Inspiration from things you drink

I ran across this as a single in the cold beer fridge at HEB.  The joint product of three breweries, it is really good.  Or more to the point, outstanding.  I recommend trying it even if you are not a big IPA fan, the way that the blackness of the malt really stands up to the hops.  It is the product of cooperation between three breweries, and apparently inspired by the metal band Vulgaari.

And when it comes to inspiration, I believe in getting inspiration anywhere and everywhere.  Whether you are a beer fan or not, the three-headed demon or devil on the label is worthy of some mythopoesis -- just look at the crazy mix of features!  So let's see what Mike and I can come up with.

Looking for Lilith

Folks may remember my interest in Lilith.  (See here, here, and here.)  I love George MacDonald's novel named after her.  I remember seeing a Lilith collection at Lucky Dog Books (back when they were Paperbacks Plus) a couple of years back, and when I went back for it, it was gone.  Wondering what I missed, I went looking for the book online, and found Elaine Cunningham's Lilith Unbound.  I thought that must have been the book, but when I saw it was published in 2011, I figured that it is unlikely that this was only a year ago and that it must have been at least two.  So, anybody have any ideas what I was looking at?  Or want to recommend anything else in the Lilith category?

It's so nice to have moments to relax and even blog a little note.  I hope everyone else is soon in this place.  If it were not for the holidays, I'm not sure how those of us in academia would keep going.

Greater Cleave to the Expectations

Welcome back, Tomeful Tuesday!

When it comes to the companies we like and the designers we like, we don't always look forward to upcoming projects with the same level of excitement.  That's fine: we all prefer differ things and we are all looking for different things at different times.  If one is not in the market for a new way to open wine bottles, for example, the best wine bottle opener of all time is likely to garner little attention.

Such is how I found myself in regards to this Clockwork Gnome offering, when I heard that fellow rambler and guest blogger Paris Crenshaw was working on The Rogues Gallery: The Cloven Hoof Syndicate.  I expected good work and something useful, but it just didn't hit my future salivation button at the time.

And then, I saw it.

Publisher Taliesin and his workship of gnomes just keep improving their craft.  The Cloven Hoof Syndicate's layout and design is clear and gives the right moody look for the dark content.  The choice of illustrations is strong overall, with two minor complaints (see end of review).  But while the Cogs from gnomeland are getting shiner and prettier, the real blow that split my adrenal gland asunder came from the functional content.

Designer Crenshaw has provided a uniquely flavored, fully realized thieves guild.  While it is set in CGP's Eorthe in the city of Aerendal, it is easily adapted for use in other worlds.  It brings together alchemy, faerie, and daemons to create a criminal underground stocked with villains dangling plot hooks left, right, and center.  These characters fit within the goals and activities of the syndicate (again, more plot hooks and possible plot elements), and draw on the full range of options available at this point from the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.  For those of us who are still digesting the Core Rulebook and have little time for putting together new options from Advanced and Ultimate books in the PFRPG, here are key members who are coherent that will stand out as memorable and challenging due to these options in their builds. 

I will not give examples due to spoiler issues, but trust me: these are far from shallow or run-of-th-mill characters.  They are colorful and complex; the result of lots of creativity and time investement.  When your time is saved and you've been given better material than you would have created even with time, that's a very good thing.  (Ain't nobody happy if GM ain't happy.)  Below the key members, the supporting cast of NPC rogues would take a lot less work for the GM to build, but Paris provides appropriate sample NPCs to fill out the rest of the syndicate's roles.  Just the right level of guidance for further customization as needed that fits the organization as conceived.

In addition to taking care of time-consuming major NPCs, TRG:TCHS provides some interesting new items that fit fantasy organized crime.  But more importantly, the ebook provides a strong sense of place for the syndicate's base and the players' adventuring.  What's more important to the fantasy thieves guild than the guild hall?  Here the chief clockwork gnome himself adds the maps that aid the imagination with crisp representations to guide the GM in manifesting the location in game.  And for those of you who remember the publisher's strong interest in the mythic underworld, you won't be surprised to discover that the tunnels below lead into an entire network, fanning out to the scenes of the syndicate's business interests.  A sidebar makes clear that the mundane underworld is deep and extensive enough to allow contacts with the mythic underworld.

I have one criticism of note to make of The Cloven Hoof Syndicate, and it centers on the toughest area for a small third party publisher to deal with: art.  Take the criticism within the scope of what I have said about the ongoing improvement in appearance that Clockwork Gnome's products have been evincing, which I believe has reached a new high mark with this product.  Original art commissions are the most expensive part of publishing.  In responding to my questions about CGP's products, I was surprised to learn that TCHS depends completely on stock art for illustrations (not including maps, of course).  Allen is accomplishing a lot with stock art.  There were two pieces that didn't work as well for me, though.  The illustration on page 21 doesn't really communicate fiendish half-orc to me.  Perhaps creative needs and art resources are just too difficult to match here?  The derro illustration on page 25 looks strange in perspective and proportion.  More importantly, it does not particularly say "alchemist" to me.  However, these two examples point out the overall success of the art in the work.  As the publisher continues to wrestle with how to get the most out of his art budget, perhaps budding fantasy artists will note the quality of his products and be willing to come to mutually benefiting arrangements for some of these more difficult instances.  Take a look, artists looking for a start.  This is the kind of quality material you'd like to be able to show you had a part in as you try to grow your business.

