Sanctum Sabbathi and Valpurga

Today's post contains two more adventure locations in the Karthax Mountains. The first is the lair of Krevborna's foremost criminal syndicate based on the fabled mountain dwellings of the Order of Assassins. The second is an eldritch library presided over by the legendary nosferatu.

Sanctum Sabbathi

Sanctum Sabbathi is a concealed fortress used as the headquarters of the Skarabasca criminal organization.

    • Sanctum Sabbathi is veiled by powerful illusions—only those who hold one of the magical keys to the fortress can perceive it. It is otherwise invisible.

    • Within Sanctum Sabbathi are vast alchemical laboratories used to create the magical intoxicants that the Skarabasca’s agents peddle throughout Krevborna.  

    • The alchemists of the Skarabasca are not adverse to dipping into their own supply; the members of the Skarabasca at Sanctum Sabbathi exist in states of paranoia, mania, and heightened aggression.

    • Sanctum Sabbathi is also home to the many seers, oracles, and diviners that the Skarabasca use to spy upon rival criminal organizations.

    • The inner chambers of Sanctum Sabbathi contain the summoning circles the Skarabasca rely upon to conjure the demons they employ as supernatural assassins.  

Valpurga

Valpurga is a lonely clock tower constructed from a weathered material that appears to be stone, but is in fact the petrified flesh of a sleeping eldritch creature. No matter the state of the weather, the tower’s “stone” is uncannily warm to the touch. 

    • The interior of Valpurga is dominated by floor after floor of library shelves, all of which are tightly packed with rare and ancient tomes. 

    • Valpurga is a repository of knowledge that has been preserved for posterity via magical means. 

    • Valpurga is also decorated by a startling amount of grandfather clocks, each of which is actually a portal leading to a different location within Krevborna.

    • The surest way to find what you seek in Valpurga is to consult Count Orlok, the librarian residing within it; Orlok is a nosferatu who is only lucid for a few hours after he has fed on fresh blood.

    • Count Orlok’s arms and legs are laden with heavy iron chains as a sign of his devotion to the otherworldly entity known as the Chained Scholar.

The Sisters Carnifexa and The Skarabasca

Two more factions and organizations you can drop into a Krevborna game. Look, if you think I wasn't going to add battle nuns you don't get the setting at all. And of course you need a clandestine criminal organization.

The Sisters Carnifexa

The members of the Sisters Carnifexa are battle-ready nuns professional monster hunters who have been trained for combat at Kairn Volkov, an ancient mountain fortress in the Karthax Mountains. 

    • The Sisters Carnifexa recruit new members exclusively from Krevborna’s population of orphaned and unwanted female children. 

    • Originally a branch of the Church who specialized in slaying unclean monstrosities, the Sisters still wear clerical vestments common to militant nuns.

    • According to hearsay, some of the children collected by the Sisters Carnifexa are experimented upon in the Vlaak laboratories they discovered in the depths of their fortress. 

    • The purpose of the Sisters Carnifexa’s experiments is to mold them into “perfect warriors” to be used as weapons against supernatural threats; those who survive these experiments are rendered stronger and more resilient, and they often possess strange powers.

The Skarabasca

The Skarabasca is a powerful, shadowy criminal syndicate operating throughout Krevborna. 

    • The Skarabasca executes mundane crimes, such as heists, robberies, and assassinations, but the organization’s true specialty is dealing in alchemically enhanced intoxicants.

    • The goal of the Skarabasca is to either destroy or assimilate all rival gangs and criminal organizations in Krevborna. 

    • Upon joining the Skarabasca, a new member chooses a grandiose or fanciful name for themselves, such as Broken Sword, Mirthless Daughter, Steel Serpent, or Omen of the Seven Sorrows. 

    • The members of the Skarabasca revere Cain, the immortal first murderer, as their spiritual patron.

    • Each murder committed by the Skarabasca is dedicated to Cain in hopes that, like him, they will remain uncaught and unpunished for their crimes.

The Mote of Sycorax and the Needle of Golgotha

Two adventure locations in the Karthax Mountains. In this installment of our tour of the mountains things are getting eldritch and strange. Of course, both the artificial sky-island and sinister obelisk described here are connected to the Vlaak.

The Mote of Sycorax

Hidden behind the perpetual cloud cover surrounding one of the Karthax Mountains’ highest peaks floats the Mote of Sycorax, an artificial island held aloft by eldritch machinery.

    • The Mote of Sycorax was created by the aberrations who once kept the inhuman Vlaak as slaves.

