The Sword of Bheleu by Lawrence Watt-Evans

Written by Lawrence Watt-Evans, the Sword of Bheleu is apparently the third in a series. This is another one of those novels that I picked up for $1.00 at Half Priced books. Hell, maybe I had a coupon and picked it up for eighty cents or something.

The interesting thing is that at the time of its printing, it was $2.50. Yeah, inflation in a specific field gone wild again eh? More interesting to me, is that at Amazon, you can buy it in ebook format for $5.59 which to me is a little overpriced considering the original cover price but not horrible.

Knowing nothing of the series, the author, or what happens after, as I'm still reading it,  but I'm going to hit some spoilers below.

First off, the book is sword and sorcerer. Magic is fairly rare but those who have it tend to be powerful. Magic items are also fairly rare, and in this case, while we have a few of the standards, like the crystal ball, the Sword of Bheleu itself turns out to be a major artifact, effectively making the user a avatar of the god of destruction. This isn't a one way ticket though. Indeed, the sword often compels its user to destroy, to attack, to kill. this is often indicated by the massive ruby on the hilt of this two-handed bad boy glowing with an inner fire. A great visual cue but if you're playing the prototypical dumb fighter, all the visual cues in the world aren't going to help.

The sword is also a bit of old school in that it seems it can do many things. For example, when the wielder, Garth, is spied upon with a crystal ball, his connection to the got of destruction travels back on that feed and destroys the crystal ball. Garth can also use the weapon to set fire to buildings, to burn through stone itself. This doesn't count that others don't seem to be able to use the weapon without suffering massive burns and wind up dropping it.

By not pinning everything the sword does, the author provides himself some space in which to use the sword for different elements. One of the terrible things that third edition started, and fourth edition fully embraced and has been struggling to get back ever since, is removed the magic from magic items. I haven't played a lot of 4e lately and I know that some others, like the Fourthcore group, have also tried to bring some of the magic back to the magic so to speak. Damn shame that it ever got that far to begin with.

Anyway...

Another interesting aspect of the book is that Garth isn't human, he's what's called an overman, humanoid but physically better than a human. The problem is that the overmen lost the Racial Wars that happened some odd three hundred years ago. Turns out that like orcs and some other humanoids, while they may be great independent fighters, they are terrible fighters when it comes to war as they are not great social creatures, each too headstrong and independent to do any group warfare that doesn't involve a numerous commanders involved with many levels of the soldiers. Their home life structure isn't that great either, they essentially borrow the idea of marriage to provide some stability to their lives.

I like this factor because it provides the overmen some character and showcases why they are where they are when I read this book. It's not some nine hundred page beast that I feel compelled to read because it's trying to teach me history. Rather, it's a quick sword and sorcery romp that showcases  bad things happen and sometimes, more bad things happen. Heck, I think Rolemaster old versions may even have something similar to this guy. I know that they had High Men, which were essentially homages to Strider's people, but I think they had something even bigger and stronger and with even fewer background points in one of their series of companions.

In addition, it gives me some ideas as to why elves and dwarves and other long lived races don't rule the world. They're just not able to compete with humanity. It's not that elves aren't the best archers, rangers, or masters of magic. It's just that they're so tied up in their own thing they never think, "Man, these humans are going to take it all over." For the dwarves, they might have so much going on in their various book of grudges, that they don't necessarily care that humans are taking over until those humans get into the book of grudges themselves, and because humanity at least if often allied to dwarves, the dwarves are only worried about specific humans to hunt down. The decline of their race isn't something directly attributed to humans often, but rather to their many numerous other enemies ranging, at least in say, Warhammer, to goblins, trolls, orcs and Skaven, to even chaos dwarves. Humans may provide worthy foes, a few may even go into the book, but for the most part, allies and trade partners.

Speaking of those bad things, in that war three hundred years ago, when the overmen lost, they got some bad terms. But interestingly enough, the garrison, the town, the fortress that provided them? Well, as Garth notes, humans have short memories and yesterday's heroes are today's useless dregs of society. The town that has its borders with the overmen is poor and feeble and easily overcome. Mind you this isn't necessarily a good thing because as I read its indicated that yeah, this was a wasting outpost but its just a part of a larger entity. Still, showcasing how decay can ease up onto these elements of society, especially those that might have been considered the most important at one part of a setting's history, are important.

The overmen have another advantage here in that they have warbeasts. These are essentially large, black massive hunting cats that, like like worgs, wargs, or dire wolves, are actually more dangerous than the overmen themselves. This makes fighting overmen even worse when they come prepared. Worse still, the beasts aren't too concerned with what they eat as at one point Garth is worried about the warbeast eating patrolling soldiers if they're not feed soon. Scary but entertaining stuff.

A third interesting factor, is the use of the King in Yellow. Now I'm not saying it's the exact character from the Mythos, but when you read a little on the author's page about the series, yeah, it's pretty much him. He comes off as a tragic character with a terrible destiny but also a little like the dude of Many Eyes and the Faceless mentors of the Twain from Fritz Lieber's various Swords Against series. Good stuff.

So, still reading, and may/may not get the ebook versions, but they're out there, the paperbacks are still out there, and there's even an omnibus edition. It's old school with a bit of a twist and well worth reading for those looking for a non-human hero with a kick ass magic weapon.

and come on, how can you not lover a cover where the guy in the middle of these enemies isn't looking like he's going, "What, you wanna piece of this?"

