Original Roleplaying Concepts
Delta Green: Kali Ghati is essentially divided into three acts. In the first act, the Agents will investigate Ellis’ activities at F.O.B. Turner, dealing with the officers and soldiers who had dealings with him, as well as an interpreter and the members of the Afghan National Army. They are a mixture of helpful and reluctant, but with some careful roleplaying, the Agents will learn that Ellis was fascinated by the strange tales of a nearby village that go back to the nineteenth century, and more. They are likely to also be given warnings not to go to the village, but duty demands that they do. The second act consists of the drive to Kali Ghati—and here the action hots up as attempts are made to prevent them getting there. This is a big scene and will need careful staging from round to round, almost like a wargame.
The third act takes place at the village of Kali Ghati and sees the Agents learning the secrets that the villagers are hiding. They will very likely also discover the whereabouts of Tim Ellis. As plotted, once they discover the secrets of Kali Ghati, all hell breaks loose and the best they can probably do is get the hell out…
Delta Green: Kali Ghati is a problematic scenario. Its issue is that it is linear and does not allow a high degree of player agency. In the initial scenes where the Agents are investigating Ellis’ activities and interactions, they have plenty to do, but in later scenes, there is less and less that they can do. Should the players want their Agents to push harder and harder at the constraints of the plot, the more effort that the Handler will have to make to accommodate their actions. The scenario is also more combat focused in comparison to other scenarios for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, which will put Agents with fewer or limited combat skills at a disadvantage. Of course, replacement characters abound in the form of other U.S. Army soldiers, but the likelihood of having to replace the Agents—either early in the scenario or at the climax, undermines players’ roleplaying. Essentially, the combats are all but unavoidable, and the second combat is likely to become something of a grind, likely to be preceded by a grind of dice rolls to get to that second combat…
Physically, Delta Green: Kali Ghati is nicely produced. The maps are clear and the artwork excellent as is usual. The six pregenerated Agents, including a CIA Officer, an FBI Agent, CIA Consultant, a biohazard specialist, and two U.S. Army soldiers, are for the most part, decently done. They have a few details missing, but these are not pertinent to the scenario and can be easily made up by the Handler or the player.
Delta Green: Kali Ghati is linear and is tightly constrained in terms of storytelling. In fact, to the point that it feels more like a film than a roleplaying game—indeed, the scenes in the village of Kali Ghati are reminiscent of the film, The Man Who Would Be King. The short length and the straightforward, narrow nature of its plot means that Delta Green: Kali Ghati is best suited as a one-shot or a convention scenario, especially for players looking for action rather than investigation.
It is another Follow Friday here and since we are wrapping up Tasha's Week of Everything I thought it might be nice to detail some of the sites on the web and social media that feature Iggwilv, Tasha, and items from her history.
The Web
Tasha from HeroForge
Lots of great stuff here really.
Greyhawk Online has a wiki full of details.
Likewise, the Forgotten Realms wiki has some entries for her.
She has even made appearances in Golarion from the Pathfinder wiki. In particular as a former Queen of Irrisen. According to the Golarion timeline, she ruled 4113 AR to 4213 AR (current year 4720 AR).If you want some fiction about Tasha/Iggwilv then there is Tommy John Kelly's Greyhawk Stories Page. Greyhawk Online has a number of posts featuring S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.Blogs
Iggwilv from HeroForge
Lots of people have had some words about Iggwilv in the blogging circles too. Here are some of them
James over at Grognardia gives her an uncharacteristically brief mention in his post about The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.
Sean McG has written up an extensive post on the publication history of Iggwilv, which he keeps updated at the Power Score.
Mike Bridges at Greyhawkery also has a few posts.
And of course, Greyhawk Grognard has some posts. Though he is not as enamored with the adventure as I am.
Baba Yaga from HeroForge
MeWe
YouTube
1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.
—oOo—
Invented in 1965 by Doug Malewicki and published by Flying Buffalo, Inc. since 1972, the Nuclear War Card Game is a satirical game of Cold War brinkmanship, black propaganda, and mass destruction designed for between two and eight players. Designed for players with a sense of humour, aged thirteen and up, who each control a major nuclear power, it can be played in roughly thirty to forty-five minutes. Whilst the aim of the Nuclear War Card Game is to win by defeating a player’s rivals—either by persuading their population to defect or bombing them back into the Stone Age, either way reducing their population to zero—a game can also end in a storm of retaliatory missile and bomber strikes that leaves everyone’s population dead and dying. In which case, everyone loses. If you think that this sounds M.AD., then that is Mutually Assured Destruction for you.The Nuclear War Card Game consists of two decks of cards, eight player boards, a Nuclear Spinner Board, and a four-page rules leaflet. The two decks are the Population Deck and the much larger Nuclear War Deck. The Population contains cards representing between one and twenty-five million persons, whilst the Warhead Deck contains cards of various types. Warhead cards represent nuclear warheads ranging in size from ten to one hundred megatons, each indicating how many members of a population it will kill, ranging from two to twenty-five million. Delivery cards indicate the size of Warhead tonnage they can deliver to a target, raging from a single ten megaton warhead in a Polaris missile to a Saturn rocket capable of carrying a single one hundred megaton warhead, whilst a B-70 Bomber can carry multiple warheads up to a total of fifty megatons. Other cards include Anti-Missile cards which will bring down incoming missiles during an attack, whilst others are Top Secret or Propaganda cards. Top Secret cards can decrease an opponent’s or the current player’s population, force him or the current player to lose a turn. For example, ‘Your Cold War prestige soars due to being the first on the Moon’ causes five million of the enemy to join the current player’s country and ‘TEST BAN!’, which called by the President of the current player’s country forces him to miss a turn. Propaganda cards simply cause Population from a rival country to defect to the current player’s country.
Each of the Player Boards, illustrated with a photograph of a Titan missile launch station, is marked with six spaces—‘Face Up Card’, ‘1st Face Down Card’, ‘2nd Face Down Card’, two ‘Deterrent Force’ spaces, and ‘Population’. A player uses the ‘Face Up Card’ and ‘Face Down Card’ spaces to set up and bluff using his country’s nuclear arsenal; the ‘Deterrent Force’ space to establish a threat against anyone who might attack his country; and the ‘Population’ space to keep track of his Population cards. The infamous Nuclear Spinner Board is spun whenever a missile is launched or a bomb is dropped to give a random effect, such as ‘Explodes a Nuclear Stockpile! Triple the Yield’ to increase the number of Population killed or ‘Bomb Shelters Saves 2 Million’ which reduces the damage inflicted. The Nuclear Spinner Board also tables to get the same effects from rolling either two six-sided or two ten-sided dice as an alternative, or if the spinner is broken! Lastly, the rules sheet both explains the rules, answers various questions, and gives some suggestions as to tactics when playing the game.
Game set-up is simple. Each player receives a Player Board, a number of Population cards (the number determined by the number of players), and nine cards from the Nuclear War deck. On a round each player takes it in turn to play all the cards marked Secret or Top Secret in his hand, draw back up to nine cards, play any cards marked Secret or Top Secret in his hand so added, draw again, and so on until he no cards marked either Secret or Top Secret in his hands. The fun of these is a player using the text on the cards to build a story about his country, taking it through the Cold War to the point where Nuclear confrontation turns hot…
Then each player places two cards face down in the first two slots on his Player Board. They will be revealed in subsequent turns and in doing so, will reveal a player’s strategy. A player with weak warheads or inadequate means of delivery—bombers or missiles, or who does not immediately want to turn the Cold War hot, can play Propaganda cards to reduce a rival country’s population. A player who wants to go aggressive immediately can put down a delivery system—bomber or missile—followed by a warhead, which has to be launched at a rival country once the combination has been revealed. A player can also bluff, playing a warhead, but not a delivery system—and vice versa, instead playing a Propaganda card. In some instances, a player does not have a choice as to which option he chooses, it very much depends upon the cards in his hand. Alternatively, a player can place Anti-Missile cards or even a combination of a warhead and a delivery system onto the Deterrent spaces of his board. These are placed face up rather than face down and serve as a warning against any other player who might be thinking of launching a nuclear strike at that country. The classic combination being a Saturn missile with a hundred megaton warhead ready to launch in retaliatory fashion against an enemy.
Once a player has put two cards into the first two slots, and sets up his initial strategy, he draws a third from the Nuclear War deck and places a third card into the third slot on his Player Board. The last thing a player does is turn over and reveal the card in the first slot on his Player Board. This will reveal the initial suggestions as what his current strategy is. On subsequent turns, a player will draw a card first and then play the rest of the turn as per normal.
If a player reveals on subsequent turns that he has a delivery system loaded with a warhead—in the order of delivery system first, followed by the warhead, he is ready to launch a nuclear strike! He designates his chosen target, spins the spinner on the Nuclear Spinner Board and applies the results to the warhead’s detonation. If the warhead is successfully detonated, the targeted player loses the indicated number of casualties from his Population. Once a nuclear strike has been launched at another player, a State of War exists not between the attacker and defender—but between all players! This State of War continues until one player, whether the attacker, defender, or another player is eliminated. An eliminated player can retaliate by combining warhead and bomber or missile cards and target not just the player who struck at him, but any player! It is entirely possible for an eliminated player to eliminate a rival with a retaliatory strike, and that rival to eliminate a rival with a retaliatory strike, and so on. Basically in one giant M.AD. conflagration!
