Youtube Theatre: Lovecraft & Moebius

Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown

In Search of Moebius

The Alchemist's Baleful Hound

Campaign: Krevborna (open table, 5e D&D)

The Characters:

• Verdegan, kenku rogue
• Medrash, dragonborn fighter
• Erasmus, tiefling barbarian
• Doctor Skitmeyer, halfling rogue
• Thane, darakhul wizard

Objectives: to infiltrate an alchemist's abode currently under guard by agents of the Church of Saintly Blood; steal away with both the alchemist and his notes; deliver the man and the notes to the quartermaster of Captain Redmayne, a notorious pirate

Events:

• After observing their deft way of handling themselves in a bar brawl, Jericho Chastain--a lanky, lean quartermaster employed by the infamous Captain Redmayne--approaches the group with a job his boss wants handled. It seems that Amel Alharzac, an alchemist, was working on a project for Redmayne when the Church of Saintly Blood took an interest in him. They posted guards in front of his house at all hours and now he does not ever leave his home. 
• Redmayne's crew would move directly against the Church, but to do so would upset the delicate underworld ecosystem of Piskaro. Clearly, independent rogues are needed for the task. The job, then, is to get past the guard and abscond with the alchemist, bringing him to the Four Knives Tavern where he can continue the work that Redmayne requires of him.
• After negotiating their fee, the adventurers spent a day watching the movements at Alharzac's house. There is always a guard posted at the front door and a guard posted at the back door; the guards are armed with maces and crossbows, and wear black tabards emblazoned with an ouroboros bisected by a sword. The guards appear well-trained and alert. At around eleven each morning a child approaches the house and delivers what appears to be a basket of food. One of the houses next door is vacant and condemned.
• A plan is hatched: Dr. Skitmeyer will ambush the child, take her clothes, and attempt to enter the alchemist's house. The others will provide a distraction using a cart full of cabbage, and then enter the house to find the alchemist, spiriting him away in said cart.
• The plan...didn't come off without a hitch. Skitmeyer waited for the food-bearing girl in the street, but his attempt to lock her in a trunk was seen by a nearby oyster seller. Recognizing that the girl was clearly the victim of a strange kidnapping, he intervened with a cudgel, beating Skitmeyer badly and forcing the rogue to retreat.
• The plan...went forward anyway. Skitmeyer, now dressed as a little girl despite any appreciable skill at disguise, walked to the door to gain entrance while the rest of the party hide among the cabbages, hide in the vacant building next door, or waited on the cart itself. The well-disciplined guard took no interest in the "distraction" provided by the cabbage cart.
• Once inside, the ruse was blown by Skitmeyer's odd behavior--little girls don't often try to hit grown men with crowbars--and the halfling was knocked unconscious.
• The party outside chose action over waiting for their halfling friend to unlock the door for them. Leaping upon the guard at the front door en masse provided effective: Thane tried to beguile the guard to sleep, but it took the combined efforts of Erasmus, Verdegan, and Medrash to knock her unconscious. 
• In a fit of rage, Erasmus broke down the front door and threw the unconscious guard inside, taking a bit of damage from the door in the process; they confronted the guard poised over Skitmeyer's unconscious form, and dealt with him as well. 
• The guard at the back door was none the wiser that the house he was supposed to protect had been breached.
• The house now cleared of threats, Skitmeyer was revived by his companions. They began to explore the house, but it seemed to hold few secrets: a laboratory that appeared disused, an unoccupied bedroom, a collection of oddities--prosthetic limbs, exotic weaponry, taxidermy, and the like. But no alchemist. Where was he, and where were his notes?
• A storage room provided the answer. The smell of incense seemed to seep from what proved to be a hidden door set into the floor. Thane recognized the incense as a special sort used to mask the smell of dead and decaying bodies. Lifting the secret panel revealed stone steps doing down into darkness. A lantern was lit, and down they went.
• The steps terminated in a stone landing underneath the house; the only obvious passage stretched off to the right. Following it culminated in a chamber that had four large pots of incense burning--one in each corner--and for good reason: three tables sat at the center of the room, each one bearing a human corpse. Inspection unveiled that each corpse was in a state of disrepair: one was missing both legs, another was missing an arm, and the third had its head caved in.
• Wondering at the corpses, the party began searching for hidden passages they may have missed. As they picked their way back toward the stairs, Medrash noticed a strange bluish-green luminescence glide along the wall and settle into a corner of the landing. Shining the lantern onto it revealed it to be a large, slavering hound whose flesh was torn; the thing's ribs could be seen through horrific wounds, and the creature glowed with an uncanny, spectral light.
• Erasmus attempted to lure the creature to him with rations, but the offered meat simply passed through the creature's half-real substance. It howled an unearthly cry and advanced upon them. 
• The thing proved difficult to fight; the party's weapons often simply passed through the beast instead of wounding it. It was dangerously real, however, as Verdegan discovered when its bite pushed him perilously close to death's door. Ultimately, Medrash was able to jam one of his swords through its ravening mouth, causing the thing to dissipate into steaming fluid that smelt of the briny deep.
• The monster dispatched, the crew now saw that a secret door in the wall was open a crack. Following a left-turning passageway brought them to the real alchemist's laboratory: this one had a number of bubbling flasks that evidenced an experiment in progress. They also discovered the alchemist's notes on a shelf in this room.
• Amel himself was located in the next room, desperately stuffing potions from a rack into a bag. A frail elderly man, he put up no fight when it became obvious that he was going to be abducted by the group and taken to Captain Redmayne.
• Moving quickly now, because the change of guard was expected at any moment, the group hustled Amel onto the cabbage cart and brought him to Jericho at the Four Knives. They were given rum and their just reward; Jericho seemed surprised that the group was successful, especially since they arrived battered, bloody, and one of the was now wearing a little girl's dress.
• On the way out of the Four Knives, the party passed the guard who had been stationed at the back of Amel's home. He didn't recognize them, but declared that he was badly in need of a drink because he had failed so badly at keeping the alchemist's house under the Church's control.

