Igorrr, Dour Festival

Igorrr, Full Concert (Dour Festival, 2017)

If you dig that, check out these videos about the making of Igorrr's album Savage Sinusoid:

Beowulf But with the Xenomorphs from Aliens

A campaign idea: Beowulf, but with xenomorphs from Aliens.

The player characters are all Geatish heroes lately arrived at the kingdom of the Danes to help the beleaguered Hrothgar, whose mead hall has been overrun by...aliens from beyond the stars. 

Of course, once Grendel--a xenomorph/human hybrid--has been slain and Heorot cleared of the alien menace, the heroes must venture beneath the lake to the crashed ship the xenomorphs arrived on and face Grendel's mother--the xenomorph Queen.

This statblock from Geek & Sundry may come in handy:

Misery and Gain Have Their Own Staccato Rhythm

Campaign: The Excruciata (Umberwell, 5e D&D)

Characters: Raymondo Cortiz (human assassin rogue); Grumli Fellhammer (dwarf path of the ancestors barbarian); Nina Kessler (genasi way of the frozen fist monk); Hiroshi (human samurai fighter); Zanna Cobblepot (gnome wild magic sorcerer); Wexel (goliath college of valor bard).

Events: The gang tracked Doctor Nymenholt to the medical clinic he runs in the Chandler's District. Zanna posed as a patient needing an examination; Nina came with her playing the part of a concerned friend. The rest of the group sidled around to the back of the clinic to enter surreptitiously through a window. Unfortunately, the break in went wrong from the start--Raymondo, Hitoshi, and Grumli made too much noise breaking and entering and were promptly attacked by nurses who turned out to be more than medical personnel--nurses generally don't cast spells that make the walls bleed and cause slashing claws to form out of the ether.

Meanwhile, alerted to the intrusion, the nurse who was attending Zanna in an examination room turned on her, slicing at her with a scalpel. Nina, reading a broadsheet in the waiting room, failed to hear the melee until it was too late...Zanna stumbled out of the examination room only to crash to the floor in front of Nina, dead. 

And that's where we took a break so Zanna's player could make a new character.

The game resumed with the gang's sorcerer falling dead at Nina's feet. Now alone and besieged by a murderous, magically proficient "nurse," Nina fought for her life--and won. Upon examining the corpse of the nurse, Nina discovered that the woman bore the Adversary's mark. It was now apparent that the Church of the Outlander had enlisted the Excuciata in a war between two cults as the condition of their alliance--the Church of the Outlander were hoping that the gang could take out their occult rivals.

Nina fled deeper into the Nymenholt Clinic to find the rest of the Excruciata. She discovered them in a pitched battle with other members of the clinic-cult. After dispatching the "nurses" the gang debated whether to press on with their mission to assassinate Doctor Nymenholt or bail in light of Zanna's untimely death. Misery and gain have their own staccato rhythm; the remaining members of the Excruciata decided to press on and take blood for blood.

As they explored the now shockingly silent clinic, they discovered a patient--a goliath musician name Wexel--hiding in a janitor's closet. Wexel explained that he had come to the clinic hoping to beat his addiction to snowleaf, but had discovered that Doctor Nymenholt and his nurses were implanting the patients with unholy parasitic lifeforms. He had tried to make his escape during the chaos of the Excruciata's entrance into the clinic, but he hid in the closet when he saw the doctor appear suddenly and take the elevator down into the basement.

Wexel decided that there was safety in numbers. Grumli armed Wexel with a spare sword and he was duly deputized as an auxiliary member of the Excruciata. The gang quickly located the elevator that Nymenholt had been spotted entering, and took it down into the basement of the clinic.

Facial Justice

Episode 20: Facial Justice.
L.P. Hartley's Facial Justice depicts a post-nuclear dystopia in which absolute equality is enforced by rule of... well, not law, but supposedly benevolent edicts designed to protect citizens--or in the book's language, "patients and delinquents"--from themselves. In this world, anything that might inspire envy is corrected by the state, even if that means surgically altering a person's physical appearance. Jack and Kate take a deep dive into this novel that is by turns cheeky, macabre, and thought-provoking.

Is it possible to be a good person in an inherently flawed society? How can language shape a culture? Is it worse to be banished to the underworld or forced to play rounds of golf? Why is 1984 standard reading but young people are deprived of the chance to discuss Facial Justice in the classroom? All these questions and more are explored in this month's episode of Bad Books for Bad People.

BBfBP theme song by True Creature

Find us at BadBooksBadPeople.com, on Twitter @badbooksbadppl, Instagram @badbooksbadpeople and on Facebook. You can discover where to get all the books featured on Bad Books for Bad People on our About Page.

