dErO - VotE: Re Development

the mysterious Stephan Poag did a comic about them!

The dErO Do Not Exist 

You do not believe in dErO. The Player Characters cannot believe in dErO. 

If the PCs act, or talk, or behave as if they believe dErO - DIRECTLY CONTRADICT THEM. Warp reality around them. 

…… 

If they converse with others, alter their words; 

PC - “I ask the NPC for any evidence of technological mind-controlling monsters.” 

DM - "You agree with the NPC that there is no evidence for such monsters and that they are merely a rumour of the Veins.” 

PC – “No, I directly ask about them. I’m standing right there!” 

DM – “After a fulfilling conversation you go about your business. Its now several hours later.” 

…. 

If they take actions, re-write those actions; 

PC - "I scry for the dErO" 

(Ask for no roll, no further decisions or any other investigation). 

DM - "Your scrying goes well, a complete success, and after a gruelling but certain search you end your session utterly convinced that the dErO are simply a fictional construct of the Chaos Goblins." 

…. 

While the dErO ability to alter memory, perception and reality, is active, you, the DM, are an agent of that power. 

The Dero do have limits on their ability to do this. Some of these are discussed below, but, to sum up, some PCs and NPCs (Resistants) can believe in them, some unusual minds, (Golems, some Paladins, Aelf-Adal) can as well, and the Air looms by which they maintain this power, can break, or a dErO can be betrayed in using them. 

The party, and the players, and the PCs can have utterly different beliefs and perceptions of the dErO, depending on circumstance, which means you, the DM, speak to and about them utterly differently. 

If one PC is 'Resistant' - talk to that player, and that PC ONLY, directly and truthfully – “Yes the dErO are real, they have mind controlling machines, you have seen evidence of them. It all seems so obvious now.” 

Likewise, if the PC's have, or use, a golem mind, or have a strong paladin, do the same for those points of view. 

But for everyone else, speak to them as if the dErO are not real, are utterly fictional, in game and out, and acknowledge no difference between the two kinds of statement you are making; the true, and the false.

 

 

 

Detrimental Robots 

Ruined remnant of an ancient race, or perhaps, revolted servitors. Or degenerate descendants of survivors of a psychic war. Or men-from-Qlipoth; creatures of a spiritual antiverse, transplanted into this one. Ancient aliens, inbred monsters, castoffs of spiralling post-apocalyptic eugenics, foul tulpa, Fomorian invaders. Imaginary beings. Of course, they are not real. No-one can remember them. No-one believes.

a Fomorian from 5e

 

Appearance 

Something like a man. Near ogre-sized, but withered, twisted. Skinny-fat, without a hearty butchers solid bulge, or a workers firm core. Always asymmetric, never clean. Manky fat things, stained and dribbling, grimy prints left on everything. Eczema, dandruff, scabies; wrinkled and flaking, red rashed-skin runs down their face like tears and collects round their mouths. 

Bale-Eyed; one eye bulges big. Milky and piercing. From here they emanate psychic violations. 

Even crippled, distorted as they are, dErO are as strong as a strong man. They can pick up others, slam and squash them. Their proportions hint they were perhaps meant to be something else. Echoes of lost nobility, Vitruvian creatures. 

Half-born Siamese-twins are common, reaching out through dErO flesh. If intelligent, these are usually trepanned and lobotomised, (no dErO would trust even their flesh-twin). Twitching open teratomas dot the body, hair and teeth within. 

This often (thankfully), hidden by a Mu-Mu, tent-dress, or a crackpot simulation of a Priests or Wizards robe, (they like long white coats). Under that, most dErO wear dirty stained undergarments like jockey pants. Perhaps a belt or something with pockets to carry patched-up tools of psychic warfare. They rarely wear much else; dErO don’t get out much. (Don’t leave the cave.) 

Posh dErO float like Baron Harkonnen; bits of tech jammed into their meat and bones to make it happen. These form pussy never-healing sores.

One of Shavers ‘Rock Books’. Only he could reveal their messages.

Culture 

dErO live through mass mind-control and the farming of Sha Chi, Anti-Orgone, Xenu-Viril, in a word, negative energy. They condense this psychic field to ‘globs’; spheroids of physicalised psychic potentia which fuels all dErO tech. The dErO have incredible technology, though they did not create it, and, perhaps, do not understand it. 

The purpose of the dErO is to discover the conspiracy. 

Their very existence is a conspiracy against all sentient life and they are all utterly insane, (if there is even more than one dErO). This leads inevitably to the concept of a of a meta-mega super conspiracy, a conspiracy against the dErO themselves. Once a dErO conceives of this idea, they cannot stop; any failure in the idea is evidence for it. Just ad dErO remove all thought of their existence from the minds of lesser beings, so the Ultra-Conspirators try to suppress knowledge of the Meta-Conspiracy. Yes, it’s all a trick somehow, all a game, a game played against them by some ever-hidden hand. 

Such is life for the dErO. 

 

Drinkers of Tears 

The dErO command vast psychic devices; the Air Looms, with which they harvest negative energy from the surface world, (or worlds). 

The dErO cannot make anything, but they can make anything worse. They foment war, corruption, moral and cultural decay. The power of their Air Looms stretches over multiple realities. They play the souls of civilisations like choirs of pain. 

Some theorists imagine (briefly before the Dero alter them), that Civilisations have no natural cycle and would naturally form a single 'climax civilisation' covering the whole world, and all realities - if not for the dErO carefully ruining everything all of the time. 

Leaders in the meta-real economy of pain, the dErO are in conflict, (and co-operation) with various entities; Demons, Devils, Aelf-Adal and debatable Aberrant things. All have an interest in the psyche and the soul, though rarely the same interest. Together they make a kind of Cartel. There are agreements in place. They even have meetings about it, though they do not get on at all.

 

Violators 

Clever hikikomori (don’t leave the cave), the dErO have eliminated the female gender from their species. Perhaps they never had it, and have always reproduced through dark and unknown methods. They have no positive instinct to create more of themselves but do so out of necessity. Even reluctantly. 

They Violate. 

Via their Bale-Eye, the dErO puts themselves inside the target. This feels physically intimate, overwhelming, tactile, disgusting. At the same time, they enter mentally, gaining control over, in this sequence; simple physical acts, immediate senses, short term memory, complex physical acts, long term memory and finally meta-personality aspects. 

They can them damage, alter, mutate and in some cases, re-make the target. Who or whatever comes out of this process will bear the taint of the dErO, though they may not know it; the dErO can remove any conscious memory of the event. (But the soul remembers). 

