Once I noticed I was on fire, I decided to relax and enjoy the fall

Halloween, mostly at other people's places this year

I have some Halloween content, but it's not up here, unfortunately. First up is a story that Marc Kevin Hall, raconteur and gadabout, done went and formatted all special like for Halloween, In the Land of the Dead. It's got a lot of zombies in it, so many, in fact, that Shane over at Near Mint Heroes inexplicably made it part of his Dead in 24 Hours contest. Go give both sites a look, and not just for my stuff, either.

Meanwhile, raconteur and man of action Leonard Pierce, or as we have been ordered to call him by Gorgo, Mormo and the Thousand Faced Moon, Zombie Rasputin, has up Zombie World News, some of which are funny and some of which I wrote. You should go look at those, too, and then stay for the cake and perhaps the death as well.

I may even try and crack open some essay action for the holiday. We'll see how I feel.

More ideas for stories I probably won't ever write

First off, The Hero Legion of Hellas: playing off of my old 'Theseus as Batman' idea (and seriously, what with the various murderers and thieves Theseus dispatches on the road to Athens, guys with names that describe what they do like Periphetes, who beats people to death with a big club and whose name actually means 'Club bearer' and Sinis the Pine-Bender, who killed people by using four pine trees bent to the earth to tear them limb from limb and who Theseus killed via the exact same method... I'm telling you, Theseus had a whole Arkham Asylum full of bad guys, he was the Batman of ancient Bronze Age Greece) I figure this one's a classic. Imagine a cross between the JLA and the Argonauts, with Theseus, Autolycus, Heracles, Sisyphus, Perseus and others all teamed up in a pre-Trojan War setting. You could work in Jason and the Argonauts as the Teen Titans style successors to this group, while the Olympian gods themselves become similar to the Justice Society, and the monsters and Titans of Greek mythology are the naturals for the rogue's gallery. I can imagine Autolycus and Sisyphus (and maybe Theseus' second wife Antiope as the team's Wonder Woman, if you assume she was there willingly, which some myths do) acting as the 'reluctant hero' types, Theseus as the Captain America of the team (indeed, Theseus in later Athenian eyes serves very well as a Captain America, even appearing during the battle of Marathon to rally the troops), Heracles as the Thor/Superman figure, Perseus as the 'hard-liner' who squabbles with Theseus for leadership of the team but is ultimately committed to Hellas and the Legion. And the best part is, such a team would have a huge roster of minor mythical figures to serve as fill-ins and backups, and you could do stories involving the Hero Legion's future successors, the heroes of the Hellene invasion force who attack Troy! (Yes, I'm saying that Achilles and Odysseus are the Legion of Super-Heroes to this group's JLA.) And yeah, I know I said Theseus was the Batman of Bronze Age Greece and then I said he'd be this group's Captain America, but that's the brilliance of the concept, because he really could fulfill both roles. (Personally, I'm looking forward to the personality clashes between grim, focused Theseus, reckless Perseus, and the sometimes homicidally insane Heracles.) I'd really like to do this one as a comic book, equal parts Frank Miller's 300 and Grant Morrison's JLA - anyone up to doing the art?

Next up is my long threatened Lensmen/Green Lantern/Star Wars inspired Azuriath/Krimsath story: the basic idea is that there's a god/entity of fascism, an actual Black Sun (inspired by various neo-Nazi ideologues like Savitri Devi) that intends to conquer all existence and impose order over everything, like all good cosmic villains should. It infiltrates every culture it can over the course of the formation of the universe, working to bring everyone under its banner and even playing its pawns against each other at times (to use a relatively recent example from human history, both Stalin and Hitler were totalitarian ideologues who wanted to run everything, so the Black Sun wouldn't mind using both of them) - opposing the machinations of this billions of years old living star stood the Order of Light, the Raan Basath, who were the soldiers of a race of entities known as the First, whose last living member, the Unfailing, was the inspiration and leader of their order. (Think of the First as a cross between the Arisians and the Progenitors: long-lost aliens who evolved and died, save for one survivor, before most other sentient beings existed, beings who opposed most of the vanished horrors of the elder times and sealed them away beyond our reality, losing their own lives in the process.) Eventually, the rise of the Black Sun meant the weakening of the Raan Basath, and just as eventually, the Black Sun found the homeworld of the First and destroyed it, scattering the Raan Basath and seemingly removing any impediment to its conquest of the universe. However, two surviving Raan Basath, Amidst the Blue and Krimath, managed to start new orders, the Azuriath and the Krimsath, each named for their competing philosophical approaches. 'Amidst The Blue argued for fluidity, subtlty, saying that when faced with irresistable force, you turn that force against itself. Reckless action would only lead to the destruction of the Raan Basath, and with their loss who would stand against incursions from without? By subtle means, even this great evil could be turned to serve the cause of the universal good. Decapitation,not wholesale war, would slay this beast. The remains could be used as a basis for Omazd, the universal unified state of being Amidst The Blue considered an outgrowth of Raan Basath philosophy, where all existed under the umbrella of their protection. This fluid approach was derided by the Krimsath, who under Krimath, came to believe in a proactive approach: Krimath argued for individual value, saying that the beings of this empire were being twisted and forced into slavery, ultimate suffering, and such suffering did not merely injure them but indeed all life as well. Black Sun was an abomination, twisting the role of the stars as furnaces and birthplaces for all that exists, the original homes for all the matter that makes up creation. The Raan Basath should be like stars, shining examples of life that all could draw inspiration from, striking down evil ones who would twist life until it was no longer worth living.

