Unwelcome Guests in the Malcovat

The Setting: Secreted deep within the imperious peaks of the Nachtmahr Mountains lies the black stone school known as the Malcovat. The Malcovat is unlike any other school in Krevborna, for it is a place where fiends and nefarious occult scholars teach the ways of black magic to students selected for their inherent aptitude in the dark arts. For many students of the Malcovat, it is an unwholesome prison; for others, it offers untold freedom.

The Characters:

• Annabelle Rykov, a human student of magic specializing in the unhallowed arts of necromancy
• Jezamine Nikovich, an eladrin student who has made a pact with the Black Faun

Objectives: Explore an unfolding mystery within the school.

Events:

• After a particularly difficult-to-follow day-long lecture about divination from Professor Crowley, Annabelle and Jezamine decide to sneak about the corridors of the Malcovat under the cover of darkness so that they might learn more of their school's hidden mysteries.
• The duo spot a classmate, a young witch named Svetlana, unlocking a side entrance to the school and ushering in a number of hunch-backed figures whose faces and bodies are obscured by black cloaks. Annabelle and Jezamine peer from behind a statue of a horrible demon, watching intently as the figures head up the stairs toward the ladies' dormitories.
• As Svetlana is re-locking the side entrance, Jezamine uses her natural fey stealth to appear behind her classmate and accost her as to who she was granting access to the school. Svetlana spins a tale of being designated to let in a cohort of upperclassmen who had planned to spend the evening frolicking with abandon in the woods, but Jezamine knows the girl is lying. 
• Being pressed harder for answers only angers Svetlana, who lashes out at Jezamine. The ensuing magical duel proves deliciously unfair, as Svetlana had no idea that Annabelle was still hidden behind the statue. Annabelle, the crueler of the pair, using a spell that conjures a spectral hand that grasps at Svetlana's throat, choking her until the light dies within her eyes and her soul withers to ash.
• Is the use of a fatal spell against a fellow student grounds for dismissal? A demerit? Or perhaps worthy of academic recognition? It's hard to tell at the Malcovat.

Note: this game gets played out in small sessions of about an hour to two hours.

Phantom Page Turners, Tome Guardians, Frankenstein Notebooks

The Mystery of the Phantom Page Turner (Ben Marks for Collector's Weekly)

When Book Lovers Guarded Their Prized Possessions with Tiny Artworks (Hunter Oatman-Stanford for Collector's Weekly)

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Notebooks

Total Skull - February 2017

Books, films, tv, and music that brought me delight in February, 2017.

Books

Sofia Samatar, A Stranger in Olondria
A Stranger in Olondria is a fantasy novel of rich, fragrant description that doesn't fall back on the cliches of exoticism to tell its tale. As in Tolkien, the protagonist is a common man, and not a hero in the traditional sense. Jevick is the son of a pepper merchant travels from his backwater place of birth to Olondria, the city he has come to know only through reading his tutor's books. And it's the power of the written word that sits at the novel's thematic heart; when Jevick finds himself haunted by the ghost of a countrywomen he met in the crossing, he free himself from her by merely giving her the proper funeral rites of their people--he must write her life to appease her. Samatar's prose is lush and her story moved me. If you are someone who feels attached to the seduction of language, the meaning behind the written word, and the purpose of storytelling, this books should be on your list.

Brian Evenson, Contagion and Other Stories
This is going to be taken as heresy by many, but: the stories in Contagion gave me what I was looking for, and didn't get, out of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Evenson specializes in tales of paranoiac religiosity, Southern Gothic-flavored fatalism, and meditations on the Word as Law. Stylistically, Evenson's prose is spare and sharp; the paired-down spikiness and blunt impact of his writing hits all the harder for not overindulging in misbegotten grandeur. Although the contexts for his stories tend to remain mysterious in the telling, that only contributes to the intensified feeling of strangeness that permeates Evenson's fiction. Some horrors were not meant to squirm into the light.

