I enjoy writing, but I'm not very disciplined. I've only ever completed one story, actually, over five years ago. Still, it's good to flex the writing muscles every once in a while. So on the spur of the moment I whipped up this little vignette.
~~~
Ken had never seen a mountain before.
Well, that's not strictly true. He'd seen hundreds of them on film. He'd driven through the Berkshires a couple times, with its rounded mounds marching like elephants along the horizon, just tall enough to qualify as "mountains" by surveyors' standards but which were really just glorified hills. But he'd never actually stood at the foot of a real mountain out West, staring up at the snow-covered peak impossibly high above the vast green expanse of conifers. His mind could barely appreciate the sheer immensity of the thing: How could something so huge exist? He had vague memories of his mother reading him The Hobbit as a small child, and pictured himself as a scared little hobbit without a pocket-handkerchief staring in wonder at the enormous Misty Mountains looming in the distance.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?"
Ken's mind snapped back to reality. He was back on the city's main thoroughfare, modern glass-and-steel buildings flanked by homey old storefronts, tourists swarming everywhere. One of the three huge cruise ships in the harbor behind him sounded its enormous, bellowing horn; he felt his whole body vibrate. Suzanne had an arm slung over his shoulder and was playing idly with his short black ponytail.
"Uh... yeah. Yeah, it is. I just never saw anything so..."
"Big?" she interrupted with a chuckle. "Yeah, you Easterners and your little molehills. And it's 'I've never seen,' by the way." She playfully punched his shoulder.
"Shut up," he said with a grin. He looked back up at the peak towering high over town. "I expected more snow."
Suzanne rolled her eyes. "This is Juneau, not Nome. And July, by the way."
"So no polar bears?"
"No polar bears."
He shrugged, and laughed. Suddenly Suzanne grabbed his arm and tugged him toward the street. "Look, there's my brother's car. David!"
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Moral Panic and Popular Culture
This is actually a research paper I wrote earlier this year; now that it's behind me, I felt like sharing it. It could use a lot of work, I'm sure, but as the closest thing I'll probably ever get to a scholarly dissertation, I don't think it came out too badly. I've removed the citations for ease of reading.
Moral Panic and Popular Culture
On April 20, 1999, two teenage boys named Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold came to Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado and gunned down their classmates, murdering twelve students and one teacher and leaving twenty-four wounded. When it was learned that they had planned their attack ahead of time using a popular violent video game as a simulator, the American mass media launched into a feeding frenzy, blaming this game and others like it for the boys' murderous rampage.
Between 1988 and 1989, an introverted print-shop employee, Tsutomu Miyazaki, kidnapped, killed, and performed acts of necrophilia on four girls of preschool age before being apprehended by Tokyo police. When the authorities searched his apartment, they found it filled with nearly six thousand videos, including gory "slasher" films and animated child pornography, as well as many comics of a similar nature. The Japanese media leapt upon the incident, and many soon believed that all otaku – fans of comics and animation – were just as deranged as Miyazaki.
In 1950, a fourteen-year-old boy named Willie was tried and sentenced for the murder of a man whom he supposedly shot from the roof of his building. An avid fan of violent comics about gangsters, Willie had seen many ads in his comics for hunting rifles, and eventually obtained one for himself. Though the case received little nationwide attention, to a child psychiatrist named Fredric Wertham, who had known Willie since infancy, it was symptomatic of a mass breakdown of societal morality caused by trashy comic books.
These are but a few examples of moral panic, that tendency of people to believe en masse that something poses a greater threat to society at large than it actually does. The term was popularized in 1971 by sociologist Jock Young in his studies on drug culture. For the purposes of this paper, we shall focus on the phenomenon in relation to popular commercial culture. We shall see in the end that moral panic directed against popular culture is not justified at all.