The basic idea is that each group, while devoted to the defeat of Black Sun and the defense of life and the universe, has an almost entirely incompatible ideology that means they're almost as often at each other's throats as they are fighting to defeat cosmic fascism: I'd gleefully mix in Wuxia-inspired anime influences (I see the Azuriath and Krimsath almost as rival schools of cosmic-powered martial arts as well as competing knightly orders and opposed schools of philosophy, meaning that you could have all sorts of high-flying martial arts battles between them if you wanted to), classic John Broome and Jack Kirby influences, old Doc Smith himself... an excuse to throw every space opera and cosmic comic cliche in existence in the blender and hit frappe. I'm not sure exactly what powers the various groups would have... the Azuriath strike me as more likely to have a Lensmen/GL Corps similarity from member to member, while the Krimsath emphasis on individual action and exemplar status seems to argue for more variation between particular Krimsath, but I don't really have a handle on it yet. I know I'd like to see power armor, weird mental powers, far-out super-martial arts, people flying through space and wrecking star cruisers with their bare hands... you know, the basics.

This one almost sounds like it would work best as a manga or a series of screenplays, but I could also see it as a comic book with rotating artists, especially if it shifted focus from individual Azuri and Krimsath from time to time, a 'tales of the Blue and the Red' sort of thing.

Or maybe nothing will ever happen with either of them. Still, it was fun to daydream for a bit.

Since I hate it when the site goes dead...

Here's my old D&D campaign!

The Continent of Etrea

History, from the distant past to the fall of Alronia.

Sometime in the distant past, sailors from beyond the Benarian Isles found a large, sparsely populated landmass they called Etrea (which simply meant land in their language) and created several small settlements along its western and southern coasts. Their culture is hardly the oldest known to history (both the Kheimerian and lost Anniaki cultures can claim greater antiquity) nor is it true that these Etriad were the first to develop magic (for the Qiin to the far east and the Benarians to the west are innately magical people) but the Etriad were alone in their total embrace of the sorcerous, and their facility with and exploitation of magic were astonishing to all who witnessed their rise to power. In a few hundred years from their arrival on the shores of Etrea, Etriad sorceries had made them the unquestioned masters of the continent and a power to be reckoned with as far away as the Sifan Islands. Etriad navies conquered Kheimeria and Zharania, lay claim to the Serpent Isles and called the Enethyri Ocean 'an Etriad lake' with good reason. In the East, the Anniaki who inhabited what is now the Tarsan Dominion were the only holdouts preventing the Etriad from expanding into Qiin lands. War between these two nations was long and painful, and only the total destruction of the Anniaki ended it. Etrea seemed on the ascendant path to power.

Then, five thousand years or so ago, The Etriad Empire collapsed. With it fell magic...whatever it was that caused the end of the empire caused the nature of reality itself to realign, and for decades magic could not, or would not function. Some claim that the gods withheld it, others that there are no gods anyway and the ancient cataclysm proved that mortals, for good or ill, are unchecked by any higher powers. Still others blamed the dragons of the Isle of the Maker, but those haughty beasts did not seem to care to respond and those few who attempted to force a response from them were treated as snacks.

A thousand or more years passed before the chaos began to subside, and a nation which would harbor imperial designs as sweeping as those of the Etriad was forged by a young sheepherder named Alronius Mejur. It was Alronius, a boy who often spent his time herding sheep dreaming of the mythical tales of Etriad warships, their decks manned by sorcerer crews hurling fire and lightning at their enemies, who rediscovered much of the lost Etriad lore in a lost city on the shores of the Enethyri. While not a sorcerer himself, Alronius developed a system of magic based on his discoveries, creating modern Mejurianism and the Path of the Wizard. It was also Alronius who built a small city on the edge of that Etriad ruin, the city that would bear his name and create an empire of its own. (It's a sad fact that few today know that Alronius Mejur even existed, while Alron is the most famous city in Etrea, if not the world.) The Republic of Alron expanded to claim control over the entire northern shore of the Enethyri Ocean and the western shore of the Ebon Sea. Yet Alronia was often checked in its ambitions by its lack of vision...where Etriad sorceries had been wild and innovative, Alronian wizardry was efficient and orderly. It allowed for a more stable society within their borders, but expansion was slower and more laborious, and the Alronian Diet (the legislative body that ruled the Republic) often became split by dissenting voices. Eventually, the Republic reached a furthest expanse, bordered on their west by the Hentilar tribes of the mountains, to the north by the fractured nations of the Agathi and Naethdar peoples, and to the east by the equally ambitious Tarsan people, heirs to the Anniaki.. (Since the Anniaki gods are almost all dead, the Tarsans instead worship two fundamental forces, creation and destruction, and a few personified beings known as Ashurvans. Ashurvans lie somewhere between deities and mortals, beings of awesome power yet limited in many ways and servants of the fundamental forces of light and darkness, creation and destruction.) The clash between Tarsan and Alronian led to the creation of two empires, as the originally democratic nature of the Alronian Diet made it inefficient in wartime and the Tarsan tribes sought unity and strength.

For more than 2000 years, a state of equilibrium existed between these two mighty nations. The Alronians had the wild tribesmen of the Hentilar and the barbaric hordes of the Naethdar to contend with, but the Tarsans were constantly harassed by Netyri desert nomads and the Muragh. Both empires suffered from orc and goblin invasions. Both sought to exploit any edge to gain ascendancy against their foe. Equal and in many ways opposite, they faced each other across the Ebon Sea. It would take a mad shaman among the goblin peoples, a desperate magician on an island whose dreams were the sendings of a long-forgotten god, and a wild tribesman with eyes of fire to end the deadlock once and for all and create fifteen hundred years of chaos on the Etrean continent.