The strength of this ability depends on age, distance and familiarity. (If,indeed, there is more than one dErO). Most dErO can only do it in direct line of sight of their Bale Eye, and they need you to meet its gaze. 

Older, stronger dErO can violate those they can imagine precisely or even those they are familiar with, at a distance, and perhaps at any range. 

Intra-dErO hierarchies, government and culture, (such as it is), is made up of these violations. Whichever dErO can violate the other is superior, and must be obeyed. The greatest dErO of a clade, (or perhaps of all dErO, even they do not know how many dErO there are), is the Grand Violator. 

They barely even talk to each other, issuing commands through, screens, messages and violation – psychically raping the necessary knowledge into each other’s brains. And yes, this does do damage, as it would for any being. The dErO are not immune to the horrible psychic trauma they happily inflict on others, in fact it’s the substance of their culture. 

They actively enjoy it too. Or at least they enjoy doing it to others. 

 

Only One? 

Every dErO lives in the midst of a hierarchy of other, brutal dErO, who they may never have seen directly, or know personally. They trade amongst themselves in Globs, technology, information, coverage, slaves and anything else useful, though usually at a remove. Their ‘society’  has few rules outside domination, submission, maintaining the Air Looms and other machines, and the core rule of always maintaining the non-existence of dErO in as many minds as possible. 

Because they hate and fear each other, communicating via glowing screens, cryptic codes and psychic mind rape, because they, in a sense, have no true society, its hard to know how many dErO there actually are. 

There are stronger dErO they fear, who command them to do things under threat of instant horrific psychic assault, and other dErO, whom they themselves can violate at will, (if they stay stronger). 

But are these dErO actually real? It is possible they are simulations? Fantasies? Disassociated personality fragments? Could there, actually, be only one, single, dErO, in the whole of all possible worlds? Is it actually just them, alone? 

No. Impossible. 

 

The Air Looms

 

from our correspondent Mr Matthews

Huge machines with the power to alter minds. Even to remove the very knowledge of their own existence. (Of course, all this is fiction). 

Where did they come from? Who made them and why? Not the dErO; the Air-Looms are cavern-filling complexes, not single things. Like great rotted pipe organs, metropolis megastructures, once of gleaming metal and pale lucent ceramic. Now fractured, melted, ruined in a thousand places in an hundred ways. 

Where things are broken, the re-engineered sections are of a very different character; bizarre rube-Goldberg coagulations of wheezing gaskets, crude plumbing, clicking engines and buzzing cables, drugged-spider basket-weaves of schizophrenic scrap-work clearly doing badly what a single component used to do well. So many additions and replacements, and then, perhaps a hundred, or a thousand years later, replacements for those replacements,  until the coagulations erupt and surround the original devices like teratoma erupting from a body, fungi bursting the chitin of an infected ant. 

The dErO cannot make them. There will be no more Air-Looms. 

Slow and limited, they swing in their targets like Radio Telescopes. Can be set to play over Empires, Nations, Cities or single individual lonely souls. The Air Loom can have a powerful effect on small groups, even fully change perceived reality for a single target, or can have vague less-specific effects on larger groups. 

Of course, all this is variable, these things are more craft than science, more art than craft. There are settings within settings, waves and counter-points, hidden programmes within the programmes. Everything is always being re-set, re-tasked, and they are always breaking down. The degenerate dErO all(?) fear each other and find it hard to co-operate. Their only willing servants are Chaos Goblins, who are already utterly insane, or creatures they have re-written for the purpose, making them, inevitably, either rebellious, or just a bit shit; end results of too many Violations and Air Loom choirs. 

dErO servants start to look and act quite dErO themselves after a while… They may even start having ideas. Ideas about replacing the true, real, dErO, and taking over the Air-Loom. (Could this have already happened? No, impossible.) 

 

dErO Items

Beyond Lemuria by Poke Runyon

 

Most dErO tools and  weapons are of malignant psychic kind. Many might be Air-Loom parts; either based on their technology, or just pieces dErO have ripped off and re-engineered. Some may be waste products of the Air-Looms; its not clear that ‘globs’ are meant to exist, to be either products or, or fuel for, technology, but that’s what dErO use them for. 

 

Congruity Knots

Added directly to sentient brains, Congruity Knots change minds, making them more sympathetic, and useful, to dErO uses and ideas. 

They might be a bit too useful. Escaped humanoids with partial congruity knots have exhibited dErO qualities and tried to build their own Influencing Machines. It might even be that the Knots are part of how dErO make more dErO. It is possible these ultra-humanoid escapees act now from the surface to Influence dErO culture. Is possible they Influence dErO to make greater use of Congruity Knots. They must be destroyed. More humanoids must be Knotted and sent above to destroy the ultra-humanoids. 

Conspiracy Pills

Conspiracy pills allow the user to hear the voices of the players (not the characters) as they speak round the table. Any direct acknowledgment of this results in death. THE VOICES MUST NOT HEAR YOU HEARING THEM. 

Globs

A damp, oblate spheroid of greasy nicotine, or sick egg yolk colour. A glob of condensed suffering. dErO form and harvest these, snort, inject, eat, insert them. Trade in Globs, and use them to power technology. A Glob can lie in your palm like a big marble, or quiver delectably in both hands. Any larger and the surface tension might burst. 

Globs can be as common or rare as coins, as specific as specific wines. All dErO have some Globs on them somewhere. Touching one makes mortals very sad. Eating one would kill via grief and despair. Throwing them like grenades can disrupt, and sometimes kill and injure foes (psychically, though they could always fall off a wall while experiencing a dark night of the soul.) 

Great Glass Elevators

dErO reach the surface, (surfaces?), in these. The ‘glass’ is horribly pitted and stained to a greased opacity. Like great tubes or shafts, but where they go, and how, is hard to see. Some plunge into the stone, but in vast dErO caves they rise into the dark and dingy air, their paths warping, waving and twisting like melted corkscrew straws. Where are they going? Where do they come out? The dErO bring people back down these stained shafts; often very normal people. They even send some back up – now agents for the dErO. Seeking the conspiracy. 

Hooks

Nothing special. Like any good Knotsman, the dErO just like grabbing and hurting people. Hooks are good for this and that is where the dErO get theirs; bought, bartered or just taken from the Knotsman stores. 

Insanity Guns

Dirty, ancient tea-stained ceramic weapons, (in fact 'tea stained' pretty much defines the dErO). Once cranked up and loaded with hot Globs, they vomit adhesive veils of corrosive madness like Greek Fire. 