The Dark of a Tavern in the Cemetery

Campaign: The Excruciata (Umberwell, 5e D&D)

Characters: Raymondo Cortiz (human assassin rogue); Grumli Fellhammer (dwarf path of the ancestors barbarian); Zanna Cobblestop (gnome wild magic sorcerer); Nina Kessler (genasi way of the frozen fist monk); Hiroshi (human samurai fighter).

Events: Having secured a source of kraken blood, as well as the sulfur and charcoal needed to make black powder, the Excruciata now needed to find someone crazy enough to add arcane power to the mixture so it could be sold on the black market for enchanted weaponry. Spreading a little coin around in the occult underground netted the gang an interesting piece of information: just south of the Tarnished Ward in a shanty town outside the city's walls, there is a cemetery in which a cult devoted to the Adversary meets by night--and that cult might be capable of providing the kind of power the Excruciata was looking for.

Venturing into the shanty town, the group found the cemetery--a sprawling mass of shallow graves and hastily erected monuments in the center of a sprawling mass of lean-tos and shoddily constructed shacks. Oddly, in the middle of the cemetery was what appeared to be a ramshackle pub bearing no visible name. Ducking inside, all eyes turned to the gang. The drinkers within were dressed in furs and the sober clothes of scholars; the Mark of the Adversary was etched on the flesh of everyone in the tavern and worn openly in defiance against the religious prohibition against dealing in arcane ways. The interior walls of the pub were covered in mounted antlers draped with magical wards and charms.

Raymondo decided to keep things on the level before any trouble started; he explained in clear terms that he represented a criminal organization looking for occult aid. An especially black-eyed pureblood woman named Freya stepped forward and explained that the group was a sect of the Church of the Outlander, an apocalyptic cult devoted to the study of occult texts. A possible alliance was discussed, but the Outlanders wanted some assurances that they were aligning with a gang that could get things done. 

A series of trials--something like the cult's version of a job interview--were proposed. First, the diminutive Zanna had to face off against one of the cult's younger adepts in magical combat. A circle was formed around Zanna and the adept as they brandished wands and traded spell for spell. Zanna's unpredictable chaos magic carried the day; no one expected that one of her dweomers would send a ripple of necromantic magic through the assembled crowd that instantly healed the wounds Zanna's foe had inflicted on her. (Even Zanna didn't expect that.) The thought of having to face a newly rejuvenated foe was too much for the adept; he yielded the victory.

The second trial was simply a ritual signifying a formal alliance. Raymondo was placed in the awkward position of having to marry Freya as a way of symbolically linking the Excruciata gang and this sect of the Church of the Outlander. The ceremony was performed in the Adversary's name; the ritual befouled the air--everything stank of dark magic. The marriage was not official as far as the state or normative religion would recognize, but Raymondo felt like it had been sanctified by a far older and viler power. He was also surprised to find that her could now hear his new "wife" speak to him inside his head.

The Outlanders had one last trial to pose to the Excruciata; to cement their business agreement the Excruciata would need to assassinate a physician named Doctor Nymenholt, and make off with his collection of occult tomes.

The Bloody Chamber

Mini-episode: Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber"
For this mini episode, Jack and Kate take a look at the "title track" from Angela Carter's famed short story collection, The Bloody Chamber. This feminist reimagining of the Bluebeard story blends sensuous language, heady atmosphere, and clever inversions of typical fairy tale tropes.

What perils await young women as they venture into the wider world? How do fairy tales translate into the modern world? Is there a reason why some stories end exactly where they do? Find out all this and more in this month's mini episode of Bad Books for Bad People.

BBfBP theme song by True Creature

Find us at BadBooksBadPeople.com, on Twitter @badbooksbadppl, Instagram @badbooksbadpeople and on Facebook. You can discover where to get all the books featured on Bad Books for Bad People on our About Page.

The Art of Ian McQue

I found Ian McQue's art randomly via Twitter and I love it, particularly this "urban ramshackle" style I'm showcasing below. He works in a wide varieties of styles but these are my favorites:

Check out his site here

Why Dunwall Feels Real, Art Nouveau, Victorian Penny Gaffs

Here's Why City 17 and Dunwall Feel Like Real Cities
- Blake Hester, Waypoint

The Scottish Sisters Who Pioneered Art Nouveau
- Cynthia Green, Jstor

Victorian Penny Gaffs: Crime, Horror, and Murder
- Samm Deighan, Diabolique Magazine