Peace then breaks out… until another player has a warhead ready to launch. Play continues with rounds of missile and warhead build-ups punctuated by deadly strikes. Of course, during the build-up phases, there is scope for further bluff, as well as negotiation, counter bluff, and intimidation. A game of the Nuclear War Card Game continues until one player is left standing (amidst the irradiated rubble) undefeated and still with a Population of at least a million. Alternatively, everybody might have been wiped out, in which case, everybody loses.
With simple rules and direct mechanics, the blast ’em, bomb them style of play of the Nuclear War Card Game is quick. Which means that once a player is eliminated, he should not have to wait too long before either the game finishes (with a winner or not) and a new one, quickly and easily set up to start play anew or a wholly different game chosen. In this way, the Nuclear War Card Game serves as a solid filler.
Physically, the Nuclear War Card Game does not share the production values as more contemporary titles. The card stock for both the Player Boards and the Nuclear Spinner Board is adequate enough though still feels slightly cheap. The cards for the game feel slightly thin, but apart from the Propaganda cards which are rather plain and lacking in flavour, all of the cards are brightly and engagingly illustrated. The rules sheet is simple and utilitarian, but like everything else in the game, does its job.
—oOo—
In 1984 Games Magazine called Nuclear War, “the quintessential beer and pretzels game” and put it on its top 100 list. The game also won the Origins Hall of Fame Award as one of the best games of all time in 1998 and in 1999, Pyramid magazine named it as one of The Millennium's Best Card Games. Editor Scott Haring said “Back when people were well-and-truly scared of the possibility of nuclear vaporization (I guess today either the threat is lessened, or it's become old hat), Nuclear War dared to make fun the possibility of mankind's dreaded nightmare via a card game.”
Designer and publisher Steve Jackson reviewed the Nuclear War Card Game in Space Gamer Number 34 (December, 1980). He described it as, “...[N]o sense a serious simulation - and even as a game it is very, very simple. Other than that, the only drawback is that the "strategy" rules often lock you into a bad move a couple of turns ahead. Real life is like that - but this game isn't real life and shouldn't try to be.” before concluding that, “This is NOT an "introductory" wargame - it's not a wargame at all. It's a card game. Recommended for a quick social game or for when everyone is too sleepy to play anything complex.”
In Dragon Issue #200 (Vol. XVIII, No. 7, December 1993), Allen Varney included it in a list of ‘Famous & forgotten board games’, in his article, ‘Social Board Games’. He stated that, “It’s a sin for a multi-player design to throw out a player before the game is over, but in this venerable game, that’s the whole point.”, ultimately describing it as the “black-humored contemporary of Dr. Strangelove.” More recently in Scarred For Life Volume One: The 1970s (Lonely Water Books, 2017), authors Stephen Brotherstone and Dave Lawrence described the Nuclear War Card Game as “A card game about the unthinkable, featuring a Twister-style spinner containing results such as ‘RADIOACTIVE BETA RAYS KILL ANOTHER 5 MILLION’ and ‘ADDITIONAL 1 MILLION ARE ENGULFED IN THE FIREBALL’ might not seem like most people’s idea of a fun night in, but Nuclear War is a darkly comedic, even educational game. And it’s a brilliant one to boot.”
—oOo—
The Nuclear War Card Game is a game of nuclear brinkmanship, of nuclear standoffs and deterrence, one in which peace is always temporary and war always inevitable. Its subject matter—notoriously black, if not tasteless, in terms of its humour—combined with its mechanics (especially the retaliatory strike rule) make it the ultimate ‘take that’ game, often escalating into everyone having to ‘take that’ and suffer the consequences. The Nuclear War Card Game captures the foolishness and absurdity of the Cold War, pushing everyone to slam their fists on the big red button in the ultimate ‘take that’ game—whether as first strike or in revenge.
—oOo—
With thanks to Steve Dempsey for locating Allen Varney’s ‘Social Board Games’ in Dragon Issue #200 and Jon Hancock for Steve Jackson’s review in Space Gamer Number 34.
Wow.
Here we are. I know last week seemed like the "season finale" but tonight is the big "Series Finale".
Let's do this!
I have talked a bit about Supernatural here. Certainly not as much as my fandom might indicate. Supernatural is the one show that everyone in my family all watches together. My wife and kids all sit down to watch it. Doesn't matter what else we watch or what we do, this is the one show we always watch.
Supernatual then was also the test bd for NIGHT SHIFT.
I have been pretty open about what my personal design goals for NIGHT SHIFT have been. I wanted to be able to play ANY modern supernatural urban-fantasy I know. I want a game where I can create any sort of witch I want and have access to magic, demons, and the like. NIGHT SHIFT does all of this.
So when I was playtesting this with my kids there were two characters that were absolutely perfect. Sam and Dean Winchester.
Dean WinchesterStrength: 16 (+2) s
Dexterity: 18 (+3) P
Constitution: 18 (+3) s
Intelligence: 14 (+1)
Wisdom: 14 (+1)
Charisma: 18 (+3)
HP: 120 (15d8+45)
AC: 6 (varies)
Fate Points: 1d12
Check Bonus (P/S/T): +7/+4/+3
Melee bonus: +8 (+12) Ranged bonus: +9 (+16)
Saves: +5 to all saves
Special Abilities: Combat expertise, Melee combat bonus, Increased damage, improved defense, ranged combat bonus, Supernatural Attacks, Tracking
Skills: Hand to hand combat, Steady hands (Dex), Resistance (Con), Insight (Wis), Charm/Intimidate (Cha)
Languages: English
Equipment: Leather jacket, handguns, cell phones, hunter's equipment, "Baby" 1967 Chevrolet Impala.
Dean is the archetypical hunter and Veteran. He has been described as "the perfect killer" by many including God (aka Chuck).
Sam WinchesterStrength: 15 (+1)
Dexterity: 15 (+1)
Constitution: 16 (+2)
Intelligence: 18 (+3) P
Wisdom: 16 (+2) s
Charisma: 18 (+3) s
HP: 95 (9d8+18 + 1d6+2 + 5d6+10)
AC: 7 (varies)
Fate Points: 1d12
Check Bonus (P/S/T): +7/+4/+3
Melee bonus: +5 (+8) Ranged bonus: +5 (+8)
Saves: +5 to all saves
Special Abilities: Combat expertise, Melee combat bonus, Increased damage, improved defense, ranged combat bonus, Supernatural Attacks, Tracking, Psychic: TK (Cha based), Sage: Survivor skills at level 2, Read Languages, Spells
Skills: Research (Int), Steady hands (Dex), Computers (Int), Insight (Wis), Charm (Cha)
Languages: English, Latin, Greek, Enochian, Sumerian
Equipment: Thick jacket, handgun, cell phones, hunter's equipment, laptop
Sam has had an interesting arc. He starts out as a veteran at a very young age. Because he also has/had some demon blood in him he was telekinetic for a while, but that only manifests when he drinks demon blood. He is also a Sage and has played that role well in the 15 seasons of the show.
It was also stated a few times that he was Rowena's "student" so a couple levels of Witch might have been appropriate, but I think Sage covers it well. I could also see Sammy with a couple of levels of Survivor, but again, the Sage abilities cover that.
Both brothers have high Charisma. They need to be able to talk their way in and out of situations a lot. Plus they have been on the air for 15 years.
Likewise, Dean could have also had a level or two of Sage, due to his Men of Letters status, but really Veteran covers it all.
Regardless where tonight's LAST episode takes us (and it was looking a little dicey two weeks ago!) I know that if I want to continue the story I have these write-ups and NIGHT SHIFT.
Other Supernatural Characters for NIGHT SHIFT
Gonna miss these guys. Ok Kansas, play us out.
Sam Moore / November 19, 2020
It’s easy to spot an exploitation film by the cover of the poster or DVD. Maybe more so than any other type of art, you can judge it by its cover: a woman, often barely dressed, holding some kind of weapon. Think Pam Grier on the cover of Coffy or Foxy Brown. Even contemporary grindhouse fare like Planet Terror embraces this tradition, with a machine-gun-legged Rose McGowan among the most immediately recognizable images from the film. That’s because exploitation films always know what they’re selling. That’s where the name comes from; there’s something in these films—normally sex and violence—that is being exploited in order to lure an audience. And that’s where Russ Meyer comes in, the filmmaker whose Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) takes everything about the exploitation genre and ramps it up to an eleven. It’s a strange film that at once knows the genre’s problems and is willing to embrace them.
In the film’s poster, true to form, instead of one woman, there’s two, and the angle of the camera seems designed entirely to highlight Varla’s (Tura Satana) chest. She’s thrown a man to the ground, and there are two cars, engines roaring, behind her. In many ways, it’s the perfect crystallization of the film itself: women, breasts, violence, fast cars. This excess is a “come hither” moment for exploitation audiences, taking everything that they love and blowing it up to extremes. That’s what makes Pussycat so compelling, the strange combination of exploitation and the reverence with which it treats its objects, like a piece of lurid pop art, amplifying and magnifying the tastes of the seediest corners of grindhouse cinema.
