The New New Crobuzon Challenge

After I posted a link to Judd Carlson's Make Your Own New Crobuzon post, over on my Discord server Anne of DIY and Dragons suggested that a bunch of us try our hands at using the method outlined. She's calling it the "New New Crobuzon Challenge." Here's my attempt: 

The City of New Twain
The Empire pushes ever West. This is the story of New Twain, an imperial city on the western edge of the Empire's expansion. New Twain is not a new construction; rather, it is a palimpsest of colonial ambitions built atop a prior metropolis whose denizens and former foes have now been forcibly assimilated into subservient roles by the diabolic alchemy of the Lord Doctor who governs the city in the Empire's name.

Three Minorities

Dakon. The human colonists of the Empire brought the peaceful dakon with them to New Twain. Dakon serve their human masters as menial labor; dakon sweep the streets, perform construction work, and are employed in domestic service. If the dakons' natural abhorrence of violence could be overcome, they could aid an uprising that would topple New Twain.

Dire Corbies. Before the arrival of the Empire, the dire corbies were golden creatures who basked in the sunlight and soared the skies at liberty on tremendous feathered wings. The city that became New Twain was their glorious home. After their city was annexed by the Empire's forces, they were experimented upon by the Lord Doctor; the dire corbies were stripped of their wings and transformed into base creatures who cannot stand the sun's touch upon their skin. The dire corbies are allowed to shelter in the subterranean depths below New Twain, but in return they must mine precious gold from the undercity to pay the "rent" on their squalid quarters beneath a city that was once their sole dominion.

Flind. In the early days of its colonial occupation, New Twain suffered continual raids from the packs of tribal gnolls who had been the dire corbies' rivals in the west. Gnolls, being creatures of demonic savagery, could not be placated or brought to reasonable treaty. They could, however, be captured and transmuted. The Lord Doctor's cruel alchemy changes gnoll captives into flinds: stronger, but more civilized, creatures still capable of boundless violence. The flinds now act as elite soldiers in service to New Twain and the Empire; they are often used as counters to gnoll attacks, as gnolls regard them with fear and awe. Flinds are not allowed any employment in New Twain save for military service.

Three Monstrosities

Dragonfish. The river that runs through New Twain is infested with spiny dragonfish. The presence of dragonfish renders the river difficult to traverse without a stout-hulled boat.

Eye of Fear and Flame. The colonists who die in New Train are interred in the ancient burial catacombs beneath New Twain. However, there is a curse upon those vaults that ensures that anyone who is not a dire corby who is buried within them is reanimated as an undead creature. Colonists always return as eyes of fear and flame. These creatures steal forth from the tombs under the cover at night to cause havoc; they use their command abilities to cause stray imperial citizens to engage in acts of sabotage and sedition. 

Screaming Devilkin. Screaming devilkin are vicious pests who descend from the sky in swarms. Some believe that they are bestial spies acting on behalf of a sorcerous folk living further in the west who have yet to face the Empire's westward expansion.

Conjure Wife

Episode 37: Conjure Wife

Fritz Leiber is probably best known to fantasy fans as the creator of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, but he was also an accomplished author across a myriad of pulp formats. In his 1943 novel Conjure Wife, he creates a world that is only modern on its surface, where behind every great academic is an equally great witch. When sociologist Norman Saylor discovers his wife's occult activities, he convinces her to stop her conjuration. Shortly thereafter, a series of terrible coincidences--or is it black magic?--start to turn his world upside down.

What are the risks of being the big bohemian on campus? What are some of the ways authors keep magic magical in their stories and stop if from being just another form of science? What do this book's witches think about astrology? And what is up with the sexy college gown striptease? All these questions and more will be answered in this episode of Bad Books for Bad People.

Making a Powder Keg, the Dune Way

Want to make a setting that is a powder keg of competing interests, intrigues, and goals? A potential conflagration into which to thrust your player's characters?

