of Urutsk.
I'm creating a bit of a record now, because when I started this online game, I expected it to be a one-off, or to last only two or three sessions. That's been the general fate of the online games I've played in, where either scheduling problems or the difficulty of arranging and running online sessions has led to something more like tournament-style play than to ongoing campaigns. We've played ten sessions together so far though, and we seem likely to be able to continue for awhile. As a result, my memories of the earliest sessions are now a bit sketchy. I'll probably keep the more recent session reports brief as well, but since this is going so well, I wanted to preserve a small portion of it.
SESSION 1
The first session begins with Merope the troglodyte-speaking woodcutter, Fantine the sickly guild beggar, Magdalene the grave digger, and Florence the poison-resistant healer awaking inside a large red box along with a dozen or so other 0th-level commoners. The box is something like 20' to a side, and its occupants awake lightly dressed and entirely un-equipped.
In this session, Fantine was initially my favorite character, so she led most of my team's actions. Knocking on the walls of the red box quickly revealed that doors would appear when searched for, and the first door opened into what looked like an alleyway, facing a brick wall. Fantine was the first of several brave souls to venture outside, revealing a world of great brick buildings, smoke stacks, and plumes of black industrial smoke. Fantine felt comfortable in this familiar-looking world, but the many of bewildered commoners wondered if the other walls would open into the same world, or even if this door would reliably lead back to the seemingly-Victorian realm, so they all returned into the box and shut the door.
When the door was re-opened, it was not into a Victorian alley, but instead into a strange open roadway. Several wheeled metal carriages sped past at unbelievable speed, and I believe that at least one peasant was lost when he stepped outside and was struck by one of the horseless carriages. Other carriages veered out of the way, trying to avoid the box that had suddenly appeared in the middle of their path, and a spectacular collision and explosion resulted. The peasants noticed that they were surrounded by some kind of coliseum filled with a great audience, and that they were being approached by shouting men in some kind of black uniforms. If my memory serves, another peasant was lost to a gunshot wound delivered by one of the uniformed men, although he may have been saved by first aid after the door was closed.
The next door that was opened led into a bright and vividly colored jungle, but the first two commoners who stepped out of the cubed were burned by the heat and acidic humidity of the air, and one of two possibly died after being touched by a poisonous leaf that wafted down from one of the many trees. Once their companions were back inside, the group quickly closed the door on those inhospitable environs. Florence the healer may have attempted to save one of the injured explorers.
The following door opened only a crack into a world of waist-deep snow. The peasants feared they were too lightly dressed to survive the frigid cold of that world, as their initial glimpse showed lights only in the far distance. Unfortunately, the weight of the collapsing snow kept the door from closing properly, and the cube itself began to grow uncomfortably chill. Another door was opened, revealing some kind of cave. Fantine and her companions joined an expedition into the cave, while another eight or so peasants stayed behind in the cube to try to re-close the door leading into winter.
The cavern Fantine and her friends entered was poorly lit, but a tunnel that possibly led to the surface was visible across a great crevasse. The peasants decided to attempt to descend into the canyon, in the hopes of ascending the other side, and then taking the tunnel to the surface. They located a wooden scaffolding that might have been left over from some kind of mining operation, and began climbing down. As they did, they were assailed by a dozen or so blue creatures that had bodies like monkeys, but with beaked turtle-like faces. Merope the wood-cutter acquitted herself admirably in combat, but Fantine the beggar, having only 1 hit point, was felled by one of the weird beasts. First aid, possibly delivered by Merope or Florence, resuscitated her from her injuries. Fearing that this cave was too dangerous, the commoners returned to the red cube to check on their friends.
They arrived to find that their fellows who had stayed behind had managed to close the door on the icy realm. The snow turned out to be only frozen water, fortunately, and not frozen methane or helium, and so the commoners had been able to brave it for a few moments to hand-shovel the snow back out of the doorway and shut the door firmly.
Another door was tried, this one leading into the interior of a building. When Fantine and some other peasants found a window, they soon realized they were hundreds of feet above the ground inside a tower so tall it scraped the sky itself. They also soon met a balding man with injured feet who called himself "John McClane" and who appeared to believe that he was hallucinating the peasants. The peasants followed McClane as he explored the hall and adjoining rooms, but after more gunfire from McClane's enemies, they decided to return once more to the cube.