One of the ways in which Pussycat challenges the nature of exploitation is by approaching these common tropes—oversexed and ultraviolent women—with a kind of self-awareness, looking at the genre with a nod and a wink. This is made clear from the very beginning of the film, and the way it uses voiceover narration—there’s no other voiceover in the film after this, which is unusual—that beckons the audience by welcoming them to “violence, the word and the act.” The voice goes on to talk about the way in which the “favorite mantle [of violence] still remains sex,” and the “voracious appetite” that the film gives to its leading ladies is something that obviously applies to the audience as well. Pussycat is explicitly designed for an audience that’s hungry for the intersection of sex and violence, for images of powerful women—as long as they’re not too powerful.
The women in Pussycat are fascinating contradictions, something that the film explores through the ways in which the gaze of the camera operates, often changing to enhance different aspects of the characters, from their sexuality to the power they possess over men. As the film begins, Varla and her soon-to-be partners in crime, Billie and Rosie (Lori Williams and Haji), are go-go dancing. The camera loves it, obsesses over and objectifies their bodies, the way that they move, embracing the male gaze at a level that almost feels like parody, even though it’s clearly played straight as can be in every possible way. But beyond just leering at the women, this sequence establishes the fact that they are powerful, with a shot straight out of Film School 101: with the camera low down, looking up at them, it makes the women seem bigger and more prominent—in more ways than one, they fill the screen. As the camera cuts between the dancing women and the borderline rabid men who watch them, bellowing “GO, GO, GO,” it becomes clear that this is, for better or worse, a film about women—about the power they can exert, about the way that they’re looked at. The opening voiceover offers a warning about the kind of women capable of violence, and it’s clearly aimed at men, with examples like “your secretary, your doctor’s receptionist, or a dancer in a go-go club.” It’s power through the lens of female characters, but clearly designed for the consumption of men, the great contradiction that defines the gaze of Pussycat, and much of the other exploitation fare of the era.
The women are placed among a landscape of things that define American masculinity, and the object most rooted in this is a fast car. Driving, racing, and time trials animate much of the drama and narrative of the film. Varla, Billie, and Rosie race through the California desert; they play high speed games of chicken with one another, and the film climaxes in a chase sequence that takes place both on foot and on four wheels. The three women are placed in a position normally associated with masculinity, which is what makes them such fetishistic objects of male wish fulfilment. The camera never lets the audience forget about the assets of these women, but they’re also shown to be “one of the guys” in the way that they drive, fight, and flirt. They can—up to a point—hold their own against the men, and there’s often a kind of role reversal in terms of gender.
In action films, with the James Bond franchise being a prime example, it’s the men who are good drivers and use women purely for sex. But in Pussycat, the women do that, with Varla’s attempted seduction of Kirk, a man she’s hoping will lead her to some money that’s been stashed away. There’s something striking about the way in which, in the moment, Pussycat engages in this role reversal without any asterisk or caveat, simply allowing the women to be powerful and sexual on their own terms. This understanding of how sexuality works on screen comes through in one of the most common exploitation tropes—the catfight, which occurs early on in the film. Billie and Rosie fight each other, their shirts get wet, and it’s all set to a strange, almost dissonant jazz score that undercuts the sexploitation angle of the scene. If the score had been different, then it would seem lifted directly out of porn.
This strange combination of a kind of female empowerment (one built on having the characters embody ideas of strength that are typically associated with maleness and masculinity) and exploitation fare is what makes Pussycat a unique, more aesthetically curious film than a lot of its contemporaries. And some of these images: the cars racing across the desert, Billie and Rosie in the water after a catfight, are reminiscent of pieces of perverted pop art. Pop art as a movement was all about taking the lowbrow and mass-produced elements of American culture, from Warhol’s soup cans to Lichtenstein’s comic strips, and elevating. This relationship between commerce, mass-production, and artistic merit is something that is rooted in a uniquely American tradition; Jasper Johns even reproduced the American flag itself. All you need to turn stills from Pussycat into a Lichtenstein print are some kitschy captions and speech bubbles.
Meyer’s relationship to exploitation film is a lot like the relationship that pop art has with capitalism. They’re both at once slyly aware of what the systems they exist in are doing, and they are either satirizing it (the dissonant jazz score over the catfight highlights the absurdity of the trope) or embracing it in all of its ugliness. The difference, sometimes, is almost impossible to distinguish. It’s easy to imagine Varla, for instance, even at her lowest point, aping Lichtenstein’s famous Drowning Girl. The original contains the thought bubble “I don’t care! I’d rather sink — than call Brad for help!”, and while the words don’t appear in Pussycat, Varla might have said exactly this, replacing Brad’s name with Kirk’s. The film is even willing to lampoon the misogyny that defines so many responses to independent and powerful women, notably when the Old Man whose family the dancers ingratiate themselves with in the hopes of finding money says:
Women! They let ’em vote, smoke and drive—even put ’em in pants! And what happens? A Democrat for president! A bunch of smoke up your chimney! Russian roulette on the highways! Can’t even tell brother from sister, unless you meet ’em up close.
This line highlights the biggest problem with Pussycat’s relationship to the grindhouse: while it’s more than willing to show these women being sexual, strong, and violent, it always reins them in when the male characters get too uncomfortable, a response that typifies a kind of masculinity that both objectifies, and is afraid of, powerful women. The film makes them monstrous, in a way—they always exist in counterpoint to the sweet and innocent Linda, who they’ve kidnapped and who offers a different kind of womanhood, one more palatable to male audiences once the credits have rolled. It’s no wonder that Varla’s demise in the climactic finale—in a moment of what feels like purposeful irony, she’s run over by a truck driven by Linda—that she gets described as “nothing human” by Kirk, before he and Linda drive off into the sunset in the very truck that she used to kill Varla.
In a way, the end of Pussycat is the only way that such a distinctly American exploitation film could end: after a whirlwind tour of tropes associated with male action heroes, set against a uniquely American desert landscape, normalcy returns. The power (and gender) dynamics of the real world—where your secretary or doctor’s receptionist are unlikely to kidnap your girlfriend, or try to seduce and rob you—are reinforced by the violent end that the subversive women meet. In contrast to this, the sweet Linda and righteous Kirk ride off into the sunset together to begin a quote-unquote normal relationship. Exploitation cinema reached its heights in the early 1970s, and while the template of Pussycat is there, the films that came in its wake were less willing to embrace the larger-than-life aspects of their characters and stories. Pussycat remains unique for the ways in which it refuses to look away from the complicated relationship that its characters have with the gaze of both the camera and the audience. These women are simultaneously manipulating that gaze and being manipulated by it, something that makes Pussycat the kind of gaudy pop art that you could only ever find on 42nd Street.
Sam Moore‘s writing on queerness, politics, and genre fiction in art has been published by the Los Angeles Review of Books, Little White Lies, Hyperallergic, and other places. Their poetry and experimental essays have been published in print and online, most recently in the Brixton Review of Books. If their writing didn’t already give it away, they’re into weird stuff.
One of my all-time favorite adventures is S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.
A solid two-level dungeon crawl, filled with new monsters, dangers, and the promise of great treasures. Additionally, there are rumors of an ancient witch/archmage and her battles with demons and even the threat that some of those demons are still around. There is plenty of wilderness area as well. A wide expanse with a gnome community nearby and a raging blue dragon.
With its "Booklet 2" filled with new spells, magic circles, and demons it made me think that a witch class with ritual magic could be something that would work for D&D.
There is so much great stuff in and around this adventure it is hard to know where to begin. So let's start with the adventure itself.
S4 The Lost Caverns of TsojcanthThe adventure, S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, was published back in 1982 by TSR. It was written by none other than Gary Gygax himself. It is listed as "S4" and was the last of the labeled "S series" or Special modules. This includes some of the most popular adventures ever written; S1 Tomb of Horrors, S2 White Plume Mountain, and S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.
The adventure itself is comprised of two 32 page booklets. The first book is the adventure itself, which I will get into detail in a bit. The second booklet covers all sorts of new magic, monsters, and more.
Book 1: The Adventure
The adventure is of the classic sort; the rumor of treasure and a vague threat coming from an area of the map known as Iggwilv's Horn. The adventure is designed for characters level 6 to 10. I have found over the last 40 years that it can be adapted to a variety of levels, though higher levels are better. Though the original tournament adventure featured slightly lower levels. Likely due to the addition of the wilderness adventure.
The wilderness adventure is actually well put together and not the older crazy random monster encounters. The encounters make sense for the area. Among the encounters are the Hermit, and I could not help make this the same hermit from Keep on the Borderlands (also a Gygax creation) and the Blue Dragon. The Blue Dragon, in particular, became so much a hit the first time I ran this that in future runnings of this I changed the dragon to Korbundar from CM2 Death's Ride to have a reoccurring villain. A lot of adventure is packed into 12 pages.
The second part of the adventure covers the Lost Caverns themselves, which includes the Lesser and Greater caverns. This features a large variety of new monsters, some living here, some just wandering around. Even encounters such as "The Garden of One Thousand Earthly Delights" have a good (enough) reason to be there.