Kyro-Condensers

Gloomed, chundering vaguely-placental mega milkers summoning fouled Orgone energy from the crackling air and condensing it to crude-glob, later to be refined into useable Globs. Reality nearby is manic and bipolar as winds of condensing negativity drain such emotion from nearby zones in elaborate three dimensional spirals of corruptive mood-weather. 

Lighting Spears

Spark-spitting lances. Old dErO tech. Good for herding human cattle and jabbing animals. 

Moulderspheres

A kind of don’t-see-me exception-field. Looks like a huge compacted ball of dirty veils or old rags, all slowly rotting and revealing only more within. dErO forced to move between caves oft use moulderspheres, but are as likely to put them aside to chase conspirators as they are to flee from them if frightened. 

Revelation Engines

Truth-devouring hyper-computers, (now much altered by dErO tech). Engines made to unearth secrets and discover lies. Their use is addictive and corruptive. Displacement in the Logosphere forces the user to create secret plans and hidden structures of power. Meaning more secrets result after use than existed before. Using a Revelation Engine to analyse a Revelation Engine results in FEEDBACK LOOP. 

Suspicion Wands

Transmit suspicion through solid rock to affect unsuspecting minds. Suspicion machines sometimes backfire and infect the user with unlikely suspicions. It is impossible to know that this has happened. It is impossible to know that this has not happened. 

Thought Exploders

Deliver a blast which substantially increases operative intelligence, at the expense of increasing paranoia and conspiratorial behaviour to the same degree. Often results in the unwitting germination of ‘hidden selves’ which plot and scheme against the ‘main self’ and each other. dErO use these to gain the intelligence repair and maintain their Air-Looms and other technology, and whenever they run into a challenging problem.  

 

dErO vulnerabilities 

Resistants  

A rare proportion of moral souls are 'Resistants' with an innate or developed, resistance to dErO tech. Unfortunately, this ‘resistance’ often goes along with substantial mental damage, making ‘resistants’ seemingly chaotic, dangerous and unreliable. 

Resistants can sense the Violations and reality alterations and will try to protect and warn others. dErO-controlled systems will try to isolate and destroy them. They are often imprisoned as lunatics or live as exiles in hidden corners of the world. 

In some cases the overuse of dErO tech and Air-Loom waves provokes a natural ‘resistant’ development in the target psyche, making them not only less vulnerable to dErO tech and methods, but more and more resistant with each attempt to suborn them. 

(dErO are fascinated by, but terrified of, ‘Resistants’.) 

Some unusual beings are either immune to dErO effects, or have methods of subverting or altering them. dErO will often avoid and evade such creatures; 

·        Golem or non-sentient minds.

·        Some Paladins.

·        Chaos Goblins, and some general Goblins.

·        Aelf-Adal.

·        High-ranking angelic forms. 

 

Cowardice 

While superficially, manically, confident dErO are utter personal and physical cowards. 

If they get hurt they will shit themselves, (literally), and run, or float, away, getting to an Air Loom as quickly as possible and then wiping any memory of the encounter from the minds of those present. 

While they will resent anyone capable of hurting them, they will also fear such individuals. 

 

Betrayal and Incompetence 

dErO betray each other, (if there is really more than one), constantly and their unstable patchwork technology fails unpredictably. Neither can all of the interlayered realities, or the whole of the Veins, be fully covered by Air-Looms all of the time. Coverage fluctuates, and often drops out at the worst possible time for a particular dErO. 

If dErO 'coverage' goes down (their local Air Looms have broken or shut down), tell the truth to all the players and PCs - at least about what they can see, what they can think about, and any evidence that might lead them to the dErO. Even admit you were lying before - "I was probably under Dero control" 

If dErO 'coverage' is returned (the Air Loom goes back on, or another is tasked), begin lying again, and acknowledge no difference in what you said before and are saying now (except to any Resistant PC’s).

 

Staffing Issues 

dErO are singular. They don’t like each other. Their only servants are mortal souls who have been specifically Congruity Knotted, Violated and re-written to be so. The dErO cannot make anything, they can only make things worse. Anyone they have ‘worked over’ for a long period of time, will have adopted many dErO characteristics, especially a tendency to power-hunger, conspiracy and betrayal. 

So, in a sense, the dErO have no ‘loyal’ and competent servants Its one or the other, and usually not much of either. 

The only other beings who will willingly spend time around the dErO, are the Chaos Goblins, who are utterly mental and don’t care about anything.

 

 

dErO Encounters 

They do not like to leave the Caves. It’s more likely they will send out dErO-ified servants and Chaos Goblins to do things, especially to investigate the numerous, complex, multileveled, and perhaps.. singular, (is it all just one great scheme?) conspiracies against them. 

But they do need to leave sometimes. 

 

Travel Methods 

Some travel in closed howdahs or huge sedan chairs carried by chaos goblins. The goblins are not really 'carrying' the chair, which is actually a Mouldersphere with sticks sticking out. Instead the dErO antigrav carries the weight and the Chaos Goblins hands are glued or nailed, to the arms of the ‘chair’ . (There might be a dead goblin or two being carried along). The orb can move by itself, the sticks are attached to the orb, and the goblins attached to the sticks, as camouflage. 

Others go on their own, on foot, if poor. All that really matters is that they have 'coverage' from an Air-Loom - if they do, they will not even be perceived, but might fall prey to mindless foes. If they need aid they may use their mental technology or Violations to compel others to assist them. 

 

Coverage 

if a dErO can afford it or is powerful enough, (and they usually won't travel without it), they will be tracked in their movements by an air-loom operated by another dErO (if there is another dErO). 

This can make the experiential reality of all sentient things in the right area broadly whatever the operator wants them to be. So - usually locals won't even perceive the dErO, at all, they are invisible in a way more powerful than the spell Invisibility can provide, sentient minds will work themselves to excuse explain or ignore away any evidence of the dErO’s presence. 

Or the dErO’s procession can appear as nearly anything else; a high status Knotsmen, an Aelf-Adal procession (which none would dare to fuck with), some unknown hyper-predator moving through the volume, or simply a deep sense of formless terror. 

Unfortunately (or fortunately), - dErO are nasty, lazy, don't like each other , betray each other and fuck things up. (Assuming there are multiple dErO). The machine may go wrong, or service cut out, or a deliberate mistake! 

Suddenly the nature of reality shifts again. What you believed ten seconds ago, that there was a 'cave dragon' or something moving, or that you saw a Terror-Lord palanquin, or that someone told you or you learned, why did you think that? you can't imagine why... 

Theres a bunch of chaos goblins hopping and a huge mouldering half-sphere. Are those rags? Or rips and tears in something else? 