In the year AR 2302, three cataclysms shook the Alronian Empire. Any one of them might have been weathered, but all three combined saw the utter ruin of Alron as a world power as well as the fall of Tarsis. The first took place during the Prime Month, and it was an earthquake that split open the basin of the Ebon Sea, sending massive tidal surges washing along both shores. The Tarsis capital of Astilisar was devoured by the sea, as was the Alronian provincial capital at Trezentium. (Unknown to most, this disaster was caused by the Wizard-Prelate Husentia Marden, Governor of Trezentium, who had been driven insane by dreams sent by the imprisoned god Ebon and who used an ancient Etriad artifact to blast a channel between the Enethyri Ocean and the Ebon Sea, allowing the trapped god to escape his millennia of confinement.) Alron, although hit hard, was not entirely displeased: this disaster had entirely crippled their ancient enemy, and it looked likely that an Alronian Province on the Zharanian North Shore was finally within reach.

Three weeks later, news from the north that Salithe, long an Alronian client state and ally, had been ravaged by a goblinoid army so powerful that even the Orcs of Kolevara were being driven in retreat before it reached Alron. Battles with these retreating Kolevaran Orcs and Ogres were raging throughout the North, from Naethdar and Aghat to the Nyriean Mountains of North Alronia. Only the Hentilak Mountains served as a barrier, ironically sheltering one of Alron's greatest foes from the orcs while driving those selfsame orcish hordes south along the Alronian Imperial Roads...straight into the heart of the nation, the capital city of Alron. Rather than invading Zharania, the full force of the gathered Legions was hurled forward to drive away the orcs. The resulting battle, The Month of Red Ground, saw the deaths of tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides.

Just in time for the Gobinar Horde of Dulkarnizein, the Hobgoblin Sword of the North, to march through destroyed and pacified Salithe, ford the Peng-Yan river and smash aside with contemptuous ease the armies of the Lich Agath (who was mysteriously absent from the battle) and burn the Alronian border city of Sarnalia to the ground. Dulkarnizein was a very extraordinary Hobgoblin, with a set of curved horns on his forehead that resembled those of a demon or red dragon and a set of crimson wings he usually kept furled under a cloak, only revealing them to leap skyward and surprise his enemies with a hail of magical missiles or balls of fire from his fingers. Rumored to be of infernal or draconic blood, Dulkarnizein (the name means The Two-Horned One in Goblin) easily unified his people through conquest and at the head of this army set the North afire, crushing all resistance...and now he sought to do the same to Alronia.

In the face of this new threat, Prelate Erich Darlusa of Alron (a transplanted Naethdar slave who had risen in the ranks to his position as overall commander of the Alronian army) sought the only ally he could find who had experience fighting the Goblin army...Drakkus Gruunar, Warfather of the Kolevara. While the orc had no especial love for his Alronian counterpart, he certainly hated the hobgoblin chieftain who had burned his homeland to the ground, and after a tense day of negotiation agreed to join forces with the Alronians in exchange for land within the borders of the empire for his people to settle. The combined Human/Orc armies, with Elven and Ogre allied forces, made their stand against the Goblin Horde at Nevren, directly at the ford of the Alia River which split Eastern and Western Alron and almost directly at the geographical heart of Alron itself.

The battle that followed is remembered at The Black Ford, for the mountain of bodies that dammed the river at its end, creating Lake Erich. The ogres died to the last standing against their bugbear counterparts, but they held the north fork of the river and allowed the elves to slay the advancing bugbears. The main force of hobgoblins and goblins slammed into the human and orc ranks at the walls of Nevren itself, retreating only after killing so many of the Alronian and Kolevaran armies that the pile of bodies actually blocked the river. Yet the humans and orcs inflicted savage casualties of their own, and Dulkarnizein had to abandon his dream of sacking Alron itself and retreat back to the north, even losing his hold on Aghat territory in the process. He did hold Kolevara and Salithe and started what would become Gobinar, the Goblin Nation, however, and a descendant of the Two-Horned One still sits on the Gobinar throne.

Dulkarnizein's dream of sacking Alron would, however, be realized. The Goblin Horde was thrown back in Tertius, and while the year had been violent and chaotic to that point, Alron seemed to have weathered the storms, weakened and bloodied yet intact. The orcs of Kolevara were now allies, and were settling the depopulated Nyrian region. Refugee elves from Salithe were settled into the Erythllyn highlands north of the river Mamers, long contested by Salithe and Agath the Lich and now free to their use. The hard and unusually long winter finally began to relent sometime before the end of Quintus, and it seemed as if a mild summer would allow Alronia to recover.

Instead, Endok the Wolfen would destroy Alron in order to save all mortals from eternal suffering and damnation. For during the dark of the Goblin Invasion, while all eyes were on the North, the Wizard Emperor Sajurk IV had sought aid from any quarter...and had been devoured by a demon servant of Verth the Dark Dragon who had taken his shape. From the Ancient Vaults of the Etriad within Alron itself, the beast in the form of the Heir of Mejur planned to enslave and destroy all humans, elves, dwarves, goblins, orcs...all that lived would become fodder for the Killer of Gods, and then the world itself would cease to exist as the Dark Dragon walked the world. The sacrifices of the battles to date, while enormously powerful fuel for necromantic magic, were not enough to sunder the barriers between worlds and allow Verth to manifest in Etrea itself. But the death of an entire race...

