A waste of a great concept

In 1975, Empire of the Petal Throne introduced roleplaying gamers to the world of Tekumel, a beautifully detailed fantasy setting that was the first of its kind to feature non-Caucasian characters in a society nothing like the usual Graeco-Roman or medieval world. In fact it was the first ever society of any kind to appear in a roleplaying game, D&D and its imitators up to that point being just "a medieval Wild West" whose society consisted of nothing but a shop to spend your loot in.

Tekumel’s creator, M.A.R. Barker, drew on inspiration from South-East Asia, the Middle East, China and Pre-Columbian civilizations without his world actually being like any of those cultures. The result was something very different from other RPGs – and from most American or European fantasy literature. What made Barker's creation so revolutionary in 1975 was its vision of entire civilizations that didn't look, think, or act like variations on medieval Europe. Barker’s greatest gift to the fantasy genre was showing us that other worlds could be genuinely other. That lesson feels more important now than ever. Paul Mason gives a taste of what I’m talking about here.

That’s not how Tekumel gamers (a small and dwindling group) usually get to approach the setting, though. For example, Bethorm is the name of one of many Tekumel-set RPGs that have appeared in the half-century since EPT. It’s also the Tsolyani word for a pocket dimension, apparently. But why do the Tsolyani have a word for "pocket dimension"? Why do they even have the concept? It can hardly be something an ordinary citizen would use in everyday life, after all.

Consider the real world. "Galaxy" was the Middle English word for the Milky Way. Nobody knew until the 1920s that we lived in one galaxy and that there are trillions of others. Nobody knew until the 1950s that the universe is billions of light-years across. We don't even now have single words for dark matter and dark energy, and they are observable (in the first case, anyway), so I'm stumped as to how even educated Tsolyani ended up coining a word for "pocket dimension".

One argument is that the Tekumel setting incudes “learning spheres” – find one, give it a twist, and you’re an instant expert in whatever was originally programmed into it. So if learning spheres are common, that means the technological know-how of yore need never have been lost. Tekumel would be like the world in Zelazny's Lord of Light, where most people think that gods and demons and magic are real, but the select few know that's all just a way of explaining science to the uneducated. And if you spoke to those select few they would know all about quantum theory, atoms, cybernetics, etc.

(There's actually a real-life equivalent of this, incidentally. When William Kamkwamba wanted to build a dynamo in his village in Malawi, he told the locals he needed to collect old bits of machinery "to do some magic" because he knew that's how they would interpret what he was doing.)

The trouble is, we’re told that learning spheres are used up when activated. And they were constructed at least 30,000 years before the present day. So I don’t think they’d be a significant factor in the education of the Tsolyani, certainly not to the extent of making the concept of pocket dimensions commonplace.

This opens up the question of how much magic is there in "real" Tekumel. I imagine a world where priests do a lot of rituals before and during a battle, and those rituals have a real effect on morale, and many soldiers will swear blind they saw miraculous things like lightning bolts, but in fact that's mostly in the mind. So this would be a low-fantasy world with no more magic than Westeros, not a pulp sci-fi setting with spells like phaser-blasts. I do realize this would be unpopular with Tekumel enthusiasts, but after all they are an endangered species. My Tekumel doesn't consist of characters discussing abstruse cosmic concepts like bethorms.

What would Tekumel look like if it were contemporary SF/fantasy rather than 1950s-influenced Planet Stories, a bit like the way Battlestar Galactica was rebooted? Most Tekumel fans seem to prefer the space opera version, a genre that was repopularized by Lucas in the '70s after all. They play games in which the rich culture of Tsolyanu, Livyanu and the other states is all but irrelevant. Instead player-characters gad about between bethorms encountering alien/human multidimensional politics and yammering about warp drive and gravity engines, while Barker's invented societies, so marvellously different from our modern world, are flattened into the same sci-fi mush you’ll see in a dozen fungible entertainment franchises. 

It makes no sense. Barker was a linguist and anthropologist and he describes wonderfully strange civilizations which he brings to life in minute detail. That's where Tekumel shines. He wasn't a scientist and his science fiction ideas are a dime a dozen. His SF is also typically mid-20th century Western in flavour, whereas the cultures he created don't resemble any historical setting, most especially not any Western one. Not that setting alone is enough to deliver a compelling story, especially not in an era of BookTok, celeb book clubs, and dopy romantasy sagas. You need characters you care about. But the setting is the environment they move in, and if it's off-the-peg then the situations are too. Lizzie and Mr Darcy's relationship means nothing outside the special context of Regency culture and socioeconomics. Jane Austen even starts the novel with an ironic statement about that.

If I were to reboot Tekumel, I’d throw out the “Doc” Smith space opera stuff and make it more about everyday life. Much less magic and much, much, much less whizzy technology. The Eyes wouldn’t have standard names; they’d be too rare for that. There wouldn’t be an internet of telepaths reliably sending messages across thousands of miles overnight. There’d be no thousand-year-old plans hatched in “pocket dimensions”, no routine encounters with robots and gadget-wielding aliens. I’d strip it all back to what really is unique and wonderful: the cultures that Barker created. As we look toward the future of fantasy gaming and fiction, his example reminds us of the beauty of diversity. The most memorable worlds aren't built on clever mechanics or exotic technologies. They're built on the patient work of imagining how people actually live, love, struggle, and die in societies radically different from our own. That's the kind of magic that never gets old.

Science fantasy gets a makeover

It was Empire of the Petal Throne, not D&D, that hooked me on roleplaying, and the reason for that is I was into sword-&-sorcery and science fantasy rather than the Tolkienesque strain of epic fantasy that caught on through the late 20th century. You know how a duckling follows the first thing it sees when it hatches? Ten-year-old me discovered fantasy through Mike Moorcock’s Mars books and A Planet Called Krishna by L Sprague de Camp. There was no looking back – or forward – from that point on.

Genre is slippery, so bear with me, but technically those books belong to what is now defined as sword-&-planet or planetary romance:

‘Planetary romance is a sub-genre of science fiction that has a close relationship with fantasy in the sense that the cultures that are described are very frequently pre-industrial. The pseudo-medieval warfare with bows and arrows and swords is frequently reminiscent of medievalist fantasy, but this is also a space in which some writers explored American notions of the primitive, mapping the mythology of the American West on to the plains of another planet.’

- Farah Mendlesohn & Edward James, A Short History of Fantasy

Usually spacefaring humans arrive – or better still, get stranded – on a planet at an ancient or medieval level of technology. Sometimes, as in Vance’s Planet of Adventure series, the indigenous civilization has technology of its own. Then it can shade off into Flash Gordon territory, if the natives fully understand their advanced devices, or Tekumel, where the remnants of ancient technology are rare and thought of as magic.

Outliers here (I can’t resist a digression) include Arthur Landis’s Camelot novels, which I basically agented to Don Wollheim back in the early ‘70s. That has some tropes you’ll see recurring: human operative dropped into a more primitive world with just a few bits of kit to give him some magic powers. Swords, princesses, mystic powers, and high adventure – the familiar ingredients of Star Wars, but drip-fed rather than delivered by fire hose.

I call it science fantasy because I don’t seem any intrinsic difference between those planetary stories and, say, Lin Carter’s Thongor books, which are set on a lost continent in Earth’s distant past but still have all the familiar elements. Likewise our own Abraxas setting.