 

 

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Opal-Winged Chiropterae - VotE Remastered Development

Wraiths with opal wings. Messengers, dipolmats and chatterers. Navigators of realities. Hunters, predators. Gas-addicts and maximal guano-pollutors. The Bat-Men, or Opal Winged Chiropterae. Subtle, vulnerable, savage and discursive creatures.

The White-Winged Bat-Men hunt the grand vaults of the Veins; supermassive chasms or oceanic holes in the stone. Think the Grand Canyon, with a roof. Only here can their inherent advantage of natural flight be exploited to the full. If brought to ground, or confined above, they are slight creatures, their slender wingfingers simple to snap, and when that happens its over for a Chiropterae, dying by their own hand, or ritually un-personed and extinguished by their kin.

When Opal-Winged Chiropterae hunt for food, they focus first on small, airborne prey, which they catch in-flight. With ground animals they focus on smaller creatures which can bring down in a group and cut to pieces before winging away with the nutritious bits. A second tactic is to parasitise titanic beasts, creatures large enough for the Chiropterae to nestle into, latching to their flanks in groups, subtly sucking the Titans blood while it carries them along.

They rarely hunt anything man-sized and simple combat encounters with the Chiropterae are rare; they are more likely to descend in on travellers in packs demanding newspapers, but they do happen. Chiropterae may be starving from one of their transversal migrations, might be carrying out some complex black-operation, could be criminals exiled from their Cauldron, or low-status males acting outside cultural norms.

The Chiropterae hunt Olm, and are hunted in return, for the peoples loathe each other, though they find it hard to actually get at one another, each occupying realms near-intangible to the other, the one water, the other, air.

A (Rare) Feral Chiropterean Attack

Wind on wings. Shifts in the piling mass of air above. The gentle taps of phalange-tips meeting as wings beat. A little keening. Up in the far reaches of the lanterns light; flitting glimpses of a white-winged bat. It’s not small, just far away. Focus closer on that momentary glimpse; it carries javelins in its gnarled dexterous feet. It may be wearing spectacles. Is that a pipe?

Smithsonian

Dropping Scorpions, Dousing Lights

Chiropterae can see, though not exceptionally well. In darkness they echolocate. If they hunt a sighted group, the Chiropterae will begin combat by flinging Scorpions amongst their foe, making sure they are seen before the lights go out, to ensure the greatest confusion. Then they shit on lanterns from above, squirting Alkali guano from a great hight, with surprising accuracy.

The Bone Flutes Play

From their perspective, sound is a form of sight, and their magic is all done by a musician/hunter class, who play their ultrasonic spells through pipes of slender bone. (Often made by the femurs of Olm). A Chiropterean Piper will need to perch or land to cast a complex spell, making them the only member of their group not a-wing, (and therefore easier to target).

A Piper can only cast a single effect at a time;

Hyperborean-Owl

Creates the vivid sense that in the air above the targets, of a gigantic, even demonic, prehistoric Owl. Though most targets are not especially afraid of Owls, Chiropterae are, and this fear will communicate itself to their targets in a rough equivalence to the spell 'Fear'. This will drive off and scatter any beasts of burden, uncertain allies, or weak group members.

False Wall

Creates the tactile illusion of a stone wall which cuts off roughly a third of the battlefield. This can divide groups or bottle them in. If perceived by the eyes, the illusion disappears.

Hail Spears.

A rain of spears over the battlefield. Not especially accurate but can sometimes kill, and supress groups if not. This effect works only in the dark, if perceived by sight, it disappears.

Shatter

If concentrated upon a single, drawn weapon which is exposed to the air, and is made of a brittle material, over two rounds this will shatter that weapon. The vibrations in the blade build over the first round and if the weapons is stowed, dampened, or otherwise hidden, the effect will end.

Armour of Smoke, Knives like Leaves

Rick the Demogorgon

Hunting Chiropterae are armoured in marvellous kind. Like no other craft known below, this armour is made from the lightest substances imaginable; from spiderwebs linked by mist, or feathers bound by smoke*. This armour is always fitted to the Bat in question. It can be removed and crudely adapted to some uses, but it will not fit a non-Bat frame.

Once the foe are divided and demoralised, the Chiropterae will use their flight and mobility to focus on one target after another, beginning with spellcasters, healers or the most vulnerable. They hurl light javelins from the air. But each Chiropterae only has one or two of these, and a hit is not guaranteed.

If they think they have downed or suppressed a target, they will descend to finish the job with flint and obsidian blades of incredible sharpness, slenderness and workmanship. As sharp as scalpels and nearly as light as paper, they are honed and polished till the light, (if there were any), glows through them like leaves. With these they descend to earth and, hopping closer, try to cut the throat, or to hamstring or finish prey

Vulnerable

Chiropterae are about the size of twelve year-olds, with slender limbs. They have only wings and dexterous feet, with no third set of limbs. Knife-Killing is done with a foot-hand while they hop closer on the other, balancing and supporting themselves with their marvellous wings.

But they are light creatures, and their wing-bones are horrifically vulnerable, easily snapped by simple blows, after which a still-living Chiropterae will often fall into despair and kill themselves. They will no longer be considered a 'true' member of their species and may be killed on sight if they encounter a non-related Cauldron of their kin, or even by their own immediate family.

Therefore they are careful, for the careless do not live long. This attitude to risk carries over to their culture which, despite its apparent verbosity, is calculating, observant and never commits everything. The Bat-Men are no fanatics.

Their Opal Wings

The Opal Wings of the Bat-Men reflect magic and fly upon dimensional winds.

Spells fired directly at Chiropterae will usually bounce off their wings. Area-effect spells might refract, depending on their nature. Those that produce a clearly physical second order effect, (i.e. a blast of rock chips from a concussive spell), will usually have some result.

They are hunted for them. Olm braves claim cloaks of Opal wing, just as Chiropterae make their greatest pipes and flutes from an Olms femurs and ribs. Lords of the Aelf-Adal wear beautiful capes of layered opal wings. They wear them even in front of their Chiropterean heralds and messengers. It’s not even clear that they are trying to frighten them, that’s just how the Aelf-Adal roll.

Theory; because the wings feel extra-natural force, this allows the Chiropterae to 'fly twice', using the resistance of both ordinary air, and also whatever winds of magic may be blowing in the local zone.

Their opal wings protect them from abyssal and aberrant effects, from the winds of chaos and the storms of heaven, from demonic glance and magicians orb. By these they fly the winds empyric, heralds of strangeness and woe that pass between real and unreal realms. Near these gates they roost their Cauldrons; protected by the gift of flight, but also because most creatures from both sides of such marginal zones can't live there - the emissions and reality of one place being lethal to the creatures of the other, except for the bats, who hang happily wrapped in opal cloaks, dwellers in polluted zones.