    • Sycorax was created as a monitoring station meant to analyze the Vlaak Empire’s rise and eventual fall.

    • The Mote of Sycorax contains magical and technological marvels unseen in this or any age.

The Needle of Golgotha

The Needle of Golgotha is a magical obelisk erected by the Vlaak.

    • The Needle of Golgotha is a narrow, towering pillar of unnatural black stone; embedded within its surface are a multitude of yellowed Vlaakish skulls.

    • Cultists of the otherworldly abominations of the Outer Dark believe that the Needle allows direct communion with the eldritch monstrosities they serve. 

    • If the Needle of Golgotha truly allows for contact between the “eldritch gods” and their cultists, it is theorized that the use of certain obscure rituals performed at the base of the obelisk may enable travel from the mortal plane to the nearest reaches of the Outer Dark.

The Requiem and The Rooks

Two factions in Krevborna! One is an order of magical math monks and the other is the setting's equivalent of the Pinkertons. 

The Requiem gives an organization for characters to belong to for people who like to play D&D-ish monks in the setting, which has proven to be a surprisingly popular option over the years. 

Nobody in my games ever seems to trust the Rooks, but unlike the real-world Pinkertons WotC can't send them to your house over some illicit Magic cards.

The Requiem

The Requiem is a monastic order of warrior ascetics who believe that study and contemplation of the divine mathematics underlying all creation is the true path to spiritual redemption. 

    • Each monk of the Requiem inscribes their body with angelic seals and complex mathematical formulae to channel the power of the divine. 

    • The ascetics of the Requiem prize cold, passionless logic.

    • Monks of the order venture into the world to obtain evil or accursed magical artifacts to be taken for safekeeping in the well-protected vaults below the Monastery of Saint Menoch.

The Rooks

The Rooks are a guild that engage in “night work”—clandestine investigations, strike breaking, and bounty hunting.

    • The Rooks maintain guildhalls throughout Krevborna where they can be contracted as private detectives, hired muscle, spies, discreet couriers, bodyguards, and manhunters. 

    • Over the years, the Rooks have gained renown for disrupting the illegal slave trade in Piskaro, capturing several bandit chiefs, and solving a number of mysterious murder cases. 

    • However, rumors that the Rooks will take innocent lives for the right handful of coins continue to dog the organization and tarnish its reputation. 

    • The Rooks have established routes upon which specialized agents deliver mail and parcels sent through their guildhalls.

The Malcovat and the Monastery of Saint Menoch

Two adventure locations in the Karthax Mountains. The Malcovat is a school of dark magic based on the folklore of the Scholamance. The Monastery of Saint Menoch was inspired by the Ravenloft novel Tapestry of Souls and my desire to add something to the setting that would allow for the sort of militant "monk" characters that some people like to play.

The Malcovat

The Malcovat, a school of black magic, is hidden within the Karthax Mountains. Though the Malcovat is largely thought to be a thing of legend, the rumors of its existence are all too true.

    • Students at the Malcovat are taught by warlocks and wizards who have extensively studied arcane magic.

    • Some classes at the Malcovat are presided over by devils summoned from Hell to provide instruction in the darkest arts of magic. 

    • Out of every cohort, the student who advances the least in their studies is forfeit to the school’s diabolic masters; their soul is taken as Hell’s due. 

    • Graduates of the Malcovat can be found throughout Krevborna, though they keep their alma mater a closely guarded secret.

    • When encountered in Krevborna, former students of the Malcovat’s infernal curriculum are almost always pursuing unholy routes to power.

The Monastery of Saint Menoch

The Monastery of Saint Menoch is a mountainous spiritual refuge maintained by the warrior monks and nuns of the Requiem order. 

    • Though the Monastery of Saint Menoch is known for the tutelage in celestial mathematics and the rigorous physical and mental training it provides to acolytes, there is a secret hidden beneath the well-protected edifice.

    • Hidden below the monastery is a vault in which the Requiem safeguards evil and accursed magical artifacts. 

    • As part of their spiritual mission, the monks and nuns of the Requiem search out and obtain baleful magic items, which they then transport to the vaults of Saint Menoch to be secreted away and kept out of the hands of those who would be tempted by the corrupting power they offer.

Hellraiser #2

This post is the second installment of my re-read of the Hellraiser comics published by Epic. The first issue was undeniably a cracking start, even if it played fast and loose with the idea of a unified "Hellraiser Mythos," but can the second issue rival that tough act to follow? Let's dig in and find out.