As science fantasy stories are set in ‘exotic’ civilizations, there’s usually a lot of world-building. That could explain why science fantasy has been largely superseded by the Tolkien/Game of Thrones/Witcher variety, in which the settings are more-or-less identikit medieval Europe. We in the West seem to be less enamoured of other cultures than we used to be. In the last century, exotic customs were occasion for surprise and delight. We found them intriguing, and the more troubling elements like suttee looked like they’d been safely banished by modern secularism. Nowadays the news tends to focus on the less quaint features of other cultures: morality patrols, girls being denied education, ancient artworks being blown up, the demonization of gays and albinos, gang-rape of low-caste women, 'honor' killings, and mobs murdering people of other religions. Is it a coincidence that many Westerners have retreated into a genre of fantasy that depicts a cosy cosplay version of their own past? A kind of fantasy where bad things are only done by bad people, so as not to have to face the different and disturbing ways that a whole society can behave? Of course, actual medieval Europe wasn’t a bit like the Middle Ages of most fantasy literature and games, but the difference is it is comfortably dead and gone so fiction can feed us the denatured version.

I’m only speculating as to the causes, but certainly there’s little interest these days in all the cultural minutiae we were presented with in games like Empire of the Petal Throne. In most Tekumel games these days, the participants no longer bother to try roleplaying Tsolyani. What grabs them is all the science fantasy stuff. They want to stand apart, to be the clued-up modern folk luxuriating in a sense of superiority over all those 'primitive' NPCs.

If you've hung around here long enough you'll know that the rich diversity of human culture is precisely what I personally find enthralling; and when it comes to fiction, the more different from modern Western democracy the better. But I've also noticed that the books, movies and games I like are not usually the million-sellers. In this post I'm trying to figure out the kind of makeover science fantasy needs to avoid bombing like John Carter. What does it take to turn it into the opposite of the kind of niche culture-gaming that can barely muster a cult following? It seems that if Tekumel were ever to break out of its ever-shrinking ghetto, those Star Wars style mass-market fantasy tropes mentioned above are the strengths it should play to.

What would that look like? Imagine Star Wars several centuries on. A single planet isolated from the rest of the empire or republic or whatever. Science is largely forgotten, apart from a few Christopher Johnson types who everybody else thinks of as wizards. If you find a light sabre it’s like picking up a magic sword. Droids are tantamount to elves, immortal and nonhuman. The Force is – oh well, that’s always been about black and white magic.

So this reboot of Tekumel would take its cue from Star Wars, blurring all the ethnographic particulars and instead foregrounding the elements that are easy for modern audiences to grok:

• Alien powers that have set themselves up as gods
• Remnants of near-magical super-science
• Shapechangers meddling in human affairs
• Secrets of the ancients known only to a few
• Robotic guardians that are dangerous but can be reprogrammed to become servants (Terminator, golems, etc)
• Swordplay and derring-do
• A world in which a few people can make all the difference

Culturally it would retain only the specific Tekumel USPs that might resonate with modern audiences:

• Non-white societies
• Women, gays & trans characters are fully accepted and equal
• Stereotypical nonhumans are there for flavour (the Stepin Fetchits of modern fantasy)

The weird linguistics would need to be downplayed. I've spent four decades listening to D&D players sneering at Tekumel's "unpronounceable names". Gamers can't be bothered to figure out consonants like tl and ts, never mind ng and nd. In any case, most Tekumel players already don't say the name of the planet correctly. It should be TAY-koo-male; they tend to pronounce it TECH-you-mell.

A reboot like this wouldn’t  involve entirely abandoning the more obscure bits of Tekumel culture. They just wouldn't get mentioned. It can be useful for any fantasy setting to have those ‘iceberg details’ supporting it, as long as they don’t get in the way of the 95% of players who want to ignore them. Given easy docking points for new players and a familiar rules system, maybe it could avoid the demise that Steve Foster predicted and prescribed for thirty years ago.

Why I think Tekumel would be worth such a reboot is because it has dwindled to barely a cult interest, and yet it does have those USPs and it’s a truly American sui generis of fantasy, something original in a field where almost everything else is a mutant strain of Lord of the Rings. Also, it has a champion in Steve Jackson, who once offered to publish a set of three GURPS Tekumel books. M A R Barker, who I think everyone agrees had extremely poor judgement, turned that down for a publishing deal with Lou Zocchi to release an RPG that nobody even remembers anymore. Tekumel has become in effect the obscure but authentic R&B that achieved breakthrough success only when diluted and dumbed down to become white rock & roll (think Numenera in this analogy). Maybe there’s a way to give it one last shot, even if that means chucking out most of what diehards like me cherish about it.

How to make things stranger

This article originally appeared on my Patreon page for 5 January 2022 -- there with a little extra content -- and I'm reprising it here in hopes of enticing a few more of you to come and back me. 

“The chimera was beginning to bore people. Rather than imagining it they turned it into something else. As a beast it was too incoherent; the lion, the goat and the snake do not readily make up a single animal.”

Borges there, writing in The Book of Imaginary Beings, and he’s dead right. I never quite embraced the Greek myths as a kid because of all those monsters with the forelimbs of animal X and the hindquarters of animal Y. Even as a kid I thought they should have tried harder. The Norse myths came steeped in really dark and dreamlike elements, which I loved and that’s probably why Legend turned out the way it did.

This came up in a recent episode of The Good Friends of Jackson Elias, my second favourite fantasy gaming podcast. The chaps were talking about Robert E Howard’s short story “The Tower of the Elephant”, and I got to thinking about how almost every illustration of Yag-Kosha just plonks an elephant’s head onto a man’s body. You can almost hear the scratch of the pen as the artist carefully copied a picture from a zoology book.

But here’s how Yag-Kosha is described in the story:

“Conan stared at the wide flaring ears, the curling proboscis, on either side of which stood white tusks tipped with round golden balls. [...] This then, was the reason for the name, the Tower of the Elephant, for the head of the thing was much like that of the beasts described by the Shemitish wanderer.”

Yag-Kosha is an extraterrestrial. While REH was no doubt inspired by the mythology of Ganesha, I think he had something stranger and more original in mind. A body with two arms and two legs, and head that has protuberant teeth or horns and a long, prehensile snout – of course to Conan it looks like an elephant-headed man, but that’s no excuse for artists to be so literal.

One of the worst offenders is the illustration by J M Wilcox from the March 1933 edition of Weird Tales:

No better is Ernie Chan’s depiction from The Savage Sword of Conan. Somewhere there’s a photo of an elephant’s head that looks exactly like this:

Likewise this uninspired mix-n-match. The artist evidently just couldn't be bothered:

On the other hand, Cary Nord put some real thought into his version (the header for this post). And here’s a properly alien one I found online (artist unknown):

The takeaway is that we all find our inspiration in the familiar, but when transmuting that lead into fantasy gold it pays off to hide your sources. And, along with that, always to look for a new angle on familiar material. For instance, vampires that seem to have been whisked off the set of a Hammer horror movie will probably not give your players a genuine shudder, but investing a little work in dirtying them up, or adding an outré spin on the concept, can yield a very memorable encounter.

Incidentally Scott is right on the money about both Conan’s physique and the need for realism to ground fantasy fiction -- but those are subjects for another post.

The Siege of Faltara: worldbuilding done properly

A few years ago, I got a strong recommendation from John Whitbourn to read Arsen Darnay's planet story The Siege of Faltara. I really ought to have got the message by now. John was the one who originally urged me to read The Dying Earth, and he's also nudged me to try some other books which have never disappointed.

Nonetheless, The Siege of Faltara sat on my bookshelf for four years until John mentioned it again. This time I took the hint, and I'm very glad I did. As an example of SF worldbuilding it's in the same league as Vance and MAR Barker, and luckily Mr Darnay's storytelling skill is much nearer to the former. 

Netflix or Amazon or whoever really ought to be looking at works like this to adapt for TV -- or game developers should get in on the act. At the very least it'd be nice to see a GURPS sourcebook for the world of Fillippi - though of course there's no chance of that happening for an unknown work. This novel shows what a truly imaginative author can do when they're free to create an original world. Even more importantly, Mr Darnay shows how to reveal just as much lore as is needed for the story. If you can find a copy at a reasonable price, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

New worlds in the making

It’s often said that Tolkien is the originator of modern fantasy, and I suppose that’s true if you only consider the dominant strain of fantasy with its vaguely European and vaguely medieval flavour. I can’t knock that, it’s where Legend springs from too, but I have just as much affection for the older variety of fantasy from which sword & sorcery evolved. Barsoom, through the Hyborian Age and Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique, Poseidonis and Xiccarph, then Planet Stories and Vance through to Moorcock’s Young Kingdoms.