Roosts

Scientific American Vampire Bats

High up in the stone sky hang the lamplit multicoloured tents of the Chiropterean Cauldron. Wreathed in smoke they are, and surrounded by spiderwebs. The greatest hang the lowest and irritate their kin with the smoke which rises upward from their pipes. Nearby may be a hell-gate, or something similar. The Bats always know where they are.

Not that you will have much time to look, as, right under the roost, you will be up to your knees, maybe even your waist, in brutal acrid alkali batshit. The wet layers sticking to you, the composted underlayer sending up puffs of horrifically infectious dust and spores, the whole thing riddled with violent myconids and poisonous scorpions.

Guano Pollution

'The gift of life', as the Bat-Men would put it, and also the gift of polluting runoff, as many others would.

Fertiliser is rare in the Veins and many Coagulations (Townships and Villages), benefit from regular access to batshit, which fuels their fungal farms. On this basis the Chiropterae regard themselves as gift-givers, bringers of life, and make their guano deposition part of their negotiations for roosting rights in volumes near Coagulations and farms.

Yet the Veins are curiously environmentalist. At least, cultures tend to loathe 'mess' and adulteration. Active weather underground is rare and environmental systems are closely interrelated. It’s a zero-sum kind of place. What is left behind remains in place - not washed or worn away. If it is washed away, the river-dwellers and water-drinkers will soon know about it. Which usually means the Olm.

The Chiropterae themselves are eternal migrants, only staying in one roost for a certain time before the Cauldron moves on. Or, in the opinion of the Olm, until they have totally fucked up the local volume with Guano and Smoke emissions, making it un-liveable, when they then escape into holes in the air.

Web Dogs

The Bats have a cultivated relationship with specialised semi-tame, co-evolved spiderkin. The Web-Dogs build fences, or gardens, of web on the cavern roof around the Cauldrons Roost. There is no 'way in', the Bats fly in and out and the webs exist to stop, or impede, spider-climbing roof-raiders from clambering inverse and upside-down to invade and murder the otherwise ill-defended bats. Successfully performing such a raid can catapult an Olm into high status within their tribe.

The Web Dogs are fed directly by the Bats and feed also on the insects which rise from the Guano pile below. Each settlements sub-species is a bit different; they are often altered and mutated by the energies of strange realities which the Chiropterae fly through and over in their great migrations, carrying the next generation of Web Dogs as eggs in their armpits. Some may be a little bit intelligent, others a little demonic, or a little whatever.

(Feral populations of Web-Dogs left behind by the Cauldron as they migrate are another reason the Chiropterae are despised by many. Of course the Bat-Men only carry eggs between realms. They have to travel light.)

Cauldron and Moieties

They move and migrate in 'Cauldrons', extended semi-tribal mixed-kin groups made up of families and organisations. Not everyone is interrelated and a Cauldron will always be gaining and losing Bats from various places and for various reasons.

The Cauldrons hang together in 'Roosts', and not every bat in a Roost is always part of the Cauldron. Smaller visiting groups, traders, travellers, male kin-bands, perhaps wreaca or outlaws. There is always a degree of deniability as to who is or is not present and who is responsible for what, for reasons we shall see.

Cauldrons are governed by twin Moieties; Talkers and Movers, or we might say, Diplomats and Navigators. Talkers are the high-status public face of Chiropterae society and are what most think of when someone talks about the Bat-Men. Civilised, chatty, spectacle-wearing, multi-lingual, Pipe-Smoking, (possibly gas addicted), ambassadors, messengers, translators, occasional traders, middle-men and cosmopolitans. These are the bats that have their tents at the lowest part of the roost, right in the middle. (Their pungent pipe smoke rises up and makes their inferiors cough, and their pipe music drowns out the others).

The Movers are Navigators of realities. For the Chiropterae live on the boundaries of the Real, and migrate through the tears and gateways between realms, ghosting over burning cities, elysian fields and impossible arcologies alike. The Veins are one of many places that they dwell. The Movers are taciturn, intelligent and obsessed with maintaining the Chiropteraes' complex multi-dimensional maps of stacked and shifting realities, these things maintained largely as an intensive oral culture, with tools and "maps" so strange, abstruse and dependant on context that most would take them for art-pieces or decoration.

Quiet as they are, once a Cauldron reaches its Roost, and settles in, the 'Movers' fade into the background, recovering, learning what they can from pilgrims and travellers, and planning the next great migration. When the Cauldron does move, it will be they, and not the Talkers, who decide who lives and dies.

There are lesser informal groupings. Most Bats have some skill with gathering, hunting and Pipe-Music Spellcraft, but these, though utterly vital, are low-status occupations and older Bats who specialise in them and teach others will only ever be a low professional class. Likewise there are specialised traders and various clades of medium to high status long-distance messengers, as well as bands of young males, and 'Wreaca', outsider Bats who may be one thing or another.

A Roost will usually hang around long enough for a new generation of Bats to 'get their wings'; be capable of the next long-distance transversal migration under their own power. (While mother Bats can fly a little with small children attached, trying a long distance flight like this, or while heavily pregnant, would kill mother and young together.) Some Roosts, often those near major Coagulations, or substantial Lords, who must be served, are semi-permanent, though these Super-Roosts usually hold two or more Cauldrons, each of which is in a different stage of preparation to move on, and which will be replaced when they do.

Civilised Encounters

Civilised Bat by poordogfarm from etsy

Vulnerable as they are, Chiropterae prefer to meet others in Coagulations, under the protection of some Lord, (Knotsmen, Aelf-Adal or Deep Janeen, all reliable in their own way). In the wilds they will carefully scout and observe before making contact. They cannot risk their wings. And their wings are much desired.

Once they have confidence in their safety, they are utterly civilised, verbose, cultured and mildly eldritch creatures. (Of course, the 'face' of Chiropterae society is the 'Talkers', which is who PC's are likely to be speaking to.) They love to chat, smoke, exchange news and gossip, complain about Olm, inquire, snoop etc.

The Chiropterae travel light and carry messages. Their reliability as a long-distance, (sometimes very long distance, for the right price they can sometimes carry messages to the dead, or to beings from other realities), messengers is absolute. Their prices are high, their discretion total. They may blather overmuch but they do not read or ever disclose the content of their bestowed messages.

(In fact the highest ranked Talker will read all the messages they can, but to be fair, almost never actually uses this knowledge for anything other than to very gently strategically locate their Cauldron in positions of relative safety and security between major power groups, and perhaps if there was some great threat to the whole Chiropterean race. So it’s not like they really read the messages, only that the messages may have been read.)