At least as far back as the 1790s in Great Britain, growing industrialization and urbanization, mass publication, and the creation of mass transit led to the birth of a nationwide commercial culture, in contrast to the communal pastimes that had previously provided entertainment. Even then there were those who railed against "the poison continually flowing thro' [sic] the channel of vulgar and licentious publications.” By the 1830s, British legislators were speaking out against penny gaffs, inexpensive plays with bawdy or sensationalist content, which were supposedly corrupting "the children of the lower classes" and leading them to crime. Thus, we see that moral panic is nothing new.
A classic example of moral panic was the crusade of Doctor Frederic R. Wertham against American comic books in the 1950s. Comic books were wildly popular in the 1940s and 1950s, having enjoyed widespread popularity among United States soldiers during the Second World War thanks to their colorful heroes fighting against the Axis powers. After the war, comics about masked mystery men fell out of popularity, to be replaced by comics about gangsters and supernatural horror – Tales from the Crypt, still popular today, got its start in this era, then published by EC Comics. A 1950 survey showed that 41 percent of American adult males and 28 percent of adult women regularly read comics; another survey in the same year revealed that 54 percent of comics readers were twenty years of age or older. Comics were even more popular among young people, however: 95 percent of boys and 91 percent of girls between the ages of six and eleven read comics, as did 80 percent of all teenagers.
During the war, the likes of Superman and Captain America had drawn criticism from parents for their might-makes-right message. Intellectuals viewed comics as a drug for children and the mentally deficient, keeping them occupied with colorful characters and black-and-white conflicts settled through brute force. This concern turned to outright panic with the ascendancy of horror and crime comics, which regularly portrayed cold-blooded murder, wanton sex, and supernatural elements such as occultism, vampirism, and walking corpses. Despite being sold to children, however, these stories were written with adults in mind. "We were writing for ourselves at our age level," recalled EC Comics editor and artist Al Feldstein in 1972.
Doctor Fredric Wertham abhorred all this. A German-born New York psychiatrist, Doctor Wertham believed that there was a direct link between comics and juvenile crime. A resident psychiatrist at the free Lafargue Clinic in Harlem, Wertham cared greatly for the mental health of children and was an ardent supporter of civil rights for people of color. Wertham drew many disturbing conclusions from his studies on comics and published them in his 1953 book, Seduction of the Innocent. Wertham was convinced that violent imagery led children to perform violent acts. For instance, one ten-year-old child he interviewed said:
"Once I saw in a science comic where this beast comes from Mars. It showed a man’s hand over his eyes and streams of blood coming down. I play a little rough with the kids sometimes. I don’t mean to hurt them. In a game I said I would gouge a child’s eyes out. I was playing that I was walking around and I jumped out at him. I scratched his face. Then I caught him and sucked the blood out of his throat. In another game I said, 'I’ll scratch your eyes out!'"
The boy later said, “I played such games because I got them from comic books.”
Wertham picked and chose his examples, however, often citing fringe comics with low readership and exceptionally gory content as the norm; none of them were from major, mainstream publishers like DC or Fawcett. He spoke at length about comics leading children to homosexuality, displaying the prejudices of his day. He condemned Batman and Robin for promoting a gay lifestyle and Wonder Woman for partaking in un-feminine activities. He went out of his way to attack the use of onomatopoeic words as "thunk" and "blam," apparently believing that they degraded children's reading skills.
Wertham also never addressed whether his case studies were true of delinquents across the board and tended to jump to conclusions without considering all evidence. His case studies were just a random assortment of juvenile delinquents who all just happened to read comic books.
Doctor Wertham’s accusations toward the comics industry weren’t all hyperbole. For instance, he was immensely troubled by the comics’ depiction of blacks, Asians, Native Americans, and other racial and ethnic minorities as sub-humans and savages. He was concerned with the hypersexualization of women in comic book stories and ads and the effect they had on girls’ self-image. Despite this, however, most of his declarations amounted to alarmist hype.