The keynotes of that genus of fantasy are exoticism, the ancient world, priesthoods and demons, typically (not always) lower or less widespread use of magic yet at the same time an admixture of science, or at least scientifically-coloured fantasy. Most importantly, the universe in such science fantasy tends to be realistic, governed by laws of nature (even if they include magic) that are indifferent to humankind. It’s the opposite pole to Jewelspider, where dream logic and prophecies and a real divine presence are woven into the setting.

As a teenager I loved the fantasy worlds of Robert E Howard, Edward P Bradbury (Moorcock again), Jack Vance and Tanith Lee – so naturally when Empire of the Petal Throne appeared in the mid-‘70s I took to it like a tletlakha to water. I owe a creative debt to Professor Barker and his world of Tekumel only partially repaid with the four issues I edited of The Eye of All-Seeing Wonder.

A lot of studios, game developers and book publishers these days are eyeing the success of things like Game of Thrones, The Wheel of Time, and Dune. With networks in the streaming wars all chasing the last big thing, a fully-realized original fantasy/SF world is a lottery ticket with a big jackpot on offer. Suddenly worldbuilding is in.

A little while back I was lamenting the difficulty David Velasco and Riq Sol were having raising funds for their game Expeditionary Company. Probably the answer is to forget about launching it as a boardgame/gamebook, just take it to a developer who wants a great concept for a new MMO. Judging by the rapid rise of Vulcanverse online, if they could find a way to include NFTs in the design they'd have to chase the investors off their front lawn. Or they could see if Jeff Bezos has another half billion and doesn't want to throw it away this time. (It would need a far sexier name than "Expeditionary Company", though.)

There aren't that many fantasy world-builders with expertise in both games and storytelling, so I thought I'd try my hand at creating a "hard fantasy" setting. This was Before the Storm, a novel I was writing while doing jury service in the mid-'90s. I’ll quote from the T-shirt version:

An isolated star system out beyond the galactic rim. For a quarter of the year the night sky is utterly dark with only a few smudges of light marking distant galaxies. Then gradually the galactic rim makes its appearance at night: a vast wheel of stars, not of one galaxy but of two in spectacular collision.

The people of this world are descendants of a crashed colony ship but have no record of their heritage. As far as they know they are alone in the universe. The fauna of their world are not the familiar animals of earth. Instead of horses they ride “destriers”, two-legged animals that because of their cold blood must be warmed beside ovens before they can be used in cold weather. Technology is barely beyond the level of the late middle ages - though there are some features that have not paralleled the development pattern of Earth's history, such as primitive gunpowder weapons and even a type of photography.

Some biotechnology survives from the colony ship that brought the original settlers, often in the form of various algae. There is a hydrogen-producing strain that permit balloons for use in reconnaissance and a cobweb-silk producing strain that is used for weaving immensely strong fabrics. Various other scattered fragments of technology are sometimes found, but to the superstitious inhabitants of this world they are thought of as magic.

There are also civilized nonhumans and semi-humans sharing this world with humanity. At the point when the first novel begins they have only been infrequently contacted and are thought of as mythical.

Medra is a tropical island nation that, by virtue of the industrious and warlike nature of its people, has consolidated an overseas empire much larger than the original archipelago. Medran society is more developed than those of the countries it has conquered, but the rigid caste system that has vitalized it in the past has now reached the point of breakdown. A new society is in the process of emerging.

I never finished the thing. One reason is that I got a job at Eidos that left no time for novel-writing. But that’s really just an excuse. The truth is that it was the kind of fantasy I wanted to write but not really what anyone was reading back then. Publishers wanted the Western style of fantasy I mentioned above set in a  version of the Middle Ages with more modern sensibilities -- effectively, "medieval America". 

By contrast my fantasy world was not the slightest bit medieval nor culturally or ethnically European. It bucked the '90s trend, being more of a modern evolution of those weird and wonderful Planet Stories of yore, but now that the selection pressure is for exotically different fantasy worlds (there is no point in creating a world that isn't uniquely and brandably distinct) it might finally be time to dust it off -- with the necessary changes to make it compatible with current trends in massively multiplayer online play, which is where the demand is coming from. So I am currently repackaging it like this:

A Rapa Nui of the cosmos

The idea of an isolated world is a powerful one, throwing all our human endeavours against the daunting backdrop of uncaring immensity. Here’s a way to do that:

This world orbits the star Edis , a solitary system out in intergalactic space. For several months of the year the night sky is empty of stars. Then only the other planets of the system and the moons of our world are to be seen.

As the season of stars approaches, the rim of a galaxy rises above the horizon – higher month by month until mid-summer, when most of the night sky is taken up by the spectacular sight of two galaxies in collision, intertwining vortices of light formed by great reefs of stars being torn into new configurations.

How do people come to be here? For most, it is a mystery no one even considers. This is where humanity has always been, surely? There are cities, farms, villages. Kings and councils of syndics, priests of the gods who explain portents – and deep forests in which dwell alien creatures that never arose on any world of men.

The truth: a one-in-a-trillion quantum fluctuation in the warp drive of a generation starship, so that instead of its intended destination in the Milky Way the ship was flung across gulfs measureless to the imagination. That it arrived anywhere in real space is a miracle. A return journey would have been impossible to plot or undertake even if the ship had not taken damage.

The crew made their decision. With no future possibility of contact with the rest of human space, no hope of ever returning to space, it would be kindest to raise the new generations with no knowledge of humanity’s past. This world Edis IV, known to the settlers as Anshar , would be the new Eden.

That was hundreds of years in the past. To most people, Anshar is the only world there is.

My initial plan for how to develop it was using The Expanse's serialized book model, though more like a TV writers’ room – ie five or six writers each taking main responsibility for a couple of “episodes” (around 20,000 words each) building over 6-10 months into a 12-episode “season arc” thrashed out from the start by the lead writer(s). Those novellas would be the proof of concept stage, and viable as products in their own right, but if funding could be found they should be repurposed into scripts and released as audio dramas. The plan, then, was to prototype in prose and see if that could lead on to videogames, TV shows, or whatever.

The snag is that really you need artists involved from the start. Words can only take you so far but people want a shared experience -- visuals showing the architecture and clothing and also sounds, the noise of wildlife, the rhythms of music in this fantasy culture.

Whether I’ll get to do more with Edis than I did with that Medra novel thirty years ago remains to be seen. The sword of Damocles over every writer’s head is that all creative work is entirely speculative. The seed capital is the writer’s own time and effort, but when it comes to selling it nobody respects sweat equity the way they respect cash. So taking six or nine months out to devise a complete fantasy world and write a novel set in it is like buying a lottery ticket in the knowledge that, if it looks like winning, some producers or publishers will do their best to claim the lion’s share of the payout.

In any case, after my day jobs (freelance design on a videogame and writing the final Vulcanverse book) my first priority is Jewelspider. I was chivvied about that by some gaming buddies I met up with recently. Oliver Johnson was running a new Legend adventure and resorted to using original Dragon Warriors rules because 'Dave still hasn’t written the Jewelspider magic system!' So I have to do that – and then Abraxas, which will be serialized first to Patreon backers and is a science fantasy setting (prehistoric rather than far-future) that will use a new edition of my Tirikelu rules. And after that, maybe, I’ll take another look at this thing.

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This post originally appeared in longer form on my Patreon page, and included a link to the first 20,000 words of the Medra novel. I mention that not to try to get you to sign up to Patreon (though you would be very welcome) but just for full disclosure.