On the persnickety side, there is a text/illustration crowding issue on page 11.

Even if I allow these two issues to lower the appearance from an A- to a B+, the content gets a solid A+.   Pathfinder players should avail themselves of this imaginatively conceived and finely carried-out thieves guild.  Labyrinth Lord players can look forward to the release of its upcoming LL version.

Finally, a musical dedication to hark back to my entry point.  Good game writing and design has the ability to fan the flames of imaginative desires where previously they burned low, and for me this is a testimony to The Cloven Hoof as an accomplishment.  I'll be on the look out for the occasion to use this to improve my game.

O is for OMPHALOS

From the Greek word for navel, the word was used to describe the navel, the boss of a shield, and the center of the world.  A conical stone was used to mark supposed locations (see example below).

Omphalos from Delphi*

This mythic conception of the omphalos seems to be identical with the idea of a world pole or axis mundi, which can be conceived of as an umbilical cord or as a phallus.  The center of the world is important as a cultic site and as the point of entry into this world in origin myths.  In your world creation, starting at the center is useful and natural way of delimiting a culture or civilization both in terms of both physical and mental geography.  I would consider having it as a marking a portal to the underworld or, if I was using something like the Yggdrasil as the axis mundi, I'd have it be a planar gate into the pathways between worlds/planes.

* More here.

I is for INANNA

If you are unfamiliar with the goddess Inanna, I recommend giving her a look.  She is a Sumerian goddess, much of whom seems to have been assimilated into the Akkadian Ishtar.  Her journey to the Underworld has been reconstructed due to a greater availability of the fragmentary sources and the subject of much treatment.  For a popular/scholarly reconstruction and treatment, see Wolkstein & Kramer's book.  It is not known with certainty if the Old Babylonian image below is of Inanna/Ishtar, Ereshkigal, or Lilitu/Lilith.

© Trustees of the British Museum, Used by Permission.

Upsurge from the Underworld?

Is it just me, or is the number of blogs with "Underworld" in the title proliferating?  Personally, I am all in favor of it, captivated as I am by the themes and images of the Underworld.  It almost makes wish I'd gone with "Underworld Mythopoet" or something like that.


First there was UNDERWORLD INK, which was joined by UNDERWORLD KINGDOM, then
DANDY IN THE UNDERWORLD, and now UNDERWORLD CLEANING SERVICE.  Am I missing any?  (Of course, a title alone is not enough for Zenopus, so he worked Underworld into his blog's subtitle.)  ;-)

Let me, like Odysseus, offer a libation to conjure up any other heroic shades that might be down there. I'll be checking in from time-to-time, to learn your secrets.

Holmes' Underworld: A Prelimary Sortie

Flimsy Excuse for Kate B. Picture, Accepted

One of the things that struck me as I read The Maze of Peril was Holmes' regularly referring to the realms of underground dungeons that are the destination for his adventuring characters as the Underworld -- complete with capitalization and definite article.  This fits with the terminology of Dungeons & Dragons, edited by Eric Holmes, 1977-79, where he uses the term, though uncapitalized.  I haven't counted, but I believe that he actually prefers "the Underworld" to the term, "dungeon" in the novella.  I am curious if his adoption of the term simply reflects passages is his source materials (Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, The* Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, Greyhawk, Blackmoor, and Eldritch Wizardry), or if it occurs at a statistically higher rate.  If the latter is the case, and if this usage tracked with his usage in other writings, we would reasonably conclude that the preference in usage here is deliberate, and that in works where he reflects his own judgments rather than summarizing those of others, he prefers to the more game-bound term, dungeon, the traditional term that evokes mythic works and themes.  But to what extent and with what confidence we could assert that Holmes preferred the Underworld to the dungeon, and whether it seemed to be more a matter of his continuing the earlier verbal practices of D&D (pre-AD&D) or more a reflection of his conception of the presumed setting of D&D adventures, could only be asserted through more careful investigation.

I am, of course, not making any claims to any originality in my discovery that Holmes likes to call to our minds the Underworld.  I am, rather like Chesterton, the yachtsman who went off on a voyage, only to land on a shore where was raised a fantastic fane.  Raising my flag of discovery on what is so obviously a foreign shore, I learn that I am merely in Brighton.  Maybe everyone is tired of me fanning on Zenopus, but I'm not done: Note the subtitle of his Archives is Exploring the Underworld of Holmes Basic Dungeons & Dragons, playing on his usage and the other meaning of "underworld."  (When you are not reading Zenopus or Holmes, feel free to take a break with Chesterton's Orthodoxy, which you can read online for free if you don't want to get out to the library.  This isn't the first time I've had occasion to point it out.)