Regardless, people listened. Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, already at odds with EC publisher Lev Gleason due to his leftist political leanings, turned an ear to Wertham. Despite one 1950 congressional hearing that found that crime was actually decreasing when crime comics were at their most popular, Wertham pushed on. A 1953 Senate hearing in which Wertham testified – described by a British comics authority as a show trial much like the anti-communist witch hunts of the era – ultimately fell in Wertham’s favor. In 1954, in response to veiled congressional threats of censorship, a group of major comics publishers formed the Comics Code Authority, a draconian self-censoring committee. Over 100 comics series were put out of publication due to failure to comply with CCA standards. The CCA essentially neutered the industry, reducing comics to harmless fluff for children. Comics sales would not begin to pick up until the introduction of Stan Lee’s popular characters at Marvel Comics in the early 1960s (the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, etc.), and comics written for adults would not appear again until the “underground” comics late in the same decade, and in either case the damage was done: Comics sales never rose above a fraction of what they were after the war, even to this day.
Japan in the 1980s and 1990s provides an interesting parallel to Wertham's America. Unlike America, comics in Japan (manga) never experienced significant censorship, and by the 1980s they were regarded as a mainstream medium for readers of all ages, much like television or video is in America. Toward the end of the 1980s, pornographic manga was as easily available as adult videos are in America, some of it containing elements of rorikon (from "Lolita complex") – child pornography. It was in this time and place that Tsutomu Miyazaki went on his killing spree.
The Miyazaki slayings would not be the only time the Japanese media turned the spotlight on manga. Media outcry against manga and anime (Japanese animation) repeated in 1995, due to their use as promotional tools by the doomsday cult, Aum Shinrikyō. Aum's leader, Shōkō Asahara, directly lifted some of his ideology from popular science-fiction anime of the 1970s, such as Space Battleship Yamato and Future Boy Conan, and many of his converts were culled from the otaku subculture. Aum was responsible for the deaths of twelve people when they unleashed nerve gas in the Tokyo subway system. The idea that a fevered mind could draw such grisly plans from cartoons shocked parents.
Some claim that violent and sexual imagery in the media is leading to societal breakdown. For instance, one commentator claimed that adults and youth alike receive "inspiration" from television featuring "casual sex and filthy language," leading them to commit acts of molestation and adultery. The same source notes that in 1996, cases of STD infection, divorce rates, and television viewing were at an all-time high in America. Yet in Wertham's America, the rate of murders per year was at an all-time low when comics, then filling the niche that television fills today, were experiencing the highest sales they would ever attain. In Japan, comic books regularly portray acts of sex and violence that make anything American television has to offer seem tame in comparison; yet two 1994-5 studies on crime revealed that Japan experiences about one-tenth as many murders and one-fortieth as many rapes as the United States. Despite the constant barrage of sexuality in popular culture, dating back as far as the erotic ukiyo-e art of the 1600s, people in Japan continue to present an air of staidness and repression. As the commentator above himself admits, "No cause-and-effect relationship can be absolutely proven."
All too often, self-appointed moral guardians use popular culture as a scapegoat, an excuse not to deal with legitimate social problems such as poor education or poverty. Sensationalism is easy: A headline that reads “Gory video game turns boy into killer” sells more papers than “Lonely boy turns against classmates.” Hip-hop music, wildly popular among French youth (the country being the second largest market for the music after the United States) was blamed by some in the media for the devastating Paris riots of 2005, ignoring France’s long history of neglect towards its ethnic minorities. The rioters’ outrage may have been reflected in hip-hop, but it was fuelled by poverty and racism.
Throughout the ages and especially in the past few centuries, popular culture has been blamed for everything from individual acts of violence to the breakdown of society at large. Looking beyond this alarmist hype, however, we see that other forces are at play: Individuals’ personal experiences, cultural influences, and society’s own failure to look after its members. Moral panic, we see, is simply not warranted at all.
References:
Chagall, David. “Television – The Phantom Reality.” The Media & Morality. Ed. Robert M. Baird, William E. Loges, Stuart E. Rosenbaum. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1999. 259-76.
