Classic Horror

I've been watching a lot of horror movies the past few weeks, especially the old classic monster movies by Universal Studios and the later Hammer Films remakes.

I have a great fondness for both, and I've been trying to decide which I like better. Hammer films featured Christopher Lee and the incomparable Peter Cushing, but Universal had some pretty great talent, too, especially Lon Chaney, Jr. and Boris Karloff. While I'm not a great fan of Bela Lugosi, his was the first portrayal of Dracula I ever saw and I'll always love that Lugosi stare. And who doesn't immediately picture Boris Karloff when you imagine Frankenstein's monster? The Universal actors became the icons for all the monsters of classic horror that still resonate with us nearly eighty years later.

Ultimately, though, I'm going to have to go with Hammer Films as my favourites for their greater depth of story. Universal too often opted for the typical 'Hollywood treatment' of classic fiction, usually missing the point of the story entirely, Frankenstein being a prime example. I was watching the Hammer movie, Revenge of Frankenstein the other night and was struck by the poignant tragedy of the brain transplant patient fleeing to avoid becoming a medical sideshow while slowly degenerating and becoming progressively more violent. There were no clear bad guys here and everyone lost out in the end; especially Dr. Frankenstein who was beaten near to death by a mob of his patients and needed to have his brain transplanted, leaving his fate open to speculation.

So, what's your favourite studio?  Cast your vote on the poll at the left.

Now here's a video with some great classic monster movie scenes accompanied by the greatest Halloween song ever written.  Happy Halloween everyone!

The Changing Face of the Orc

There has been quite a bit of discussion of pig-faced orcs lately, due to Otherworld's orc miniatures and the recent announcement that Minifigs will be re-releasing their classic pig-faced ork miniatures.

I always harboured an intense dislike for the pig-faced orcs when I was young.  I refused to buy any of the Minifigs orcs on the grounds that they weren't proper orcs, by which I meant that they didn't conform to how Tolkien had described them, which is to say another word for goblin.  This was, admittedly, a pedantic viewpoint, but not entirely unjustified; the term orc as coined by Tolkien was a Westron derivation of the elvish words for goblin: uruk in the Quenyan tongue, and yrch in Sindaran.  I always considered orcs and goblins to be synoymous, just as Tolkien intended, and it somewhat offended my sensibilities to see them depicted, not as goblins, but as pig-men.

A 'proper' Tolkienesque orc: Durbuz, Goblin King of Moria
by Games Workshop

As far as I know, it was in volume 2 of D&D, Monsters and Treasure, that orcs were split from goblins for the first time.  Even here, the descriptions are vague and it could be that in OD&D orcs were intended to be a different breed of goblin, but they were listed as a separate monster and thus began the orc's transition to the generic evil cannon fodder of pop-culture fantasy.  Certainly by the time the Monster Manual was released orcs were definitely a separate race from goblins:

"As orcs will breed with anything, there are any number of unsavory mongrels with orcish blood, particularly orc-goblins, orc-hobgoblins, and orc-humans."

Where once orcs were universally known as a filthy and degenerate race, malicious, cruel and hateful, who were bred by Melkor in mockery of the elves, we now see many differing concepts of orcs in a variety of media, such as the noble warriors of World of Warcraft, the zany nihilists in Warhammer, and the nature-loving tree-huggers of Eberron.  There are even novels about orcs, such as First Blood by Stan Nicholls, which depicts orcs as the heroes; metaphors for the noble savage myth of the North American Indians, they are beset by the ravaging humans who rape the land of resources and sow destruction in their wake.  A pretty mediocre book, but an interesting example of how orcs have proliferated in the fantasy genre.

Of course, in D&D orcs are still the same foul, evil-wizard-serving  malcontents we've known and loved for years.  But it is interesting to see how greatly D&D has influenced mainstream fantasy that orcs have become the generic bad guy race throughout the genre.  I doubt that orcs would be so ubiquitous in popular media had they not been included as a monster in D&D.

Given my early dislike of pig-faced orcs it took me a while to find orcs that I thought looked sufficienty orcish.  The first of these were the miniatures from Grenadier's Orc's Lair boxed set for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

I bought this set in the spring of 1981 to use with module A1: Slave Pits of the Undercity, which I was about to run my friends through.  I was absolutely overjoyed that I'd finally found orc miniatures that resembled what I thought orcs should look like:

My views on orcs have softened over the years, and I've even been tempted by Otherworld Miniature's pig-faced orcs, at least as an aesthetically pleasing sculpt.  I still can't reconcile them as orcs, but I do rather like James Maliszewski' solution to use them as a race of boars that were magically given humanoid form.  In that context I can easily warm up to them.