The 'Emperor' knew that the Hentilar were the ancient enemy of Alron, and that they were the last remnants of the Etriad themselves. Many of the ancient devices of that lost people would only function for those of Etriad blood, meaning that only a Hentilar could use them. Within the Ancient Vaults were many such devices. Seeking to annihilate the last remnants of the Etriad and gain access to those awesomely powerful artifacts, the demon began moving the Alronian people and their allies to make war on the Hentilar, blaming them for the Goblin invasion, the disaster at the Ebon Sea (Hentilar sorcerers seeking to undermine the Empire...and wasn't it odd that, alone among the lands of the north, the goblin horde made no move to conquer Hentilar lands?) and he was remarkably successful. If Erich Darlusa had survived the Goblin Invasion, perhaps he could have prevented the war to come, or perhaps merely won it.

Instead, the Alronian Legions, repopulated with untrained replacements to swell its ranks beyond even its original size, surged into the killing grounds of the Hentilak Mountains. The orcs of Nyria and elves of Erythllyn, while both technically obligated to assist their ally, found ways to delay their participation, perhaps sensing the dark magics that swirled around the 'Emperor' like flies on a corpse. For six months, those Hentilar who were unfortunate enough to live in the disputed zone between their land and Alron were slaughtered or captured, dragged to Alron to serve the Emperor's depraved whim or forced to venture into the sealed vaults of the ancient city and die trying to retrieve powerful artifacts for the demon.

Then, as the winter began to return to the north, a vast horde of gryphon-riders and wyvern-tamers boiled out of the mountains and darkened the skies above Alron. The Hentilar, always fractious and rarely able to agree on anything, had been unified by the depredations of Alron. The War Host of the Hentilar, a great airborne army in the old style of the Etriad, swept down the valleys of Alron and blasted its enemies with ancient sorceries, the power of nature, and wing and claw. Perhaps a seasoned Alronian army, with its allies at its side, could have beaten back this arcane and archaic flock...but the bled-white and untrained version of it that the Demon Emperor had assembled did not stand a chance.

Alron burned. The Emperor was revealed to be a demon when Endok Wolfen, head of the Wolf tribe of the Hentilar, cut its head off with an ancient Etriad Sword of the Dragon looted from the very tomb the demon sought to use. The Hentilar flew back to the north with the loot from the grandest city on the Etrean continent, and while the Empire struggled on in its death throes for nearly another century, the year AR 2302 was the end of Alron and the beginning of the Etrean Dark Age.

Now is AR 3806, or rather 1504 by the Nazreal calendar put into place by Archpriest Hulzein of the Etrean Revised Church four hundred years ago, making the death of the Demon Emperor the beginning of the new count of years. Alron is long dead, but new lands born out of its destruction have been rising, and now at last Etrea is ready to take a place of glory in the greater world again, as it once did. Time has moved on, and the world enters a new phase.

Nations of Modern Etrea

Nazrael

The Nazri rule over the peninsula that stabs out into the Enethyri Ocean, the birthplace of the Alronian Empire and home of that magical and majestic ruin. Yet the Nazri look forward, never back...Alron is long dead, and the Nazri are concerned with the future, with trade, with arcane arts and sciences and efficient engineering. Nazri bankers loan money to most of the nations of Etrea, Nazri architects design the palaces of Etrean nobles and the towers of her wizards...and are usually wizards themselves. Nazrael, their capital city, is a shining beacon of elegant marble columns and everglowing crystals to provide light, powered by elemental engines that run cleanly and efficiently and require only that their enchantments be renewed. Golems of shining steel police the streets and handle the most dangerous criminal element...yet, of course, a criminal with an agile mind and dextrous hands can go far in the White City. Arcane Artifice is seen as the primary art of the Nazri, and they view their work as far superior to the whirring, clanking, belching steam engines and clockworks of the Benarians. The foreign quarter of Nazrael is larger than most cities. It's said that only Dunadon and Benarian can compete with the size of the White City, and no city anywhere in Etrea is as dazzling. People of every race and culture call Nazrael home, from the haughty elves of Erythllyn to expatriate hobgoblins from Gobinar.

Kolnyr

The Orcs have built themselves an unusual kingdom on the border of the Hentilak Mountains. Kolnyr today is considered a member of the Etrean community, a somewhat civilized (if reckless and brawling) nation. Orcish soldiers in plate mail wielding greatswords may be viewed as archaic by the Nazri or Benarian peoples, but they are the most sought after mercenaries in all of Etrea. The Kolnyr Orcs are always willing to adapt to the newest ideas in warfare...not a few orcs have a Nazri Firestaff or a Benar Arquebus strapped to their backs, ready for use. The one-shot nature of such weapons tends to keep the orcs practicing with their enormous blades, however. Orcs of the Kolnyr tend to be slightly shorter and less hairy than their wild cousins, and they have come to an accommodation with their human, elf and dwarf neighbors that no one would have believed possible when they were first settled in the mountains that they now call home. Prelyns, once an Alronian fort, is now the capital city of Kolnyr and while it may lack the grandeur of other cities, it would take a concerted effort of several armies to take 'Fortress Orc' from the Kolnyr. The Etrean pantheon is worshipped in Kolnyr, especially Ebon and Ionan.