And here's a reading list to go with:

• Abraxas: The Lost Continent
• The Complete Chronicles of Conan
• Elric of Melniboné: The Elric Saga Part 1
• Elric: The Sailor on the Seas of Fate
• Night's Master
• The Siege of Faltara
• The Songs of Distant Earth
• Tales of the Dying Earth
• Zothique 

The indigo triremes of Atlantis

"Experience swords and tragedy in the vein of Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné and Tanith Lee’s Night’s Master."

How did I miss this? I first fell in love with science fantasy through the Kane of Mars books by "Edward Powys Bradbury" (in reality our old mucker Mike Moorcock) which I discovered when I was about nine years old. Immediately my heart was whisked away to an exotic world of red deserts, soaring towers, flashing blades and ancient wonders. (Was Kane an aspect of the Eternal Champion? Of course not. Revisionist/marketing nonsense, that. He was his own man, and all the better for it.)

In Rose Bailey's game Bright & Terrible you wander the ancient world as an exile of lost Atlantis. It reminded me a bit of Abraxas (a lost continent of the world of fifty thousand years ago) where the players can travel to the mainland and interact with Neanderthals and Cro Magnon tribes to whom the inhabitants of Abraxas seem like gods. The difference is that Bright & Terrible is not set in deep imaginary prehistory like Abraxas but instead overlaps with the Bronze Age. All the action takes place in exile in that new world around the Mediterranean where the characters have only memories of the old world they've left behind -- a perfect springboard for stories.

Rose Bailey also wrote Cavaliers of Mars, set on "a planet of flashing swords and choking sands, of winking courtesans and lantern-lit canal cities." If you're as big a fan of science fantasy as I am there's no need to say more -- other than to thank Roger and Mike on Improvised Radio Theatre With Dice for pointing me in the right direction. Now I just have to find somebody else who loves this stuff as much as I do and maybe I can get a game going...

Enchant all the ladies and steal all the scenes

All that talk of aeronauts last time reminded me of another more-or-less abandoned project from back when I was revamping my Tirikelu RPG.

The Time of No Kings was to be set in the Dark Ages of Tekumel, a period of Rhialto-like wizards and Cugel-like rogues.The snag was, under the rules of the Tekumel Foundation I couldn't publish it in print form or make any money from it. I thought of moving it across to a different science fantasy setting. The world of Abraxas, perhaps. And in that form it might yet happen.

Really it would just be a love letter to the genre of science fantasy, which I discovered at an early age with Mike Moorcock's Kane of Mars novels. "Airships and swordplay meet blasters and psionic aliens," as I said in this post. What's not to like?


That's where that painting comes from, by the way. It was James Cawthorn's cover for Moorcock's Barbarians of Mars. Picture the ten-year-old Morris standing in a secondhand bookshop in Woking clutching that battered tome and thinking, "Mars... swords... and airships...!" Possibly the lithe undraped maidens too were starting to dimly register as objects of unsettling emotion on my reason-bright mind; or maybe that was still a few years off. Anyway, with or without a girl on my arm, I wanted my own airship.

You're thinking the balloon envelope looks a little small? That was the attraction, of course. Moorcock set his stories on a long-ago Mars that hadn't yet lost its atmosphere, so the low gravity meant you could get away with using a lot less helium. Tiddly up up!

Martian britches

Some other examples of science fantasy novels are shown here. Don't let my juvenile scribblings in the genre put you off. And incidentally not all science fantasy series garb their characters in loincloths. The inhabitants of Krishna get to wear long trousers and jackets at times.

*  *  *

“The World of Krishna” part 8: “The End of the Dasht”

Suddenly the Dasht found himself held from behind. Acer’s companions had come to their senses just in time.

With the strength of a madman, which is what he was, the Dasht broke away.

“You’ll never take me alive!” screamed the Dasht. He rushed over to a bank of switches and clicked them all into the on position. The Dasht rushed over to one of the disks and jumped on. In his haste, the Dasht stepped onto the receiving disk instead of the transmitting disk.

The computer that operated the disk now had to bring an object to the control room that was already there.

There was a blood-curdling scream and a terrible explosion. When the smoke had cleared, all that was left on the disk was a pulsating blob of protoplasm.

The Dasht’s guards were, of course, Earthmen and were sent back to Earth to serve a prison sentence.

As for Acer, he was very thirsty. He didn’t have to tell his aya where to go. It knew by habit.

My L Sprague de Camp fanfic

Here's the first instalment of my story set on the planet Krishna. I was only 10 years old and yet I feel it's on a par with some of the Beast Quest books, for example. I realize that's not saying much. The entry from my primary school exercise book begins by setting the scene...

*  *  *

I am reading a book called A Planet Called Krishna. The author is L Sprague de Camp.

Krishna is a planet very similar to Earth in Roman times. Krishnans are just like humans except they have two short antennae.

Here is my own story about Krishna:

“The World of Krishna” part 1

Acer lom-Tanoc stood in a Krishnan inn. The innkeeper scurried up to him and handed him a menu.

Acer sat down and contemplated the list of meals. He ordered a roast shomal and a glass of cragot. (Cragot is the Krishnans’ answer to beer.)

Suddenly he felt a dagger-point touching the back of his neck.

Swords and old science

A little way along from Ashplants, where I bought magnesium ribbon, and the newsagent’s where I got the latest Marvel comics, was a second-hand bookshop in the proper old style. Two long rooms – dirty, musty, dark. Trestles covered in books, many of which could have done with a dusting of antifungal powder before you touched them. It’s not there now. You’d have to set your Tardis for Woking in the late 1960s.

I got my copy of Amazing Spider-Man #12 in that second-hand bookshop. It was tatty and torn, more like a relic of Victorian times than the three-year-old comic I now know it to have been. But who cares? It was Lee and Ditko, and this was the issue in which Spidey was “Unmasked by Doctor Octopus!” In colour. ‘Nuff said.

It was also where I discovered science fantasy, in the form of Edward Powys Bradbury’s Mars books. Airships and swordplay meet blasters and psionic aliens. It was a Damascene moment, like when I first learned that dinosaurs had actually walked the Earth. A thing that would have been cool enough if merely imaginary turned out to be honest-to-gosh real.

Memory plays tricks, so probably I didn’t cotton on that science fantasy was an actual genre until I came across a second instance of it: L Sprague de Camp’s A Planet Called Krishna. John Carter and Thongor of Lemuria were still in my future then, but the seed had been planted that would inevitably make me an aficionado of the world of Tekumel ten years later.

What reminded me of all this was clearing out my mum’s things and finding an old exercise book that she had kept from my primary school days. It’s an interesting little snapshot of the past. I talk about dinosaurs, comic books, the coming decimalization, everyday events, and the RAF. There are reviews of You Only Live Twice, The Lair of the White Worm – the book, that is – and The Great Ghidrah. (The last of those, according to Wiki, was released as Invasion of Astro Monster but I was there and I can tell you what I saw.)

And there’s a story set on de Camp’s world of Krishna. It wasn’t my first stab at fiction – the year before I’d begun a sequel to Dracula, which opened with Jonathan’s and Mina’s grandson arriving at Dublin airport. A lost classic, obviously. The Krishna story came about because we had a student teacher for English lessons who encouraged us to write a story every Monday morning. I began my Krishna serial and I remember the teacher was concerned because he thought he was going to leave without reading the last instalment, but then he got an extra week at the school and signed off with “Very good indeed, +1”. After that it was goodbye to fiction as our regular teacher just wanted us to describe what we did over the weekends. I wish I could remember the student teacher’s name. He was the only one of them worth a damn at that primary school.