The Implication
With my predilections, which I assume are pretty clearly on display in the name of the blog as well as in various posts, I resonate to Holmes' continually referring to the Underworld.  In the novella, the party of Zereth, Boinger**, Murray, and their various allies and hirelings initially enter the Underworld because it is the legendary treasure house of ancient riches and magic (cf. "The party then enters the underworld, tries to capture the maximum treasure with the minimal risk and escape alive," p.41 in the rulebook.) They return due to complications of their first visit, which leaves them with unfinished business: including not only personal business, but the classic trope of a threat to the surface world uncovered through their adventuring.  But broadly this fits the pattern of characters going to the Underworld because that is where the treasures are.  In the novella, the treasures end up being more varied than the gold and magic that is initially the object of the venturing.

The Paradox
As D&D's identification of the planes evolved, multiple Underworlds took shape: Hell, the Abyss, the Underdark, and so forth.  These Underworlds might have little or nothing to do with a dungeon, depending on the location.  This is so much the case that a child of Moldvay+AD&D such as myself, familiar with a good deal of D&D that is post my formative experiences, had to be have someone actually draw my attention to the dungeon-Underworld connection.  (As I have previously indicated, the pieces by Philotomy, found here and here.)  In retrospect, it seems incredible that someone had to suggest this to me, and that it was not something simply and consciously apparent.  That someone who's academic field is not unrelated to mythology had to have this pointed out to them, is indicative to me of how disconnected what I take to be a relatively unexceptional D&D experience became from the stories of Persephone, Orpheus, Odysseos, and Aeneas.

Underworld as Antithesis
Though the party of adventuring characters is made (at various points) of the diverse races of human, halfling, dwarf, and elf, the Underworld is not the home of any of these races.  This point is driven home by the fact that one of the main characters, Zereth, is a dark elf.  Unlike the Gygaxian dark elves (=drow), Zereth is not an inhabitant of the Underworld (or what Gygax named the Underdark).  Apparently what constitutes a dark elf for Holmes is not moral darkness concomitant with a cosmological unnaturality that has a magical expression in an unnatural skin color (like obsidian, not a mundane dark skin tone like we associate with Africans) that belongs in the Underworld, but merely mundane skin color.  (This reminds me of Peter Griffin in the Family Guy episode who, upon being told he cannot play a paladin and use a helm of disintegration responds, "Oh.  Then I'm a black guuuuy...")  Again, the point is the otherworldliness of the realm of adventure, over against the home of the heroes who, despite all their diversity, belong together as members of the same world, not with the monsters of the Underworld.

The Takeaway
Reading Holmes has reaffirmed and encouraged my decision to always think about any specific dungeon in terms of its relation to the Underworld.  Even if a given dungeon is not strictly a planar location, it is somewhere on the planar continuum: a locale that is not strictly mundane, but at least in the process of crossing down into the Underworld and hence populated with monsters, perils, and treasure that indicate an environment whose characteristics are increasingly uncanny and supernatural as one descends.

Genesis: The Gift of Life by Miguel Covarrubias, 1954.  The Dallas Museum of Art.

* See Zenopus A's comment below.  Also, this image.
** I hope no one actually pronounces the name as Boing-er in their head as they read.  Bo-in-ger or -jer allows one to not be distracted by a silly halfling name.

Thoughts on the Demonic from Halloween Reading

 

Well, I didn't finish the October reading schedule I set for myself.  I made it through book three before the month ended, due to general busy-ness.  I think I will save the other books for next October, rather than extend the reading into this month.  The last book I finished was A Mortal Glamour by Chelsea Quinn Yabro.  Set in a Southern France during the papal schism between Avignon and Rome.  It had a rather glowing blurb from Stephen King.  I'm not going to give it any prizes, but it did end up being something I didn't expect: an exploration of the idea that demons are powerless apart from human desires.  This is an interesting idea for various reasons I will explore.

I caught Stephen King on AMC last night, talking about horror movies.  One thing he touched on was his strong disagreement with Stanley Kubrick about one of my favorite horror movies, The Shining.  For King, the ghosts tied to the hotel was the problem.  For Kubrick, the character flaws of Jack Nicholson's character caused him to be haunted: he was the problem.  Kubrick believed ghost stories are ultimately optimistic, to which King objected that ghosts reflected a belief in Hell.  This calls to mind FrDave's recent post, and a conversation I had over coffee with a friend of mine who is an episcopal priest.  I had recently seen Drag Me to Hell, and was more excited about it than I had thought I would be.  For one thing, it is loosely based on a ghost story by M. R. James, "Casting the Runes" (also the basis of The Night of the Demon).  My friend objected that modern demon movies play into a theology popular in the US, that the demonic is a supernatural reality on a par with the divine: a kind of gnostic dualism in which humans are subject to demons despite God, and apart from their own morality and their own relationship to God.  I think this may go to the heart of what FrDave and King were also concerned about: one with theology, the other with what makes horror stories work.  If humans who do not deserve demonic persecution are subject to it, then we live in an world in which God fails to protect his own.  But if we live in a world where only those who deserve demons get them, then most of us (rightly are wrongly) are not scared.  {SPOILER} Who can watch Drag Me to Hell and believe that the protagonist, for all that she has some character flaws, deserves to be dragged to Hell?  If anyone deserves to be dragged to Hell, is it not the gypsy who curses her?