Unanswered Questions:

• What branch of the Church uses the ouroboros & sword insignia?
• What did they want with the alchemist in the first place? Why was he "quarantined"?
• What is the nature of the work that Captain Redmayne requires of him?

Loot:

• XP: 155 each.
• Treasure: 75 gp each from Jericho.
• The alchemist had three potions: two potions of healing, one potion of climbing. Divide this up among yourselves.
• The shark-tooth longsword that Erasmus took is not magical, but as a rare example of its make in Krevborna is is worth 60 gp if you wish to sell it.
• You could probably take over Amel's house, but you might want to wait until the Church is done looking at what went wrong there.
• 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.

Dune as Detourned Weird Fiction

I'm sort of surprised that Frank Herbert's Dune hasn't been read as more speculative, philosophical riff on Lovecraftian weird fiction. The correspondence isn't prefect, of course; Herbert isn't interested in parables of xenophobia, his stories are ultimately heroic in scope, and he doesn't mind having women as characters, for example. But, a skewed reading of Dune might perceive it as the productive additive inverse of H. P. Lovecraft's universal pessimism, a detournment of the weird's cosmic horror toward a science fictive hopefulness that burns with the sullied intensity of a bloody conflagration:

• Dune features a horrific cosmic plan--the Golden Path--that is beyond human comprehension. However, the Golden Path isn't ultimately a threat to mankind. As awful as the destruction wrought by the Golden Path will be, it's actually the only possibility for humanity's survival. This might be weird fiction at its most utopian, even though this is an imperfect utopic vision of the future. A future that comes at a grave cost might be all we can hope for; after all, a detournment of Lovecraft's intensely bleak view can bend only so far before it breaks.
• The spiritual transformations in Dune lead to the physical transformation of one its protagonists from human to chthonic, primordial form. And yet, there is again a positive difference between becoming sand worm and becoming deep one, aside from the obvious difference between desert and sea in terms of their respective imagery and thematics. Whereas such transformations in Lovecraft are generally associated with a loss of humanity--in the sense of racial degeneration--the transformations in Herbert are a transcendence of the human condition, and are actually an evolution beyond human limitations.
• Both Herbert and Lovecraft's fictions feature strange familial inheritances. In Dune this takes the form of race memories and purposeful galactic inbreeding. In Lovecraft this takes the form of cosmic miscegenation and the fearful histories of tainted bloodlines. Both carry the potential for danger, as in the narrator's eventual realization of he is a descendant of Obed Marsh in Lovecraft's The Shadow over Innsmouth and the influence of Baron Harkonnen upon Alia in Herbert's Children of Dune, but Herbert's version at least allows for genetic memory to function as a useful tool if it is resisted and mastered.
• Both also express fears over the gene pool. See, for example, the Bene Gesserit mission to produce the Kwisatz Haderach and Lovecraft's vivid depiction of monstrous, racialized Others in "The Horror at Red Hook." The difference, of course, is in the ends: the Kwisatz Haderach functions as a messiah, if only a messiah that must destroy in order to preserve and create. In Lovecraft, the gene pool is only ever an endangered fantasy of a less than progressive outlook.
• A minor key note: Dune has Fish Speakers! C'mon, that's a straight-up Innsmouth-y name.
• Ghola & Ghouls would be the name of my old-school Herbert/Lovecraft mash-up. Nobody gets to steal that now.

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.