The final door the peasants tried opened into a fairly featureless white hallway, but quick exploration turned up a locker room. Each peasant pressed their palm to a door to open a locker, and each found supplies related to their profession, including some white coveralls, a computer tablet, and a gun.
At this point, the session ended and we all leveled up. Merope became a fighter, Fantine and Magdelane became thieves, and Florence became a cleric.
SESSION 2
In this session, and for the rest of the sessions that take place in Urutsk, I was one of only two players. We each chose one character to advance. I chose Merope, whose 0th level characteristics reminded me of JK Rowling's depiction of Voldemort's mother, and my fellow player chose Slunk, a wood-elf charlatan and snake-oil salesman. Merope graduated from being a 0th level Dungeon Crawl Classics woodcutter to being a 1st level 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons fighter. She also rolled for a random characteristic on the Arduin Grimoire's "Special Abilities" Chart. She got +1 with all axes and -3 against all dragon's breath, which seemed appropriate for some kind of reptile-loving forest-dwelling recluse. Slunk became a warlock and swore a pact of allegiance to Lord Worm, a demonic entity aligned with elemental silt. (I later learned that all magic users and magical creatures in Urutsk are associated with one of a few dozen elemental bloodlines.) Slunk also acquired a familiar in the form of a holographic projection of a woman from his tablet computer, quickly dubbed "Clippy."
Shortly after deciding his intention to make a pact with a magical entity, Slunk received a vision of Lord Worm, a silt-blooded demon king. Slunk discovered that he too had an elemental silt bloodline, and soon swore a pact to Lord Worm, gaining various magical abilities in the bargain.
Merope and Slunk exited the locker room and began exploring. In one room they found some emergency rations and ration cards as well as some med kits. They also found evidence that the crew might be abusing stimulants, and a quick peek inside a ration revealed twice the safe daily limit of stimulants available alongside one day's worth of food. In another room they found some humans in similar white coveralls who revealed that they were on a ship, and had been for their entire lives. Merope and Slunk decided that they were dealing with the degenerate inhabitants of the original crew of a generation ship and decided to look for some form of shuttle craft or escape pod. Consulting both Merope's tablet and Clippy soon revealed that the crew only controlled a relatively small area of the ship. They also discovered that Merope's handprint would open any door with palm-reader, while Slunk's elven hand was denied access for some reason.
A bit more exploring revealed a kind of interstitial space, a kind of scaffolding of walkways the appeared to run behind the walls and between the levels of the ship. Slunk and Merope tried climbing down a couple of levels, outside of the crew-controlled area, in search of valuables. I think our reasoning was that anything salvaged from an abandoned portion of the ship would be valuable to the occupants who no longer had access to that particular supply. Once in the uncontrolled portion of the ship however, they were quickly set upon by a towering centipede-like robot. Slunk was injured, while Merope was quickly felled and had a near death experience. She used what she thought was her dying breath to tell Slunk to run. Slunk decided to stand his ground however, and fired an overloaded blast from his stun pistol, seemingly knocking the robot out of commission. Slunk's CPR, and a bit of good fortune, brought Merope back from the brink of death.
Slunk helped Merope into the first room they could find on this lower hallway, where they found a number of crates labeled "Cedar." With Merope still at death's door, Slunk opened a crate and found a foil packet filled with some kind of glowing liquid, which he poured into Merope's mouth and encouraged her to drink. Merope did, and recovered a bit of her health, she also mutated becoming mildly radioactive. Her physical stamina permanently increased, and she became mildly resistant to injury. She also gained a kind of Ren-and-Stimpy-style detail vision that allowed her to inflict more damage with her attacks by striking her enemies' weakest points. The mutagenic liquid frightened both Slunk and Merope, so they decided to look for treasure in another room.
As they re-entered the hall, they saw that the giant robot was reviving itself. Merope put her newfound detail vision to work and fired her security gun at the robot. The super-heated round splashed liquid metal after striking the creature, revealing the source of the strange damage to some of the walls Merope and Slunk had seen earlier. Slunk called upon his patron and shot malevolent blasts of elemental silt at the centipede. Between these two attacks, the robot deactivated again, although this time the pair was unwilling to believe that it was permanently disabled. They continued attacking its prone form for another 20 minutes before rolling it off the walkway and into the bowels of the ship below. Merope managed to break off a few of the creatures legs to use as a short sword, a long sword, and a pry bar. Slunk was able to pocket a few of the shinier bits of the machine to try to trade later.