Dudley, William, ed. Opposing Viewpoints: Mass Media. Farmington Hills: Greenhaven Press, 2005.
McBride, James. “Hip-Hop Planet.” National Geographic. Apr. 2007: 100-19.
Perry, George, and Alan Aldridge. The Penguin Book of Comics. Norwich: Jarrold & Sons, Ltd. 1967.
Schodt, Frederik L. Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga. Berkley: Stone Bridge Press. 1996.
Springhall, John. Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics: Penny Gaffs to Gangsta-Rap, 1830-1996. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1998.
Thompson, Jack. “Violent Video Games Promote Violence.” Opposing Viewpoints: Popular Culture. Ed. John Woodward. Farmington Hills: Greenhaven Press, 2005.
Wertham, Frederic. Seduction of the Innocent. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company. 1953.
Moral Panic and Popular Culture
On April 20, 1999, two teenage boys named Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold came to Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado and gunned down their classmates, murdering twelve students and one teacher and leaving twenty-four wounded. When it was learned that they had planned their attack ahead of time using a popular violent video game as a simulator, the American mass media launched into a feeding frenzy, blaming this game and others like it for the boys' murderous rampage.
Between 1988 and 1989, an introverted print-shop employee, Tsutomu Miyazaki, kidnapped, killed, and performed acts of necrophilia on four girls of preschool age before being apprehended by Tokyo police. When the authorities searched his apartment, they found it filled with nearly six thousand videos, including gory "slasher" films and animated child pornography, as well as many comics of a similar nature. The Japanese media leapt upon the incident, and many soon believed that all otaku – fans of comics and animation – were just as deranged as Miyazaki.
In 1950, a fourteen-year-old boy named Willie was tried and sentenced for the murder of a man whom he supposedly shot from the roof of his building. An avid fan of violent comics about gangsters, Willie had seen many ads in his comics for hunting rifles, and eventually obtained one for himself. Though the case received little nationwide attention, to a child psychiatrist named Fredric Wertham, who had known Willie since infancy, it was symptomatic of a mass breakdown of societal morality caused by trashy comic books.
These are but a few examples of moral panic, that tendency of people to believe en masse that something poses a greater threat to society at large than it actually does. The term was popularized in 1971 by sociologist Jock Young in his studies on drug culture. For the purposes of this paper, we shall focus on the phenomenon in relation to popular commercial culture. We shall see in the end that moral panic directed against popular culture is not justified at all.
At least as far back as the 1790s in Great Britain, growing industrialization and urbanization, mass publication, and the creation of mass transit led to the birth of a nationwide commercial culture, in contrast to the communal pastimes that had previously provided entertainment. Even then there were those who railed against "the poison continually flowing thro' [sic] the channel of vulgar and licentious publications.” By the 1830s, British legislators were speaking out against penny gaffs, inexpensive plays with bawdy or sensationalist content, which were supposedly corrupting "the children of the lower classes" and leading them to crime. Thus, we see that moral panic is nothing new.
A classic example of moral panic was the crusade of Doctor Frederic R. Wertham against American comic books in the 1950s. Comic books were wildly popular in the 1940s and 1950s, having enjoyed widespread popularity among United States soldiers during the Second World War thanks to their colorful heroes fighting against the Axis powers. After the war, comics about masked mystery men fell out of popularity, to be replaced by comics about gangsters and supernatural horror – Tales from the Crypt, still popular today, got its start in this era, then published by EC Comics. A 1950 survey showed that 41 percent of American adult males and 28 percent of adult women regularly read comics; another survey in the same year revealed that 54 percent of comics readers were twenty years of age or older. Comics were even more popular among young people, however: 95 percent of boys and 91 percent of girls between the ages of six and eleven read comics, as did 80 percent of all teenagers.