Edgar Allan Poe, Selected Tales
Putting together a collection of Poe's tales probably seems easier than it really is. Of course, you know you'll be including Poe's well known Gothic tales; "The Cask of Amontillado" is going to be in there, as will "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Black Cat," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Pit and Pendulum," and all those stories Poe wrote about beautiful women who die. You'll probably need to include an example of Poe's detective fiction, but this edition goes the extra mile by including all three Auguste Dupin stories--even the ridiculously inanimate "The Mystery of Marie Roget." This Oxford edition rounds out the collection with some nice surprises, such as "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" and the archly bizarre "The Man Who Was Used Up," and the included notes, introduction, and other supplementary material is of the expected high caliber. If you don't own a collection of Poe's short fiction, this is a great volume to fill that gap.

Clark Ashton Smith, The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies
It's amazing that a good sampling of Smith's poetry and fiction is now widely available in a Penguin Classics volume. The selection of stories in this collection is very good; it gives a taste of stories from Smith's celebrated secondary worlds, such as Averoigne and Zothique, as well as his Mythos-adjacent work and his fiction intended for a more general "weird horror" audience. Although there is no critical consensus on what constitutes Smith's best stories--simply because there has been little serious evaluation of ouvre--The Dark Eidolon features strong examples of Smith's pulpy sword & sorcery, horror, and science fiction tales such as "The Mother of Toads," "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros," and "The Double Shadow." The poetry selections are helpful for gaining a fuller understanding of Smith's artistry, but I can't help thinking that slimming-down these sections, particularly his less-successful attempts at prose poetry, would have cleared a little room in the book that could have been better purposed to feature more of his fiction.

Films

The Love Witch
Come for the witchy 1960s Technicolor aesthetic, stay for the thematic exploration of sex vs. love, the multiform shades of feminism, archetypal man-eaters, gender roles, empowerment, and romantic fantasy vs. libidinal fantasy. The Love Witch focuses on the protagonist's use of magic to ensnare men in their own love for her, but although these spells are effective we're left questioning how much this magical domination is really to her benefit. The film could be called a satire of gendered views on love, male fragility, and emotional labor, but its approach to theme and narrative is far more insightful than that. The film is also stunningly shot; every frame feels perfectly constructed and essentially true to the overall aesthetic. The mostly obviously Hitchcock-inspired scene in the movie is an especial treat.

Get Out
The obvious pitch for Get Out is "Look Who's Coming to Dinner meets The Stepford Wives meets The Wicker Man," and honestly that's fairly accurate. Although I didn't find the film that scary--it isn't rife with jump scares, the intensity didn't ratchet-up to can-you-endure-this levels, and the gore is fairly tame--I also have the luxury of not having to be afraid of the ideas the movie explores, which is actually the point. All genre work is political, but Get Out is unabashedly a social commentary. And it's a smart social commentary all the way through. As a film Get Out is incredibly well constructed; the actors all turn in tremendous performances, the subtle menace of suburban isolation is spot-on, and the musical cues hit right where they need to. 

Television

Taboo
When James Koziah Delaney returns after his assumed death in Africa to claim his inheritance at his father's funeral, he acquires the rights to Nootka Sound--a piece of land that immediately puts him at the center of machinations involving the East Indian Company, the Crown, and the newly-minted United States. Through a combination of unbreakable will, capacity for brutality, and (possibly) some degree of supernatural affinity, Delaney navigates the treacherous, cloak-and-dagger world of politics both local and personal; even when it seems as though his schemes have been countered by one of the political leviathans pitted against him, Delaney remains one step ahead. Although the ultra-grottiness of the setting and characters sometimes veers perilously close to cartoonish (even the highest members of society look to be in need of a good scrub), and the violence is overly gleeful, I haven't enjoyed a show as much as Taboo in a long time. 

Music

Hans Zimmer, Henning Lohner, and Martin Tillman, The Ring soundtracks
A caveat: this is a great soundtrack is you don't listen to the last four tracks, which add unneeded electronics, rockin' guitar, and cringe-worthy vocals to what is otherwise a really nice collection of dark instrumental tracks that trade on creeping dread and moments of quiet melancholy introspection.

A Dream of Poe, A Waltz for Apophenia
The triangulation of Black Sabbath riffs, stoner atmospherics, and themes drawn from exploitation horror is the shape of doom du jour, but A Dream of Poe's A Waltz for Apophenia harkens back to a time where My Dying Bride was the defining sound of funereal metal. Which is not to say that A Dream of Poe is a My Dying Bride clone; their brand of plaintive dirge has its roots in a strong tradition of heavy melancholia, but they are their own beast.