Surprisingly, this is where A Mortal Glamour, a not particularly sophisticated novel, steps in.  It plays on the power of desire, which has a long history of daemonic identification.  Questions of justice aside for a moment, what about our competing desires?  While we desire the good, we also have other desires that conflict with that.  What if we desired to be overcome?  Demons feeding on our desire (in Yabro's book, set in a convent, these center almost exclusively on the sexual) would have the strength to overcome our desire from the good and drag us to Hell.  There is a possibility for justice here: we get what we secretly desire.  At the same time, there is something to be afraid of.  While the initial focus of our fears is external -- the devil who can assume a pleasing shape -- we ourselves are what we should fear.  Our own conflicted, desire-ridden nature, full of secrets not only that others do not see but that we ourselves may be blind to, may be the true cause of our destruction.  There is a psychological sophistication here that I didn't expect and that I will give some thought, and from an author that I am pretty sure is very antagonistic to Christianity there is a theological anthropology that would fit with certain Christian visions.  Not that it will satisfy theological questions proper by itself, but it makes room for both fear and the optimistic view that there may be some basic justice in the story world.

Thanks for dropping by for this week's Tomeful Tuesday.  I will continue with part II of Gygax on Game Design.

Light on Lolth from the Land of the Rising Sun

In my previous posts on Lolth, you have seen me use an identification of the Demon Queen of Spiders with the ancient figure of Lilith to draw the strands of the demonic, the vampiric, and the arachnid, together with the dark elves, to revision a coherent divine niche out of traditional and game materials. The name Liloth will serve to identify this composite or revisionary demon queen. I have, however, one more strand that I wish to draw on. For this final strand, we look to Japan and its rich store of folklore. Therein we find a figure of the spider woman, though she goes by multiple names in different areas and in different stories. She has rightly become a popular figure in Japanese horror, and provides some further possibilities for my vision of Liloth. I know that my references here are not exhaustive as I would like them to be, but I welcome any further resources that my readers may alert us to.

The figure is an attractive one to weave into our web of Liloth, because she is beautiful, and she combines various features of a beautiful woman and a spider, depending on depiction, just as Lolth does in her various depictions or aspects. She uses her beauty and charm to capture men. Playing on the association with strings, she often complements her appearance by playing on the biwa or some other traditional Japanese stringed instrument. This adds another possible area for exploration to Liloth: why not make her a patron of stringed music? If the silk of Liloth and driders were strong enough to hold a tune, it would have many other applications as well. Can we learn more from portrayals of this figure? Let us turn to the names used.

Right away, we face a problem of terminology. I found that there are at least three names that this shapeshifting yokai, or bakemono, goes by: tsuchigumo, jorogumo, and kumo onna. The first two names have entries on wikipedia which promise to be helpful for those wanting more details to mine:
Tsuchigumo or Jorōgumo

The latter name seems to be more common. The jorogumo entry at the Obakemono project provides additional information from folklore (and about the spider that shares the same name). The fact that there is a particular species of spider involved fits with game developments in which a particular kind of spider is particularly identified with Lolth. For an appearance of the the jorogumo in an RPG product, we need look no further than the cover of the final installment in the Kaidan adventure series Curse of the Golden Spear:

Michael Tumey & Rite Publishing's Dark Path, cover by Jason Rainville

Thanks to Michael Tumey for reminding me of this and allowing the use of the image. (I do wish there was a bigger version available, as I forgot this fact because one has to look at the illustration for some time to realize the woman's nature.)

The final name that I found for this creature is kumo onna. This is the name that occurs in Dark Tales of Japan: The Spider Woman, which is viewable on YouTube (parts 1, 2, and 3 -- thanks to Dave Gross who retaught me how to use Google in a moment of mental impairment). While these different names are used in different contexts, so far I have no reason to think that they represent any important distinctions in the figure, at least for our purposes here. Other places that you kind find the Japanese spider woman: Hellboy cartoon, Sword of Storms, features one, and so does the manga/anime xxxHolic, which has a character named Jorougumo. (The latter's blond hair is unique among the characters, which not only serves to mark her out as the sexy blond, but recalls the white hair of the drow -- hair the color of spider silk.) The figure also shows up as the Spider Queen in the video game Okami.

This matter of hair is a particular area that I would pay attention to if I were rebuilding avatars of Liloth to fight in games, and, for that matter, vampires/driders. Liloth's spidermaids (little Miss Lolthets?) would fit with the kind of action I see in the Japanese portrayals, and with the male fascination in women's long hair, if the web were to strike out from their hair. It also calls to mind all the white-haired witches in kung fu movies that are able to attack with their hair.