Anyway, people are always on at me to write like I did twenty years ago, so from Saturday I’ll run the reductio ad absurdum of that: my writing at age ten. The Fabled Lands started there, folks. Amazing as it seems in this age of trigger warnings and young people who get traumatized if you so much as challenge their dearest assumptions, the level of bloodthirstiness in the story was pretty typical of ten-year-old boys in the 1960s and nobody sent us for counselling because of it. When you read the story you may decide they should have.

Salvaging treasures from the sunken continent

I've been looking through our material for the world of Abraxas recently. This, if you've just joined us, is the science fantasy setting that Jamie and I created for a massively-multiplayer online game we were developing at Eidos about a decade ago. No orcs, no goblins, no elves... Instead we had psionics, flyers, prehistoric civilizations, alien foes and vril-powered rifles. It would have been different from the usual crop of CRPGs, you have to give us that.

Fortunately, when Jamie and I left Eidos, we had the foresight to get them to cede rights in the aborted design for the game, including ownership of the wonderful concept sketches and maps that Russ Nicholson and Darren Horley had done for the game. So now I'm looking for a way to get that material out into the world. But it needs to be in a form that will encourage people to use it, sticking something up for free on the internet being a quick way to consign it to the contempt of over-familiarity.

Abraxas is available as a Kindle book but you don't have to splash out $1.99 because it's also available right here on the FL blog. I've been thinking of publishing it as a paper-and-pencil role-playing game, adapting the Tirikelu rules that I originally designed for the paragon of science fantasy - and indeed of fantasy world-building in general - namely Professor M.A.R. Barker's magnificent creation Tekumel. But would today's gamers be interested in a setting that lacked all those cherished tropes (see orcs, above) that have been enshrined in fantasy by descent from Tolkien via Tad Williams and then Dungeons and Dragons and finally gamebooks? I guess there's only one way to find out.

Gold, silver, ivory, apes, and terror birds

If you were hanging around these parts a year ago, you will have seen the long string of posts about Abraxas, the fantasy setting Jamie and I created and were planning to use for our MMO at Eidos in the late 1990s. Abraxas is a continent of prehistoric civilizations, aircars, vril-powered cannons, cosmic rings around the Earth, neanderthal barbarians, psionic magic, and hostile intruders from other stars. A Princess of Mars rather than Lord of the Rings, say. While digging through some old floppy disks, Jamie came across this image of the Vadem Causeway gate outside Tamo Anchan, as depicted by our concept artist Darren Horley. Would've been great to materialize there and go charging your character through the city in realtime 3D... Sigh.

The enemies of man

Many thousands of years ago, when Tékumel was still located in this universe, spacefarers from Earth and elsewhere subjected it to terraforming with a view to colonization. How many species became extinct then, or were forced to traumatic adaptation simply to survive? The Hlüss and the Ssú were forced back into small enclaves, tolerated as amusing animals by the invaders.

Then disaster struck. For reasons still not known, the Tékumel system was sucked out of the cosmos at large. Along with her sun, two moons and sister planets, Tékumel was stranded in a starless mini-universe where new laws of nature applied. Civilization collapsed, and slowly the old life forms began to regain lost ground.

These write-ups present the Ssú and Hlüss for use in a RuneQuest-derived campaign. With minor adaptation they could be made to fit a Stormbringer game. (And since Elric and his cronies are indeed wont to hurtle like pinballs through the multiverse, why should they not end up on Tékumel?)

These creatures, like many life forms native to Tékumel, appear to have evolved from a six-legged ancestor. The upright stance has been achieved by changes in the back structure which ‘folded’ the forequarters up by almost ninety degrees.

This is more fully advanced in the Ssú, which have four almost equidistantly spaced legs, whereas the Hlüss are far more obviously close to their forerunners’ six-legged stance. Other questions—whether these creatures are warm- or cold-blooded, whether they possess an internal skeletal structure, the nature of their nervous system, etc—remain to be asked, much less answered.

Hlüss: the Spawn of the Old Ones

STR 3D6
CON 4D6
SIZ 2D6+8
INT 2D6+6
POW 3D6+2
DEX 3D6+1
Move 3
Hit Points av 15
Fatigue 25

This species inhabited Tékumel before the coming of man and other interstellar races. They hate mankind and most other intelligent nonhumans, but are friendly to their cousins the Ssú. Their segmented bodies are armoured with a chitinous exoskeleton that ranges from green-blue to black. They have three limpid black eyes set above a proboscis that conceals a row of razor-sharp mandibles. They walk on four legs, and have two arms and a long scorpion-like tail. The tail ends in a sting, injecting a venom of POT 12 which causes paralysis if it overcomes the victim’s CON. Popular belief has it that paralysed captives are carried off back to the Isle of the Hlüss, there to serve as food for the great Hlüss Mother and her young. The island is the main centre of Hlüss habitation, but others live on hive-like ships made from a stony bodily secretion. They are greedy for ancient technological devices and magic weaponry, and any party encountered will include at least one Hlüss Lord armed with "Eyes", etc, and having 91% skill or better in its preferred weapon (usually a sword shaped like a lightning bolt). The bodily secretion mentioned above is also used to cement gems onto the exoskeleton, making a Hlüss champion a glittering and magnificent sight.

Ssú: the Enemies of Man

STR 3D6+1
CON 4D6
SIZ 2D6+6
INT 2D6+6
POW 4D6
DEX 3D6+1
Move 4
Hit Points av 14
Fatigue 26

This ancient race has been forced back into a small area to the east of Tsolyánu, but they yearn to retake the ancient stronghold of Ssúganar, in modern Pechano. The Ssú are mankind’s deadliest foes, still filled with bitter hatred because humans destroyed the original form of their planet. They are slender six limbed beings wrapped in what looks like grey web (actually a loose integument which is shed continually). The eyes are large and milky-white with no pupils, and the mouth is a stark black vertical slit; there are no other facial features. The usual stance for a Ssú is to stand upon its four rear limbs and hold weapons, etc, in its triple-digited hands. In this way it can stalk quietly or scuttle quickly in any direction. When fighting, however, Ssú sometimes rear up onto their back legs and use the middle pair of limbs to wield a shield or additional weapon. This allows the creature two blows (or parries) a round, though the second blow is made with reduced effectiveness. For battle they wear a simple harness of leather studded with metal plaques and bear black wood shields with raised copper bosses. Ssú smell like musty cinnamon and speak in a high chiming like the sound of bells. They are friendly to the Hlüss and may be neutral to Shunned Ones or Hláka.

Ssú parties range through the human nations seeking magical weaponry, passing unnoticed by border patrols. It is said that they may have access to some tunnel transportation system now lost to mankind.

Ssú are fearsome magic-users and every group met outside Ssú territory will include at least one with 75% or more in sorcery skills. Each Ssú also has the power to hypnotise 1-3 people, who must be within 10 metres and looking in the Ssú’s direction. This counts as its action for the round, and requires the Ssú to make a Hypnotist skill check. (Assume any Ssú met in human territory will be at 50%-plus in this special skill.) Victims are then hypnotised if the Ssú overcomes their POW, and will fight as the Ssú directs, being freed by the death of the Ssú who hypnotised them. Fortunately the neuter worker-fighters who make up the bulk of Ssú society do not possess this hypnotic ability.


For more information on Professor M A R Barker's remarkable fantasy creations, visit The Tekumel Project and Peter Gifford's beautifully designed and comprehensive Tekumel website. You can get masses of Tekumel products on DriveThruRPG. (Start with the original Empire of the Petal Throne book and the maps, that'll be the best $23 you ever spent.) And for Five Empires figurines, get in touch with Ian Marsh at Fighting 15s (UK) or with Eureka Miniatures (USA and rest of world.)

Trouble in paradise

This adventure set on Professor M A R Barker's science fantasy world of Tekumel was originally published in The Eye of All-Seeing Wonder #3 (spring 1994) and can also be found on the Tekumel website.You can download Tirikelu, my role-playing rules for Tekumel, and a character sheet.