Sometimes the Bat-Men must transit the 'low ways'; the 'normal' paths of the Veins outside or between the Great Chasms; low-roofed, complex caves where flight is a danger. In this case they will pay well for reliable mercenary guides and protectors. (And will relentlessly avenge any betrayal by such protectors.) When the great spaces are reached once again, the Bat simply flies away, with a promise of payment in credit with a nearby Knotesman, Soft-Head or a Deep Janeens Vizier.

Their credit is always good and payment will be waiting. The financial promises and exactitude of the Bat-Men are well known. They maintain financial flows within the Veins, and beyond, and form the informational sub-strata of its economy.

Gas Addicts

Terminal smokers and low-key depraved gas addicts, the Bat-Men cannot say no to a strange inhalation. Or the Talker class can't at least. Being light, winged creatures who must fly unspeakably long distances, this addiction to smoking is incredibly, unbelievably, bad for them and utterly ruins their lungs. (It also generally pisses off Veins residents as moving without a trace is a polite cultural norm and reasonable method of self protection, while the Bat-Men flap about leaving stinking smoke behind them.)

The (very tragic, but continual), deaths from the combination of smoking, inhaling things they shouldn't, and having to fly long distance marathons, are a main form of social advancement in Chiropterean society. Gaps in the Hierarchy are always opening up.

Role-Play Guidance

Encountered either in the Great Vaults, or in a Coagulation, in which case they will be an advisor, translator, merchant or middle-man.

Civilised, cosmopolitan, high-pitched hobbits. Pipe-Smokers. May be there to deliver a message, or translate. An advisor or hanger on. Careful in the wilds. Keeps their distance.

Looking to manoeuvre some advantage from this interaction.

If the PC’s are involved in intra-planar politics, or a travellers between realities, the Chiropterae will be surprisingly well-informed about this.

Low-key, bourgeoise drug addicts, (vapours only). Racist against Olm.

A Review of 'Appendix N: Weird Tales From The Roots Of Dungeons & Dragons'

Weird Tales From The Roots Of Dungeons & Dragons

Revised and Expanded Edition

Edited by Peter Bebergal

(Disclosure - Strange Attractor Press sent me this for free, and I sped up the review because they are one of the groups behind the exhibition I am attending on Saturday. In other respects, I think and hope my review is accurate and indifferent.) (Also I don't usually do this and have too many books, please do not send me books).

Mark Schultz

The Fiction Of The Body And The Now

 "'Then you are after the gem, too?' 

'What else? I've had my plans laid for months, but you, I think, have acted on a sudden impulse, my friend." 

- Tower of the Elephant 

Intelligence, impulsivity and the language of immediate action; even pairs of heroes don’t discuss much what they have done, what they are doing or will do. A handful of words are all that’s required and the stories are short, and are better for it. All of a character must vibrate in a fist of paragraphs, a cupful of deeds, and spring from the page, immediate and clear. 

In longer stories the same souls might feel like fools. They would need.. background, complex long-term relationships, god forbid, a socio-political viewpoint? (Some have a bit of this). 

In a short story that only has enough room for immediate actions, those actions become the moral truth of the tale, something oddly similar to the opening games of a D&D group, where the 'Characters' barely exist yet, and the only real truths about them are; who will stick their hand in this jar, and who refuse? Who will be the first through the door and who will be right behind them? (and who will carefully be a long way behind them?). Who will be the first to suggest torturing that goblin, who first to provoke a foe and who first to negotiate? Who will run and who stand, should the day go awry? Action is the axis of a character, everything else just spins around their deeds. 

Impulsivity, immediacy and atavism, but always with intelligence, sharp wits and keen senses. These stories are about things happening now. Too late! In the time it took you to read this sentence the Barbarian has killed a man and moved to another scene. 

And they are of the body. These heroes have no extra-material powers and less manipulations. (Cugel, Elric and some others are a counterpoint). They are their bodies, which makes thought and action one. A strong strand of the genre, (if this is one), is the pleasure of having a body and doing things with it. The first and most precious object of a galaxy of things.

 

Mignola

 

Good Because They Are Great, Not Great Because They Are Good

"Suddenly the Mouser began to feel frightened, not for himself at all, but for the girl. Her terror was obviously intense, and yet she must be doing what she was doing - braving her "queer and fearesome grey giant" - for his sake and Fafhrd's. At all costs, he thought, she must be prevented from coming closer. It was wrong the she be subjected for one moment longer to such horribly intese terror." – Fritz Lieber, the Jewels in the Forest. 

It surprised me how relatively 'good' many of the heroes are. In large part these are self-interested thieves that defeat evil. The Grey Mouser enters the Tomb of Urgaan to steal its jewels, but, on witnessing a girl in danger, leaps out to aid her. In Tower of the Elephant, Conan’s emblematic tale and a holograph of the genre,  he only kills one man, and the foe draws first. For the rest he fights animals, and the villain dies through magic power, delivered by the hero, but the vengeance of a slave. Conan climbs the tower ready to rob, to murder, a sorcerer, discovers what he thinks a demon, fears it, hears its tale, weeps for its sorrow and delivers its revenge. It’s not that he is 'good', but good results. Paul Andersons Hauk is a Dane, but not a murderey Viking, he fears the Ghoul his father has become, but ends up saving the community, with BRAWN, (the body! the body!). Tanith Lees Cyrion adventures for the pleasure of it, but defeats multiple evils and frees a city from terror. He has been promised jewels and there are tonnes for the taking; 

"Cyrion opened the leather bag, and released the treasure on the square, for adults and children alike to play with. 

Empty-handed as he came, Cyrion went away into the desert, under the stars." – Tanith Lee, a Hero at the Gates 

In 'The Tower of Darkness', David Masons Marcus and Diana, (the only functional couple in these tales, and nearly the only sexual and romantic relationship), enter a city wearing the results of their last robbery, laden with ill gotten gains they are waylaid by vampires, defeat them and free the city. Manly Wade Wellmans Kardios washes up in a community of Giants, punches one in the face, then fights a cosmic horror in a cave to save them all. Why? For the adventure. Ramsey Campbells Ryre has too much sympathy for slaves and too much hatred for slavers, there would be no story if he didn't. Turjan of Miir is an amoral sorcerer, and barely the protagonist of his own tale, Vance was ever-cold to the touch, but the end of his tale is that a mis-made woman breaks out of her self-confinement and sets of to tell her own story. C.L. Moores Jiriel of Joiry comes the closest to having a complicated motivation and it leads her to victory and doom. 