The Naethdar Marches

The Naethdar are tall, shaggy people descended from Etriad stock who were stranded in the far north following the fall of their homeland, and who adapted to their circumstances as best they were able. Rough and hardly, Naethdar view this life as a series of tests that will eventually prove or disprove one's worthiness to sit in the hall of the Old God and do battle with his enemies forever. Naethdar are master mariners as well, and their ships travel down the river Mamers to Tarsan lands as well as the seaports of Etrea, Kheimiera and possibly even as far as the fabled Sifanji Isles of the far east....or the deadly Serpent Islands to the west of Etrea. They will not sail to the Isle of the Maker. Naethdar eschew most of the modern magics of Nazrael or the devices of the Benar, preferring to trust to their strength at arms and their faith in their gods. So far, it's worked for them. People from surprisingly far come to Archionisk to trade for Naethdar pelts and ships.

Nullgate

The city-state of Nullgate is named because there is no gate in the wall that separates them from the Aghat Free State. They want no truck with the nation of the Lich-King, and indeed, are remarkably suspicious and standoffish with just about anyone else, suspecting that any stranger could well be a servant of their undead enemy. The amusing thing is, if Agath spends any time at all plotting the takeover of his neighbor to the east, you wouldn't be able to tell by looking. This of course only increases the suspicion and paranoia among the citizens of Nullgate. They buy weapons from the Benarians, suspecting their contraptions less than the magics of the Nazri or the inhumanity of the Kolnyr, and prepare for an invasion that does not seem to be coming any time soon. Nullgate is scrupulously neutral in the affairs of nations, and all of its citizenry is trained to serve in its militia, making it a tough nut to crack for any invader. Many people of Nullgate (known among other nations simply as Nulls or Nullers) take several years after their initial tour of duty in the Null military to work as mercenaries in Etrean armies, inasmuch as their iron discipline is highly regarded by their neighbors. "Crazy, yes, but Nulls can fight" is a common Kolnyr saying. Null mercenaries are often Fighters, Rogues, Rangers or Wizards, or a multiclass combination.

Basilath

All that's left of the original people of the Nyrian mountains who were displaced by the Kolevaran orcs during their retreat from the Goblin army, the Basilath who settled to the south of Nullgate (then the Duchy of Null) are, by and large, a peaceful people. They tend towards blue or green eyes, pale skin, and are shorter than average for humans (many of them may have elven blood). They live in alpine villages, mostly grow cheese or other goat-based products like textiles, and are not very exciting. 35% of their population are gnomes, who create textile mills and suchlike for their neighbors and who are even less exciting. No one has tried to conquer the Basilath in the last 1500 years, and they have little experience of war.

The Aghat Free State

The Aghat are a bustling, metropolitan people whose cities (Trevin, Aardson and Peng-Yan) are each engaged in trade and industry and are full of life. It's hard to believe that the state religion is one that worships a lich, especially one who is the titular head of the nation. Aghat is mostly human in population, although a surprising quantity of dwarven engineers work on its many roads and bridges, which date back to the fall of Alron. A mountainous country, Aghat is mostly free from fear of invasion (the fact that a lich sits on the throne tends to dissuade the Gobinar, who last invaded in 1347 Nazri and were horribly butchered for their attempt to emulate Dulkarnizien) and is prosperous. They have mixed and matched the arcane artifacts of the Nazri and the steam and clockworks of the Benarians, liking the clean and efficient devices of the one yet recognizing the lower cost and nonreliance on magic of the other. Aghat troops tend to be armed with Benar arquebuses due to their immunity to antimagic fields.

Erythllyn

The kingdom of the elves. The last land left to these once-proud people, whose lifespans rival those of empires. There are ancient Erythllyn alive today who remember the fall of Alron, although these few are soon to die and at the limits of how long even an elf can live. Still, the average elf can live for 800 years, and many achieve a century beyond that, making them incomprehensibly old to the humans and orcs who must often deal with them. To an Erythllyn, the survival of the people is all...and by the people, they mean elves. Everyone else is Husqyllyn, not elves. This is not to say that they aren't living, sentient beings...but if an Erythllyn saw a elf about to die on one hand, and ten humans trapped in a fire, he'd save the elf. Understandable, to a people who nearly saw the total extermination of their race at the hands of the Goblin horde, but this attitude does little to make the Erythllyn any friends, and many elves who have made their homes in the Etrean nations have to deal with subtle bigotry from those who assume they share this attitude. Still, the Erythllyn live in cities made out of magically shaped glass, and are one of the few people left on Etrea whose approach to magic is a primal one. (Erythllyn elves can choose either Wizard or Sorcerer as their favored classes.) Erythllyn view the Nazri arcane artifacts as preferable to Benarian claptrap, but prefer a good old fashioned incantation to either. Amazingly, the Erythllyn and the Kolnyr orcs actually get along fairly well, with their common hatred for the Gobinar to smooth over their usual racial antipathy.

Gobinar

Not many humans or demihumans have ever seen the iron cities of the goblins. In the years since their ancestors carved a kingdom out of the bellies of the orcs, elves and humans of the north, the Gobinar have seen their fortunes rise and fall several times, locked in eternal war with each other and with their neighbors. Lacking a strong leader like the Dulkarnizein (whose name is still revered and who even has a strong priesthood in Cyner and Alderin...it is reported that his priests can even cast spells and turn undead) they have not been successful in any recent attempts to expand their territory, and the up and coming generation of goblinoids is the most vocal at questioning authority and demanding that Gobinar attempt to find a new path among the Etrean nations. It remains to be seen if they will actually manage to change the way things are done in the most militaristically-oriented nation on the face of the Etrean continent. Gobinar society is orderly (mainly because of the influence of the hobgoblins who make up the majority of the ruling class...they are a sizeable 35% of the total population, but a staggering 90% of the upper classes) and has been directed towards outward conquest for generations. Bugbears thrive in the northern Kolevaran wastes that used to belong to the Kolnyr orcs, and goblins infest the Salithe forests that were the ancestral homeland of the Erythllyn elves, as well as the long dead Salithan elves and their vanished Hanthalan cousins, many of whom survive in the blood of the common Etrean elf, who is of mixed Hanthalan and Erythllyn descent. The fact that Gobinar is built on these homelands, as well as territory once belonging to the Aghat and Naethdar, means that the Gobinar have few friends. Which suits them fine. Still, the Nazri often trade with them, as they do with most anyone, and the Tarsans have no animosity towards the Gobinar, meaning that their large army is well equipped with Firestaves and second-hand Arquebuses as well as cruel morningstars and greataxes. (Gobinar tacticians don't like relying on what is, to them, untested technology.)