But there is more to be gained from reflecting on the jorogumo (or whichever name you prefer) than adding these elements to the characterization and mechanical build of Liloth.  Often, divine or demonic figures are assumed to be popular in only one culture or segment of the world's population in RPG worlds (a human god, a dwarven god, an Eastern god, etc.)  Whether assuming a world in which such supernatural figures are real, or from real world cases of amazing parallels between mythic figures (accounted for however), Liloth might benefit not merely from some Oriental elements, but from having an Oriental presence, as well.  If, say, driders and their goddess have an above ground (nocturnal) presence in your fantasy Japan, this is another area of world-building that will call for explanation and lead to more world-building.

We might do well to close by reflecting on this figure from the Jungian perspective: this is a male anima archetypal figure, and a negative one. It represents the fear that woman will catch you in her web, and that though she seems beautiful, she will turn out to be a monster that will suck you dry to sustain her own life. That she would reign over an entire underworld of threatening, shadowy figures as matriarch is not surprising, once we become aware of the elements that she reflects. That this figure of Liloth would seem like a more compelling figure is in keeping with the strength of the psychological elements combined: lust, entrapment, loss of self and life, etc.

In closing let me add this addendum: I believed I was being creative and somewhat original in my identification of Lolth and Lilith, but to show the nigh impossibility of actually being the first person to have a totally unique thought and do so something with it, check out this link that I later read, and this illustration that I recently found. While all the connections are not present, either implicitly or explicitly, it gives one pause if one is inclined to entertain Jungian thoughts. But who can tell with the power of linguistic attraction at work?  On that note, I bid you Happy Halloween, and a good Mythopoeic Monday.

Lilith Queen of Lust by Icequake Design

Other contemporary illustrations of the jorogumo may be found about the internet, for example, check out this illustration by Matthew Meyer.

A Fiendish Hierarchy

I have previously blogged about the amalgamated, generic D&D setting that I created for 3.5.  I wanted to use some figures that players were already familiar with, and chose from among those they new from various D&D settings and monster books while trying to create a setting that had more coherence, and added some new twists to the familiar.  Building the celestial hierarchy was important for clerics and paladins, building the setting's mythic background, and the calendar, as I tried to indicate in the posts on those subjects.  Just as important -- maybe even more so -- is the opposition.

The Fiendish Hierarchy

Arch-Devils (5 for the pentagram)

• Hextor, the Warlord: patron of war, discord, massacres, conflict, conquest. Diabolic Knights (=UA’s Paladin of Tyranny) the ancient Urromite Empire and Drachand; also popular in the city-state of Adikos. (Wrath & Pride)
• Lilith, Queen of erinyes, succubi and incubi, creator of Vampires: patron of stillbirth, abortion, infant death, kidnapping, sexual addiction, sexual perversion, sexual seduction, and sexual infidelity.  (Lust & Envy)
• Mammon, Plutarch of Hell: patron of the accumulation of wealth for its own sake, gambling addiction, evil bankers, insurers, and usurers.  (Greed & Sloth)
• Mephistopheles, King of Devils, the Father of Lies, the Buyer of Souls: patron of lies, evil illusionists, manipulation, deception, temptation, and (general) seduction.  (Pride & Lust)
• Tiamat, Queen of evil dragons, creator of dragonspawn: patron of all evil draconic creatures.  (Fear and Hatred)  

Demon Lords (6)

The Chaos symbol.  (I don't like the one with 8 arrows: it doesn't look chaotic at all.  So I adapted it to the anarchy symbol.  Voila!)

• Abaddon, aka Apollyon, Typhon, and Pazuzu; the Destroyer, king of the locust-demons and evil air elementals.  Patron of Destruction for its own sake (includes suicides).  (Hatred & Wrath) Realm: where the planes of the Abyss and the Air touch.
• Dagon,   Lord of Aboleths, Leviathans, Krackens, Sahuagin, Locathah, and Ixitxachitl. Patron of Typhoons and Hurricanes.  Called the Illithids.  Creator of the first (evil?) giants (the Cyclops.  Through a pact with the powers of elemental evil, the giants were improved?)  Thus the source of the enmity between the dwarves and the giants goes back to the warfare between Moradin and Dagon.  (Gluttony & Hatred).  Realm: Where the planes of the Abyss and of Water touch.
• Demogorgon, Prince of Demons; patron of monsters, chaos and destruction in the animal realm.  (Pride & Envy).  Realm: Where the planes of the Abyss and Earth touch.
• Hekate, Demon Queen of hags, witches, and lycanthropes, bestower of curses.  Patron of Madness and Nightmares, Hallucinogens and Psychodelics.  The Dark Moon.  In some cultures, she is known as Baba Yaga, one of her avatars.  (Hatred & Lust).  Realm: Where the planes of the Abyss and the moon touch.
• Lolth, Demon Queen of the drow and of evil arachnids.  Patron of drug dealers, sadists, assassins, and poisoners. (Pride & Hatred) Sworn enemy of Orcus.  Realm: Where the planes of the Underdark and the Abyss touch.  
• Orcus, Lord of the Underworld, maker of undead (excepting vampires, liches, and mummies), maker of the Orcs, patron of Necromancers.  (Gluttony & Pride). Sworn enemy of Lolth.   Realm: The whole of the Abyss.  His claims extend to the entire plane of the Underworld, and his desires to extend the Underworld into the Underdark have earned him the eternal enmity of Lolth. 