Concerned that the noise of this encounter might bring additional combatants, the pair abandoned their plan to look for valuables and re-ascended to a higher, and safer floor. They located a security office and used Merope's clearance to enter it. Inside they found a variety of colored jackets that seemed to reveal one's crew rank, along with a couple of gas masks and tear gas canisters, and a safe place to rest for the night. Merope settled on a purple command jacket, although a panel of the jacket, located where a name-badge might be placed, turned orange to identify her as security personnel. Slunk discovered when he wore a blue jacket this panel turned green, and in a green jacket it turned blue, so he left the green jacket on. The pair felt a bit better disguised and protected in their new jackets, and decided to take a long rest to recover from their injuries.
Friday, November 28, 2014
Wizards of the Coasts' Monsters I Want to Fight - Thallids (part 1)
Fallen Empires is one of my favorite Magic: the Gathering sets, and the thallids are probably my favorite monsters from the set. Fallen Empires is set on an island, Sarpadia, which is undergoing a period of cooling that's being caused by an apocalyptic foreign war.
The cooling period that Sarpadia is undergoing is similar to Europe's Little Ice Age, circa 1550-1850, when crop yields fell, some northern areas became uninhabitable, and sea ice became a navigational challenge. Unbeknownst to anyone on Sarpadia, their cooling period doesn't have any natural cause - it's the aftermath of the Brothers' War depicted in the Antiquities set. The Brother's War was a WWI analog, featuring very large scale combat using magical and mechanical superweapons, and involving massive environmental despoilation due to resource extraction, manufacturing pollution, and the after-effects of the fighting.
In the Fallen Empires set, shorter summers, longer winters, and lower crop yields have forced the Sarpadian elves to find a new food source (supplementing what was presumably a diet of game, berries, edible shoots, and other arborial fodder.) The elves have started cultivating edible fungus, but their experiments have gotten away from them, giving rise to a new lifeform, the thallids.
The thallids are motile fungi of at least animal intelligence. They have escaped the elves' attempts to domesticate them, started competing with the elves for their traditional food sources, and become a danger to travelers and villagers alike within the forest. (The closest analogy I can think of is if, in response to global warming, we bred modern cattle into something like hippopotami, who then escaped their pens and began rampaging across the countryside.)
Thallids seem to possess a collective intelligence, similar to ants and other social insects, which seems appropriate for fungal lifeforms, considering that the mushrooms we see are sometimes only the most visible tips of mile-long underground organisms. Also like ants, or at least like leaf-cutter ants, thallids appear to collect fodder to compost and let rot, with the fungal growth from the rot piles serving as both a food source and a reproductive medium. Different thallids specialize in different tasks, and a number of them appear to be specialized for combat. As represented in the cards, thallids also reproduce by budding off smaller undifferentiated versions of themselves, called saprolings.
I love the idea of thallids. They're a bit like Christopher Priest's triffids, but their fungal, rather than vegetal, origin makes them seem even more insidious and menacing. In response to climate change, the elves tried to create a new food source, and ended up creating their likely successors. They bred an enemy that was utterly independent of them, indifferent to them, and able to outlast them in the coming winter. Not only could the elves probably not defeat the thallids, (and for the thallids, anything less than a total defeat is tantamount to a victory), but their war against the thallids made all their problems caused by climate change worse. They still needed more food and a long-term plan for survival, but now they also faced a serious competitor for land, living space, and whatever fresh greenery remained.
The appearance of the first thallids seems to have been decided by the individual artists. Ron Spencer's "Thallid" and "Thallid Devourer" (figures 1 & 2) and Sandra Everingham's "Night Soil" (figure 3) have a very ropy, knit-together quality that makes the thallid body appear to be just an appendage of a much larger organism. Spencer's depictions are, I think, my favorite representations of the thallids, and they strongly shape how I think of them.
Drew Tucker's "Night Soil" (figure 4), Rob Alexander's "Feral Thallid" (figure 5), and Heather Hudson's "Night Soil" and "Thorn Thallid" (figures 6 & 7) combine both an insectoid and reptilian feel. Tucker's saproling, in particular, looks almost frog-like, while Alexander's thallid has a feline quality. I especially like the animal quality of these images, because they make the thallids feel potentially cunning, like they might be smarter than us without being sentient, at least about the things they know best.