The Hentilar Tribes

Fifteen hundred years ago, the Hentilar were wild barbarians who rode gryphons and wyverns (and the occasional bronze or copper dragon) into battle, who cast spells by the inherent power of their blood rather than wizard erudition, and who shattered the greatest empire on Etrea and in so doing may well have saved the world. They haven't changed much. If there is any people who have found a way of life that works for them on the face of Etrea, it may well be the Hentilar. All Hentilar are of half-elven blood...in effect, the Hentilar are a race of half-elves, each new generation born to parents who were born to parents whose ancestors were equal parts elf and human. The elves in question were the Hanthalan, who were nearly wiped out when the Anniaki and Etrean pantheons made war on each other, and the humans were the Etriad sorcerers whose Empire fell as a result of that same war. Bedraggled bands of each met in the mountains of the peninsula and were prepared to slaughter each other when the Anniaki outcast god Hentre appeared to them and offered his patronage and protection to them, if they would follow his dictates and unite in his service. They took his offer, and became the Hentilar. Outside of the Erythllyn and followers of the goddess Sathak, the Hentilar are the only sorcerers left anywhere in Etrea, and their facility with sorcery is great. Many Hentilar are either multiclass Barbarian/Sorcerers or devote themselves solely to one of the two classes, which predominate among them. Viewed with suspicion and awe by their Kolnyr and Arnas neighbors (after all, it's never a happy thought that an army of flying wildmen might rampage through your lands) the Hentilar keep to their mountains, suspicious of the ways of outsiders. If they knew of Nazrean arcane artifice they would be terrified and angered by it (such magics are all too reminiscent of the lost art of the Etriad) and they would view Benarian steam and springwork as unnatural. But while still a powerful people, time may be passing the Hentilar by.

Benar

The people of the isles are talented. Save for the Naethdar, they have no equals on the ocean. Save for the Nazreal, they have no rivals for invention. Save for the Gobinar, they are the most disciplined nation in Etrea. Save for the Kolnyr, they are the most free spirited. While many deride the Benar as 'second-best at everything' the Benarians view it differently. If, after all, they combine all the strengths of the other nations into themselves, what can't they do? Their capital city, Eloidain, is a mass of spires and castles that grew over the course of thousands of years, rivaling fabled Alron for antiquity, Nazreal the White City for beauty and Prelyns for impregnability. The harbor is a series of ringed wharves unlike any other city, a masterpiece of gnomish, dwarven and human arts combined into one seamless whole. The Benar embrace people of all races and cultures to some extent, seeking to become more and more capable by absorbing the capacities of other cultures. While they do not deride magic, they rely on it as little as possible, out of necessity...Benarian proximity to the Isle of the Maker causes waves of chaos to occasionally sweep their islands, causing magic to behave erratically and unpredictably. Only by resorting to the steam and spring technology that has made Benar famous could they weather the Makerstorms that sometimes act as enormous antimagic fields and at others amplify magics so that a small fire spell sets the docks on fire or an attempt to create a wineskin full of water floods a house. Rapiers and arquebuses have replaced greatswords and armor in Benar, and the sea provides both in food and commerce, as well as defense...most belligerent nations would have to brave the seas near the Isle of the Maker to attack Benar, and if they survive the dragons and chaotic magics of that place, they would have the cannons of the Benar Fleet to deal with.

Other nations include Eradnes on the Enethryi Ocean, Arnas to the south of Kolnyr, Nerev and Duradon to the north of Nazrael and south of Aghat, and Aresia, Saluriv and Murag. Those lands are more isolationist or less powerful than the ones named, but are not terribly different. Duradon is a sealed kingdom of Dwarves, and no non-dwarf goes there and comes back.

Obsession and the Dark Knight

I'm really blocked lately, but I hate the white space on this page, hate it so much I can't really even relate it to you. So I'm going to take the time to discuss Batman here just so that I can have something here. Yeah, it should probably go over on the Howling Curmudgeons especially since this isn't a comics blog, but I don't have anything else: consider it a small continuation of the Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told series.

In re-reading that book, I've been exposed to variety of Batman stories - his golden age stories, those written by Gardner Fox and Bill Finger and including the classic The Origin of the Batman, followed by Gardner Fox's return to the character years later, and then the Dennis O'Neil/Neal Adams run and the Englehart and Rogers stint on Detective (some of my favorite pure comics out there) and anything Alan Brennert did with the character (I also have Brennert's Interlude on Earth Two and it's one of my favorite stories dealing with the Earth-One/Earth-Two concept). All of it has made me rethink my original distaste for the character.

Also, Jim Aparo rocks. I love his art.