The final encounter is in the center of the Greater Caverns and it is not for Iggwilv's Treasure, but rather against Iggwilv's Treasure; the vampire Drelnza. She is a bit more powerful than your average vampire and she has magic to help her out. Eventually, she will succumb to heroes and the treasure will be found including the infamous Demonomicon of Iggwilv, Daoud's Wonderous Lanthorn, and the Prison of Zagig.
Book 2: Monsters and Magic
This second booklet, as I have mentioned, grabbed my attention as much as the first, if not more. Listed inside were new monsters, only some appeared in the adventure, including new demons and demon lords. There were the mysterious Xag-ya and Xeg-yi, the Derro and the awkwardly named (for the early 80s) Valley Elf. All these creatures would later be reprinted in the Monster Manual II for 1st Edition. This is fitting since the original tournament adventure introduced monsters that would become part of the first Monster Manual. There are some magic items including some wonderful artifacts mentioned above. Of these The Demonomicon of Iggwilv capture not just my imagination, but that of hundreds of others. The Demonomicon became a feature in Dragon Magazine and even a 4e book of the same name. Iggwilv went from a "long-dead archmage" to "The Mother of Witches" and the premiere demonologist in D&D. This little booklet also contains plenty of new spells.
This was classic AD&D at the end of its 1st Golden Age.
The adventure is extremely playable and I have adapted it over the years for AD&D 2nd ed, D&D 3rd, and 5th Editions as well.
If you want to play it for 5th Edition D&D then the team over at Classic Modules Today has made a 5e conversion.
There are also maps you can print out with DM's notes.
And other realistic maps also for printing.
The Sequels
The first true sequel to this adventure was WG4 The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun (though no WG1-3 were made*). This was published the same year and dealt with a Temple of Tharizdun. It was designed to be played right after S4 and used the same wilderness map. The adventure fits in well enough. I justified in my games by saying that Iggwilv, like Tsojcanth before her, chose this area due to its arcane and eldritch properties. The adventure also has a wealth of information on the World of Greyhawk and Tharizdun. All of these will be explored later in Gary Gygax's novel series about Gord the Rogue.
S4 and WG4 would also get a review in White Dwarf #44 and both get 9/10 from Jim Bambra. He calls them the last of the Golden Age adventures.
*The rumor is that WG1 was Village of Hommlet, WG2 Temple of Elemental Evil and WG3 was The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, or Tsojconth in the original.
Another sequel of sorts was The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga. Published much later in 1995 for 2nd Ed AD&D and written by Lisa Smedman, this adventure was labeled "S5" but it never appears in any of the classic reprints of the S Series adventures. While the connection is little more than any of the other "S" series, there is the connection of Iggwilv, then Tasha as the adopted daughter of Baba Yaga. Lisa Smedman would also work on Ravenloft and ShadowRun. Some Ravenloft monsters make their way into this adventure.
Yet again another sequel, this time for 3.5 D&D, was published in 2007. Iggwilv's Legacy was published in Dungeon Magazine in October 2007 and appeared for free on Wizard's of the Coast website well into the 4e era. Sadly no longer available, it added another level to the caverns to explore, The Hollow of the Horn, the areas left behind by Tsojancth himself with the implication that even Iggwilv was afraid of these areas. The adventure and the additions were converted and updated to 3rd Edition. I ran this version for my family at their first Gen Con in 2009. Here we meet the half-demon archmage Tsojcanth and his vile witch mother Vilhara.
The Reprints
As part of the much-loved S-series, the Lost Caverns of Tsojanth has been reprinted twice. Both times bundled with the other three S-series adventures.
The first reprint was called Realms of Horror and it was all the S-series adventures combined into a loosely tied together "Super Module" that was all the rage in the late 80s. All the maps were reprinted in a small booklet and personally, I found them harder to read.
The second reprint was the more faithful reprint from Wizards of the Coast, Dungeons of Dread, in 2013.
The Original Tournament AdventureThe original tournament adventure, the Lost Caverns of Tsojconth (note the spelling) appeared at the Wintercon V game convention in 1976. This would have been akin to a playtest version of AD&D. Also Iggwilv is described as being dead, and male.
While the adventure does not feature the wilderness areas, the caverns seem to have a more mystical bent to them, with the center "nexus" described as the connection point between worlds to help explain all the new and weird monsters in it. It would make sense, to be honest, and help explain why Tsojcanth and later Iggwilv possessed it.
Paleologos at the OSR Grimoire talks a lot about the original Lost Caverns of Tsojconth.
Playing in HyperboreaNormally at this point in my Revisted posts I would talk about using this adventure with other games. But instead, I think I just want to focus purely on Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.
A while back I posted about HS4 The Lost Caverns of Acheron, a Hyborian Age reskinning of S4 from the Hyborian Age site dedicated to the d20 Conan RPG. They have a lot of adventures including some reskinned ones on their Adventures in the Hyborian Age page. But it is S4 that interests me today.
Combining this idea with the Holmes flavored Tsojconth above you could have a perfect game for AS&SH. The idea came to me while reading Eric Fabiaschi's Swords & Stitchery blog. He even pointed to me that he had done exactly this.
The pulp sensibilities of Gygax's adventures comes through in S4 with vampires in lost temples, ancient eldritch forces, and strange creatures from beyond. Pairing this with AS&SH and the Lost Caverns of Acheron turns it up to 11 as it were.
With its history of magic, archmages, witch queens, vampires, and demons it is no wonder that this is one of my favorite adventures. Like B1, it is one I like to come back to again and again.
Today is the day I was waiting for. The release of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. I just picked it up about an hour ago so I have not had a chance to get into it in detail, but here are some initial thoughts. I am also going to talk about it from the point of view of an Old School Gamer and how well does it mesh with the established history of Iggwilv.
The Book
The book itself is 192 pages, full color. Both covers retail at $49.95.
The big update here is the various classes and subclasses. We get a new(ish) class, The Artificer, bringing the total to 13 classes for D&D. The artificer gets the subclasses Alchemist, Armorer, Artillerist and Battle Smith.
Each of the 12 standard classes also gets one or more new subclasses. Also, many of the spellcasting classes get new spells, detailed later. There are a lot here, among the one I like the best are Cleric Twilight Domain, Druid Circle of Stars, Fighter Rune Knights and Psi Warrior, this is in addition to all sorts of maneuvers the fighter can get for the Battle Master. The Ranger gets the Fey Wanderer, the Rogue gets the likely new favorite. The Wizard gets another Bladesinger (not sure how different this one is) and one I am looking forward to trying the Order of the Scribe. There are a lot more, but those are the ones I want to try.
One of the new ideas is Group Patrons.
These are essentially people, things or organizations that fund your characters' adventuring career. This is something that was kinda done ad-hoc or less explicitly. This entire section can be used AS IS in any version of D&D with no changes.
A book about/by/from Tasha would not be complete without new Magic. In this case some new spells and magic items. We get some explicit spells for traveling to other D&D worlds, as befitting Tasha.
Some old familiar items back their 5e comeback including Baba Yaga's Mortar and Pestle, the Crook of Rao, The Mighty Servant of Leuk-O, and the Demonomicon of Iggwilv. There are also rules on personalizing spells and some magical tattoos.
The is also a section on DM's Tools. This can also be adopted by players of any version of the game. There is some advice on Session Zero which includes how did the party come together, a useful bit in light of the new Patron rules. A bit on social contracts as well as hard and soft limits.
Something sort of new is the idea of Sidekicks. These are "semi" or NPC classes that go along with the party or adventurer. These are a restating of the 3.x Edition NPC classes from the Unearthed Arcana' Warrior, Expert, and Spellcaster. Substitute Fighter, Thief, and Magic-User if your version is older and you can do the exact same thing.
There is a section on parleying with monsters, something I have seen used since the Moldvay Basic set. Environmental hazards of supernatural, natural, and magical regions.
And the puzzles. Again easily used as-is for any versions of the game.
So like it says on the tin, a little bit of everything.
I was talking with my friend Greg just a bit ago and not only did we just miss each other at our FLGS, he said the book has a solid Unearthed Arcana feel to it. I have to agree.
Is it Tasha?
Iggwilv is a storied character in D&D lore. But in truth what we know about her is very, very limited. For 1st Edition AD&D we know her from the modules S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojanth and WG4 The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun. Most other details come to us from 2nd ed and beyond. Maybe the most we learn from her is actually from 3.x era. So to make the claim "is this Gary's Tasha/Iggwilv" is a fallacious one; there never was a Gary's Tasha. "She" was, in fact, a "He" in the first drafts of the "Lost Caverns of Tsojconth."
There are little sidebars and enough information here to make a few things clear. This is Tasha before she became Iggwilv. So I am placing it at or around CY 395 to CY 406 (Current year is CY 597 or so). This Tasha has wit and charm and maybe a little bit of a caustic or salty sense of humor. She is not really interested in killing Mordenkainen (nor really do I think she ever was) but she does want to take him down a peg or two.
She acknowledges she was Hura (Hura appears in Ket around CY 297) and plenty of references to Baba Yaga. This is very much the remembrances of a powerful spell caster on what would be considered her "University Years."
Is it Tasha? Yes. This is the person that would later go on to become the ruthless and amoral Witch Queen Iggwilv. Spend some time as a prisoner of a Demon Prince, especially one as depraved as Graz'zt, and see if that doesn't change you a little.