During the war, the likes of Superman and Captain America had drawn criticism from parents for their might-makes-right message. Intellectuals viewed comics as a drug for children and the mentally deficient, keeping them occupied with colorful characters and black-and-white conflicts settled through brute force. This concern turned to outright panic with the ascendancy of horror and crime comics, which regularly portrayed cold-blooded murder, wanton sex, and supernatural elements such as occultism, vampirism, and walking corpses. Despite being sold to children, however, these stories were written with adults in mind. "We were writing for ourselves at our age level," recalled EC Comics editor and artist Al Feldstein in 1972.
Doctor Fredric Wertham abhorred all this. A German-born New York psychiatrist, Doctor Wertham believed that there was a direct link between comics and juvenile crime. A resident psychiatrist at the free Lafargue Clinic in Harlem, Wertham cared greatly for the mental health of children and was an ardent supporter of civil rights for people of color. Wertham drew many disturbing conclusions from his studies on comics and published them in his 1953 book, Seduction of the Innocent. Wertham was convinced that violent imagery led children to perform violent acts. For instance, one ten-year-old child he interviewed said:
"Once I saw in a science comic where this beast comes from Mars. It showed a man’s hand over his eyes and streams of blood coming down. I play a little rough with the kids sometimes. I don’t mean to hurt them. In a game I said I would gouge a child’s eyes out. I was playing that I was walking around and I jumped out at him. I scratched his face. Then I caught him and sucked the blood out of his throat. In another game I said, 'I’ll scratch your eyes out!'"
The boy later said, “I played such games because I got them from comic books.”
Wertham picked and chose his examples, however, often citing fringe comics with low readership and exceptionally gory content as the norm; none of them were from major, mainstream publishers like DC or Fawcett. He spoke at length about comics leading children to homosexuality, displaying the prejudices of his day. He condemned Batman and Robin for promoting a gay lifestyle and Wonder Woman for partaking in un-feminine activities. He went out of his way to attack the use of onomatopoeic words as "thunk" and "blam," apparently believing that they degraded children's reading skills.
Wertham also never addressed whether his case studies were true of delinquents across the board and tended to jump to conclusions without considering all evidence. His case studies were just a random assortment of juvenile delinquents who all just happened to read comic books.
Doctor Wertham’s accusations toward the comics industry weren’t all hyperbole. For instance, he was immensely troubled by the comics’ depiction of blacks, Asians, Native Americans, and other racial and ethnic minorities as sub-humans and savages. He was concerned with the hypersexualization of women in comic book stories and ads and the effect they had on girls’ self-image. Despite this, however, most of his declarations amounted to alarmist hype.
Regardless, people listened. Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, already at odds with EC publisher Lev Gleason due to his leftist political leanings, turned an ear to Wertham. Despite one 1950 congressional hearing that found that crime was actually decreasing when crime comics were at their most popular, Wertham pushed on. A 1953 Senate hearing in which Wertham testified – described by a British comics authority as a show trial much like the anti-communist witch hunts of the era – ultimately fell in Wertham’s favor. In 1954, in response to veiled congressional threats of censorship, a group of major comics publishers formed the Comics Code Authority, a draconian self-censoring committee. Over 100 comics series were put out of publication due to failure to comply with CCA standards. The CCA essentially neutered the industry, reducing comics to harmless fluff for children. Comics sales would not begin to pick up until the introduction of Stan Lee’s popular characters at Marvel Comics in the early 1960s (the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, etc.), and comics written for adults would not appear again until the “underground” comics late in the same decade, and in either case the damage was done: Comics sales never rose above a fraction of what they were after the war, even to this day.
Japan in the 1980s and 1990s provides an interesting parallel to Wertham's America. Unlike America, comics in Japan (manga) never experienced significant censorship, and by the 1980s they were regarded as a mainstream medium for readers of all ages, much like television or video is in America. Toward the end of the 1980s, pornographic manga was as easily available as adult videos are in America, some of it containing elements of rorikon (from "Lolita complex") – child pornography. It was in this time and place that Tsutomu Miyazaki went on his killing spree.
