wearestormcaller

Cryptid week! First some history of terminology. Even though it may seem like it should be much older, “cryptid” was suggested by John Wall in 1983 as a catch-all term for the sorts of creatures studied under the umbrella of the pseudoscience cryptozoology, largely to distinguish them from the term “monsters.” For that matter, “cryptozoology” isn’t all that old either. The term was first used by Ralph Thompson to describe plausible but as yet unknown animals in 1941. He did that in a review for the New York Times of a book by Willy Ley, The Lungfish and the Unicorn.

This book, Willy Ley’s Exotic Zoology (1959), is not that book, though it contains most of the material from it, as well as two other previous books (Dragons in Amber and Salamanders and Other Wonders) and also collects some of his essays from Galaxy Science Fiction magazine. Willy was a great science writer, plain-speaking and capable of explaining complex concepts in an accessible way that didn’t downplay or undermine the source material. His rigorous skepticism when dealing with topics like man-eating plants and the Yeti is balanced by a general good humor.

Make no mistake, though, this is not a book about debunking legends, that would be tedious. Rather, it’s an exercise in exploring the edges of zoology and seeing what still remains to be discovered. Quite a lot, actually! My favorite chapter so far (I’ve not read everything yet, alas) remains the first of Ley’s writing I’ve read, “The Island of the Man-Eating Tree.” I favor it in part because I find the hoax of the man-eating tree of Madagascar to be fascinating, but also because we rather quickly leave the tree behind to examine the myth of the Roc and why it probably emerged from the same island (extinct giant flightless birds, their incredibly large eggs and another tree that grows leaves that look suspiciously feather-like). The rest of the book is full of similarly delightful detours.

Return of the Witch Lord (1991) is the second HeroQuest expansion. This is the US version, with its sad repaint of Les Edward’s superior cover painting that appears in the UK release. It’s basically the same again, ten more scenarios, but with undead. There is a rad throne room tile, too.

I could talk at length on dissecting these images and other popular depictions, but in the interest of brevity and staying on message Ill just summarize. In 2016 Orcs are monstrous humans, in 2024 they are buff elves. Ill admit that part of m dislike of the change is just a departure from things I liked growing up. Warcraft II was a big part of my childhood and introduction to Orcs, and Ill always love them that way best. But there is more to it than that. I understand that a lot of this change comes from a place of reimagining Orcs beyond simple evil archetypes, to avoid the potential for unfortunate racial or xenophobic undertones, and so on. I think that's a good and noble thing. Fantasy tropes are modern myths, we can and should shape them and build upon them. But I don't feel like this really does that. What does it say that to make the Orcs less 'problematic' that they need to become elves? Why can't they keep their bestial jaws, their somehow both ape and swine-like features? I remember once, on this very website, seeing someone repost a bunch of art of very elven looking Orcs with a comment to the effect of "Who says Orcs have to be big and buff?" and framed itself as somehow, frankly, woke for the depictions. As though saying "I have made the thing slender and elegant and now its beautiful" was somehow deviant, and not the most mainstream of takes. There also comes with it a kind of strange erasure, a kind of white-washing of Orc lore. I think its because if we want to imagine Orcs in the frame work of modern conceptions of race they definitely aren't "fantasy white" so they must be "fantasy POC" and therefore anything wicked is a big no-no. They can't be demon-blooded marauders, they need to be misunderstood. Ironically, I feel we just reinvent the Noble Savage but green.

Just very berrybrained right now. I'm picking and eating blueberries everyday and I can never get enough! I like to imagine that every berry has a whole world in them ✨

I'm so obsessed right now that I spent a week of no sleep designing blue space berry lanterns. It's still just a prototype and needs a lot of refining, but I'm pretty happy with it so far :)

Plus the usual painting timelapse!

This week, I dug out some Infocom games, because text adventures are great and I feel like the world needs to constantly be reminded of the fact. First up, a classic: Planetfall (1983). The player takes the role of an Ensign Seventh Class in the Star Patrol, on duty aboard the starship Feinstein.

As you may recall, Infocom games usually come with “feelies,” a collection of props that set the mood for the game or otherwise enhance play (which basically boils down to reading text on a screen and typing in prose commands to navigate the story). The feelies for Planetfall are mood-setters and seem custom-made to occupy the attention of a kid like me on the car ride home from the computer store at the mall. The booklet includes a recruitment pamphlet for the Star Patrol, along with a jokey questionnaire (HULL is to SPACESHIP as SKIN is to: A. Glove, B. Cat, C. Thermonuclear fusion, D. Titanium, E. Burn, F. Muffin). There are three interstellar postcards in a vintage style, a special assignment task force ID card and a sheaf of note pages containing a handwritten journal (in two inks for added verisimilitude!). Judging from the journal, “You” are at wits end about your duties and contemplating going AWOL when the game starts.

Thankfully, the ship crashes not long after the start of the game. You wind up on an island in the company of a robot named Floyd and the ruins of a vanished alien civilization. In addition to finding a way to get off the planet, you also need to unravel why the aliens disappeared. There are two timers spurring you on (though I don’t think they click on until you make a certain amount of progression). The first is the plague that did for the aliens (the remaining population is in cryosleep, awaiting their robots to synthesize a cure) — it’ll get you, too, if you don’t find an antidote. Even if you do, though, the planet doesn’t have much time left as its orbit has decayed and it is on a collision course with the sun. You need to repair a whole bunch of alien tech to A. Stop the planet from burning up, B. Allow the robots to complete the cure and C. Repair your own ship. I’ve never managed to stop A., in part because some of the puzzles to do so are intentionally unsolvable, and I’m terrible at figuring stuff like that out.