Just to show how catholic my tolerance for non-Tolkien depictions of orcs has become, I've embraced the zaniness and recently begun collecting an Ork army for Warhammer 40K:

The only thing scarier than orks is orks with chainsaws
and rokkit launcha's

My 40K ork army is a band of pirates belonging to no clan; instead they roam the spaceways in their kill kruza's, led by the fearsome Kaptin Badruk, raiding, plundering, and hiring themselves out to larger warbands.

Da Boss

When it comes to D&D, though, my preference is not to use orcs at all.  I still can't shake the feeling that orcs are synonymous with goblins and since goblins already exist there should be no need for orcs.  Unfortunately my current campaign is set in a world that I first created about twenty five years ago and though it was intended to be a world of dark fairy tale and mythology, I included orcs without thinking it through.  I now feel obliged to retain them out of a sense of continuity, but I have defined their presence in the world in a way that reconciles them with the goblins that are the indigenous bad guys of Faeridor.  Orcs, like humans, are aliens from another dimension who entered this world through breaches in the dimensional boundaries.  Thus orcs are present only in small numbers and do not not exert significant influence upon the milieu.  They exist in small warbands who hire out as mercenaries to anyone who will pay them and allow them fight and plunder.

The Spoils of Victory

"I won a Games Workshop painting contest and all they gave me was this lousy pen."

So, my Prince Althran miniature won the painting contest.  My prize, a cheap ballpoint pen bearing the Games Workshop logo is illustrated above.  If they had put this on a t-shirt it would at least have been funny.  Instead it's just kind of pathetic.

They also gave me a really ugly old Halfling Thief miniature from 1999.

I don't mean to be ungracious, but I think a corporation the size of GW could have done a little better than this for prize support.

Prince Althran

I've been slacking off quite a bit on my posting this week, but this time I have a good excuse.  I've been busy painting the Warhammer Fantasy High Elf lord, Prince Althran, which was just released last weekend, for a painting competition this Saturday.

I've used this miniature to practice my non-metallic metal (NMM) technique, which, as the name implies attempts to create the illusion of metal without using any metalic paint the same way that artists do in paintings.  What's tricky about this is it requires fairly seamless blending of paint shades, which is quite difficult and I am still trying to get right.  The other trick is that you have to decide where the light is reflecting off the metal from an imaginary light source and paint the reflections on.  I have an especially difficult time doing this with curved surfaces and ever since I first attempted the NMM technique, it has changed the way I look at things.  I now find myself consciously assessing at how light reflects off everything I see.  It definitely makes you look at the world in a different way.

Anyway, I still have a long way to go towards mastering this technique, but I'm pretty happy with how Prince Althran turned out; he's my best NMM effort to date.  Hopefully he'll do well in the competition this weekend.

Now that this is off my plate, I hope to be back to posting on a more regular basis.

Planet Stories in SFBC

Fans of Paizo Publishing's Planet Stories line may be interested to know that the Science Fiction Book Club is starting to carry their books.  This morning's mail brought the latest SFBC catalogue, which features Otis Adelbert Kline's The Swordsman of Mars.

This is encouraging, since SFBC will expose Planet Stories to a much wider audience of mainstream science fiction and fantasy fans and may help to ensure the health of the line.

Session 11: Home at Last

This session saw the end, at last, of a story arc that had become a long-running odyssey of misadventure.  What had seemed like a simple task to repay a sinister looking necromancer for having raised Jin from the dead, escalated into an ever more complicated sequence of events that always seemed to draw the party away from competing their goal.  I suspect that some of the characters, at least, may find wisdom in the quote from Pet Semetary, "Sometimes dead is better."

Last session ended on a dramatic note: the characters being pursued through the streets of Dragotha by the troll crime lord, Septimus Squalor and his gang of orc mercenaries.  Valkrys and Tavranik quickly outdistanced the slower-moving Bvar and Theon, and when it became apparent that the latter two could not escape, they positioned themselves in an alleyway to defend themselves, while Valkrys escaped to the upper tier with the rescued oracle.  Tavranik lurked behind Squalor's gang firing arrows, and when things looked grim, he scaled a cliff wall to try and enlist the aid of the second tier's crime lord, known only as The Crone.  Her headquarters were in a brothel called The Guilded Whore, which also served as a temple to Malcanthet, queen of the succubi.  Tavranik noticed that while The Crone's face was concealed within a deep hood, her cloak parted to reveal a young and shapely figure beneath.  He told her that his companions were presently battling Squalor on the first tier and wondered if she might not like to use the situation to her advantage and eliminate a dangerous rival to her position.  She agreed and followed Tavranik back to the battle, accompanied by a pair of prostitute body-guards.  The situation by this time was growing grim, as Squalor himself had entered the fray, and his gang was encircling the alley to make sure no one escaped.  Bvar and Theon were running low on hit points when The Crone tossed a fireball into the melee in hopes of ending the troll's life in a burst of flame.  The fireball killed all of Squalor's minions, but just missed him and the PC's.  Seeing that the tide had turned against him, Squalor chose to fight another day and fled the scene.