The Miyazaki slayings would not be the only time the Japanese media turned the spotlight on manga. Media outcry against manga and anime (Japanese animation) repeated in 1995, due to their use as promotional tools by the doomsday cult, Aum Shinrikyō. Aum's leader, Shōkō Asahara, directly lifted some of his ideology from popular science-fiction anime of the 1970s, such as Space Battleship Yamato and Future Boy Conan, and many of his converts were culled from the otaku subculture. Aum was responsible for the deaths of twelve people when they unleashed nerve gas in the Tokyo subway system. The idea that a fevered mind could draw such grisly plans from cartoons shocked parents.
Some claim that violent and sexual imagery in the media is leading to societal breakdown. For instance, one commentator claimed that adults and youth alike receive "inspiration" from television featuring "casual sex and filthy language," leading them to commit acts of molestation and adultery. The same source notes that in 1996, cases of STD infection, divorce rates, and television viewing were at an all-time high in America. Yet in Wertham's America, the rate of murders per year was at an all-time low when comics, then filling the niche that television fills today, were experiencing the highest sales they would ever attain. In Japan, comic books regularly portray acts of sex and violence that make anything American television has to offer seem tame in comparison; yet two 1994-5 studies on crime revealed that Japan experiences about one-tenth as many murders and one-fortieth as many rapes as the United States. Despite the constant barrage of sexuality in popular culture, dating back as far as the erotic ukiyo-e art of the 1600s, people in Japan continue to present an air of staidness and repression. As the commentator above himself admits, "No cause-and-effect relationship can be absolutely proven."
All too often, self-appointed moral guardians use popular culture as a scapegoat, an excuse not to deal with legitimate social problems such as poor education or poverty. Sensationalism is easy: A headline that reads “Gory video game turns boy into killer” sells more papers than “Lonely boy turns against classmates.” Hip-hop music, wildly popular among French youth (the country being the second largest market for the music after the United States) was blamed by some in the media for the devastating Paris riots of 2005, ignoring France’s long history of neglect towards its ethnic minorities. The rioters’ outrage may have been reflected in hip-hop, but it was fuelled by poverty and racism.
Throughout the ages and especially in the past few centuries, popular culture has been blamed for everything from individual acts of violence to the breakdown of society at large. Looking beyond this alarmist hype, however, we see that other forces are at play: Individuals’ personal experiences, cultural influences, and society’s own failure to look after its members. Moral panic, we see, is simply not warranted at all.
References:
Chagall, David. “Television – The Phantom Reality.” The Media & Morality. Ed. Robert M. Baird, William E. Loges, Stuart E. Rosenbaum. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1999. 259-76.
Dudley, William, ed. Opposing Viewpoints: Mass Media. Farmington Hills: Greenhaven Press, 2005.
McBride, James. “Hip-Hop Planet.” National Geographic. Apr. 2007: 100-19.
Perry, George, and Alan Aldridge. The Penguin Book of Comics. Norwich: Jarrold & Sons, Ltd. 1967.
Schodt, Frederik L. Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga. Berkley: Stone Bridge Press. 1996.
Springhall, John. Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics: Penny Gaffs to Gangsta-Rap, 1830-1996. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1998.
Thompson, Jack. “Violent Video Games Promote Violence.” Opposing Viewpoints: Popular Culture. Ed. John Woodward. Farmington Hills: Greenhaven Press, 2005.
Wertham, Frederic. Seduction of the Innocent. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company. 1953.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Cosmogenesis
For as long as I can remember, J. R. R. Tolkien has been my favorite writer. It's not an easy subject for me to talk about -- The Lord of the Rings is often written off as pop literature dross, and throughout the years I've learned that if I so much as drop Tolkien's name into a conversation I'm opening myself up to ridicule for being a "nerd." Yet I can't escape Tolkien's impact on my life and outlook. I've enjoyed Tolkien's works since I was a child because his skill at creating a realistic fictional setting continues to fascinate me to this day.