In contrast, Daniel Gelon's "Thallid" and "Thorn Thallid" (figures 8 & 9) and Mark Tedin's "Thorn Thallid (figure 10) have an otherworldly, alien appearance, almost like octopi, but with entirely un-animal-like eyes.
Gelon is the only artist to envision the thallids as stationary, both in his depiction of the thorn thallid and in his "Fungal Bloom," (figure 11) although Margaret Organ-Kean's "Spore Flower" (figure 12) makes the thallids an invisible, but menacing presence, and suggests the possibility of them escaping the forest.
The only early depictions of the thallids that I don't especially care for are Edward Beard Jr's "Thallid" (figure 13) and Jesper Myrfors' "Thallid" and "Thorn Thallid" (figures 14 & 15). Beard's hairy-looking thallid might be intended to evoke something plant- or moss-like, but it's never really looked fungal to me. Myrfors' thallids do look like fungus, but they seem tiny and smurf-like to me, and both seem somehow too humanoid, not animalistic enough for my tastes.
If either Beard's or Myrfors' visions had dominated or become the house style, I doubt I would have liked the thallids as much as I do. Myrfors offers us another vision of mushroom-headed humanoids, akin to Jeff Vandermeer's graycaps, and a half-dozen similar beasts, including DCC's Shrooman (DCC 426). Beard gives us a hairy green cyclops, something like a yeti or Looney Tunes' Gossamer. His vision seems more suited to a single, unique monster than to a whole race. If Beard's monster reproduces, it seems like it should be at sword-point, when the misfortune of being sliced in half turns into the fortune asexual reproduction. I might like to fight one of Beard's monsters, but I wouldn't want it to be the template for the other thallids.
As a bonus I've also included Daniel Gelon's and Heather Hudson's "Fungusaur" images (figures 16 & 17). These depict a different fungal monster. Unlike the thallids, the fungusaur is decidedly not part of an ecosystem or community. It appears to be a unique monster, and one that grows itself, rather than growing offspring, as part of its life-cycle. The fungusaur is a direction not taken. While the thallids are not meant to be perfectly human-like in appearance or intelligence, neither are they intended to be mindless brutes, or to single-mindedly pursue their hunger. What makes thallids frightening is that they might be smarter than they seem, and they already seem unnervingly smart for things that were only ever bred to be eaten. The fungusaur is a landmark, it is unmissably huge. The thallids are human-scale, and they are camouflaged. An individual thallid might be hidden behind the next tree, and an entire forest of them might be hidden just beyond. Collectively, the thallids are much, much bigger than the fungusaur, but their size is distributed, spread out across an entire countryside. And while the fungusaur might escape its cave and grow big as a mountain, the thallids have already escaped, and they might grow as big as the whole island, and there might not be enough room for you both.
All images used here are copyright Wizards of the Coast, and used without permission, for fair use purposes.
 |
| Figure 1 - "Thallid" by Ron Spencer |
 |
| Figure 2 - "Thallid Devourer" by Ron Spencer |
The cooling period that Sarpadia is undergoing is similar to Europe's Little Ice Age, circa 1550-1850, when crop yields fell, some northern areas became uninhabitable, and sea ice became a navigational challenge. Unbeknownst to anyone on Sarpadia, their cooling period doesn't have any natural cause - it's the aftermath of the Brothers' War depicted in the Antiquities set. The Brother's War was a WWI analog, featuring very large scale combat using magical and mechanical superweapons, and involving massive environmental despoilation due to resource extraction, manufacturing pollution, and the after-effects of the fighting.
 |
| Figure 3 - "Night Soil" by Sandra Everingham |
In the Fallen Empires set, shorter summers, longer winters, and lower crop yields have forced the Sarpadian elves to find a new food source (supplementing what was presumably a diet of game, berries, edible shoots, and other arborial fodder.) The elves have started cultivating edible fungus, but their experiments have gotten away from them, giving rise to a new lifeform, the thallids.
 |
| Figure 4 - "Night Soil" by Drew Tucker |
The thallids are motile fungi of at least animal intelligence. They have escaped the elves' attempts to domesticate them, started competing with the elves for their traditional food sources, and become a danger to travelers and villagers alike within the forest. (The closest analogy I can think of is if, in response to global warming, we bred modern cattle into something like hippopotami, who then escaped their pens and began rampaging across the countryside.)