The art really gives you the feeling of "brilliant university girl trying to show her teachers she is smarter than they are" vibe.
Old School Content
I mentioned in a few places that there is a lot here that old-school D&D players can use and that is true.
A lot of it can be used right out of the book as-is. The classes would need some work, but as many in the old school community are so quick to point out that the differences are largely one of role-playing. Ok, here are some role-playing ideas.
Some things, like the fighter maneuvers, feel like they could be right at home in BECMI. The tattoos, something I have used here before, can be easily translated.
Was it worth the wait? Yeah, I say it was. Looking forward to trying some of the ideas here.
Things it Didn't Cover that I Wish it Had
Or. I just have not found them yet.
I would have liked to know more about Tasha's face tattoo and why Iggwilv no longer has it. Related when did Tasha's stop calling herself that and instead became Iggwilv. We do learn that her tattoo is an Eldritch Claw tattoo.
Given her timeline, I am sure it had a lot to do with her summoning of Graz'zt and her imprisonment in the Abyss. Also likely around the time she fled Greyhawk with the Tome of Zyx.
Definitely, a lot to use in this book.
Mike Apichella / November 17, 2020
The first music videos to air on MTV and broadcast television were chaotic blurts of arty nonsense defined by pastel colors, cheesy dance party theatrics, and avant-garde visual effects. Often realized by student auteurs working with little to no budget, even the weirdest of these clips didn’t aim for scares.
Early heavy metal videos were an exception. Sans any playful abstraction, these emerged as S&M nightmares brandishing dystopian, Mario Bava-esque atmospherics, and other classic horror movie elements. Iron Maiden, W.A.S.P., Ratt, Mötley Crüe, Judas Priest, and the ever disturbing Ozzy Osbourne were some of the earliest metal acts to dabble in these themes, and headbangers were mega-stoked to find their favorite shredders interspersed among skinny tie New Wave bands, foppish New Romantics, Barnes & Barnes’ “Fish Heads,” and all the other tamer acts that typically formed music video programming in the age before American Idol and reality shows.
No heavy metal chiller got more immersive or confrontational than the 1984 video Don Coscarelli directed for Dio’s “The Last In Line” (watch it here). By ‘84, Coscarelli was already well known in the genre circuit for cult classics like Phantasm (1979) and The Beastmaster (1982). The work he turned in here is a claustrophobic melange of suspense and political subtext, overflowing with scenes of torture and psychological horror.
The clip starts off with a courier (child star Meeno Peluce) bicycling in a peaceful California suburb, gliding through a squeaky clean business district. Sporting long curls, a dangling earing, and tight Levi’s, it would’ve been tough to find another actor who looked more like a young suburban rocker. Once he arrives at his office-plex destination, a beardo in an old sports car (Dio member Claude Schnell) gestures ominously with the sign of the horns, possibly an attempt to stop the kid from entering the glassy industrial space. Confused and annoyed, the teenager avoids the mysterious hairball. As he enters the building, the music chimes along with a folky lilt and forlorn vocals describing “a ship without a storm.”
The kid gets in the elevator, going up, then makes a sudden high speed plummet as the guitar distortion kicks in, crashing deep beneath the Earth’s crust. The elevator doors open to an attack of screaming riffage that ushers our hero into a murky, post-industrial Hades. Freakish processions of enslaved deformity mob the kid: shambolic zombies, doomed souls covered in infectious scars and pockmarks, and hastily assembled androids (including one that’s extremely Borg-like in appearance, years before the Star Trek: The Next Generation characters made their debut). The hapless creatures are pressed into electronic torture chambers by cyborg storm troopers armed with glow-in-the-dark cattle prods.
Several images here signify economic blight. One zombie can be seen clutching a grocery cart filled with sundry garbage (a boom box, a broken record, scraps of fabric) while dressed in a tattered trench coat. A balding middle-aged man limps along in filthy business attire wearing a cracked pair of reading glasses. Their vacant stares are fearsome, but also touched with overarching sadness and tragedy. Some of the less monstrous extras appear to be outcasts from L.A.’s Skid Row (whose hordes of homeless the LAPD was desperately trying to “clean up” on the eve of the 1984 Summer Olympics).
Of the video’s many scenes of suffering, there are two big standouts. The first occurs as our hero finds a fenced-in arcade where kids are chained to video game machines. Their wrists are locked in manacles that shock them whenever they make a mistake. If they lose a game, they’re fried to death. An obvious interpretation here involves criticism of consumer culture and the moral panic surrounding video games.
Another interpretation involves game theory—the belief that dog-eat-dog competition is a major building block of civilization. So Long Sucker (originally Fuck You Buddy) was a board game co-created by the infamous RAND Corporation and Nobel prize-winning mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr., a paranoid schizophrenic whose battles with mental health weren’t publicly known until several years after his research had concluded. In the early 1950s, Nash and RAND conducted a series of experiments in which people were monitored while playing So Long Sucker. They hoped the project would yield undeniable scientific proof of game theory’s validity. According to RAND’s own documentation, their first experiment was a failure; the others were successful, but occurred in an environment much more tightly controlled than that of the first one. Regardless, after many years of therapy and introspection, Nash later declared his belief in game theory to be nothing more than a bi-product of the paranoia brought on by his mental illness.
The deadly arcade serves as the proving ground for this cynical realm, ruled by a mutant military-industrial establishment. The players here, like the protagonist, are teens. Unlike the other haggard rogues, they’re fresh-faced and clean cut. The arcade of doom pinpoints and rewards those driven by the insane competition while rooting out and killing those who are not addicted to conquest. Presumably whoever endures gets a special place in the wretched promenade.
The scariest torture scene unfolds when Peluce’s character wanders into a theater where another large group of teens have been fastened to metal racks, their mouths stuffed with big red ball gags, foreheads primed for lobotomizing. They all face a giant screen TV that plays footage of singer Ronnie James Dio belting out incendiary lyrics:
Two eyes from the east
It’s The Angel or The Beast
And the answer lies between the good and bad
We search for the truth
We could die upon the tooth
But the thrill of just the chase is worth the pain
In the track notes of the 2003 Dio anthology Stand Up and Shout, the singer described “The Last In Line” as an open-ended tribute to perseverance: “This song has many interpretations. You could be the last in line meaning, oh shit, all the good stuff is already gone. Or you could be the last, the strongest, and, to me, it’s always been that, the perseverance that comes from going through challenges in life. And when you get to the end and you’re the last one standing, and you ask yourself, ‘Was it worth it?’ You better say yes. That’s gonna be my answer.” The song’s revelatory chorus reinforces this sentiment:
We’ll know for the first time
If we’re evil or divine
We’re the last in line!
See how we shine!
No one goes further with over-the-top theatrics than Ronnie James Dio himself. The guttural overlord gets to do all the things that have rightfully made him a superhero to generations of heavy metal fans. In many scenes he’s shown standing on a bonafide pedestal! His greatest moments come at the end of the clip with a hilarious sequence that’d be a spoiler if given any detailed description.
The other Dio band members also get interesting cameos. They emerge as impartial overseers breaking the netherworld tension by hamming it up in one ridiculous arena rock pose after another. Along with Schnell’s cryptic allusion are the scenes where drummer Vinny Appice flails away at a zany bronto-bone drum kit, while guitarist Vivian Campbell solos atop a bashed up car before an adoring crowd of zombies all clad in skull-crunching electrodes that are actually hooked into his axe. The rapt attention that the ragged zombies give to Campbell and his guitar’s connection to their head gear combine to symbolize another great creator of iconic ‘80’s trance states: the Sony Walkman and similar portable stereo devices, distractions that could just as easily enhance or annihilate reality. The scene also refers to another great moral panic of the time: the idea that heavy rock could turn people into disciples of Satan. It was one of many irrational fears that inspired the anti-metal crusades of The PMRC and other right-wing Christian groups.
Just like the dehumanizing repetition of factory work or the brain melt one experiences while stuck at the local post office or DMV, the prisoners keep on marching around and around, enduring the same endless cavalcade of machine-induced humiliation. In harmony with the lyrical themes, Peluce’s character stays focused on survival from start to finish, even when fear seems to control every expression. Coscarelli’s horrors only encourage the kid to resist the overwhelming bleakness.
While videos for tracks like The Plasmatics‘ “The Damned” and Motley Crue’s “Looks That Kill” prominently featured dystopian aesthetics, “The Last In Line” is one of the few clips to serve as an unflinching commentary on defying the apocalypse. Don Coscarelli turned the Dio anthem into an ideal soundtrack for Reagan-induced nightmares of cruelty and destruction. Grotesque monsters, wayward youth, and the impoverished are all enslaved in the same excruciating hell—what lies beneath the glassy veneer of the suburban industrial park. To find a way out of this infernal world the young courier must move against the tide of pain. His will to survive—tenacious individualism is another Reagan-era requisite—provides the only path to freedom.
Mike Apichella has been working in the arts since 1991. He is a writer, multimedia artist, musician, and a founder of Human Host and the archival project Towson-Glen Arm Freakouts. Under his real name and various pseudonyms, his work has been published by Splice Today, Profligate, Human Conduct Press, and several DIY zines. Mike currently lives in the northeast US where he aspires to someday become the “crazy cat man” of his neighborhood.