Biohazard Sound Chronicle Best Track Box
The Biohazard Sound Chronicle Best Track Box is a six-disc collection of music from the soundtracks to the series better known in the US as Resident Evil. Although some of the music on this collection isn't in the same level as the more stunning pieces created for the series, the collection does live up to its Best Track moniker; if you're looking for a compilation of the best pieces of dark ambient and nightmarish soundtrack work from Resident Evil, this is by far your best bet.

DIY RIFTS

Making your own Rifts-inspired setting seems pretty easy once you understand the underlying premise and approach the project as a two-step process: 


1) Take the elements you like from various 80s action figure lines, movies, cartoons, and comics and combine them without any regard for realism or subtlety. 

If the colors are garish and candy-like, you're probably on the right track. If you feel a visceral "that's so cooooool" pull to a character, vehicle, or location, it belongs. If the thing you're considering adding to the setting would have been an awesome present to unwrap on Christmas, it needs to be in the mix.

Rifts didn't invent the remix, but it embraced the mash-up before it went viral.

Let the images below be your starting point:

You could also throw in any ideas from the sword & sorcery novels you'd always find on the wire racks of off-brand pharmacies when you were young, as well as anything you remember from the hella-weird music videos of the early MTV era. Hell, I'm not the boss of you, add what you want and need to the pile.

2) Now that you have the raw material and points of inspiration in place, you need to make them into a sensibility. My advice: approach the material on its own level, with a sense of genuine joy at working with the ideas, imagery, and aesthetics they're bringing to the table. 

It would be easy to write something Rifts-esque that veers into satire, parody, and (worst of all) irony. But "Hah, look at how silly all these things were back in the 80s," is a bad sensibility; it implies detachment, and a top-down view that only comes with the assumption of superiority to the material. At best, you're gleefully slumming. At worst, you're signalling that this is all a guilty pleasure that no one should take seriously.

Instead, immerse yourself in that level of excitement you remember from childhood--it wasn't an immature impulse, it was a sensibility that emerged from real engagement and art-for-fun's-sake.

Gather your toys and run to the playground.

Waking Nightmares, Death is the Curator, The Second Coming of Steampunk

Waking Nightmares: A Conversation with Jordan Peele (Andrew Chan for Criterion)

Death is the Curator: An Interview with Guillermo del Toro (Lauren Wilford for Bright Wall Dark Room)

The Second Coming of Steampunk: An Interview with Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (Jason B. Jones for Pop Matters)

Miles Behind Us

The first volume of The Walking Dead ended with the death of Shane, and there is no way that the second is going to let us forget that. We immediately get a flashback scene to the start of Lori's affair with Shane, which is in turn linked to the notion that to live during the apocalypse inevitably changes a person. Rick describes the change in Shane's character as "drastic," but that undersells it by quite a bit. It would be more accurate to describe Shane's descent as a "monstrous" change of heart. But even Shane's sudden, horrific willingness to kill his best friend is given an understandable explanation: the stress of survival is transformative, and whatever alterations it brings pose profound dangers to the self and the cohesive of the social units to which they belong. Any individual person can only endure so much before the breaking point makes them a liability to the survival of the group and an internal threat. Stress we cannot cope with makes us the enemy within.

As a way of exploring the idea that the group's survival is dependent on the individual's ability to handle stress, The Walking Dead starts loading its protagonist with new stresses to illustrate that not even a square-jawed hero is immune to the eruption of personal demons. First, Rick learns that Lori is pregnant. If the world hadn't gone to hell, this would be cause for celebration; but in a zombie-plagued landscape where the living are hanging on by a thread, being in the family way pushes new obstacles and concerns to the forefront for a guy who is already expected to provide for and protect both his immediate family and the larger familial unit of the group. When Lori and Rick break their news to the group, no one knows how to respond because, given the context, this isn't a joyous occasion. Of course, because The Walking Dead is a soap opera at heart, Lori's pregnancy carries an additional layer of stress in that Rick can't be sure that the baby is his. 

