His Majesty in Yellow

Man, I suck at this whole "blogging" thing. Been over a year since my last post, but I'm gonna make an effort to write more from now on (hopefully this doesn't age poorly).

As it happens, two events have inspiringly coincided. Rise Up Comus has announced a Worm Jam to make third party content for his tarot card-based RPG, His Majesty the Worm (which is excellent and you should all pick up). At the same time, I've been prepping to run the Impossible Landscapes campaign with my Delta Green crew. And it was while glancing at the campaign's King in Yellow tarot deck that I was struck with a sudden bolt of inspiration and knew what I had to do.

Arc Dream's King in Yellow Tarot Deck, illustrated by Kurt Komoda

You wake in a psychiatric hospital with precious few memories. You barely remember who you are, much less where you are or why you're here. The doctors and staff aren't helpful either - sometimes they seem more crazy than the patients. You could've sworn hospitals like this don't even exist anymore, that asylums were relics of the past - but it's hard to argue that when you're in one.

At night, a few hours after lights out and lockdown, something strange happens: the doors open - and where once was the corridor leading to the rest of the hospital, there is now a hallway with décor you'd expect from a Jazz Age hotel. You feel a desperate pull to dive deeper - the key to unlocking your memories lies somewhere within these midnight halls.

A surreal horror take on HMtW, based Robert W. Chambers's The King in Yellow. Most of the core mechanics will remain the same but be re-flavored. Character creation will be tweaked slightly to account for setting and genre expectations. The meat of this project will be a new liminal-space-hotel megadungeon, the City creation retooled into Asylum creation, and a host of new monsters.

My main inspirations outside of Chambers and Bierce are Dennis Detwiller's Insylum RPG, Jeff Lemire's run on Moon Knight, Kubrick's The Shining, Goblin Archives' Liminal Horror RPG, and William Peter Blatty's The Ninth Configuration.

I'll be doing my best to post updates here as I work throughout the month. I'll post the minor mechanics changes and character creation tweaks hopefully within the week.

Is this project too ambitious for a one month jam? Probably.

Is that gonna stop me from trying? No.

Angels and the Roleplaying Thereof

 

Archangel Michael, Ivanka Demchuk

Been giving more thought to the eschatological Cold War setting I posted about last time and have been mulling over the nature of angels. The trouble with angels as characters is that the traditional Christian understanding makes their psyche almost impossible to comprehend.

Like human beings, angels possess free will, but unlike humans, they lack an intellect as we would understand it; rather than processing and mulling over thoughts, angels either know or do not know - unless given new information, they cannot change their minds. At the moment of their creation, the angels thus had to choose to fully serve God or rebel against Him. Fortunately, God gave them perfect foreknowledge of the consequences of their rebellion (eternal separation from the one thing that can make them happy); unfortunately, a third of them still chose to rebel anyway.

So, we have beings that can't change their minds but still have free will? While obviously metaphysically possible, trying to imagine what it'd be like to think that way is mind numbing - mainly because they don't even actually "think".

What this means is that I am going to have to play a bit fast and loose with the nature of angels if I want to even consider using them as player characters in an RPG. But at the same time, I don't want to turn this setting into one in which Heaven and Hell are painted with shades of gray. While individual angels can be a bit more malleable, Heaven and nearly all of its angels will remain capital-G Good and Hell and nearly all of its angels will remain capital-E Evil.

That's enough theory for now. Next time, I will go into detail on the different kinds of angels and the factions in the spiritual realms.

The Man from Y. H. W. H.

Following a discussion of the hymn For the Beauty of the Earth

So, naturally, I had to start writing something...

1963 AC (After Creation): In the middle of Hell, there’s a small little enclave of heaven; well, not Heaven-heaven, but compared to what’s around it? You betcha. Those crafty apes lucky enough to not screw themselves up too badly end up here: Limbo. Just next door is Pandaemonium. When they set it up, Morningstar thought everyone would realize how much better things are without G_d and be clamoring to come to their side. Instead, they had to build the wall just to keep folks from leaving.

The Big Man Upstairs assures us His plan is trucking along on schedule; and things always go according to His plan. Until then, our job is to keep an eye on things in Pandaemonium and stop Morningstar's agents from interfering in Limbo. Assume nothing; everyone is potentially under opposition control. Even your fellow archangels. Good luck agent.

Source unknown

On Those Things the Ignorant Call "Dwarves"

Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.