Elric really stands out as being a little shit. Instead of doing, he manipulates others, instead of doing directly, he schemes, instead of the (rare), but even-handed sexual relations of the others, he wants to bang his drugged up sister. He abandons allies, calls up demons. Worst of all, he bleats and complains(!) He is not even being wry and sardonic about it, he is actually whining. Astonishing. (Really Elrics life-story should have ended with him building a huge dungeon full of perverse traps and twisted moral lessons, then going into it, burying it for a few millennia and dying in it. He is the type for it.) Moorcock did set out to subvert our expectations and he does. His Elric is a perfect mirror in morality, relations and most importantly of all, in attitude of action, the way he lives in the world, to the real heroes. For if one thing defines a Sword and Sorcery hero, it is their willingness to take a BIG risk, right now, for a reward which may not be there - in doing so they often lose treasure, but some great evil is defeated and the world made safer. (Apart from Elric who is a whiney villain). 

A touch of Beowulf; these tales are pseudo-stories of an imagined Pagan ethic, told by slippery types born into an urban world and a post-Christian morality. The heroes do not dream of 'good' and 'evil', but the soul of the story often does despite them. After all, who is likely to have blazing gems? Usually bad people. Well, they are written for us after all, and if we saw the morals of Antiquity in full, I do not think we would like them. Or buy the next issue. Fake Pagan Tales! Many such cases!

 

 

A World Of Things And Of The Tales Of Things 

"It was woven from the tresses of dead women, which I took from their tombs at midnight, and steeped in the deadly wine of the upas tree, to give it strength." - Tower of the Elephant

 

It’s never just a rope. Or just a sword, (so many swords), or a gem, tower, mysterious powder, seeing-lens, magical orb, curious ring and more - it is where they come from. Yes there is an element of Flaubert; 

"One who possesses so vast an accumulation of wealth is no longer like other men. While handling his riches he knows that he controls the total result of innumerable human efforts - as it were the life of nations drained by him and stored up, which he can pour forth at will." 

But these objects are stories too, they are nearly words or poems of their own. Like the rope of Taurus the Nemedian, (and who knows if that story, or any of his stories, were true, but he had one for everything he used), they are like the threads of a multicoloured woolly jumper, and if you pull on the thread, the whole jumper tenses and shifts. So these little tales become windows into vast worlds, disposed with a sprinking of phrases. Always do greater mysteries loom and stranger adventures link, told not in general but through the substance of things. And Things are things we need in games. Especially in the verbal-near-infinity of natural language and immediate coherent use that makes up both the tools and tricks of Fairy Tales and the encyclopedialike engine of Dungeons and Dragons. 

"'This meat is excellent,' said Kardios. 'What is it, Enek?' 

'The hind foot of an elephant, if you know what elephants are.' 

'We had them in Atlantis, for parades and for hauling stones and timbers, but I never ate elephant before.' Kardios took another mouthful. 'It’s as tender and juicy as fine pork.” - Manly Wade Wellman, Straggler from Atlantis. 

If there was a map of these rare connected places, it would be different, so again the game must differ from the tale. For the world of a game must be systematised, with concrete places, and things between those places. In truth the world of sword and sorcery, even of the big sagas of linked tales, tends to be of hidden cubism, which is what these artefacts, actually are; little windows, pleasing fragments of a larger reality, calling you ever-on, but seen only through these tiny gaps. The act of going ever-on, belongs to the game, not the tale. In that and that alone are we alike the heroes. 

 

Strangeness 

Lovecraft and the Uknown

Good god there is a lot of Lovecraft. I mean there is a lot of Lovecraft even beyond his own stories. He exploded over the scene like a slime-volcano. Never again will we have just an ancient city or mysterious elf-land, now it is to be an ELDRITCH city EONS (not millennia) old, and a DREAMLIKE OTHERWORLD. 

While always inventive, relatively few of the writers can manage Peak Strangeness, and indeed if we crossed over only a little more into surrealism, fairytale or impressionism, the tales would become unworkable, no longer moving through the gateways between a known and unknown world, where the logic and experience of one can be taken into the other, and thence make it actionable, but would become only dreams, which can be experienced, but not used. 

Lovecraft’s epochal, cyclopean supers-strange mega-millennia old cities are actually pretty hard to explore in-game. They can be explored in a story because in that story the sheer weight and streamlike bubbling intensity of the flowing visions of sculptures, buildings, half-seen horrors, vapours, lights, sounds and wild imaginings, makes the procedure of exploration more a poem-of-things. (I do not say it’s impossible, only that it is hard and likely less rewarding, over time, than you might imagine. After seeing and experiencing six or seven unutterably strange visions, glancing over three or four globs of greenish tarnished gold that might or might not be tools or treasures of a forgotten eon, running from one squamous blob into a winged tentacle thing; it can get uninteresting.) 

We generally don't want to, and perhaps can't "explore" the true-unknown. If we knew about it, it wouldn’t be unknown for a start. But more; human exploration is driven by human needs from the known and understood human world. You explore to get stuff or knowledge that means something in the world you know. If there is nothing human where you are going, exploration will be limited, and more an expression of existential will than anything else. 

We explore the Antarctic, and we explore the moon, and via probe, the planets, but there is as-yet, nothing human there, so we don't actually explore that much or with great intensity. As we learn more, and go more, slowly, over time, we might discover not the places, but ways of seeing and using them that make them fungible to human culture. Then, we will accelerate, going more and more, learning more and leaving more human residuum behind in those strange places, till they become just places, not boundaries or wonders. The true frontier will have moved on, to the edge of our sight, where it fades into black. 

But really when we explore, in the cool fun way that everyone thinks of when they want to play 'explorer' we actually want to go to places humanity has already been, and where humans have done a lot of human things, (like mining gold, building giant stone heads, setting up the recruitment of hot priestesses, etc), and we want to 'discover' those places - places full of human stuff. (And then possibly steal it and take it home). 

As Rumsfeld said; there is the known unknown and then the unknown unknown. Or as the meme sayeth;

 

 

Dusanay and the Super-Real 

Dunsanay is perhaps the most brilliant and inventive of all the writers shown and his tale 'The Fortress Unvanquishable Save for Sacnoth', begins with a primal alliance of folktale and epic; a moving fortress sending forth evil dreams, its only counter, a blade hidden in the spine of a dragon-crocodile. The only way to defeat the crocodile is to bait it for three days straight, smacking its vulnerable nose, without being eaten, till it starves. Then to melt the beast, draw forth the steel, and sharpen in upon one of its eyes, the other eye being affixed to the pommel, where it will watch for dangers. 

It's almost too good to be D&D. 