When The Walking Dead starts piling it on one character, it really unloads on them. With the prospect of a difficult addition to his family on his mind, Rick also has to deal with his son Carl getting shot during a hunting accident. This is the incident that pushes Rick past his personal breaking point and reveals that, although it might take more to get him there, he has the same sort of monstrosity lurking under his heroic exterior that we have already seen unleashed through Shane's murderous breakdown. Rick's blind rage and willingness to kill Otis for shooting his son is understandable, but it also delineates that even a good man might not hesitate to pull the trigger when the thing he clings to is being taken away from him. Perhaps we get a sense of why Lori is drawn to both Shane and Rick; they aren't so different, after all.

Of course, Rick doesn't end up killing Otis, but it's easy to imagine that if he did it would have a disastrous impact on the group's stability. Knowing what we do about Rick's sentimentality and hidden fragility, it is likely that he would soon spiral out of control and leave the group without its linchpin. The comic gives us a displaced version of how Rick might hypothetically response to loss; Allen's nearly-complete emotional shut down after the death of Donna could be taken as an alternate universe version of Rick's fate should he lose Carl, Lori, and his internal moral compass. Indeed, this chapter of the story gives us another instance of a good man who is pushed too far by hellish circumstances; after the death of his son and daughter in the barn, Hershel snaps and draws down on Rick the same way that Shane drew down on Rick and in the same way that Rick drew down on Otis.

Much of the stress depicted in this chapter is directly related to the assumption that if the group is it to survive it must have a leader who is both stereotypically male and stereotypically capable. Dale reveals that the reason the group hadn't moved camp earlier was because Shane--the default masculine authority--didn't endorse the idea. Now that Rick has assumed the role left vacant by Shane's death, it all falls to him to be the locus of authority they seem to expect and desire. Dale makes it clear that it has to be Rick: Dale is too old (and therefore too weak), Glenn is too young (and therefore not yet truly a man), and Allen is simply too incompetent (he later reveals that Donna wore the pants in their family, which is a damning sin according to the patriarchal order being established here). The oddest part of the exchange between Rick and Dale about the need for a man to lead them to the promised land of safety is that Rick doesn't question the imposition of the role or even the worldview behind it. Rick also seems to believe that the role is a natural requirement and that he is the obvious candidate to take on the mantle.

With all of this potentially fatal stress buffeting the group at every turn, the characters use sex as their release valve. There is a massive, and obvious, emphasize on sex, pair bonding, and the need for physical and emotional intimacy even in close quarters in this volume. Dale and Andrea are spotted having sex as a way of getting through Amy's death; Glenn and Maggie have sex to boost Glenn's feelings of inadequacy and give Maggie something of her own not related to her family; Chris and Julie have sex as a form of rebellion against life under what they perceive to be Tyreese's thumb; Tyreese immediately pairs off with Carol beause both need reaffirmation after their personal losses. Even the interactions of Carl and Sophie are viewed by the adults in the group through this lens; there is a heightened level of projection here that assumes that the children will ultimately end up together because they will inevitably need to rely on each other in the same way that the adults currently need each other as physical and emotional reassurance.

However, as much as sex is one of the few pleasures they have recourse to in an anhedonic world, it is an imperfect form of release. Sex can function like any other stressor for the group and can threaten the group dynamic. Rick's worries over Lori's pregnancy, to say nothing of his anxieties that another rooster has been in the hen house, are the most stark illustration of this, but it crops up for the other characters as well. The introduction of Tyreese and the ease with which Tyreese catches Carol's attention puts Glenn in a mindset where he reconsiders his sense of belonging within the group; the sexual relationship between Chris and Julie sets Tyreese on edge because it is a facet of the social dynamic he's not fully in control of; catching Glenn with Maggie is the event that pushes Hershel into ejecting Rick's group from the safety of his farm. Sex, physical contact, and pleasure are things we cling to when the world upends, but they also leverage already extant cleavages in the social dynamic--pairing off with one person is always already a matter of exclusion, and exclusion is a luxury that survivors don't have.