In rethinking it, I've come to believe that the crucial aspect of Batman is his obsession. But overplayed, that obsession becomes almost a parody, and Batman (to me) becomes unreadable, an exercise in pointlessness. I think this is one reason I enjoyed the O'Neil and Adams stories: they presented a calm, collected, intelligent detective who is still capable of error, a strong, relentless crimefighter who can be occassionally overmatched by an opponent. I love the original Ra's al-Ghul stories because you get a real sense that Batman is opposing an equal, to the point where he actually assembles a group of experts to help him oppose the Demon's Head. I enjoy Rogers and Englehart's tale of Batman vs. Deadshot because, even while Batman is distracted by Silver St. Cloud and fighting for his life against a master marksman, they still have time to stage the fight atop a giant typewriter, a sly nod to the somewhat strange Dick Sprang comics that doesn't tip over into parody. The obsession shouldn't replace the characterization, as it has from time to time: as good as The Dark Knight Returns is, its portrayal of Batman should not bleed over into the regular series as it has. The Batman in that story is obsessed to the point of mania. He's resigned as Batman only to find that he cannot resign because he has no life as Bruce Wayne, nothing to resign to anymore.

As much as I don't like Mark Waid's writing on JLA, I thought his point about Batman in that series to be an interesting idea: that at the heart of the Batman, the anger and fury, the literal demons that obsess him are fundamentally those of the slain childhood of Bruce Wayne. It was Bruce Wayne who watched his parents die in an alley, it was Bruce Wayne who swore on their graves to avenge their deaths. In the classic The Origin of the Batman it isn't Batman who ultimately confronts Joe Chill, but rather an enraged Bruce Wayne, who is willing to sacrifice being Batman if it means putting enough fear into the heart of his parents' killer. The Batman is a guise, a means by which Bruce Wayne pursues his revenge. As long as the obsession is kept to that degree, the character works: he has to walk a razor edge between cold, controlled reason and inner fury, goaded ever onward by the unreasonable vow he made as a child, literally driven by outside demons he's chosen to take on.

As an aside, I very much recommend the 1948 The Origin of Batman as an example of a comic that perfectly straddles the line between some of the excesses perpetrated both in making Batman too obsessed and in making him not obsessed enough: in it, Batman is relentless yet clever and inventive and ultimately daring, willing to take the ultimate chance of unmasking himself to his parents killer if it will help him close the case. It's interesting that, even after the powerful scene where a shaken Joe Chill confesses to his criminal allies that he is inadvertantly the reason Batman exists and they kill him out of outrage before realizing that Chill could have told them who Batman was, at no time does Batman seem to believe that bringing Chill to justice is the end of his career as Batman. (It does, however, signal a decade of, shall we say, interesting stories about the Batplane, the Gorilla Gang and Batman being recruited for experiments in testing outer-space conditions.) The obsession motivates Batman, but it does not control him; however, it is so fundamental a part of his personality that he simply does not consider letting it expire with his father's killer. (Later writers would insert Lew Moxon into the story, letting Bruce avenge his parents death again: a novel by Andrew Vachss would suggest that the real target was Bruce's mother, killed for her work fighting child sexual abusers, both only serving to muddy the waters and ultimately serving little.)

In essence, I've always believed that Batman works best in the version of him Englehart and Rogers and O'Neil and Adams seemed to create in pieces, a character forever held in tension between his ultimately impossible goal of ending crime in Gotham City as an offering of sorts to dead parents he failed to save (and obviously, could not have saved) and the all-too-real cost of that goal. One of the reasons I really enjoyed Brennert's To Kill A Legend was to watch Batman on a world where his parents were about to die again, exactly 20 years after they'd died in front of him, and to see the Bruce Wayne of that world choose to take up the path of the Caped Crusader for entirely different reasons. It reminded me a bit of Miller and Mazzuchelli's Year One where a grim, focused Bruce Wayne tries to fight crime in Crime Alley and gets knifed for it, although there's no direct linkage between them: what they both point out is the costume, the identity of the Batman and its mythical implications, the embodiment of the old Criminals are a cowardly, superstitious lot invocation of the original Batman origin... but in that invocation, it's never forgotten that Batman is just a disguise. Criminals are a cowardly, superstitious lot, so I must wear a disguise that will strike terror into their hearts! Brennert's story suggests that the costume can also strike awe into the hearts of those the Batman saves, that Bruce Wayne's symbolism serves more than one purpose, while Miller's Batman is making use of every edge he can find in order to escape the failure of his first night out, the night without Batman.

So if we accept (and many will not) that Batman is a disguise, then what of Bruce Wayne? Well, as the character has developed, we've seen Bruce Wayne go from a pipe-smoking amateur detective chumming about with the police commissioner to a hedonistic playboy: in the Archie Goodwin/Jim Aparo story Deathmask published in 1974, Bruce himself comments on this change when he says to himself The old Bruce Wayne - gusty, involved - couldn't disappear when trouble popped up without causing suspicion - but for the new one... it's totally in character! (Earlier in the story, Commissioner Gordon comments on the change to himself and indicates that Bruce has changed very radically into a new man over the course of the past 'few months', a nebulous amount of time at best in the interesting timeline of comic books, Dave Fiore's 'dynamic stasis'.) In essence, as Bruce develops the Batman disguise, he also develops a public 'Bruce Wayne' disguise that no one would ever suspect would act as a vigilante crusader; Miller's Year One does an interesting comment on this when he has Bruce Wayne and a strumpet greet Lieutenant James Gordon and his wife and put on a big act to divert them, an act that doesn't quite get past Gordon's sharp cop eyes. (I have to say that Jim Gordon in Year One is my favorite rendition of the character ever.)