"Downward to the Earth" by Robert Silverberg, 1981
"The Orchid Cage" by Herbert W. Franke, 1978
The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum, 1977
"Brainrack" by Gerry Davis/Kit Pedler, 1976
"Desert of Fog and Ashes" by Joan Trigo, 1978
The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, 25th Anniversary Anthology, 1976
"The Green Brain" by Frank Herbert, 1978
"The I. Q. Merchant" by John Boyd, 1977
"Our Children's Children" by Clifford D. Simak, 1976
"Before the Golden Age" Isaac Asimov, 1976
"In 1976, the year after the death of Spanish military dictator Francisco Franco, Barcelona publisher Ediciones Martínez Roca launched its Colección "Super Ficción series—an eclectic collection of science fiction novels—with Los Hijos de Nuestros Hijos, a Spanish translation of Clifford Simak’s Our Children’s Children. Los Hijos de Nuestros Hijos and the titles that initially followed it featured cover art created for UK publisher Penguin’s science fiction series. They were the work of David Pelham, who was then Penguin’s art director, as well as the artist behind many of the company’s most memorable covers (one of the best-known being Penguin’s 1972 re-release of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange). ""While in the process of commissioning German surrealist "Konrad Klapheck to provide covers for 1974 reissues of several of J.G. Ballard’s early novels, Pelham took it upon himself, at Ballard’s urging, to realize some of the ideas himself, and it was these that Penguin ended up using.
For the cover of its edition of Jack Williamson’s The Legion of Space, the ninth release in the series, Ediciones Martínez Roca turned to artist Horacio Salinas Blanch. Over the following decade, Salinas Blanch would produce dozens of covers for Colección "Super Ficción". Although his illustration for La Legión del Espacio was relatively restrained, Salinas Blanch’s work—presumably under the instructions of the publishers—took as its template the airbrushed aesthetic of "Pelham’s Ballard covers, where odd juxtapositions of forms rendered with eerie smoothness hovered in isolation against brooding backgrounds. Salinas Blanch, though, approached the concept through his own otherworldly, idiosyncratic lens: pop culture reimagined as art, reimagined once again as pop culture, a circular transformation of which it seems reasonable to presume Ballard would have approved. Salinas Blanch’s" mixture of airbrushed unreality, pop-art surrealism, and lunatic dreamscapes reads like some crazed cocktail of Pelham and the other artists of the day who were working in a similar visual idiom—names like Peter Haars, Peter Tybus, Heinz Edelmann, Peter Lloyd, Bob Pepper, and Alan Aldridge.
No slouch at an inspired rip-off (see his take on Pelham’s cover for Fred Hoyle’s October the First Is Too Late, which Ediciones Martínez Rocahad already used for its cover of a collection of Robert Heinlein’s Lazarus Long stories), Salinas Blanch was not above directly cannibalizing his inspirations, as in this cover art for 1978’s Del Triunfo a la Derrota by Spanish anarchist journalist Jacinto Toryho, where he recycles "Pelham’s Big Boy from the cover of The Terminal Beach, adding a series of powerful details—the low light source, long shadows, and target on the ground. Salinas" Blanch’s other work included cover art for the Spanish translation of Mary Lee Dunn and John Maguire’s book on the Jonestown mass suicide, Hold Hands and Die!, where he offered up a compellingly dreamlike revisitation of an image as famous as it is awful.
Cynical plagiarist, pragmatic jobbing scribbler, or a genuine visionary? It’s hard to say—practically no information about Horacio Salinas Blanch is to be found outside of his corpus of work: his covers, which inhabit the happy intersection of crowd-pleasing commercial interest and fine art inspiration passed through many hands as in a game of telephone, creating something at once known and strange, like some shared archetypal folk memory.
It’s one of the great truisms and paradoxes that it’s occasionally imitation—especially imitation of the crassest, most commercially-driven type—that highlights the essence of what makes something engaging, either by contrasting it with an inferior copy or, as in the case of Horacio Salinas Blanch, by reiterating and mutating the source material until a perfect synthesis of what makes it strange and beautiful has been achieved—and until the imitation itself has become something strange and beautiful too." - quote taken from an excellent article on the artist with additional artworks at We Are The Mutants.
It's Tasha's Week of Everything this week here at the Other Side. So I thought I'd start Monstrous Mondays with a monster that has been suggested to me over the years.Today's monster comes from a variety of sources. First, there is Iggwilv-Louhi connection that I talked about it in the Finish Mythos. Louhi, despite being an old witch is said to have lovely maiden daughters that the heroes often seek out. By extension shouldn't Iggwilv have some daughters too?
If we go with "yes" (and I always go with yes) then there are two issues, what are they like and who is the father. Let's go with the father question first. Among the candidates of "people" she has been involved with include the Demon Prince Fraz-Urb'luu, the half-demon Arch-Mage Tsojcanth, the wizard Zagig Yragerne, even Mordenkainen himself is a possibility and of course the Demon Prince Graz'zt.
We know all about Iggwilv's love affair with Graz'zt. We know from other sources, chiefly the Gygax Greyhawk novels, that Iuz is the offspring of Iggwilv and Graz'zt. Or maybe not. In the World of Greyhawk Fantasy Game Setting entry for Iuz it is suggested that he is "some by-blow of Orcus." I personally liked the idea that Orcus had mortal agents in the world. While this idea was later dropped it became an element of the Forgotten Realms, where I think it works out a little better. But it still is a tantalizing idea.
While Louhi might have daughters known as "the Maidens of Pohjola" I am not expecting Iggwilv's daughters to be so innocent. Her only other daughter, Drelnza, was a vampire, described as a "false Disney Princess" (she is not the damsel in distress, she is the monster), and most certainly not the offspring of Graz'zt. Going back to the Louhi/Lovitar connection for a bit, Lovitar is known as the mother of the Nine Diseases. Nine is a good number.
I think I have something.When Iggwilv was defeated by Graz'zt the former master was now the slave. Graz'zt had intended to keep the fallen Witch Queen in the Abyss to have her suffer an eternity of imprisonment as she had kept him. Iggwilv however was more clever than the Demon Prince knew and soon she went from prisoner to consort, to confidant to his main advisor. While she was rising in the ranks of Graz'zt courts she was "traded" to the Demon Prince Orcus over a loss Graz'zt had suffered at the hands of the Demon Prince of undead.
Taken from Azzagrat in chains she arrived in Thanatos at the feet of the Lord of Undead to serve a tredecim (13 years) of service between CY 503 and CY 516.
Enraged, Iggwilv plotted revenge on both Graz'zt and Orcus. Her carefully constructed lies and seductions learned from Fraz-Urb'luu that were so effective on Graz'zt held no sway on Orcus. Save for the occasional bit of violence Orcus showed no interest in the Witch Queen other than to deprive Graz'zt of her. Within that century though Iggwilv gave birth to nine daughters that she was able to keep secret from both Orcus and Graz'zt. These nine daughters were all of the same fierce, dark beauty as their mother, but had the taint of undeath like their father. In secret, Iggwilv taught her daughters the ways of witchcraft and fashioned Abyssal weapons for each of them. Once they were grown their curse of undeath took hold and they became something akin to vampires. Iggwilv sent them into the world to cause as much havoc and chaos as they could and, most importantly act against the designs and will of both Graz'zt and Orcus.
Noidan Tytär
The Noidan Tytär, or Daughters of the Witch, are a unique group of undead demonically spawned creatures. These creatures, as beautiful as they are powerful, evil and deadly, are thankfully very, very rare. In fact, only nine are known to exist. Thankfully they also never work together by order of their mother the Witch Queen.
Each of the Noidan Tytär is a skilled fighter and possesses both superior arms and armor. Typically magical plate mail of etherealness +2, and a bastard vorpal sword +2 that they wield with one hand due to their preternatural strength.
In addition to their fighting ability, the Noidan Tytär are also undead akin to vampires. Magic is required to hit them and they are immune to charm, hold and sleep magic as well as any mind-affecting magics. Unlike vampires, they do not require blood to survive but drain the life energy (Constitution points) at the rate of 2 points per touch. They can go long periods without feeding but it will cause them to go into a deep stupor until a victim can be found. They can not enter a personal dwelling or holy/blessed land like a vampire and holy items can keep them at bay and cause damage. They are however immune to the effects of garlic. A stake through the heart will destroy them, but if the stake is removed they will reform in one round. They can become gaseous, but cannot assume the shapes of animals. They can fly as per the spell.
They can be Turned as Special (14 HD) by a cleric of high enough level. Any result of a D only discorporates them until the next new moon. The only way to truly destroy them is stake them, remove their head, and burn both the body and head in separate pyres. An exorcism or cleanse spell must then be used to force their spirits back to the Abyss.
Additionally, each Noidan Tytär can cast spells as a 7th level witch of the Mara Tradition.
The Noidan Tytär are often used as mercenaries for powerful chaotic rulers, demon lords, and evil cults. Secretly they work to undo the efforts of Graz'zt and Orcus.
Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was a Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...
Name: Endless LightYou know I love my theme-Weeks. On Tuesday we get the new "Tasha's Cauldron of Everything" from Wizards of the Coast featuring Tasha, aka Natasha the Dark aka Iggwilv.