Players in the original campaign included Jamie, Oliver, Mark Smith, Jack Bramah, Steve Foster, Ian Marsh, Patrick Brady and Dermot Bolton. My character was Hetepek hiAztlan, who sat out this adventure because, of course, I was running it. Steve and I used to alternate refereeing duty, and that meant our characters had to be got out of the way on some pretext. Hetepek's wife, the demanding Lady Chamakiyang, was played by Roz Barnes, who I later married in real life.

The picture of the hlüss is by Karen J Englesen and is from the original Empire of the Petal Throne rulebook.

INTERNECINE!A scenario of co-operation and conflict
This adventure takes place when a ship carrying the player characters is wrecked on a small uncharted island in the Deeps of Chanayaga. It is suitable for characters with a little adventuring experience, the best fighters having Melee values around 21-26.

As written, the adventure assumes that the player-characters are employed aboard the ship as marines. One or two characters might be sorcerers, again in the employ of the ship’s owner.

Other options are possible. Some of the players might be sailors. It is possible that a foreign passenger is aboard. Further player characters could show up as marooned sailors from previous wrecks. In fact, the adventure provides a good excuse for bringing together quite a disparate group.

The journey

The ship on which the characters are travelling, the Meteor, is one of two Sescha-class fighting galleys accompanying the Illustrious, a Tnek-class merchantman, as escort. The flotilla set out from Jakálla, sailing close to the Tsolyáni coast until they reached the small island west of Ngeshtu Head. They then struck out south into open ocean as far as Ssamris Isle. The intention was to sail west from Ssamris Isle until they made landfall around Lairu Harbor, then down the coast to Tsamra. In theory this route (as opposed to sailing right round Penu’im Bay) should clip some 10-15 days off the journey time. It should also not have been too risky at this time of year (the month of Halir).

Alas, it is the fate of man to be at the mercy of the gods. A storm blew up barely a day out of Ssamris. The flotilla was scattered. It was all the crew of the Meteor could do to hold her together as she ran before the wind, driven on all through the afternoon and night.

By morning the storm has died down. The Meteor is taking on water and has the additional problem of carrying very little in the way of supplies. But the day brings a glimmer of hope when they sight an island ahead. The mast has split, so the rowers bend wearily over their oars and slowly the Meteor limps into the shelter of a placid bay.

The island
The island is roughly oval, seven kilometers long by four across, with a coastal fringe of thick jungle, above which steep grassy hillsides rise towards the soaring peak of an extinct volcano in the centre. (Of course, the characters won’t discover the extent of the island unless they send out scouting parties.)

The referee may find it helpful to sketch the bay where the Meteor puts in. The beach, of white coral sand dotted with a few rocks, is 35 meters wide and backs onto a area of dense jungle. To the characters’ left as they come ashore, the beach tapers to a strand only 15 meters wide that stretches into the distance. To their right, a high shelf of overgrown rock blocks the beach after only 200 meters or so. At the foot of this rock they see the wreck of a Mu’ugalavyáni bireme

The ship’s company
The Meteor’s crew are all members of the Blazoned Sail Clan. The ordinary oarsmen (of whom there are forty-two) are of the Deilesha and Ra’agana lineages—all of social status 2. The oarsmaster, carpenter and stroke-singer are of the Nerukan lineage (status 3-4). The captain and first mate are cousins belonging to the Farrekesh lineage (status 6).

There are twelve marines. This includes the player-characters. Assume that any non-player marines are average ex-troopers with Melee values in the range 19-24.

Naturally someone is in command of the marines. Lord Hetepek hiAztlan (the ship’s owner and thus everyone’s employer) will have previously assigned this position to the player-character with the best soldiering experience. If this character dies in the course of the adventure, command will pass to the marine of highest social status.

Also aboard is Lady Chamakiyang hiAztlan, Hetepek’s wife. Her presence gives the characters good reason to hope that Hetepek may come looking for them. She is also a potential (in fact, certain) source of discord, and will cause headaches for both the marine commander and the captain.

Rescue chances

Lord Hetepek was aboard the Illustrious when the storm blew up, and may already be scouring the area for signs of the Meteor’s fate. Of course, the characters have no way of knowing whether the Illustrious weathered the storm, but it is a fair assumption. Even so, they would be foolish to sit it out in the hope of rescue. The island they are on lies almost four hundred kilometers south west of Ssamris and is not marked on any charts. Hetepek has no reason to suppose they can survive more than a few days on the supplies aboard to Meteor, and any search of the area could take weeks. In fact he will make the attempt anyway, but the chance of the Illustrious finding the island is only 3% each day. (Check for this on the third and subsequent days. Once the characters put back to sea, the chance of the Illustrious finding them drops to 1% daily.)

Repairs
The captain orders the Meteor hauled up onto the beach. After a brief inspection, he estimates repairs will take two or three days. He immediately tries to establish an authoritative tone: "We must assume the Illustrious will be circling in the area trying to find us. In the meantime, we need food and a supply of fresh water. And I want a party to look over the Mu’ugalavyáni ship yonder..."

The player-characters may wish to dispute who is in overall command. The problem is that there is no formal chain of command. In normal circumstances, the marines are supposed to take charge during sea battles and to organize shore parties. Unless the player character leading the marines agrees to defer to the captain, it is probable that the whole group will begin to polarize into factions.

For the referee’s information, 120 man-days’ work is required to make the Meteor seaworthy. They could set to sea before this work is complete, but it would be taking a risk. Someone will need to supervise the repair work, and at the end of each day this person must make a +5 Shipbuilder check. A critical success on this roll means that 25% extra progress has been made (eg, if forty men were working they will have achieved fifty man-days worth of labor). Critical failure means the day’s work is wasted; ordinary failure means half the work is wasted.

The captain has 6 levels of Shipbuilding, while the carpenter has 12. Ideally, then, it should be the carpenter who oversees the work. Tsolyáni regard for status being what it is, however, the captain will actually do this in consultation with his clan cousin the carpenter, the net effect being to average their skill levels for the purpose of repair checks.

The bireme

Searching the Mu’ugalavyáni bireme reveals a few dead sailors and many dead oarsmen. They were apparently killed in the wreck. Evidently most of the rowers were slaves, as can be seen by the bronze torcs around their necks. This is odd, as slaves are not usually set to work as oarsmen in the Five Empires. A few of the slaves seem to have been set free—perhaps by a kindly slavemaster as the ship foundered? Many are still chained to their oars, and from their condition it looks like the wreck occurred maybe a week or more ago.

Curiously, about a dozen of the rowers are not here. It seems that they must have survived the wreck and were unchained so as to be moved elsewhere.

The bodies of one or two of the slain show sharp gaping wounds. Anyone who has fought Hlüss has a chance (unmodified Cleverness check) to recognize these characteristic injuries inflicted by their jag-edged swords. Anyone who can read Mu’ugalavyáni (or who is Mu’ugalavyáni) will spot the glyph stamped into the slaves’ collars that indicates they were property of the state. The same glyph is visible on an open dispatch-locker located in a small raised cabin at the stern of the ship. Someone succeeding in a -5 Soldier/Reasoning check realizes that the likely explanation for the bireme being rowed by slaves is secrecy. Free men might blab when in their cups, but slaves could be put to death when the bireme reached its destination with no one any the wiser.

Survival

The ship’s remaining supplies will last for only two days. Tall trees along the back of the beach sport a profusion of large dark nuts under their glossy foliage. A +5 Survival check identifies these as g’ar nuts, providing edible blue flesh once the hard shell is broken open. Any characters gathering them must make a +5 Dexterity check, with critical failure indicating the character falls while climbing and suffers 1D10 minus 1D6 damage. (Ingenious characters may find other ways to gather these nuts.)