From the hip:

• It's interesting that the introduction of Tyreese--a powerful, former NFL player--doesn't shake up the masculine pecking order established earlier in the comic. He doesn't seem to challenge Rick's leadership of the group in any meaningful way. Is it assumed that the leader of the group will be white and this is just an unspoken part of the job's requirements?
• The depiction of Glenn as not masculine enough to be a leader is reinforced by the later revelation that he is a virgin. But now that he's got some stank on his hang-low I'm curious to see how his place in the larger narrative evolves. Also worth noting: Glenn isn't positioned as a potential leader and he's also not a white guy.
• I stopped watching the tv adaption of The Walking Dead once they reached the farmhouse because their stay there seemed interminable. The comic handles this episode at a much brisker pace; the comic's depiction of those events is quicker moving and ultimately more satisfying because of it.

One Night at Fayaz's

Campaign: Scarabae (Open Table 5e D&D)

Characters:

• Theobaldo, the Marques de Carabas - refined and gentlemanly tabaxi rogue
• Mortimer - pugilistic human monk
• Dr. Aleister Wiffle - human fighter conducting research into infectious diseases
• Ash - human monk and accomplished sprinter
• Zunx - fidgety little warlock mole-ish thing

Objective: To find a dwarf child in a Chuck E. Cheese gone mad and return him to his father

Events:

• The crew was assembled in the early hours of the morning by Koska, who sent messengers to fetch them to a location on Porthos Street in the Redgutter Ward. The client is a male dwarf whose beard is threaded with gems. He sits in a gilded carriage and speaks to the party through the carriage window. He explains that his young son Allan attended a pizza party at Fayaz's Pleasure Palace for Children last night, but come this morning he discovered that neither his son nor the servant sent as his son's chaperone had returned. Surmising that his son was still at Fayaz's, he sent three armed servants into the building to find his son, but...they never came out again.
• Gesturing to the building across the street, the dwarf pointed out Fayaz's. The building is a single story tall and built from new brick, with a faux gilt dome on top and a gaudy sign out front. Strangely, the building had no windows. Scouting the perimeter revealed that there is a front entrance and a side entrance that is probably used to bring in foodstuffs for the kitchen. Ominous black clouds whirled above the building, propelled by winds that no one on the street can feel.
• The characters chose the front door for their initial point of entry. Inside the front door they found three ticket booths, all of which were occupied by the corpses of the ticket-sellers. The room was illuminated by an enchanted, glowing ceiling. Obnoxiously loud carnival music blared from speakers in every room of the restaurant. The corpse of a gray-haired elf lay face down on the carpet in front of a door marked MANAGER'S OFFICE. Examination of the elf's body indicated that he had been assaulted by something capable of both bludgeoning him and slashing his vest to ribbons. Rifling his pockets gained the party a set of keys that unlocked the manager's office.
• The manager's office proved to be fairly mundane, save for a crystal ball on the desk. When fiddled with, the ball swirled with mist and then resolved itself into an image of what appeared to be a women's bathroom. The characters had tuned in just in time to see the door to the bathroom close--something was on the move. 
• Further manipulation of the crystal ball showed them a room lined with mechanical rides and games such as a magic dart board and an automatized whack-a-mole. Seated upon the mechanical rides were three corpses armed with swords, presumably the dwarf's servants who had been sent in prior and who had not returned. The final image the party got out of playing with the crystal ball was a constructed pit filled with multicolored rubber balls. Also in view were what appeared to be naked, chubby pink legs walking out of view. The party wondered if these legs might belong to overgrown babies, and they weren't half-wrong. 
• And then...the crystal ball suddenly went dim and the glowing ceiling extinguished, leaving the crew in total darkness.
• A lantern now lit, the group decided to retreat outside and try the side entrance--which put them in a pantry filled with shelves of canned ingredients and bags of flour used to make the pizzas served at Fayaz's. Aleister opened a door to see what was beyond; he found the restaurant's kitchen and also two human-sized mechanical cherubs staring back at him blankly. 
• Shutting the door quickly and informing his fellows of what was approaching, Aleister and co. readied themselves. Mortimer quickly tied a couple aprons together; when the cherubs wrenched the door to the pantry off its hinges he was able to throw it over a cherub's head to "blind" it. The rest of the party let loose a barrage of gunfire, rapier stabs, and fisticuffs that quickly brought the two automatons down. 
• From the kitchen, the party entered the dining room where they found several long tables still laden with food and drink. Unfortunately, they also found many adults who were either parents or staff, all of them apparently dead save for one half-orc woman. At their right was a long stage full of mechanical cherubs going through their prescribed motions--some were dancing, others playing instruments. 
• The half-orc woman muttered something about "the children" and "the control room." Aleister decided it would be best to carry the half-orc woman back into the kitchen where they could tend to her wounds; as he was carrying her back to kitchen, however, the fattest of the cherubs on the stage shot her with an arrow and things looked grim for her, and the party, at that moment.
• Battle broke out between the crew, the fat cherub, and a cherub drummer who also left the stage to join in the fray. The party managed to put a lot of bullets into the fat cherub, but the situation become worse when the opposition was joined by four more of the mechanical monstrosities. (These four were the ones they had caught glimpses of in the crystal ball in the manager's office.) 
• In the ensuing battle, the party started to take quite a beating. Two of the cherubs (including the deadly bow-wielding one) were taken down, but Mortimer and Theobaldo both went down as well. Sensing the tide of battle turning against them, the remaining members of the group dragged their comrades back to the relative safety of the kitchen where they were patched up by Dr. Wiffle.
• Oddly, the cherubs did not pursue them into the kitchen. Exploring a different path through the building brought them to a janitor's closet and then to Fayaz's control room. Listening at the door let the crew hear whispering voices seemingly talking to themselves. How they would storm the room was much debated. At last, they threw open the door, ready to hack and slash but...no one was inside.
• Built into the desk were a number of switches and dials used to control the various enchantments at work in the building. Also on the desk were a crystal ball like the one in the manager's office and a large black egg swirling with shadowy power. Zunx used his magic to manipulate the control panel to restore the light throughout the building and (finally) kill the ever-present music. Zunx also picked up the crystal ball and...sent it crashing into the black egg, shattering both. (And, it should be added, severing the outside influence exerting control over Fayaz's mechanical cherubs.)
• Although normalcy was restored, they still hadn't found any children. The next door the party tried opened into a long hallway lined with half-built or semi-repaired cherubs. Fearing that the automatons could come to life at any moment and overtake them, they decided to test their apparent inactivity. 
• Ash volunteered to sprint the length of the hallway, turn around, and sprint back so that his fellows could pick off anything that came after him. Ash ran his race safely; nothing sprang out at him or followed in his wake. A more cautious exploration of the hallway revealed that several children were hiding behind the cherubs, including Alan, the dwarf boy they had been sent to rescue.
• The crew ushered the children outside, reuniting Alan with his father--who certainly won't be winning any Parent of the Year awards, as he seemed to have trouble recognizing his offspring, but such is the way of rich folk who leave the upbringing of their heirs to servants. 
• The party returned inside, as they knew that there should have been more children inside that they hadn't found. They were right, but there were no more children to be discovered within. What had happened to them? The only clue they discovered was a black ashen ring featuring leaf-like sigils burned into the floor of a workshop--a sign they recognized as belonging to the Children of Fimbul, a dark sect of druids that wish to begin the apocalypse to rid the world of machines and usher in the rebirth of a more natural age.

The Take:

• XP - 205 each.
• Assorted coins and jewelry looted throughout the premises and your fee from the dwarf: 318 gp each.
• The crystal ball from the manager's office will allow you to see into any room of Fayaz's, which might come in hand if you ever need to peek into whatever business sets up shop in the building. Fayaz's is undoubtedly closed for business.
• That smoke-able stash of drugs you found in the kitchen turns out to be magical; when smoked it functions as a potion of heroism.
• Two of the now-dead parents were apparently in the habit of communicating to each other with a pair of sending stones.
• One woman was wearing a bracelet of prayer beads; 5 of them turn out to be beads of force.
• Talk among yourselves and let me know how you want to distribute the magic items.
• Also, if you'd like to note some aspect of the adventure that was important to your character as a way to get Inspiration in an adventure to come, feel free. I've written up my Inspiration replacement rules here. Let me know if you have any questions about that.