 |
| Figure 5 - "Feral Thallid" by Rob Alexander |
Thallids seem to possess a collective intelligence, similar to ants and other social insects, which seems appropriate for fungal lifeforms, considering that the mushrooms we see are sometimes only the most visible tips of mile-long underground organisms. Also like ants, or at least like leaf-cutter ants, thallids appear to collect fodder to compost and let rot, with the fungal growth from the rot piles serving as both a food source and a reproductive medium. Different thallids specialize in different tasks, and a number of them appear to be specialized for combat. As represented in the cards, thallids also reproduce by budding off smaller undifferentiated versions of themselves, called saprolings.
 |
| Figure 6 - "Night Soil" by Heather Hudson |
 |
| Figure 7 - "Thorn Thallid" by Heather Hudson |
I love the idea of thallids. They're a bit like Christopher Priest's triffids, but their fungal, rather than vegetal, origin makes them seem even more insidious and menacing. In response to climate change, the elves tried to create a new food source, and ended up creating their likely successors. They bred an enemy that was utterly independent of them, indifferent to them, and able to outlast them in the coming winter. Not only could the elves probably not defeat the thallids, (and for the thallids, anything less than a total defeat is tantamount to a victory), but their war against the thallids made all their problems caused by climate change worse. They still needed more food and a long-term plan for survival, but now they also faced a serious competitor for land, living space, and whatever fresh greenery remained.
 |
| Figure 8 - "Thallid" by Daniel Gelon |
 |
| Figure 9 - "Thorn Thallid" by Daniel Gelon |
The appearance of the first thallids seems to have been decided by the individual artists. Ron Spencer's "Thallid" and "Thallid Devourer" (figures 1 & 2) and Sandra Everingham's "Night Soil" (figure 3) have a very ropy, knit-together quality that makes the thallid body appear to be just an appendage of a much larger organism. Spencer's depictions are, I think, my favorite representations of the thallids, and they strongly shape how I think of them.
 |
| Figure 10 - "Thorn Thallid" by Mark Tedin |
Drew Tucker's "Night Soil" (figure 4), Rob Alexander's "Feral Thallid" (figure 5), and Heather Hudson's "Night Soil" and "Thorn Thallid" (figures 6 & 7) combine both an insectoid and reptilian feel. Tucker's saproling, in particular, looks almost frog-like, while Alexander's thallid has a feline quality. I especially like the animal quality of these images, because they make the thallids feel potentially cunning, like they might be smarter than us without being sentient, at least about the things they know best.
 |
| Figure 11 - "Fungal Bloom" by Daniel Gelon |
 |
| Figure 12 - "Spore Flower" by Margaret Organ Kean |
Gelon is the only artist to envision the thallids as stationary, both in his depiction of the thorn thallid and in his "Fungal Bloom," (figure 11) although Margaret Organ-Kean's "Spore Flower" (figure 12) makes the thallids an invisible, but menacing presence, and suggests the possibility of them escaping the forest.
 |
| Figure 13 - "Thallid" by Edward Beard Jr |
 |
| Figure 14 - "Thallid" by Jesper Myrfors |
 |
| Figure 15 - "Thorn Thallid" by Jesper Myrfors |
 |
| Figure 16 - "Fungusaur" by Daniel Gelon |
As a bonus I've also included Daniel Gelon's and Heather Hudson's "Fungusaur" images (figures 16 & 17). These depict a different fungal monster. Unlike the thallids, the fungusaur is decidedly not part of an ecosystem or community. It appears to be a unique monster, and one that grows itself, rather than growing offspring, as part of its life-cycle. The fungusaur is a direction not taken. While the thallids are not meant to be perfectly human-like in appearance or intelligence, neither are they intended to be mindless brutes, or to single-mindedly pursue their hunger. What makes thallids frightening is that they might be smarter than they seem, and they already seem unnervingly smart for things that were only ever bred to be eaten. The fungusaur is a landmark, it is unmissably huge. The thallids are human-scale, and they are camouflaged. An individual thallid might be hidden behind the next tree, and an entire forest of them might be hidden just beyond. Collectively, the thallids are much, much bigger than the fungusaur, but their size is distributed, spread out across an entire countryside. And while the fungusaur might escape its cave and grow big as a mountain, the thallids have already escaped, and they might grow as big as the whole island, and there might not be enough room for you both.
 |
| Figure 17 - "Fungusaur" by Heather Hudson |
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
DCC House Rule - Lucky Weapon
I'm planning to add a house-rule to the Dungeon Crawl Classics games I referee to modify the DCC Warrior's "lucky weapon." In the rules as written, Warriors permanently add their starting 1st level Luck modifier to attack rolls for a weapon of their choice.