Few of the fruits and berries to be found on the island are much like anything back home in Tsolyánu. Without the Survival skill, they will be reduced to trial and error to determine what is safe to eat. A character sampling anything rolls D10:

1-7 = the fruit is okay;
8-9 = stomach cramps reduce Stamina by half for the rest of the day;
10 = poison requires an unmodified Stamina check or incapacitated for the rest of the day.

Each person gathering g’ar nuts can get enough in two hours to provide one person’s daily food requirement. In theory this would be an ideal task for the player-characters and other marines, while the sailors get on with repairs. Characters of respectable status may chafe at doing any such undignified work, however. ("We are warriors, not farmers!") This is a challenge that the player-character in charge must deal with, or else risk losing authority.

Scouting

It will be necessary to send out at least one group to search for fresh water. A kilometer or so along the beach they come across a strange broken object the size of a boulder. The substance it is made of is not stone, but a light calcinous material about as hard as pumice. Other similar objects are nearby.

Continuing another half-kilometer, they find the source of these objects, lying across a reef of rocks like a giant broken egg. It seems to be some kind of wrecked vessel—but not like any craft that ever sailed out of Jakálla harbor. It is platter shaped, about thirty meters across, filled with a flooded honeycomb of low tunnels. It seems to be made of the same substance as the "boulders" on the beach. (This is in fact a Hlüss hive-ship, as a -5 Sailor or unmodified Magical Lore check will identify. It was thrown up by the storm onto a spur of rock at the end of the beach. It is so badly damaged as to be completely unseaworthy.)

Higher up, at the edge of the trees, there are signs of burnt-out fires and a makeshift Hlüss camp. There are several dead Hlüss here, obviously slain by sword-wounds, including one Hlüss noble with many gems remaining in its carapace. These gems are worth a total of maybe 1000 Kaitars, but will take almost half an hour to pry out.

While the characters are having a go at getting the gems, they may well be surprised by two or three "runt" Hlüss. These are tiny wizened versions of the full-sized creature, ranging from twenty to forty centimeters in length. Cast out by the full sized Hlüss to fend for themselves, their only aim is to grab a bit of food (ie, flesh) and scuttle off into the jungle with it.

Shipwrecked mariners
The scouting party subsequently encounter two figures who dash off as soon as they’re seen. One, who has a Tsolyáni look about him, turns and hesitates as he gets a closer look at the party, then stops running and calls his companion back.

Approaching warily, the pair introduce themselves Aisenish Turel and Zakaren hiAhanur. Both came to the island on the wrecked bireme. Aisenish is a sailor, and Zakaren is a slave from Tsolyánu. (Originally from Penom, and of the Flowering Life Clan, though he has been a slave for ten years and by now is almost used to it. Indeed, up until a week ago he had a better life than he ever did as a free man.)

These two were part of a foraging party sent out by Prince Hurusamish (see below). They were ambushed by Hlüss. "We managed to get away," says Zakaren, "but now we can’t find the others. Aisenish thinks they must have relocated to another camp. We’ve had to fend for ourselves these last three days, and a bloody nightmare it’s been too, with those Hlüss scuttling about at all hours of the night. Safest time’s the middle of the day, funnily enough..."

A tale to tell

Aisenish and Zakaren cannot tell the characters much. They were aboard the Mu’ugalavyáni bireme, the Scourge of Hrsh, which was transporting several officers the Company of Mourners in Sable to Ssamris Isle. En route they encountered a Hlüss ship which must have ventured north for plunder.

Caught in a sudden storm, both ships were blown far off course. The Hlüss ship was wrecked first. The Scourge of Hrsh stood out to sea until the rowers tired, then it too was wrecked. The soldiers and surviving crew freed a few slaves, but were forced to flee when the Hlüss showed up. That was over a month ago. For the last three days, Aisenish and Zakaren have been on their own.

The Hlüss

The Hlüss appraised the damage to their ship and realized it was irreparable. The surviving slaves taken from the wrecked bireme were used for egg-laying, but then the ship’s "mother" died of injuries it had sustained in the wreck. Stranded on the island, the Hlüss switched into a colonizing mentality, rather as some social insects do. They divided into two factions, each supporting a "princess". These factions are now at war with each other. Both factions desire more humans for egg laying: the "runt" Hlüss (about half normal size) are all they can hatch from the local jakkohl-like fauna.

These is one Hlüss lair at each end of the island, located in caves in the jungle. The strong acid reek of these places gives anyone who has encountered Hlüss ample warning not to enter. Each lair comprises one "princess" and one "chamberlain" (who do not fight), two "lords" (old warriors distinguishable by the gems studded into their exoskeletons) and about twenty ordinary fighters. There are also several paralyzed slaves in whom eggs have been laid, but these will not hatch for another hundred days.

The Mu’ugalavyáni
The Scourge of Hrsh was transporting Prince Hurusamish Gatlena, commandant of the Company of Mourners in Sable, the elite Mu’ugalavyáni state security legion. He was on his way to Ssamris Isle with orders that would place him in command there. By the terms of the treaty of 2021 AS, the Mu’ugalavyáni are only supposed to maintain a token presence on Ssamris Isle and Tsolyáni shipping is to be given free passage. Prince Hurusamish’s orders were to change all that. The plan was to rapidly build up a large fleet at the island and use it to launch a full-scale invasion against the outlying Tsolyáni islands (Ganga, Vra and Thayuri). Thus the Mu’ugalavyáni hope to snatch territory from their old foes while the Imperium is off-balance from the threat of civil war.

Since Prince Hurusamish and his men are outnumbered by the Hlüss, they have set up a hideaway on the upper mountain slopes. From there they observed the crippled Meteor putting in to shore. Naturally Hurusamish is keen to get off the island, but he is content to let one day go by while the sailors make repairs. During the morning of the second day, he will choose his moment to try to seize control of the Meteor.

Hurusamish’s scouts have reported some sort of factional conflict among the Hlüss. He knows nothing about the reason for this, of course, but he is enough of a realist to know that such a lode of luck cannot last. His aim will be to get off the island once he judges the repairs to the ship to be at least three-quarters completed.

Prince Hurusamish is accompanied by his ruthless second-in command, Lord Surendish Ju’una, and six elite troopers. All wear light excellent steel and are armed with excellent steel swords. The Prince also has an Eye of Healing with 6 charges and an Excellent Ruby Eye with 12 charges.
Also in the Mu’ugalavyáni group are the captain of the Scourge of Hrsh, his Aridani bo’sun, two sailors and four slaves. None of these will fight unless their lives depend on it.

Hurusamish’s strategy
Hurusamish is outnumbered by the Tsolyáni, but a direct assault to wrest ownership of the Meteor is not his only option. First he will try approaching the marines, preferably while they are scouting and hence without a rabble of sailors to back them up. He knows that if he can establish an authoritative position over the marines, the Tsolyáni sailors will go along with that.

Hurusamish starts by explaining the situation as regards the Hlüss and pointing out the importance of a truce. His tone ought to make it clear to the characters that this would not involve a partnership of equals. Remember that Hurusamish is a tough soldier, accustomed to command. By making sure that his men refer to him conspicuously as "His Highness the Prince", he capitalizes on the respect for social rank that pertains throughout the Five Empires.

If Hurusamish sees that the Tsolyáni will not buckle under, he will target the character in charge with a formal challenge to mortal combat. This mirrors the form of a Qadarni battle challenge, and it would be very difficult (-5 Soldier/Etiquette check) for the character to avoid it without serious loss of face. (Players may not appreciate the importance of face. If so, explain that the character cannot remain in authority if this challenge is not met.) Prince Hurusamish will not fight in person, but appoints one of his men. Similarly, the Tsolyáni commander can appoint a champion from among the marines. The Mu’ugalavyáni champion offers to exchange weapons with his opponent to make things more even, insofar as he himself has steel amour.