So far we have learned that this book will be focusing on the younger Tasha. The girl who was adopted by Baba Yaga. While I have always thought that Eva Green would make a fantastic Iggwilv, here is cosplayer, D&D streamer, and all-around cool gal Ginny Di cosplaying AS Tasha in a WotC sponsored shoot.
Her Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/p/CHdiPg0FUgb/
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Ginny Di ???? #Natural2021 (@itsginnydi) on Nov 11, 2020 at 11:02am PST
And her YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySRmaMYaV6I
This is just another example of what I love about the new gamers to D&D, they bring so much love and energy to their creations in and out of the game.
Let's hope the book lives up to all this hype. But even if it doesn't this has all still been great fun!
As a country, Spain is rarely visited by roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror—and when they do, it is primarily during periods of great conflict or turbulence, such as the Spanish Inquisition of fifteenth and sixteenth century or the Spanish Civil War of the nineteen thirties. Examples of the latter include ‘No Pasaran!’ from the Miskatonic University Library Association monograph Shadows of War: Four Scenarios Set In and Around the Second World War published by Chaosium, Inc. for Call of Cthulhu and Soldiers of Pen and Ink, a scenario for Pelgrane Press’ RPG of clue orientated Lovecraftian investigative horror, Trail of Cthulhu, whilst ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ in Strange Aeons from Chaosium, Inc. and ‘Fires of Hatred Defile the Sky’ in Red Eye of Azathoth: Unspeakable Adventures Straddling a Millennium by Open Design, LLC, are examples of the former. There is not even a Call of Cthulhu campaign supplement for Spain in any period, so it was pleasing to see to see the publication of Campo De Mitos: A Campaign Setting of Lovecraftian Mythology Based in El Campo De Gibraltar, despite the fact that it is not a Call of Cthulhu campaign supplement for Spain. Rather, it is a campaign supplement for part of southern Spain, the ‘El Campo De Gibraltar’ of the subtitle, focusing in particular upon the town of Algeciras. Also pleasingly, it is written by a native, Paco García Jaén, and it is systemless, which means that its contents can be adapted for use with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, Trail of Cthulhu, or the roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative of your choice. However, Campo De Mitos is also the first book from a new publisher, Mindscape Publishing, and that is not without its consequences.Presenting a fictionalised rather than a historical version of the town and region, specifically in 1924, Campo De Mitos is designed as a sort of sandbox, the Investigators able to go anywhere and encounter anyone in the region, but particularly in the town of Algeciras. Primarily the sandbox is built around numerous NPCs and their places of work, whether that is Manolo the ‘Ice Cream Man’, a street vendor who sells ice cream, sweets, and treats all year round from his cart in the Plaza Alta in the centre of the town, or Anselmo Arrubal, the quiet and fastidious, but also misogynist owner of Santos Bookstore, who worked with Aleister Crowley to open up access to a seemly infinite library behind the counter of the bookshop. Being a systemless book, none of the NPCs have any stats, but what they do have is a set of three profiles—friendly, neutral, and antagonist, each of which sets their attitude towards not just the Investigators, but also other NPCs, who in turn will also have their own attitudes towards the Investigators and other NPCs. This is a nice, simple gauge that helps the Game Master roleplay each NPC when the Investigators interact with them.
The various locations in Algeciras are all outwardly ordinary, ranging from La Alicantina Pastry Shop to the Post and Telegraph Office. Some are, of course, inherently Spanish, such as the Convent Of San José, the Bullring La Perseverancia, and the White Cross Monastery, and their inclusion go towards emphasising the atmosphere and feel of the town and region—which are obviously different to that of locations typically seen in Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying. All of the locations and NPCs have their secrets, many of them weird or odd, or connected to the Mythos. Some of them are perhaps in terms of Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying prosaic, but others are inventive and engaging. For example, the Juan Moya Barbershop whose owner is renowned for the ointments, balms, and other concoctions he has on his shelves, many of which repulse women as much as they attract men. Juan Moya mixes them from the plants he harvests from the Dreamlands, not by going into the Dreamlands himself, but by reaching into the Dreamlands via a portal he is able to open in the basement of his shop.
Throughout the book, boxed sections add adventure seeds and little snippets of background material, typically where they relate to a location or establishment being described, such as the box discussing female bullfighters next to the description of the Bullring La Perseverancia. Beyond Algeciras, there are entries on a handful of nearby towns and villages, including the surprisingly nearby Rock of Gibraltar, which has been in British possession for over two centuries. A Bestiary also describes a number of creatures and beings. They include a Cyäegha Tick, a rare parasite which feeds on its host’s brain energy and amplifies it in psionic attacks, as well as turning the host into a tentacles ending stingers, eyes, and tweezer-like claws; the sea-dwelling, mermaid-like Gnorri which have asymmetrical arms and long tails and little regard for humanity; and Meigas, beings of the Dreamlands which appear as women when on Earth, and which come in various types. For example, the Feiticeira, or Sorceress, is ancient and lives near rivers or streams and uses its hypnotically beautiful voice to attract children, and then drown and devour them, or the Vedoira, slender and pleasant diviners, who for a price, can contact someone in the afterlife and determine whether he is enjoying eternity in Heaven or is still in Purgatory. Many of these are drawn from Spanish folklore, but others will be familiar from other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror. It would have been nice to have seen some of these used in the supplement’s setting content, but the Game Master will have to do that herself.
Physically, Campo De Mitos is a handsome book and the publisher has put a great deal of thought into the choice of period appropriate photographs and had it illustrated with some delightful artwork that looks great in greyscale, but really makes you wish that the book was in colour. However, the book lacks any usable map of any kind, either of Spain, the region of El Campo De Gibraltar, or indeed, of Algeciras. Which hinders the supplement’s intended use as a sandbox. That though, is not the real issue with Campo De Mitos. Nor is the fact that entries in the index refer to the wrong pages. The real issue with Campo De Mitos is that it has not been professionally edited and as a consequence, it reads poorly, it is obvious that English is not the author’s first language, and it lacks the development necessary to make it an accessible, easily referenced, and easily utilised sourcebook for the region it sets out to describe. To be clear, the English is not necessarily bad English—the author’s English is infinitely superior to the reviewer’s Spanish, but to a native speaker it simply does not read sufficiently natural. Thus, Campo De Mitos needs editing, needs localising, and needs developing—and the latter would probably have solved the supplement’s other issues and pushed the supplement towards what author and publisher intended it to be.
As a supplement dealing with Spain—or at least a part of a region of Spain—in 1924, it does not pull back enough to introduce to the country as a whole. There is no idea of its politics, its religions, its culture, and so on, or how to get there during the Jazz Age. From a roleplaying point of view, it does not address what type of Investigators might be found there or ask if there are any careers that they might have which are common or native to the setting. There are mentions of historical events, but which are completely left unexplored. For example, the Rif War is mentioned, but no explanation of who, what, and why it is, is given. As a consequence, Campo De Mitos lacks context and feels disconnected from the rest of the world, let alone the rest of Spain.
In terms of its descriptions, Algeciras fluctuates in size—from village to city, and back again; numerous details are added, often suggesting mysteries, but very rarely with any explanation and simply left as unknown; and too many of the NPCs in Campo De Mitos share traits in common, such as having perfect recall as to their clients and what they purchased or reasons for coming to the region and Algeciras, and that they keep secret—from both their fellow townsfolk and the Game Master! Also, so many of them possess strange devices whose origins and workings are left up to the Game Master to determine. For example, a pair of needles which ease the creation of fine ladies’ hats, the hats when worn imparting a sense of euphoria to the wearer and the needles when inserted into the spine, travelling up into the brain to take possession of the victim’s consciousness—to unpredictable effects. The effects are left up to the reader or Game Master to decide, as are the origins of the needles, just as the secrets of too many NPCs are left to the Game Master to decide and develop.
In terms of the Mythos, Campo De Mitos again suffers from inconsistency. For example, for all that Algeciras is a port town and that the Deep Ones have played a role in the region, they are barely mentioned, whereas Ghouls have strong ties to the town’s cemeteries and authorities. However, the Ghouls themselves are left unexplored—and the same can be said of the Mi-go, who also have had a presence in the region. As to other entities and races of the Mythos, there is no mention. Of course, there are limitations upon what such elements from Lovecraft’s fiction can be used, but Campo De Mitos does not sufficiently develop the ones it does use—or at least mention. And whilst the supplement does provide an overview of the Mythos in the region, it is again underwritten and underdeveloped.
Campo De Mitos is not without its charm, which shows in its artwork, its atmosphere and feel for small town life in Southern Spain, and some of its ideas. Yet the fundamental failure to either edit or develop the supplement sufficiently leaves a prospective Game Master with too much to decide or create on her own. For the publisher, Campo De Mitos: A Campaign Setting of Lovecraftian Mythology Based in El Campo De Gibraltar can be described as a flawed, but not unworthy first effort, and definitely something to learn from. In the meantime, Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying awaits the publication of a good supplement dealing with Spain.
Warplanning and Intelligence units have complied with a request from the Secretary to the Consul and developed an inventory of warfare related assets of the Freestate. It's an important document, and will guide the parameters of the modernization program. Now for a long stretch out and some hot tea...