Other Evil Powers

• Baphomet, patron of minotaurs, demon prince of beasts and vengeance.  Thrall of Demogorgon.  Patron of Anti-Paladins (= UA's Paladin of Slaughter).
• Cerberus, Lord of all hellish hounds, Hound of Orcus. 
• Graz'zt, Dark Prince, the Great Usurper.  Devoted enemy of Demogorgon and his minions.  Also known as Arioch.  
• Uzir, patron of Miżraim, supplanter of Set.  First Mummy, Lord of Mummies and of false afterlife.  Vassal of Mephistopheles.  In the Uzirite heresy, it is claimed that Anqet, as primal goddess, gave birth to Uzir.
• Iblīs, The Caliph of the Efreet, The Grand Sultan of the City of Brass, Wazir of Mephistopheles.
• Gruumsh, first orc, patron of all orcs, as well as conquest, strength, survival and territory, greater servant of Orcus.  Patron of evil barbarians.
• The Lady of Pain, the resultant split personality of Orcus' kidnapping of Kora.  Patron of masochism, loss, grief, and isolation.
• {Spoilered},  a figure associated with a major arc in some games that were put on hold.  Just in case they get started again.
• Yeenoghu, consort of Demogorgon and patron of gnolls.  Also known as Lamashtu.  (Yes, he got a sex change.  Gnolls should be matriarchal, like hyenas.)

The Four Horsemen (aka the Malefactors, NE)

• Tyranny    (Titan, patron of tyranny)  
• War           (Akhillon, Hextor's Herald/Shield-bearer).  First King & Patron of Adikos. 
• Pestilence (Nerull, patron of disease)
• Death        (Charon, opposed to Anubis. Orcus' ferryman.)

Vestiges of Vanquished Evil Powers

• Acererak (Vestige)
• Mok'slyk (Vestige)
• Tenebrous (Vestige)
• Tharizdun (Vestige)

Plutocrats 

• Erythnul, patron of hate, envy, malice, panic, ugliness, and slaughter.
• Usaht, wife of Uzir.  Patron of opportunistic abandonment of family, total freedom of worship, cooperation in scams and hoaxes, mothers who aspire to give birth to gods, and wives who have to search for their husbands.  For her betrayal of the gods, Usaht was transformed into a Serpent woman.  Thenceforth, she has become the patron of Serpentfolk and other serpentine monsters who are not already minions of Tiamat. 
• The Lady {Spoilered}.  Connected to the spoiler above.

It may just look like a hodgepodge of listing, but if you dig into it, there was a good deal of thought that went into it, in how the various evil powers are related and their opposition to the celestial hierarchy.  Thanks for stopping by for this week's installment of Mythopoeic Monday!

Updates of Good Stuff

Paizo Minis
The Paizo blog did not preview all the uncommon minis, but they did reveal three pics and a list of another half-dozen.  Check it out.

A PF Podcast
I finally listened to the latest (but no longer new) episode of Know Direction.  It has an interview with Erik Mona.  All interviews with Mona must be listened to.  It's the law.

The Undead as Denizens of the Underworld
Two recent blog posts have my attention, and I encourage folks who haven't read them to do so.

1. One at Beedo's Dreams in the Lich House
2. Two at Roger the GS's Roles, Rules, and Rolls

These go together like bread and butter, and reflect the kind of thinking that I really like. I hope we hear more on this subject from the two of them.

The Dope Fiends by Dave Mallon, 2010

Respinning the Demon Queen

N. Wright has rattled my cage with his post on Lolth.*  I had been thinking about this post for a while, and noted it in my blog schedule document, but I hadn't moved it up the queue, much less written it.  I shall wait no longer!

Lolth (or Lloth)

Every gamer of my generation remembers Lolth, Demon Queen of an underworld filled with drow and giant spiders, this way:

Erol Otus' Illustration from the Fiend Folio, 1981

Erol Otus' Illustration from Queen of the Demon Web Pits, 1980

 And "she also enjoys appearing as an exquisitely beautiful female Dark Elf," in D&D, called drow (Q1:31).  So perhaps she was even more memorable to pubescent and adolescent boys as looking something like this:

Another Erol Otus Illustration from Queen of the Demon Web Pits, 1980

Thus Lolth has two forms of appearing, even as she has two aspects: Goddess of the drow and Demon Queen of spiders.  These forms are both favorites of artists: reward yourself with a Google image search and you will be inundated with forms both of a horrendous arachnid with varying female humanoid attributes, and of the exquisitely beautiful female dark elf.  (All drow chicks are hot, ergo, Lolth must be the hottest of the hot.)

J. M. Collier's Lilith, 1887

Lilith
Another powerful demoness is the similarly named Lilith, from Jewish mythology.  Lilith is another sexy demon: according to the tales of some rabbis, she was Adam's first wife, divorced and turned into a demon because she wanted to be on top during coitus.  Thus she was punished as a threat to the belief in a divinely ordained male dominance.  Denied children of her own, she became an envious demon who kidnapped children.  In some people's mythopoesis, she became the first vampire.  Remember vampires?  How often they have pointed ears and are beautifully irresistible?  Like, well, elves.  Also note, female vampires from earliest days were portrayed as kidnapping children, just as the elves did with changelings.