On the one hand, I like that this is a new take on older mechanic's like the Ranger's "favored weapon" or the Fighter's "weapon specialization." On the other hand, I have the same objections to it that I have to DCC's "lucky roll" - only about a quarter of Warriors get an actually-lucky weapon, while half get no modifier at all, and another quarter get an un-lucky weapon.
The rules as written also mention that Warriors should be able to perform weapon-specific Mighty Deeds of Arms with each type of weapon. No weapon-specific Deeds are given in the rules; instead it's recommended that each referee write their own weapon-specific Deed for each weapon. My objection to that is that it's a lot of extra writing before you can even get started.
So, my house rule is that at 1st level, each Warrior chooses a lucky weapon. Warriors receive a permanent +1 bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls with their lucky weapon, regardless of their starting Luck score. In addition, a Warrior automatically knows one weapon-specific Deed for their lucky weapon. (A warrior might be able to learn additional weapon-specific Deeds, but only if they "quest for it.")
As with my house-rule on "lucky rolls," if a referee felt that Warriors with very high Luck scores deserved a larger bonus, that would probably work fine, although in that case, I would probably recommend returning to modifying only the attack roll, since a +2 or +3 damage bonus, in addition to the bonus for exceptional Strength, is quite a lot for the few characters it would affect.
On the one hand, I like that this is a new take on older mechanic's like the Ranger's "favored weapon" or the Fighter's "weapon specialization." On the other hand, I have the same objections to it that I have to DCC's "lucky roll" - only about a quarter of Warriors get an actually-lucky weapon, while half get no modifier at all, and another quarter get an un-lucky weapon.
The rules as written also mention that Warriors should be able to perform weapon-specific Mighty Deeds of Arms with each type of weapon. No weapon-specific Deeds are given in the rules; instead it's recommended that each referee write their own weapon-specific Deed for each weapon. My objection to that is that it's a lot of extra writing before you can even get started.
So, my house rule is that at 1st level, each Warrior chooses a lucky weapon. Warriors receive a permanent +1 bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls with their lucky weapon, regardless of their starting Luck score. In addition, a Warrior automatically knows one weapon-specific Deed for their lucky weapon. (A warrior might be able to learn additional weapon-specific Deeds, but only if they "quest for it.")
As with my house-rule on "lucky rolls," if a referee felt that Warriors with very high Luck scores deserved a larger bonus, that would probably work fine, although in that case, I would probably recommend returning to modifying only the attack roll, since a +2 or +3 damage bonus, in addition to the bonus for exceptional Strength, is quite a lot for the few characters it would affect.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
My Pointcrawl Contest Victory
Chris Kutalik of the Hill Cantons blog recently announced a contest to design a location for his upcoming pointcrawl adventure "The Slumbering Ursine Dunes." Potential prizes included having your location included in the finished adventure, and receiving a wargame from Chris' personal collection.
The winners were announced even more recently, and my entry won second place!
You can read my completed entry by clicking the link below. If you want to wait to see it in the finished adventure, or at the gaming table, then allow me to leave just the following picture to whet your imagination.
The winners were announced even more recently, and my entry won second place!
You can read my completed entry by clicking the link below. If you want to wait to see it in the finished adventure, or at the gaming table, then allow me to leave just the following picture to whet your imagination.
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| "Castoroides" by Charles R.Knight,via Wikimedia |
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Public Domain Art - Warwick Goble's "Indian Myths and Legends"
Warwick Goble is one of my favorite public domain artists. These illustrations are from Donald Alexander MacKenzie's Indian Myths and Legends.
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| "Sita finds Rama among lotus blooms" |
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| "Shantanu meets the Goddess Ganga" |
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| "Arjuna and the river nymph" |
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| "The ordeal of Queen Draupadi" |
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| "The return of the heroes slain in battle" |
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| "Damayanti and the swan" |
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| "Damayanti chooses a husband" |
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| "Rama spurns the demon lover" |
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