Gen Con 2012: Day 1

So I arrived at Gen Con yesterday. Coming from Chicago, it was a nice drive out. I had already seen a few warnings about state troopers out handing out the dreaded $1,000 tickets so made sure to obey all posted speed limits. There was a lot of construction coming in but I felt that I still made good time. I managed to listen to a lot of newer bands or at least newer releases that I haven't given the attention to that they deserve like the Vaccines, Cults, (not the heavy metal group The Cult), Two Door Cinema, and the new Bon Iver among others.

On the way in, there were two things that struck me. The first was that there were a lot of blown truck tires strewn along the highway. And when I say a lot, I mean thousands. It was a little worrisome seeing all that burst rubber scattered throughout the highway. I couldn't help but think that the best way to prevent accidents is to you know, dispose of such refuse before another vehicle hits it? The other thing that amazed me were the number of wind turbines. These were huge monstrous things and most of them were in full motion. The space they took up seemed minimized as they were well off the ground in order for the blades to clear the land. Hopefully this is providing some useful renewable energy to someone.

I am here this year running games for Cubicle 7. You may have heard of them. They are bringing out The One Ring, the RPG based on the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. That's not what I'm running however. I'm running Doctor Who, Primeval, and the Laundry.

The Doctor Who game is based on the newer versions done by the BBC. Primeval is an upcoming game based on the television show by the BBC that uses a very similar system. The Laundry is based on the BRP system from Call of Cthulhu and has its own take on the mythos. I'm certainly no expert on any of the games and have been reading them via PDF which can be useful but can also be slow at times.

I've already run two of the games and they both seemed to go quicker than I would have anticipated. The schedule was supposed to be a four hour slot but the players in the first managed it in under two hours and the latter in under three. I don't know if that stems from my lack of familiarity with the system, not wanting to push conflict on the players when they're playing exploratory types or that the players used, for the most part, good common sense, solid ideas, and were very liberal with their spending of story points to make rolls and avoid conflict that way.

The players seemed to have a good time and a few of them even recognized my name. An interesting side effect of, you know, using your actual name on the internet I suppose.

I have another game tonight and three more to run before the convention is over. The only thing I'm uncertain about is how the game on Sunday will go because it starts at 12:00 and I believe I have to be checked out of here at the same time.

So far the city is very friendly. I spend a lot of time walking around yesterday looking for some speakers for an iPod so that a podcast could be played at the Cubicle 7 booth. It was interesting but way too long. I was also tired from the drive. I know it sound stupid, but driving can take a mental toll on me after a few hours. I'm also six and a half feet tall so that doesn't help in the comfort department either.

I'm fortunate in that my roommates are normal people. I keep hearing horror stories from others but the gamers I played with in both games were good and the room mates are normal. So far it's all win. I still have to check out the exhibition hall. I might do that later on today but after running the games this morning and having another tonight, I may just relax and bum around a bit. Maybe check out the paint and take or watch some movies if they still have them running this year.

So far so good.

Shoggoth!

I try to pretend that I'm not into 'things' as material possessions. I've owned numerous computers, books, movies, music, etc... However, I do like owning some thing and their loss would be a blow. One of those things is my old copy of Deities and Demigods that has the Cthulhu Mythos in it.


The shoggoth on page 46 what could be its cousin, but is probably Shub-Niggurath on page 47, both done by Erol Otus, who also did the cover painting, showcase a monstrous entity that oozes along with limbs and eyes and tentacles and teeth coming and going.

But the shaggoth is well, weak. Don't mistake me, it's twenty hit dice, and 30% magic resistance along with some innate immunities, to weakness, paralysis and charm, provide it some benefit. But...  Suffice it to say I like the 3.5/Pathfinder version much better.

In Rolemaster, there are monsters that are tough to kill. They're not powerful monsters. They just have lots of hit points. Things like whales and what not. That method always made sense to me. These big monsters aren't going down with a single sword stroke, but unlike say 3.5 D&D, where monster level automatically grants it X amount of power, those big monsters weren't necessarily capable fighters either.

Anyway, the shoggoth, ancient creatures created by 'Primordial Ones' also have a variant. I remember reading about it in one of the various works of fiction published by Chaosium. The thing is, these shape changers are roughly humanoid and walk among humanity. It wasn't long until I bought one of the Rafm miniatures. Heck, I'm almost done with it. Maybe I'll post pics when it's finished. The one below is from Rafm: Edit; And posted!

Now what brought this to mind is that I just finished reading the graphic novel, Dark Tower: The Fall of Gilead. Like all good sieges and attacks and large scale combats, its tale involves the use of spies and traitors. How much better if you can add something like a proto-shoggoth? There is no innate link there. Merely the reading of one book, seeing a situation that could use something that would've been different, and then the idea.  The use of dopplegangers and other entities that shape change are fairly well known, but not all D&D players are familiar with the Cthulhu mythos.

By changing up the expected monsters and assassins, even though its still a 'gotcha' moment, it might be a different sort of gotcha moment. The Cthulhu Mythos tends to evoke a different type of horror than standard D&D monsters. At worse, perhaps it'll take the players off guard.