My thoughts on each of the stories contained in the issue are below. As always, the stories chosen for the issue offer a nice range of horror tales, albeit that they are united under the Hellraiser rubric. We've got the political and corporal terrors of the prison, the horrors of the hospital, virtual reality, and more!

"The Vault"

Marc McLaurin, Jorge Zaffino, Phil Felix, Julie Michel

"The Vault" concerns a violent prison in an unnamed South American country where a revolution is currently sputtering to its end. A prisoner within the facility sold out his comrades to get possession of a Lament Configuration, which he inexplicably still has in prison. Opening the box removes him from incarceration, but that poses a problem for the facility's commandant, who sees the unexplained escape as a blotch on his record of keeping law and order. And he is a big believer in law and order; he believes in structure and imposing structure from top to bottom, bottom to top, and from the middle outward.

To rectify what he sees as a lapse in order in the prison, the commandant tortures various prisoners into solving the left-behind puzzle box to figure out how the escapee fled his domain. The puzzle doesn't open until he beats a prisoner while holding it. The Cenobite who arrives is very disappointed in the commandant's lack of self-control. The story ends with the commandant being told that this fault can be corrected--from top to bottom, bottom to top, and from the middle outward.

This is an interesting story. I think the way it focus on chaos (symbolized here by the failed revolution) versus order (here played by the carceral state) is a nice thematic contrast. The art style, with is deep, shadowy blacks and muted orange and yellow palette, also really works well with the subject matter.

"Divers Hands"

James Robert Smith and Mike Hoffman

A patient named Vincent in the last leper colony in the continental United States has got his hands--or, rather, what's left of his hands--on a Lament Configuration. Vincent believes that successful manipulation of the puzzle box will grant him a cure for his ravaged body or perhaps give him a new body entirely.

Enter a new nurse named Mary at the treatment center. Vincent quickly seduces her; not romantically, of course, but he coaxes her into solving the puzzle for him since his hands are no longer up to the task. Although, it must be noted, that there is a sexual component to the attraction between them that rings true to Hellraiser's mixture of desperation and desire. While having sex with her boyfriend, Mary imagines the leper atop her in his place.

The Cenobites arrive when Mary solves the puzzle as Vincent's proxy. We now learn that this isn't the first time has had another solve the Lament Figuration on his behalf. Vincent's goal isn't to have the Cenobites cure his affliction per se; he believes that if he leads enough souls to Hell they will remake him as a Cenobite. 

Mary is taken by the Cenobites, but before she enters Hell she flings the Lament Configuration away. Believing that it must have reappeared somewhere else in the institute, Vincent begins scouring the hallways until he finds it. When he does, the Cenobites reappear, apparently re-summoned to their infernal work. The institute, it turns out, is also a puzzle created by LeMarchand, and traversing its corridors has "solved" it. With no proxy to offer them, Vincent is taken as their victim--but not before he sees Mary again, refashioned into a tangle of whole, healthy limbs.

The pastel colors and the unwaveringly bland expressions given to the characters in "Divers Hands" really sells the "clinical" horror of the piece. Everything, from the progress of Vincent's disease to the sterile Hell of the facility, underlines the cold, unfeeling betrayals that Vincent engages in and adds to the horror of the red-hot desires lurking under the surface. This is one of the all-time classics to emerge from the Epic run, in my opinion.

"Writer's Lament"

Dwayne McDuffie, Kevin O'Neil, and Jim Novak

I'd later come to know Kevin O'Neil for his work on The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, of my favorite comics of all time, so you'd think this one would appeal to me. And yet...I really don't.

"Writer's Lament" follows the travails of a freelance writer named Dave who is already in Hell. Used to writing scripts to fit a client's specifications, Dave is surprised one day to find that he's created something actually artistic for once, something that is undeniably his own. Because the use of metaphor in this story is blatantly obvious, the piece is symbolized by a baby because the project is "his baby."

Dave rushes his baby to his editor and is shocked to learn that other people have brought their babies in for consideration as well. The editor likes what he sees, but begins to make changes--you have to think of the audience, the sponsors, the pressure groups, you see. He pulls out one of the baby's eyes, yanks an arm off, and rips off its genitals. (Yes, really.) When Dave balks that the editor is destroying his concept of what the baby should look like, he reassembles it--but then rips the "heart" out of the project.

Dave is ushered out, the creative spark behind the baby now dead, but he's placated by the promise of work to come in the future. 