In the ecologically ravaged future, twelve billion people live on Earth in environmentally sealed kilometre high city blocks clustered around ‘lungs’, the colossal city-sized atmosphere processors located on the coasts. They grow and process the algae that provides humanity with air, and eventually, food. Life is about surviving, but there is a way to make it better—work in space. Sign up to crew the service vessels maintaining stations, outposts, and mines in other star systems; the tugboats hauling the refineries back to Earth; the Arbiter ships as Colonial Marshals investigating crimes on behalf of the Interstellar Department of Trading; as military units preventing (or even conducting) civil unrest or hostile takeovers; as scientific survey teams; or as Deep Space Support Teams—DSSTs, or ‘Dusters’, effectively serving as troubleshooters for their employers. Last twenty-five years and you get to retire to a life of luxury. However, it is not that easy… Space travel takes time. Even with the Gravity Assisted Drive, a minimum of a week per light year. It means that trips can take months with most of that time spent in LongSleep. Fortunately, that time counts towards time served. When not in LongSleep crews work to maintain their ship, because if anything went wrong, it could be weeks before anyone responded. Starships are not luxurious, but places to work and protect you from the vacuum of space, radiation, and random asteroids. Yet despite the safety standards, there are budget considerations, especially if your employer is a corporation, and whilst your ship might protect you, it will still have been built on the cheap. The same goes for outposts and mining facilities and the few settlements on other worlds—for no one has struck it lucky and found the equivalent of an Earth as she was planet. So living and working space is rough, hard, and sometimes lonely. And that is before you consider the dangers of corporate feuds, off-the-books scientific research, the psychological stresses of working cooped up with others for long periods, and then there is always the unknown…
This is the set-up for Those Dark Places: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying, a roleplaying game inspired by the Blue Collar Science Fiction of the nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties, such as Alien, Outland, Silent Running, and Blade Runner, plus computer games like Dead Space. Published by OspreyGames—the imprint of Osprey Publishing best known for its highly illustrated military history books—Those Dark Places is its third roleplaying game after Paleomythic and Romance of the Perilous Land. Although it very much wears its influences on the hard-wearing material of its sleeves, Those Dark Places is not necessarily a Science Fiction roleplaying game in which the crew will encounter strange aliens which morph into xenomorphs that want to hunt them and turn them into incubators. This is not to say that it could not be, but that is very down to what type of game that the General Monitor—as the Game Master is known in Those Dark Places—wants to run. Instead it is a game of environmental horror and dread, of loneliness and fear, of stress and strain, at the limits of mankind’s survival. Expect encounters with crazed killers driven to madness and murder by loneliness and never being able to walk under an open sky—or poisoned by their environment or the drugs they have been taking to numb the boredom; feuds over scientific discoveries and research which have escalated from industrial espionage to open conflict between corporate militaries; scientific discoveries and research gone to devastatingly deadly effect and which a corporation will do anything to cover up or prevent from being stolen; and more…
A Crew Member is defined by his name and description, CASE File, Crew Positions he is qualified for, and Pressure. His CASE File represents his actual attributes—Charisma-Agility-Strength-Education, which are rated between one and four. It should be noted that Strength works as the equivalent of a Crew Member’s Hit Points, as well as his physical presence. His Crew Position can be Helm Officer, Navigation Officer, Science Officer, Security Officer, Liaison Officer, Engineering Officer, or Medical Officer. To create a Crew Member, a player assigns values of one, two, three, and four to his Crew Member’s CASE File. Then he selects his Crew Member’s primary Crew Position, which is rated at +2, and his secondary Crew Position, which is rated at +1. The process is as simple as that!
Warrant Officer Grieg is an Engineering Officer aboard the CSV Lullaby, a commercial tug owned by Bellerophon Incorporated. He is six years into his contract and is a strong advocate of workers’ rights. He is always the Union representative on any vessel he serves aboard.
Oran Greig
Charisma 3 Agility 1 Strength 4 Education 2
Pressure: 6
Pressure Level: 0
Crew Position: Engineering (Primary)
Crew Position: Liaison (Secondary)
Mechanically, Those Dark Places is very simple and requires no more than a six-sided die or two per player. To have his Crew Member undertake a task, a player rolls a six-sided die and adds the values for the appropriate Attribute and Crew Position. The target difficulty is typically seven, but may be adjusted down to six if easier, or up to eight if more difficult. If the task warrants it, rolling the target number exactly counts as a partial success rather than a complete success. In that case, the player needs to roll over the target difficulty. Combat uses the same mechanics, with damage inflicted being deducted from an opponent’s Strength. A Crew Member is unconscious when his Strength is reduced to zero and dead when it drops to minus two. Sample damage is just one for a punch, three for a pistol, and four for a rifle.
However, Those Dark Places does get more complex when dealing with stress and difficult situations, or Pressure. A Crew Member has a Pressure Bonus, equal to his Strength and Education, and a Pressure Level, which runs from one to six. A Pressure Roll is made when a Crew Member is under duress or stress, and all a player has to do is roll a six-sided die and add his Crew Member’s Pressure Bonus to beat a difficulty number of ten. Succeed and the Crew Member withstands the stress of the situation, but fail and his Pressure Level rises by one level. However, when a Crew Member’s Pressure Level rises to two, and each time it rises another level due to a failed Pressure Roll, the Crew Member’s player rolls a six-sided die and the result is under the current value of his Pressure Level, the Crew Member suffers an Episode. This requires a roll on the Episode table, the results ranging from ‘In Shock’ and losing points from a Crew Member’s Attributes , up through Rigid, Catatonia, and ‘Insane Fear and Driven to Violent Flight’. Whenever a Crew Member’s player needs to make a roll on the Episode Table, the maximum result possible is limited by the Crew Member’s Pressure Level. So at Pressure Level 3, a Crew Member can only be In Shock and suffer points lost from either his Agility or Strength, but not anything worse.
One issue with Pressure Level and Episodes is that a Crew Member cannot immediately recover from either. It takes time in LongSleep or back on Earth to even begin to recover… Worse, once a Crew Member suffers an Episode, its effects linger, and he can suffer from it again and again until he manages to control his personal demons.
And that is the extent of the rules to Those Dark Places. For the General Monitor, there is a more detailed discussion of how they work, the various roles or Crew Positions aboard ship, the types of campaigns that can be run—typically based around the type of ship that the Crew Members are operating. So tugboats, passenger ships, science vessels, arbiter ships, tactical vessels, and more, each suggesting ideas about what such a crew would be doing and it might be tasked with doing. These are accompanied with descriptions of the types of reports that the Crew Members will be expected to make. These include Personnel Reports, Accident Reports, Industrial Espionage Reports, and more. Essentially combine a Personnel Report and a ship type and a General Monitor has a decent selection of campaign ideas to inspire her. Rounding out Those Dark Places is The Argent III Report, a complete scenario surrounding the sudden appearance of a research vessel thought lost for decades. It is playable in a session or two.
Physically, Those Dark Places is well presented, although untidy in one or two places. The artwork is good, definitely showcasing its inspirations.
Although clearly inspired by films like Alien, Those Dark Places is not a roleplaying game about facing strange, horrible creatures. This is reflected in the fact that there are no rules for creating such things in the book. Indeed, the rules for creatures focus on creating pets like cats and dogs for companionship in space rather than monsters. There are though, rules for running and playing Synthetic Automatons if the General Monitor includes them. Essentially, Those Dark Places is about facing horrors human and environmental rather than actual monsters. Nor is it a roleplaying game with a set background, although one is outlined should the General Monitor want one. At two pages, even this background is short enough to allow the General Monitor room aplenty to insert content of her own, that is if she does not want to create a background of her own.
However, all of this is not about roleplaying Blue Collar or Industrial Science Fiction and Horror in space—although Those Dark Places could be run like that. In actuality, what Those Dark Places is about is applying for a career working in deep space. The process of creating a Crew Member, of filling in a CASE File, is writing the application form. And then, the playing of Those Dark Places is not roleplaying missions out on the frontier, but simulations—run by the interviewer as part of the application process—run to test their suitability for working between Earth and the frontier of space. All of this is delivered in an game voice that is a mix of wearied tone, corporate cheeriness, and faux ‘I believe in you’ attitude of a Human Resources interviewer that manages to both capture the tiresome nature of applying for employment and make the reader/potential Crew Member want to punch the writer/speaker. It is a brilliant conceit which creeps up on the reader as he works his way through the book.
Unfortunately, Those Dark Places is being released when there are already two roleplaying games within its genre, the Alien Roleplaying Game from Free League Publishing and Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG from Tuesday Knight Games, both having been released relatively recently onto the market. However, Those Dark Places is very much its own thing, a combination of simple mechanics and human and environmental horror—plus its simulation/employment application conceit rather than necessarily being a game of facing horror and horrible monsters in deep space or being based on a licence.
Combining light mechanics and an easily familiar genre, Those Dark Places: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying is a pleasingly accessible treatment of Blue-Collar Science Fiction of the seventies and eighties. It enables the General Monitor to run simulations in which the horror lies not only in isolation and what we might find on the fringes of space, but also in what humanity brings with it.
