#runestaff

"Where Did That Dragon Go?" — I guess he didn’t pass dragon-slaying 101

Original title: "The Runestaff" by Michael Moorcock (1977)

There is a phenomenon with Michael Moorcock’s fiction that breaks his readers into teams. There’s the Moorcock series you first read, which entrances you (in my case, Elric) and then there are the rest, which seem like diluted parodies. That is how I feel about the Runestaff and Count Brass stories, both of which form up the setting of Chaosium’s Hawkmoon RPG (1986).

Hawkmoon is a bit of a whatisit. The box copy hails it as a standalone game, one of a (never materialized) series of Eternal Champion games. The system is a modified version of Basic Roleplaying, but it feels like a Stormbringer RPG supplement. It is an obvious labor of love for its author, Kerie Campbell-Robson, though it feels like it didn’t get the same level of editorial love as other products at the time (there is a bit of recycled art, including a map of Stormbringer’s Young Kingdoms for some reason).

The world of Hawkmoon is ours, but in the Tragic Millennium, a time far in the future, after nuclear war and plagues forced the world back to a pseudo-medieval period. Mutants abound and the line between science and magic is blurred. Despite not being into the source material, I dig the world building here. Jim Crabtree’s art does a lot to sell me (there are giant mutant flamingos that you can ride!) and the whole box has that 80s Chaosium design vibe I find super appealing.

Chaosium only put out one other Hawkmoon supplement (which I’ll cover another time), which is a bummer, because with time and support I think this could have evolved into something special. In fact, I know so, because the game caught on in a big way in France, where it has developed on its own into something wild and unique across three editions. If you’re familiar with the French Hawkmoon, drop me a line, I’d love to learn about it!

Wednesday, January 16: Runestaff, “Runestaff”

But it lead to one weird situation. See, books 2-4 saw Hawkmoon acquire powerful relics to aide him in the final battle. The Mad God’s amulet, which gives him supernatural strength, the Sword of the Dawn, which summons ghostly warriors to aide him, and the Runestaff to act as a banner he will fight under. But even with these, his forces are too small to take on Dark Empire with it’s millions of soldiers. So the Runestaff arranged events so that the Dark Empire would have a civil war, wiping out most of it’s forces so that Hawkmoon may emerge victorious.

And part of that was because of my favorite character, Huillam D'Averc, and his penis.

See, at one point Hawkmoon and D’Averc had to infiltrate the Dark Empire and came across Flana, the only surviving relative of the Emperor and the ex-wife of Hawkmoon’s rival. She's a woman with a dozen ex-husbands and countless forgotten lovers, and she initially wanted to sleep with Hawkmoon. Hawkmoon didn’t want to betray his wife, so D’Averc does the deed.

So well in fact she helps them escape on their quest. Then she longs for D’Averc, since his loving was so tender it reawakened her long dormant soul. She begins to long for him, and when her ex-husband goes to her for his coup (since the Emperor wants him to stop obsessing over Hawkmoon) she agrees because it would allow her to pardon D’Averc and give him back his lands. Her support gave the coup legitimacy. This decimates the Empire’s forces, allowing Hawkmoon to win and Flana says as Emperess she will make amends for what the former Emperor did (in his 2000 years on the throne). And this is after D’Averc is killed, though he is revived and reunited with her in the sequel trilogy (making Hawkmoon get an even happier ending than Elric and Corum).

Let me put it like this. Hawkmoon went on various quests, getting the gear he would need for the final battle and even then, with all the magical buffs he gets, he still wouldn’t have won if not for the tender lovemaking of a French hypochondriac who he originally met as a foe, saved at sea by accident, and who stayed with Hawkmoon initially because he thought he wouldn’t be welcome back at the Dark Empire’s court before proving his loyalty by helping Hawkmoon escape and return to Castle Brass after being captured in the middle of the enemy’s camp.