Mash-Up Time: The Demon Queen Gets a Makeover
These two demon-goddesses offer a strong case for identifying the two figures as the same individual.  They share so much thematically that it is easy to do.  As I noted, even their names are very similar.  If you keep the two names, they can just be differences due to language.  Or you could call her Liloth.  Combining them has happy consequences.

If you are tired of the same old folklore controlling vampire game mechanics, you can now offer vampires a makeover based on their demon mistress: driders could be the spider form available for vampires.  Now we know why the drow moved underground: those who had received Liloth's gift (many of the nobles) had to flee the destructive rays of the sun.  Why should you especially identify bats with vampires?  There is one species of vampire bat, but don't all spiders suck their victims dry of their vital juices? We also have tehe answer for why evil elves and vampires kidnap children: Because they are easy-to-catch-and-carry little bags of blood, that's why.  Changelings would be ones selected to be allowed to survive and grow up to be turned into vampires and sent back to plague their old communities.  And remember the fear about female dominance represented by Lilith?  Of course drow are a matriarchal society under the demon goddess.

Vampires and drow tend to be among lots of gamers favorite monstrous races.  They also are the object of complaint as overly used and overly familiar.  I offer this new spin on the Queen of the Demonweb Pits as a way to creatively revamp both the Lolth and her elven devotees.


* His post led me back to Tim Brannan's earlier post.

Great Blogs of Fire!

Front Cover by Aaron Arocho

Judges Guild products were not on my radar back in the '80s, probably because my game store was Toys 'R' Us*, so I have only been catching up with their offerings in the past year or so.  (Happily, during this time, a flood of them has reappeared in the second hand market.)  So I knew nothing about Geoff Dale's Inferno until the recent post by James Maliszewski.  (My reading of OSR blogs was more irregular two years ago when Brunomac wrote about the module.)  I am very excited to get my hands on a copy of this reworking of Dante's first four levels of Hell.  There is a revised pdf of it on RPGNOW.  Sadly, it is not available for Print-on-Demand, and the pdf is highly priced in my judgment, so I'll hold out for a print copy.  If you follow the link above to Grognardia to learn more, check out the comments.  Geoff Dale weighs in there, and he sounds as thoughtful as he is creative.  It sounds like he is also working on finishing the Inferno and writing a Gazetteer of Hell, which is exciting.  Talk about perseverance!  Gamers and mythopoets of all kinds who have not read Dante's Inferno will do themselves a favor by remedying this deficiency.  I'm a religion scholar and not a scholar of the Italian language, but perhaps an attractive copy like the affordable B&N hardback, along with some aids of note, commentary, and illustrations (famously, Gustave Dore's and William Blake's) would help folks to get into it.  I haven't played video or computer games in years, but this certainly tempted me.  Anybody played it?

In parting, here is some hellishly good free reading.  Readers of the blog likely know that I am a fan of J. Matthew Stater's Land of Nod, and in particular, his fantasy Asia, Mu-Pan.  As if that wasn't enough, he had to turn his sights on another one of my favorite settings to contemplate, Hell.  I pointed out some of his initial posts over a week ago, but characteristically Matt keeps cranking them out.  I find his numbering of the posts a little confusing, but he's added a tag, so keep up with his infernal posting here.

Back cover of Dale's Inferno in the original Judges Guild version.

 * Yes, young folks, there was a time you could get all TSR's stuff at Toys 'R' Us.  Those of us who grew up in the 70s/early 80s lived in a magical time.

A Round-Up of Cool -- and Very Hot -- Links

Things have been a little busy in Obscureland, so today's Mythopoeic Monday will round up a passel of great links that I wouldn't want folks to miss.

Someone reminded me of one of my favorite Dragon covers of all time.  Am I the only person who thinks we did not get enough Daniel Horne illustrations in D&D products?  I sure hope that brunette survived the undead frost giant attack.  That last arrow doesn't fill me with confidence, but for the magical aura.

Check out Belched from the Depths for some really fabulously painted old school looking miniatures.  For some reason, I've been unable to leave comments there, but I want to spread the love for those beauts that are getting shown off over there.

Can we hear too much about Dave Gross or Master of Devils?  You know my answer.  For that matter, we can never have enough Black Gate, either.  If you missed these Gross posts over at BG, I recommend you catch up:
http://www.blackgate.com/2011/07/23/black-gate-interviews-dave-gross-part-one/
http://www.blackgate.com/2011/07/30/black-gate-interviews-dave-gross-part-two/
http://www.blackgate.com/2011/08/19/a-review-of-master-of-devils/
If you are done with Gross' latest Pathfinder Tale, you can be entertained by the series he has going on the Paizo blog, A Passage to Absalom.  Those can also tide you over if you are waiting for his blog to fire back up again...but that's assuming that you are caught up on all his Asian fantasy film recommendations.

My Pet Arts
A blog with cool old images of architecture and dress/costumes that you might miss because of the name.  A great source for setting inspirations.