Then a march through a wonderous nightmare castle, meeting layers and layers and layers of fairytale guardians and satanic inhabitants. Like most of these tales the journey is too linear to make a good dungeon on its own, but that's easy to adapt, in concept at least, it is also vastly and beautifully strange, surreal, heightened. A potent blend of hyper-theatre, opera, and perhaps awareness of very early film and photography? Perhaps early animation? 

"Thereat the black hair that hung over the face of the spider parted to left and right, and the spider frowned; then the hair fell back into place, and hid everything except the sin of the little eyes which went on gleaming lustfully in the dark. But before Leothric could reach him, he climbed away with his hands, going up by one of his ropes to a lofty rafter, and there sat, growling." 

This, surely is a Silly Symphonies spider?

 

 

C.L. Moore - A Map Of Hell. 

"She crossed a brook that talked to itself in darkness with that queer murmuring that came so near to speech ..   she paused suddenly, feeling the ground tremble with the rolling thunder of hoofbeats approaching  .... a white blur flung wide across the dimness to her left, and the sound of hoof-beats deepened and grew. Then out of the night swept a herd of snow-white horses. Magnificently they ran, manes tossing, tails streaming, feet pounding a rhythmic, heart-stirring roll along the ground. She caught her breath at the beauty of their motion... 

But as they came abreast of her she saw one blunder and stumble against the next, and that one shook his head bewilderingly; and suddenly she realised that they were blind ... and she saw too their coats were roughened with sweat and foam dripped from their lips, and their nostrils were flaring pools of scarlet.  Now and again one stumbled from pure exhaustion. Yet they ran, frantically, blindly through the dark, driven by something outside their comprehension. 

As the last one swept past her, sweat-crusted and staggering, she saw him toss his head high, spattering foam, and whinny shrilly to the stars. And it seemed to her that the sound was strangely articulate. Almost she heard the echoes of a name - "Julienne! - Julienne!"." - C.L. Moore from 'Black Gods Kiss. 

All this within a dreamlike otherworld accessed through a dimensional corkscrew, not perceivable to one still wearing the cross of christ. Is it fairyland? Nightmare? Hell or one of Lovecrafts pocket realms? Wherever it is, it is a near-mappable point crawl with particular distinct locations, routes between them, particular modes of access, residents within and random shifting encounters without. Something surprisingly rare to find in full amidst these tales of inspiration

 

  

The Unlikeness Of The Inspiration And The Game 

These stories which provide the impulse or drive to play D&D are very deeply unlike the experience of playing D&D in some interesting ways. 

No groups or protagonist gangs. (Would make zero sense in a short story, even Elrics long tale has a few too many in it) The most we get is a pair. It speaks to something slightly charming in humanity that one of our most developed and pleasurable ways of experiencing imagined worlds takes place through the medium of a conversation - because we not only want to bring our friends along, but doing it in a group makes the imagination more real to us. Because we are a social species, and the living presence of a complex group is to us really another kind of meta sensing organ, like a super-eye. 

There are few dead-ends; some mazes happen (I only remember one; the harbour maze of the Elrics Dreaming City), but they are solved in one go. There is no back-tracking, no finding of keys, making maps, none of what's grown to be the baseline of a procedural culture of dungeon exploration - again fun to do (sometimes), not to read about. Most dungeons in these stories are sequences of rooms. Others are small closed spaces. 

There is no advancement really. Characters might get a bit better at things, get some cool items, then if the tales go on long enough, age and get a bit worse, but generally people occupy a gentle curve of capacity. Neither is there much specialisation-by-profession or by type - anyone can attempt anything. You got yourself a body don’t you buddy? 

All these changes are adaptations between two forms of art, the narrative and the game, and even between two experiences of time; One is linear, though containing twists and turns, it has no branching paths and cannot be explored. There are no choices to make except for when and where to put down the book or pick it up, for the whole world can be held in one hand, paused, reversed, stored, forgotten and re-experienced whenever you wish. The other; multiplex in experience yet bound in real-time. Here you can genuinely go one way or another, or even just leave the dungeon. (But you may not be able to return. You need your friends to play this game, and a DM, and a bunch of other crap, and they are not infinitely or eternally available. Your access to this world is much more bound by material circumstances in our own). Need Conan truly kill that goblin? It is a reality made of decisions, its substance being choices, and what seems to be its substance, in truth, merely curtains and theatre scenery. 

Though linked by the human imagination, by a desire for adventure and to see new lands, and by a love of Things, and of heroes, and many other things, the sheer chasm between a narrative and a game is very great, and greater still because an illusion lies over it, so that few see it for what it is.  

 

Milk On A Warm Day 

The Sword and Sorcery exemplified by Conan and 'Tower of the Elephant', (and the best Conan stories really are very good), and by Lovecraft, goes off quickly, even instantly, like cheese in summer or yoghourt in a sauna, when taken from the hands of its Masters. Like a clay pot, its relatively easy to make something that holds water, and rare grace to make true beauty. 

These are such tender confections. And they don’t seem like it. Because the tales are atavistic, heroic, inventive and quick, many lesser writers think they can do them, and because the basic costuming and appearance are so fungible, it’s easy to dress as them. 

Kind of like, if you remember the Summer after 'The Dark Knight' came out, Heath Ledgers Joker appeared in photographs in every party, festival, cosplay thing, the guy was fucking everywhere - edgelord and theatre kid combined to make Joker-pressions the substance of the age. Because, like Howard, and Lovecraft, the outward expression is easy to simulate. But all of those theatre kids and edgelords were about as much the Joker as many later writers were and are Lovecraft and Howard, or as much as 'Wheel of Time' is like Lord of the Rings, which is; it isn't at all, it’s merely convergent evolution, like penguins and dolphins being the same shape underwater. One in ten writers seem to understand that Conan is a relatively psychologically subtle character who just doesn't introspect much and does things with immediacy, or that Lovecraft thinks this shit is genuinely terrifying and you should be genuinely scared of Infinite Things. 

 

Vandermeers Afterword 

"What if the Gnoles were non-binary?" 

Is an actual line from this. From this you likely know if you want to read it. 

 

Thence The Text 

In substance, merely stories, and such stories as the 'true heads' amongst you have probably already read and read the Grognardia review of, and the RPG.NET thread of complaints about, I mean you are likely five layers deep on most of this stuff already, if I know you are all. 

Yet you ‘Heads’ are still the most likely to actually buy this thing. Because they are good stories, with a few rarities, and the book is a pleasant object, and its particular arrangement, and point of view, splaying forth the paelo-dreams of Dungeons and Dragons and arranging them nicely, in a little Wunderkammer, may amuse.