The underlying idea is interesting here, but the execution is so on-the-nose that it feels more like a creative's gripe session than a real examination of the commercialization of art. The casual gruesomeness of the baby's dismemberment has some shock and heft to it, but the artwork on this one just doesn't feel particularly inspired.

"The Threshold"

Scott Hampton, Mark Neece, and Phil Felix

Oh hey, a virtual reality story! Look, it was the late 80s; "The Threshold" even pre-empts that god-awful Lawnmower Man movie.

A scientist named Leo Marks perfects the virtual reality experience, and then promptly disappears after granting the patent to an amoral tech company. The virtual reality technology is mostly used by people who want to fuck celebrities, but a scientist at the company named Tom is up to some darker stuff. You see, Tom has been experimenting on a man's whose mind was "blown out" in the technology's trial phase; now Tom subjects him to ever-increasing experiences of pain to discover what lies beyond the threshold of maximum agony.

Since this is a Hellraiser story, you can guess what lies beyond pain, actually. A Cenobite arrives after Tom cranks the dial on his experiment--and the Cenobite is none other than Leo Marks! Marks then ushers Tom into the fold, where it seems he may be destined to become a Cenobite himself.

This is a fairly slight story, but it sticks to the themes and the virtual reality gag still has some novelty to it. Loved the scene of the guinea pig having to surf a lava flow in Hawaii.

"The Pleasures of Deception"

Philip Nutman, Bill Koeb, Gaspar Saladino

Now this art style is so of the era it gives me an ache in my chest! Dark, murky paints; inexplicable squares drawn around focal points; scratchy textures hinting at human blight--this is the stuff I'm craving.

"The Pleasures of Deception" is pure strain Hellraiser. When an artist named Davis tries to sell his latest macabre piece to a gallery, his work is rejected. His art has grown stale. What he needs is new inspiration, a new window into the complexities of desire and the flesh, so he gets his hand on a Lament Configuration. 

Solving the puzzle summons Pinhead and the High Priestess. (I believe this is the first time the movie Cenobites show up in the comic as characters.) They guide him through a series of disturbing, blood soaked lessons in how the flesh can be reshaped, taming the chaos of life and turning it into static art. Of course, like many Faustian bargains, this one comes with an unforeseen price: the artist is now cursed with seeing more of the world that he can really handle.

This is a perfect piece to close the issue. Overall, this is another strong entry in the run. You get a sense that they're still figuring out what a Hellraiser comic entails, but it does feel more unified than the first issue.

Kairn Volkov and Kherebor

Two more adventure locations in the Karthax Mountains. The first is a fortress in which monster-hunting nuns train to their craft and pursue alchemical experiments to make the perfect soldiers. The second is my take on giving the setting's dwarves a tragic Gothic past.

Kairn Volkov

Kairn Volkov is a crumbling, ancient outpost originally built by the Vlaak Empire in the western reaches of the Karthax Mountains.

    • Kairn Volkov’s fortress is now occupied by the monster hunting guild known as the Sisters Carnifexa. 

    • All Sisters receive their training at Kairn Volkov; this training is a merciless gauntlet of painful lessons that sometimes proves fatal to those who fall before the many trials involved in their instruction.

    • The Sisters Carnifexa keep the location of Kairn Volkov a closely guarded secret

    • Deep within the bowels of Kairn Volkov, the earliest members of the Sisters Carnifexa found abandoned Vlaak laboratories intended to breed alchemically enhanced imperial soldiers. 

    • Using the forbidden knowledge gleaned from these labs, the Sisters perform experiments on the most promising of their young charges, hoping to transform them into peerless monster hunters.

Kherebor

Krevborna’s dwarves sequester themselves within fortress cities carved into the dangerous slopes of the Karthax Mountains. One of these cities, Kherebor, fell to an invading force of goblins. 

    • The goblin horde was aided and abetted by Prince Coram Forkbeard, the third son of Kherebor’s king. 

    • Prince Coram saw the goblins as allies for his act of supreme betrayal and usurpation; he led the goblins through the secret tunnels beneath Kherebor, allowing them to take the fortified city’s defenders by surprise and thereby conquer the fastness.

    • After the bloody battle, the only dwarves who remained alive inside the fortress were taken as slaves. 

    • Although Coram is now the crowned lord of Kherebor, this is merely a jest by the goblins; they keep him installed as Kherebor’s sovereign as a mockery of the dwarves and their hallowed traditions. 

    • Once a proud example of the beauty and endurance of dwarven craftsmanship, Kherebor now exists in a state of deplorable ruin.