- H.P. Lovecraft, The Festival

The first thing a dwergaz sees upon hatching is rotten flesh. It slumps out of it's egg and begins to eat all it can see, growing fat on this decaying feast. But as it corpulence increases, it finds itself trapped by bone and skin; soon, like an elongated skull, the dwergaz is shaped to resemble it's former meal and wears what's left of it like a suit.

Man-Grub, Dark Souls 3

It is in this stage that most are familiar with the things, though few have seen them in person. Those that have try to forget what they've seen as best they can. Despite their appearance, the dwergazi are artisans of the highest skill. Even their shoddiest work would be considered a masterpiece by a human craftsman. They make no distinction between something practical and something decorative. Every tool, weapon, piece of armor, even the caves they call home, are covered with intricate fractal patterns, as if the very thought of an undecorated surface brought them discomfort.

As far as any can tell, the dwergazi live to dig; everything they do is ordered towards aim. Their tunnels and mines plunge deep into the earth but the endless minerals they extract are apparently ancillary to their goal. None know why they dig; perhaps they don't even know themselves.

But eventually the dwergazi die. Or at least, that's what an outsider would think. The dwergaz enters what looks like a tomb, accompanied by a strange rite performed by its kin. In this tomb, however, they construct a cocoon; the metamorphosis begins. 

The dwergaz enters into the second stage of its lifecycle: the walakuzjo.

Mi-Go, Kurt Komoda

Much less is known about the walakuzjoi compared to the dwergazi. But here is what we can say: on rare occasions, a humanoid housefly the size of an elephant descends on the aftermath of a battlefield. It picks through the corpses, choosing the best and carrying them back to its mountain hall. Upon some, it feeds; in others, it lays its eggs. And the cycle begins anew.

More research on the subject must be done, obviously. But first, those who consider themselves educated must divest themselves of the notion that the greatest works of mortal craftsmanship were made by small bearded men who live in caves; such a foolish notion has no place in the work of respectable scholars.

d50 JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Stands

My friend made a list of his favorite songs. I mined them for Stand names.

d50	Stand	Localized Name
1	21st Century Breakdown	21st Century Destruction
2	A Self Called Nowhere	A Self Called Nothing
3	Abbey Road	Abbey Avenue
4	Ana Ng	Anna Engie
5	Arcade Fire	Collonade Fire
6	Bad Ambassador	Terrible Envoy
7	Black Keys	Dark Keys
8	Blue Sky Mine	Blue Sky Quarry
9	Coldplay	Chilled Play
10	Concrete and Gold	Cement and Gold
11	Crosseyed and Painless	Crossed and Painless
12	Daft Punk	Dashing Punk
13	Day Tripper	Day Trecker
14	Design for Life	Made for Life
15	Electric Light Orchestra	Electric Light Band
16	Fantastic Voyage	Amazing Journey
17	Farewell to Kings	Goodbye to Kings
18	Firth of Fifth	Inlet of Fifth
19	Flood	Deluge
20	Hives	Apiaries
21	Life on Mars	Exsistence on Mars
22	Little Creatures	Small Creatures
23	Mad Man Moon	Angry Man Moon
24	Manic Street Preachers	Crazy Road Preachers
25	Mansun	Man Sun
26	Midnight Oil	12 O'Clock Oil
27	My Murdered Remains	My Killed Remains
28	Neon Bible	Neon Quran
29	New Way Home	New Direction Home
30	OK Computer	Alright Computer
31	One Fine Day	An Okay Day
32	Pas de Cheval	Horse Step
33	Queens of the Stone Age	Queens of the Bronze Age
34	Radiohead	Radio Face
35	Random Access Memories	Aimless Access Rememberances
36	Rapid Eye Movement	Quick Eye Movings
37	Rumble and Sway	Rumble and Shake
38	Saint Motel	Saint Bed and Breakfast
39	Satellite of Love	Satellite of Affection
40	Siamese Dream	Thai Dream
41	Smashing Pumpkins	Crushing Gourds
42	Strawberry Swing	Raspberry Swing
43	Supermassive Black Hole	Sizable Dark Star
44	Telephone Line	Telephone Circuit
45	The Colour and the Shape	The Shade and the Configuration
46	They Might Be Giants	They May In Fact Be Goliaths
47	Trick of the Tail	Jape of the Tail
48	Van Horn	Van Cornet
49	Viva la Vida	Live the Life
50	Wasting Light	Squandering Light