Appreciators of fine photography ought to take a look at the amazing images by Trey Ratcliff at Stuck in Customs. Almost every update to his photoblog causes injury to my jaw.

The latest from Siren's Call reviews a fascinating-looking book about a Venetian legend (or did it happen?) by di Robilant, as well as a history of the aquarium (although, I strongly question the statement that the Victorian imagination viewed the ocean as "a cursed, dark world where terrifying monsters lurked, devouring anything in sight."  That certainly sounds like the prevailing view from ancient times into the early 19th century, which then would have been destroyed by the dominance of two very different Victorian currents -- Romanticism and the Scientific Revolution.)

If you like to learn from history and are looking for something to listen to, check out this audio interview of a classicist who has written on the battle of Cannae.

I've also fallen behind on my Clockwork Gnome Publishing updates.  The latest announcement is a book of swarms for Pathfinder by Mike Welham.  I'm not sure if I've given up on a campaign to add one more "o" to the title of the book or not.

Check out Butterfrog's Gallery at DeviantArt by clicking the unholy symbol above!

HELL YEAH!
Give me a copy of Milton's Paradise Lost, Dante's Inferno, Ed Greenwood's articles on Hell in Dragon, and the original Monster Manual, and you have got Theodric out for the day, doodling (don't ask: when I give them to artists to be translated, they seem to find them illegible) and taking notes happily.  Thus I have been mighty-satisfied to see a hellish upsurge in the blogosphere of late.  J. Matt Stater started a series (1 and 2) on Hell which spurred Tim Brannan to look back at some of his past re-imaginings (1 and 2) and make further reflections.  In a case of felicitous timing, Talysman of The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms recently started a series on Our Infernal Neighbors (1, 2, 3, and 4).  I love the smell of brimstone in the morning.  Happy rambling (and surfing!) until next time.

Book of the Damned 2, cover by Eva Widermann

Documentary Grist for the Mythopoeic Mill

Free for Netflix Subscribers

Netflix Watch Instantly is the mythopoet's friend.  Lately I have been watching David Starkey's "Monarchy," which is like fine historical candy for the anglophile.  (The first two series are available.)  Very watchable, thought-provoking, and packed with historical nuggets presented from Starkey's strong perspective -- many of which I think will be new to the general reader/viewer who has been fed textbook views.

The Spanish Conquistadors by Michael Dialynas

I have avoided commenting on the OSR's most recent brouhahas, one of which directly relates to another documentary available to watch on Netflix: player characters as heroes vs anti-heroes vs villains.  I think basically I will continue this avoidance, but here is a resource for the anti-hero who enriches himself in disregard for others: Conquistadors.  This series by Michael Wood (I'm less of a fan of his, compared to Starkey) explores those who may be the most obvious real world parallel to fantasy adventurers who dare the unknown to kill, conquer, and plunder, yet whose violence wins them favor rather than outlawing.

Auguste Rodin's La Porte de l'Enfer by Trey Ratcliff

Documentary from Hell

So much for the good, yet even bad documentaries may be sources of inspiration.  I turn to The History Channel.  Now, The Gates of Hell is not the worst show on The History Channel by any means, as that continuum goes disturbingly low, indeed.  So while you are almost always better off watching the Smithsonian Channel, The National Geographic Channel, or even Planet Green, it just goes to show that it is not only the excellent that can be a source for thinking and creating.  My advice is, never mind the constant plastering over the vast and important differences between Hell, the realm of Hel, Sheol, Tartarus, Hades, Xibalba, Gehenna, the Egyptian Netherworld, and any other visions of the Underworld and what it comprises.  Soak up the images, and above all, think about all the claims that are being made.  Here are the claims that most intrigued me on one particular occasion: the Underworld as Prison versus the Underworld as a nigh-impossible destination.

As I watched and listened to the descriptions of the Underworld/Hell as a place that is exceedingly difficult to get to, guarded by trials, dangers, difficulties and so forth, I thought, Why would the Underworld be difficult to get to?  After all, "Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" (Matthew 7:13-14).  If the Underworld wants souls, it should make it as easy to get to as possible.  Besides, if the Underworld is a Prison, it should be impossible to get out of, not impossible to get into. 

At least a part of what lies behind this disjunction is the conception of the Underworld as a place forbidden because it holds riches (say, gold and magic for RPGers or secret knowledge for Odysseus and Aeneas) versus the Underworld as a place forbidden because it is a penal institution for wayward spirits.  So a question for those pondering their own Underworlds: Is the Underworld difficult to get into because the Power[s]-that-be is/are trying to protect the denizens above from the evils that lie below?  Or is the Underworld difficult to penetrate because it is filled with the precious objects of the Quest?  Pondering these two possibilities, is it any wonder that Pluto can be either Pluton, another name for the god Hades, or Plutos (Plutus) the god of wealth?*  Deciding how one is going to distinguish or conflate these two aspects may be an important step in the construction of one's mythic Underworld.


* This division in the Roman mythos is taken up by the figures of Orcus and Dis Pater, respectively.