Only if the player-characters manage to worm out of fighting a duel will Prince Hurusamish commence direct hostilities. If his champion loses the duel, he grudgingly accedes to an equal partnership. (The player-characters ought to have the sense to realize that this is the best they can hope for when dealing with a person of such exalted status.)

If it comes to a fight and the Mourners in Sable succeed in overpowering the marines, the Meteor’s sailors will surrender. (One blast of the Excellent Ruby Eye is more than enough to convince them.) Hurusamish will accept the parole of any character who lays down his arms. He then, quite courteously but firmly, will insist on placing metal shackles on Lady Chamakiyang to prevent her using further sorcery. If things do get to this stage, the characters are in trouble. Hurusamish is prepared to take Chamakiyang and any other Tsolyáni nobles along with him when he leaves, but he intends to strand the rank-&-file marines because they are non-essential personnel.

Setting to sea

The Meteor can carry enough water to supply sixty-one people (the entire ship’s company) for five to eight days. (The difficulty of hygiene means that barrels can go bad, hence this margin of uncertainty.) Finding freshwater streams on the island is not difficult, but transporting full one-Nmecha barrels (each weighing 60 kilograms) back to the beach will require some effort.

Cargo space is also sufficient to store a week’s basic rations. This can be supplemented while at sea by a character making a +5 Survival or Fisherman check, which will add one day’s food for 1-3 people (1-6 people on a critical success.) The sailors won’t have any time for fishing, as they will be engaged in rowing and other chores.

Once at sea, the characters are faced with several options:

1. Sail around hoping that the Illustrious will show up. The chance of that is only 1% each day.
2. Sail due north. Mu’ugalavyáni coastal waters lie about 1400 kilometers in this direction, whereupon the chance of encountering another ship climbs from virtually nil to 10% or more each day. The mainland lies another 300 km north, and the ship will probably make landfall quite close to the Tsolyáni border.
3. Sail due west. The chance of encountering coastal shipping becomes 10% a day after 950 km, and another 150 km will bring them into Fashaa Port, on the Livyáni coast.

Making headway

There will be no more storms once back at sea—unless the referee is feeling vicious and wants to maroon his players on Hlüssúyal. The distance covered each day depends on several factors including the prevailing wind, the health of the crew, and the captain’s skill. Abstract this by rolling 2D6+3. Subtract 1 for every ten man days the Meteor was short of optimum repairs, down to a minimum of 1. Multiply the final result by 20 kilometers to give the base distance covered in a day, Assuming the captain succeeds in a +5 Ship’s Captain check. (Critical success increases the distance covered that day by 25%. Failure reduces it by 25%—or 50% on a critical fail.)

Running out of time
Whether or not they realize it, the characters are working against the clock. Scouting parties may have caught sight of groups of Hlüss stalking one another around the jungle interior. By noon of the third day there will be no such sightings. The Hlüss civil war is over. There is just a single undisputed Hlüss "mother". Now they need some hosts for her eggs...

The Hlüss attack comprises three jewel encrusted "lords" and twenty-five ordinary fighters. A group of ten launch a diversion from the trees at the top of the beach while the remainder emerge from out of the sea. (Hlüss are semi-aquatic, remember.) At this point, a +5 check based on the average of a character’s social status and Soldier level is needed to hold firm. Anyone failing this check runs for the trees. (Player-characters are exempt from making the check. If and when their morale breaks it should be as a result of role-playing choice, not random dice rolls.)

To save having to make forty-seven separate rolls for the Blazoned Sail people, the referee can just Assume that all but 2-12 of them will panic. The captain and first mate should be among those who stand their ground.

None of the Mourners in Sable will panic. If Hurusamish is in charge by this stage he will have his men fight side-by side with the Tsolyáni against the Hlüss, and if they acquit themselves well he’ll be honor-bound to take them all with him in the Meteor.

Principal characters

Lady Chamakiyang hiAztlan (22 years old, status 16) is proud, beautiful, pampered and willful. A princess in her own land (Chung An Satar) she is accustomed to obedience. She does not hold any specific position of authority in the ship’s company, but that won’t stop her. Almost as soon as the Meteor is dragged ashore she will start issuing strident commands. She wants a parasol set up over some mats and cushions. She wants a good breakfast. She wants less noise from the work force. Characters may begin to think she wants something else, too, but since she is their employer’s wife they had better not try it. Another factor to consider is that she is a 9th level Ritual Sorceress with Carminry +5, Necromagy +4, Pathogenesy +4 and Venefice +5.

Hafarek hiFarrekesh (30 years old, status 6) is the captain of the Meteor. He distrusts soldiers because he believes the military are jacks-of-all-trades. In an emergency like this, he would rather fall back on his own expertise than trust to a bunch of marines "whose main interest is in designating tasks and shouting orders." Hafarek is completely guileless; if the party descend into factional squabbling he will refuse to have any part of it.

Prince Hurusamish Gatlena (51 years old, status 32) is the commandant of the Company of Mourners in Sable—the black-liveried "legion of executioners". He is a man of honor, but first and foremost he is motivated by his duty as a Prince of Mu’ugalavyá. Thus he recognizes that sometimes one must put the needs of the state above one’s personal honor. He is carrying coded documents (see above) which he will destroy rather than see them fall into Tsolyáni hands. To decipher these, a character must follow a +5 Literacy check with a -10 Mu’ugalavyáni/Spy check.

Lord Surendish Ju’unu (43 years old, status 25) is Hurusamish’s second-in-command. A practical-minded and ruthless man whose extreme zeal for the god Hrsh blinds him to the possibility of admirable qualities in a non-worshipper. He would as soon simply butcher the Tsolyáni marines ("...and the heathen witch!") and enslave the sailors.

Sergeant Tharandesh Ngale (23 years old, status 10) is in charge of Prince Hurusamish’s elite bodyguard. An earnest, dedicated young man. He has five troopers under him, one of whom has 6 levels of Assassin.

The employer
To develop the lead-in to this adventure (the voyage from Jakálla to Ssamris), the referee will need some background detail on the player-characters’ employer:

Hetepek hiAztlan (22 years old, status 25) is a charismatic young warrior who has had a meteoric rise in wealth and influence. After a relatively impoverished childhood in the village of K’gashtene outside Jakálla, followed by a term in the Legion of Mighty Jakálla, he had the good luck to become bodyguard and steward to a lord of the Tlakotani Clan. This gave him a good financial base and brought him to the notice of some high-ranking nobles and bureaucrats. Driven by boundless energy and vision, he has almost single-handedly revitalized the fortunes of the ancient Silver Links Clan.

A worshipper of Dlamelish, Hetepek is always courteous to women since in his view they share the nature of the goddess. He is clever, but his intelligence is solely of a practical down-to earth sort. He has no patience with abstract concepts. He believes utterly in his own destiny ("I am the clan; the clan is me!") and is driven by inexhaustible ambition. He rewards loyalty with generosity, treachery with ruthless reprisal.

Final notes

The title of the adventure was intended as an ironic comment on the factionalism of both the Hlüss (which I expected the players to perceive as entirely biological) and the humans (which they would of course justify as politics, not biology).

In practice, the internecine splits ran deeper than I thought, the Tsolyáni group beginning to show signs of fragmenting as soon as they arrived on the beach—something I have tried to reflect (and even encourage) in writing this version. Interestingly, it is pretty much the same thing that happens to the group of isolated legionaries in Professor Barker’s novel Flamesong.

In a sense, the adventure is like a nightmare equivalent of one of those "corporate survival weekends"—except this is the real thing! Characters who manage to hold things together and bring the group through the ordeal in one piece will be rewarded with high rank and responsibility. Hetepek recognizes and values such ability. Characters who are found wanting will most likely never have to worry about facing Hetepek’s wrath. Their just deserts will be a unmarked grave on an uncharted beach—or worse, ending up as food for a new clutch of Hlüss larvae.