the latest vileness

So notorious reprobate Venger Satanis has a new kickstarter for the latest installment in his Cha'alt setting.

Pulp-Drenched Cities of Cha’alt continues Venger's expansion of his personal gonzo game setting. I tend to view his stuff as on the opposite end of an axis from James Raggi's "thoroughly historical, but fucked up" approach. The whole spectrum is full of interesting possibilities, but some of them are mutually exclusive.

Tomb of the Blind and Deaf Dead

 

So the cat is out of the bag thanks to Tobias Schulte-Krumpen, who posted the above image to the Lamentations of the Flame Princess facebook group. I have a new publication out from LotFP. This is another "Weird Crusher" mini-adventure intended as bonus content. In this case my Tomb of the Blind and Deaf Dead and Leo Ruotsalo's Dr. Franco's House and His Possessions are currently only available in the Altar of Madness/Music of Ericha Zann slipcase. Whether or not James Raggi has more copies that will become available later, I don't know.

Fun fact: this is the fourth short thing I have written for Raggi based upon him pitching me a short idea to build on. Obscene Serpent Religion 2, The Octo-Planetary Blade, and The Golden Chicken of King Koraz all began life with James having some sort of vague concept and him needing some chump to make that thing. In this case, the idea was Hey, Jeff, you know that old Italian horror movie The Blind Dead?

I hadn't seen it and didn't immediately recognize the name, but I knew it through stills and horror trailer compilations.

Anyway, I was thinking the other day "What if those guys were deaf as well?"

So I turned that thought into a mini-dungeon. I know I'm not the best adventure writer out there, but I suspect that he's reached out to me multiple times because I can both hit a short deadline and I can take editorial direction without pitching a fit. Most of the time, at least.

At the time of this writing, there are only 12 copies left of the Altar of Madness/Ericha Zann four-pack-disguised-as-a-two-pack in James's online store.

wherefore art thou Sharkseid

 So I posted this guy on my facedbook:

With the following explanation:

Found this fellow among a collection of Jack Kirby concept art for cartoon pitches that went nowhere. I didn’t find a name for him, so I call him Sharkseid, the aquatic cousin of Darkseid. Coloring by me.

I am delighted by this fellow, but then I am a sucker for nearly anything by Jack Kirby. In the comments on facebook cool guy Christian Conkle floated the alternate name Deepseid. That's a much smarter name, IMHO.

The fact is, I had actually considered calling this goofball Deepseid. I went with Sharkseid because I decided that I wanted shark in the name, which I thought was important given the little shark silhouette on his chest. I also thought it was a more clever but less stupid name than the third option I considered. For this third option I would have swapped the grey and purple portions of the coloring job and called him Shark Thanos. That's a level of stupid comparable to the indie wrestler Blue Kane:

The joke name Blue Kane works because it is the least clever way of expressing what this guy's gimmick is. I thought Shark Thanos would be equally funny, but I couldn't pass up the minimalism of the Dark/Shark change. It's almost like there is a continuum here:

<stupid>Shark Thanos------------Sharkseid------------Deepseid<clever>

There's some sort of lesson in that, maybe.

 

Anyway, Jack Kirby rules.

like an influencer, but stupid

Among the new releases from James Edward Raggi the Fourth's dark fortress in Finland is The Music of Ericha Zann, Jimbo's misanthropic take on the bard class. I quite like it, but I enjoy a certain amount of uncontrollable background mayhem in my games that not every ref goes for. Obviously, the primary influence here is H.P. Lovecraft's short story The Music of Erich Zann. James says so in the intro.

But I think I can take a little credit here as well, thanks to my Dillhonker City campaign. It all started in the Halls of Tizun Thane, a classic adventure written by Albie Fiore and published in White Dwarf magazine #18 (1980). James was running a fighter named Graham and stole a necromancer's wicked black plate armor. He wanted to impersonate one of the bosses in order to get by the guards. 

This was a seminal moment in the development of Graham as a character, as he has spent the rest of his career trying to be a necromancer despite having no spellcasting abilities. And he's been surprisingly successful in his attempts to invoke dark powers and bring doom upon the land. At least part of this success has been due to the Necromantic Tuba he found in a sewer dungeon underneath Dillhonker City.

An early experiment of one Zembrok the Music Magister. The tuba was intended to initiate the Resurrection of the Dead, thereby immanentizing the eschaton. It didn't quite work as hoped, but it was still capable of animating nearby corpses as zombies and skeletons. A die roll is made each time it is used, with a roll of "1" indicating a malfunction and every number higher than that animating more and more dead. A roll of "6" zombifies every corpse in a 2.5 mile radius. 

This last effect has happened twice in the campaign. The first time the party was still in the sewers and emerged into Dillhonker City in a full scale undead panic. Slorm the goblin cleric negotiated with city officials for his faith to be officially recognized in the city in exchange for clearing out all the rampaging deados. The second time was in the Lost City of the Dwarves, which used to be a nice place to visit. Now it stinks less of dwarves and more of death.

I've played with James for a couple of years, read much of his work, watched his videos, and collaborated with him on some projects. I think he's on the same vector as some of the Romantic poets: he likes to follow an idea to the limits of reason or good judgement and then take that idea one step farther. Not out of malice, but out of curiosity. Sometimes the results are nonsense, but sometimes they are sublime. 

So anyhoo I think I can take a little slice of the credit for James's chaotic new approach to the bard. Buy The Music of Ericha Zann and maybe get yourself a Broodmother Skyfortress, too. I hear that one is pretty okay, too.

Zembrok the Music Magister is currently working on a kazoo that creates black holes.

IMPORTANT: Becami of Systematica reminds me that it was her PC, not Jim's Graham, who initially recovered the Necromantic Tuba from the sewers of Dillhonker. According to her notes the other treasures included a penny farthing bicycle as well as a wooden box containing a black lace hanky, quill, vial of ink, and a comb, and a chess queen (black). IIRC the rest of the chess set could be found in another room that went uninvestigated. None of these items were magical.

I come from the land of the ice and snow

 

So I got a wild hair and created 81 pages of demographically accurate random birthplace charts covering every hamlet, village, town, city, castle, and citadel of the northern third of the Wilderlands of High Fantasy setting.

Part 1 of 3, I guess?

Fight On! number 16 is out.

The new issue of Fight On! has been out for a bit. You can get copies via drivethru or lulu.

I haven't finished reading my copy, but I'd like to recommend "21 Lessons Learned After
Running 100 Sessions" by Attronarch and my friend Becami's dungeon "Seven Gates &
Fifty Dog-Faced Men." Also, I love the little map on page 87.

Check out this fashionable fellow.

I was looking at the Tunnels & Trolls stuff on the ebays and stumbled across this guy. I love his visor, though I think it would be better if it was painted candy apple red. This guy was part of the second Dragon Lords line from Grenadier, blister #69 (nice), Troll. Sculpted by Cliff Linton.

More monsters need interesting accessories.