The battle over, The Crone, a priestess of Malcanthet, asked Tavranik if he would worship at her altar in appreciation for the aid she had rendered.  Uncertain what this meant, but reluctant to offend the powerful Lady of the Second Tier, he agreed.  He returned with her to The Guilded Whore and was led to an altar bearing an effigy of the succubus queen, where The Crone then consummated the rites.  When her hood slipped off, Tavranik was horrified to see that instead of hair, her head was covered in a writhing mass of blood-red worms, but found himself unaccountably aroused despite the horror mounted atop him.  Once the services were complete, Tavranik found himself utterly drained of energy, barely able to move, and was almost certainly at death's door.

He collected his clothes, staggered out of the brothel and dragged himself up to the fourth tier of the city, where the rest of the party had congregated at the headquarters of The Painted Man, lord of the uppermost tier.  The Painted Man sat, clad only in a loincloth, his entire body a tapestry of tattoos depicting arcane runes and symbols.  He thanked the party for returning The Oracle to him and agreed to provide them with a guide back to the surface, as he had promised.  As the party was still carrying around an arcane-locked iron-bound chest they liberated from Sothiss's lair, they asked The Painted Man if he could open the chest for him.  Such a task was beyond his talents but he suggested that his ally, The Leech Lord, ruler of the third tier might be able to accomplish the task.  Since Tavranik was affiliated with The Leech Lord's gang, this seemed like a good idea as he was able to make introductions and gain them access.

The Leech Lord was a thin, anaemic man, with dark purple bags under his eyes, and limp, greasy black hair that hung in front of his face.  His body was covered with bloated leeches.  In one corner of the room, several zombies were running on a treadmill trying vainly to reach a baby that was dangling in front of them.  When asked about the Chest, the Leech Lord called for brighter light to see it by and tugged twice on a pull-cord.  In response, two more babies were lowered from the ceiling in front of the zombies, who ran faster still, increasing the light generated by the glow bulbs that lit the Leech Lord's chambers.  The Leech Lord agreed to break the arcane seals on the chest on the condition that Tavranik accompany them to the surface and serve as his agent topside.  He gave Tavranik an amulet that would allow the Leech Lord to contact him telepathically at any time to give instructions.  They all agreed to this, and the chest was found to contain a large number of verdigrised coins of unknown minting, along with Sothiss's spell book.  The Leech Lord revealed that the coins were minted in the ancient city of Murias, one of the cities of the Tuatha de Danann, the gods of men.

After a long and perilous journey, the party finally ascended to the surface, but many leagues from where they descended, and had to travel several days cross country to get to the village of Glen Morag.  Arriving home, they found the village in flames, and bands of soldiers bearing the livery of the High King of Llanvirnesse were torching the village and rounding people up.  On a gibbet swung the dead warchief of Morag, to whom the characters had sworn allegiance.  The party was quickly spotted and questioned by a band of mounted warriors.  Careful to conceal any allegiance to the King of Morag, the party was told that he had attempted to mount rebellion against the High King, Rathad MacMorne, and had been using the Scepter of Gwyddno, which had magical powers of command to rally an army of followers to his cause.  Since it was the characters who had traded this scepter to the traitorous war chief in exchange for patents of nobility and a land grant in Morag, they were quick to extricate themselves from the situation before they could be incriminated in the plot and they hastily made their way back to the Flaming Faggot, where they delivered up to Brother Frosck the orb they had recovered from the necromancer, Sothiss.  Over the past several days, Jin had been irritated by pain and itching in his eyes, which now glowed, alarmingly red, and was blinded whenever he looked at flame. Frosck told him that this was likely the result of alien energies emanating from the orb, which Jin had been carrying for weeks, and the change was almost certainly permanent.  While Jin is now able to see in the infrared spectrum, the glowing red eyes will make it difficult for him to be inconspicuous.

Tricky Treats

With just a week left until Halloween, I bought treats for the kids yesterday, instead of my usual habit of buying them in September, then twice again in October as they kept 'running out.'

I've been noticing over the years how Halloween chocolate bars seem to keep getting smaller and smaller - and no, it isn't because I've been getting bigger and bigger.  For example, when I was a kid Halloween Kit Kat bars were two full-sized fingers; now you get two half-sized fingers.  All Halloween chocolates have diminished from nearly full sized bars to bite-sized treats.  The one exception to this over the years has been Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, which have consistently been packaged as single full-sized cups.  Until now.  I opened my bag of Peanut Butter Cups yesterday (for quality control, you understand - can't give the kids substandard candy), and much to my dismay, the cups are now tiny little mini-cups.

Those treats are tricksy, I tells ya'; they keep getting smaller, but the price keeps getting bigger.  It's almost like magic.

Now here's some mood music by Concrete Blonde

'Bloodletting' by Concrete Blonde from the Album, Bloodletting