In addition to magic items, spells and psionic powers, TSR released Deck of Encounter: Set One (1994, recycling Easley’s cover of the DMG) and Deck of Encounters: Set Two (1994, recycling a Fred Fields Dragonlance painting for the cover). At first glance, these seem less useful than the spell cards and in one way they are: eventually, you’re going to exhaust them. But that’s the flaw of even the best random table as well, and we don’t really complain too much about that. And between the two decks, you’re looking at about 800 encounters, so it would take a while.

Wizard Spell Cards (1992, Fred Fields cover?) and Priest Spell Cards (1992, Carol Heyer cover illustration) seem like a good idea: take all of the spells from the Player’s Handbook and Tome of Magic and put the information on cards for fast reference. But in practice, problems immediately surface.

For one, are cards really faster or easier than a bookmark in the rulebook? I’m not sure. What happens when you have two players with wizards. Do they share cards? Are the expected to buy their own boxes? Then there is the matter of the cards themselves. What do you do with them? Keep them stacked by your character sheet? Sleeve them in plastic pages (awkward, since they are index card size, not baseball cards)? Do you file them back into the larger box when not in play? How big a stack of spell cards can you have before the book is definitely faster and easier? How do you deal with spells that are not in the two covered rulebooks?

All these questions have no definitive answers — every player is different! But I think they illustrate that the gap between the perception of utility and actual usefulness is pretty wide here. Similar issues cropped up in 4E with the decks of power cards, and will probably pop up again sometime down the line. And the problems will likely remain.

If there is a single 2E D&D product that transcend editions, it’s the four-volume Encyclopedia Magica (Vol 1 - 1994, Vol 2-4 - 1995), compiled by Dale “Slade” Henson and illustrated by Arnie Swekel. Over 1500 pages, it collects every magic item created for the game in official sources, including RPGA products, the various TSR magazines and the slightly different Basic game items. All the items include their abilities and the original descriptive text. No attempt has been made to revise, rebalance or otherwise monkey about with them. Some items are ridiculously overpowered and remain so. Some are very stupid or silly. The book makes no judgments.

It’s a titanic work. It’s hard to express the importance of magic items to the game; you could maybe boil the game down to its essence by calling it system of rules that are broken by magic items interacting with monsters. Magic items are the prime mechanical method characters distinguish themselves from each other. The same is true, to perhaps a lesser extent, of the campaign worlds themselves — what magic items are lying around and why implies much about the nature of a given world. These books give you the keys to all of it — the mightiest characters, the lore-iest worlds, the Macguffin-est quests. 

Now, unlike Michael Newton’s book of hope, I appreciate the clarity of this book’s title: Encyclopedia of Things that Never Where (1985). Stating that definitively really gets all that belief malarkey out of the way and lets us appreciate these things on their own imaginary terms (as Georgess McHargue encouraged us to do on Monday).

This book is more like a collection of several small topical encyclopedias, each discrete from the others and in their own alphabetical order. Nor do they necessarily make a perfect or intuitive sense all the way through. Things of the Cosmos is mostly gods of major mythologies, but also King Arthur and his knights. Things of the Ground and Underground collects faeries and tree spirits, but also the manticore, Minotaur and Sphinx. Things of Wonderland seems to imply things from literature, but really it collects all manner of fantastical places, from fiction, but also from legend. Things of Magic, Science and Invention could just as well have been called Things and left it at that; it collects notable items, from Thor’s hammer to Jekyll’s potion to the many unusual uses for nails. Things of Water, Sky and Air covers all the creatures not detailed in Earth chapter — Grendel is here, griffins, too, and all the sea serpents. Finally, Things of the Night details the undead and other creatures who hide from the sun, whether they go bump or not.

More monsters, can you believe it? It’s like I have shelf after shelf of monster books or something.

This is The Beasts of Never (1968), by Georgess McHargue, and, to my knowledge, it’s her first published book. It’s illustrated throughout by Frank Bozzo in expressionistic watercolors that I quite like but would probably not cut it in terms of preconceptions about quality in a similar sort of book today (more’s the pity about modern publishing, honestly). There’s a second expanded edition from 1988 that got nominated for a National Book Award, but there is something about the look of this edition that I prefer. Perhaps it was the fact that it was on my library shelf, though when I was a kid, I wasn’t super interested — that “Never” business was too contrary to my deep wish for monsters, even something like Bigfoot or Nessie, to be real.

She covers Nessie, though, at the end of the book, as a way to suggest perhaps there are monsters out there. Along the way, she also devotes time to dragons, both Eastern and Western, the Phoenix, the Basilisk, the Unicorn and a myriad of creatures of the sky and sea. She is most interested the meaning of the monster, not necessarily in the context of myth or legend, but what it might have meant to a person telling the tale beside a campfire. She ruminates and the book is poetic, even if it isn’t poetry. Speaking of the Phoenix, she says, “We will never find answers which are true in the same way the answers to mathematical problems are true.”