The set-up of Frank Herbert's Dune is what you should be stealing from. Although it's got a ton of worldbuilding and detail, the basic set-up of Dune is pretty simple and easy to reskin to suit just about any campaign setting. The conflict in Dune revolves around six competing factions, each of which is easy to scrub of specificity and refashion. 

Here's what Dune has and here's where you get to play with the ideas therein:

Dune Has...

• House Atreides & House Harkonnen
• The Bene Gesserit
• The Fremen
• The Padishah Emperor
• The Spacing Guild

So You Need...

• Two noble houses with a long-standing hatred of each other that will inevitably erupt into violence
• A religion that masks its political power in the guise of spiritual guidance
• The unaligned tribal military force that exists outside the structure that defines the place of the other factions
• A powerful military force that defends traditional power structures and the interests of a distant ruler
• A mercantile force that masks its political power in the guise of pure economics

Notice that each of these groupings represents an approach to political power: the power of aristocratic title, the power of religion, the power of the nomad, military power, and economic power. Create factions that represent these groupings of political power, make them compete for a limited resource, and let the sparks fly. Now you've got a powder keg. Hand your players the match and see what happens.

Paean to the Red Planet

It began with a maelstrom. It ended on a savage red planet, its sun gone sullen and weird, its wind hot and devouring.

A world not so much dying as it was already dead. It just refuses to acknowledge the cruel fact of its demise.

Away from our world's gravity we grew stronger here. Like Icarus, we could leap for the sun. And fail. Perhaps we too grew sullen and weird.

The things we met there were alien and beautiful. The Red Martian warriors, their voluptuous princesses, and their devious menton mind-wizards. The brutal, multi-limbed Thark!!!, whose tribes evidence the nobility of a warrior caste doomed by its own traditions.

Fast friends, some, and implacable foes otherwise.

Beyond those things we might call people we found only monstrosity. 

Death made flesh, death awoken from its long desert sleep, death so cunning that its weirding ways are scarcely comprehensible to our racing Terran minds.

Thirsty death, hungry death, death that comes on night-black wings.

And yet, despite its strangeness, this is a world that could be mapped, traced, and understood. The world of Mars wages its own peculiar war, but it is a war we can win. What else is there? Spilling one's blood on the burning sands, like so many others have done since time immemorial.

The sullen sun, gone weird in its death throes, looks on and laughs.

* * *

What I am saying is that you should seriously consider buying Michael Gibbon's recently released B/X Mars. You may need to log into your account and allow DriveThru to take you to the unheralded garden of NSFW Martian delights, but the naughty thrill you feel by doing so will soon be eclipsed by the greater pleasure of beholding Mars for yourself. 

Orientalism, Mothers as Makers of Death, Transylvanian Spa

'Orientalism,' Then and Now
- Adam Shatz, The New York Review of Books

Mothers as Makers of Death
- Claudia Dey, Paris Review

The Lost Romance of the Transylvanian Spa Town
- Messynessy, Cabinet of Chic Curiosities

Annihilation and Decoding Metaphor

Annihilation and Decoding Metaphor

Vampire Hunter D

Mini Episode 17: Vampire Hunter D

Before the anime, before the manga, there was the Hideyuki Kikuchi's Vampire Hunter D light novel series. Don't be fooled by that nomenclature, though: these books are chock full of wackiness. Part sci-fi, part weird western, part dark fantasy, and part teen romance, the Vampire Hunter D books take a kitchen sink approach to their stories. Buckle in for a thrill-a-minute adventure set in the post-apocalyptic wastelands.

Just how romantically irresistible is our titular protagonist? Is there a secret occult pee vampire story arc happening over the course of the series? What would happen if a whole bunch of Halloween costumes came to life and started kicking ass? Who exactly is the Sacred Ancestor and what is his deal? You'll have to listen and find out, since some of these questions will be answered in this episode of Bad Books for Bad People.