So far I've argued that Batman is a disguise, a means for the obsession to be channeled and released without allowing it to dominate the man, and that Bruce Wayne becomes a disguise as well. Who, then, is the real person in all this? Well, you can call that person what you like, really... you can say 'Batman is the real person and Bruce Wayne is the mask' and you'd be right, inasmuch as the public persona of Bruce Wayne as a simp and a playboy is a shell and the real person is certainly the one who trained for years and years to be able to be the Batman: the Batman's nocturnal exploits are clearly far more important to him than the social games 'Bruce Wayne' engages in to keep up his reputation as a dilletante and fop. However, you could just as easily make the reverse case: it was as Wayne, not Batman, that Joe Chill met his own karmic creation, and it was Wayne who traveled the world, learning criminology and martial arts and gymnastics and all the other things a young boy would need to wage a one-man war on crime. It was Wayne who stood in that graveyard and swore an oath to his parents, and at that time Batman wasn't even a glimmer in his mind; in every version of the origin from the one in 1948 on (even the golden age one that preceded it) to Year One, Bruce conceives of the mission before he has any idea of the Batman. It's Bruce Wayne's loss that is the original cause for that graveyard vow, Bruce Wayne's obsession that drives him into the costume.

I've not yet mentioned the interesting idea that Bruce is, in effect, attempting to create what he lost by being the Batman. The mock-Bruce Wayne who goes to society events with arm candy and attempts to disguise his keen mind with a performance of lazy decadence is, in essence, very similar to a childhood view of adulthood as the land of freedom, a parody of true adulthood that all children assume to be what will happen when no one can tell them what to do anymore. Brennert's young Bruce Wayne in To Kill A Legend was a spoiled brat who so irritated Robin that the younger crime fighter actually wondered if it would be better for the boy, and his world, if the Wayne's died and he became Batman. I wonder... if we stop his parent's murder, will he grow up to become the bored playboy that Batman only pretends to be? It's also interesting in reading Brennert's story to hear Batman himself say No one should be angry all his life, Dick. No one... because, to me at least, it indicates that the anger he felt was of concern even to him, that he was aware of it and aware that it wasn't right or normal. In essence, he knows he is obsessed. It's that level of self-awareness that makes me wonder if, at the heart of it all, he's trying to stop being so angry. In addition to the creation of 'Bruce Wayne', a spoiled, carefree, empty-headed persona that he can adopt when the stress of all that anger becomes too great, he created 'Batman', who is in effect exactly what Bruce wishes he had been 20 years previously. 'Bruce Wayne' is a child's view of adulthood as escape: 'Batman' is an idealization of the child's wish to have been an adult who could have been responsible and have saved his parents and, in effect, have saved Bruce as well from that lifetime of anger. And to me, Tom's arguments about how well-adjusted Dick Grayson turned out to be under Batman's upbringing show us that Bruce's exclaimation that no one should be angry all the time, Dick were actually heeded; in effect, Bruce was a good father and a good example for a young man orphaned by crime. He managed to prevent Dick from inheriting the obsession while giving him the tools and training he uses to this day.

To me, it's this interesting creation of a Batman 'family' over the years (and its fullest flowering in the Earth Two stories, with an adult Robin and a Huntress born out of the marriage of Batman and Catwoman) that show who the 'real' person is here, and the answer is neither of them: Batman is a selective mask, the elements that make up the obsessive crimefighter enhanced by the mystique of the 'creature of the night' deliberately engineered to terrify criminals. Bruce Wayne, on the other hand, is now nothing but a mask for that make of obsession, a parody of a man. Beneath both is the real man, who is both at once, driven by the obsession but not a slave to it, the young boy who deliberately chose to embrace his anger and loss without ever losing sight of how fundamentally wrong they were, who felt all the way down to the core of his being that no one else should ever have to feel it the way he did. The 'real' Bruce Wayne is the one who sits in the Batcave with the mask off, reading over files... the one who dropped the spoiled playboy act while eating with Silver St. Cloud and realized he was starting to actually care what she thought of him... the one who drops everything to go to Crime Alley once a year. The one who taught Dick Grayson how not to go on hating his whole life, even though he couldn't master it himself.

The one who said Criminals are a cowardly, superstitous lot, so I must wear a disguise that will strike terror into their hearts! I must be a creature of the night, like a... a... a bat! That's it! It's like an omen! I shall become a bat! To my mind, Batman is the obsession given free reign, and 'Bruce Wayne' the camoflage for that obsession created by a man with no real idea what 'Bruce Wayne' should actually act like, a man who gave up his childhood and adolescence and early adulthood, who had to build a mask for his mask out of observations instead of experience... the real man only comes out when the two guises are relaxed into one man, when he forgets to highlight one aspect or another and just is. Which means you rarely if ever see him in the comic itself, and for me, that's the best Batman: the one who walks the line he laid down for himself without tipping too far one way or the other.

Now that I think about it, that's probably why I like Year One better than Dark Knight Returns.

Hey, look, Matt hasn't written anything lately

Sorry about that.

I'll try and do a Batman entry soon, just so there's something here. I guess I can say that I picked up issues 2 and 3 of JLA/Avengers at the Half-Price Books. Marc's review is essentially correct. The art is good (it's George Perez, what do you expect) but the only good stuff happens near the end of part 2 (when Superman finally, finally punches Thor out like I've been wanting to see him do for 20 years) and much of issue 3, with the postulation of Marvel and DC becoming Earth-One and Earth-Two for each other. Otherwise, it wasn't especially good. I have yet to read one and four, so perhaps Busiek pulls it out at the end, but I haven't got a lot of hope. A thoroughly mediocre story with a lot of frustrated potential.

More to come when I've written it.