I first took to Tolkien as a child. I think I was about five or six years old when I saw a short animated movie based on The Hobbit. I don't remember much about it save that it was hilariously bad. The acting was wooden, the characters looked absurd and cartoony, and everyone seemed to be bursting into song every five minutes. Later I viewed a film based on The Return of the King (the third part of Rings), which had all the flaws of The Hobbit and further suffered as an ending with no beginning or middle: the creators had for some unfathomable reason neglected to animate the first two parts.
Yet for all their flaws something about these silly cartoons fascinated me. Although the plots were simple (and dumbed-down from the original), there was a feeling that there was something more to this world, this Middle-earth, where the characters were traipsing about. Little details, names dropped here and there for no apparent reason, people and places that had nothing to do with the story but whose identities I hungered to learn -- there was this sense that I was skimming the surface of a truly ancient place with far more stories left to tell. This feeling only magnified after I asked my mother to read The Hobbit to me, and when I read The Lord of the Rings on my own.
Eventually I read The Silmarillion -- Tolkien's life's work on which he'd labored for years between writing his novels, which only saw publication after his death. A collection of fabricated myths and legends, The Silmarillion laid out the back-story (the "legendarium" as Tolkien called it) behind Middle-earth, of which The Lord of the Rings is just a brief side-story covering some twenty-odd years at the end of the story. It's heavy stuff, on par with the Celtic Mabinogion or the Finnish Kalevala.
It was this sense of epic scope that drew me in. I've always been fascinated with the conceit of fictional worlds. Mythologies. The idea that Tolkien could create such a setting from scratch -- languages, cultures, worlds! -- gripped me. The realization that I too was capable of this kind of creation inspired me to pursue art and writing just to do the same thing, and while I'm hardly very good at either, I still get a real thrill from the process. I think this desire to learn about and/or create mythologies is common to many people, and not just fans of the fantasy and science-fiction genres: sports fans follow detailed histories and rivalries between teams stretching back generations, while housewives retain decades' worth of soap opera back-story with convoluted and ever-changing relationships. This desire for mythology permeates our culture.
While the recent film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings have gone a long way towards bringing his books into the mainstream, they're still widely decried as worthless fluff; perhaps by bringing to light the things that made me enjoy these stories, others may consider giving them a chance. Maybe they'll like them the same way I do -- or maybe they won't like them at all. The genre just isn't for many people, and I'm fine with that. In any case, I hope that in the future I may change or challenge the way some people look at Tolkien. It never hurts to broaden one's horizons: there are whole worlds out there to find.
I first took to Tolkien as a child. I think I was about five or six years old when I saw a short animated movie based on The Hobbit. I don't remember much about it save that it was hilariously bad. The acting was wooden, the characters looked absurd and cartoony, and everyone seemed to be bursting into song every five minutes. Later I viewed a film based on The Return of the King (the third part of Rings), which had all the flaws of The Hobbit and further suffered as an ending with no beginning or middle: the creators had for some unfathomable reason neglected to animate the first two parts.
Yet for all their flaws something about these silly cartoons fascinated me. Although the plots were simple (and dumbed-down from the original), there was a feeling that there was something more to this world, this Middle-earth, where the characters were traipsing about. Little details, names dropped here and there for no apparent reason, people and places that had nothing to do with the story but whose identities I hungered to learn -- there was this sense that I was skimming the surface of a truly ancient place with far more stories left to tell. This feeling only magnified after I asked my mother to read The Hobbit to me, and when I read The Lord of the Rings on my own.
Eventually I read The Silmarillion -- Tolkien's life's work on which he'd labored for years between writing his novels, which only saw publication after his death. A collection of fabricated myths and legends, The Silmarillion laid out the back-story (the "legendarium" as Tolkien called it) behind Middle-earth, of which The Lord of the Rings is just a brief side-story covering some twenty-odd years at the end of the story. It's heavy stuff, on par with the Celtic Mabinogion or the Finnish Kalevala.
It was this sense of epic scope that drew me in. I've always been fascinated with the conceit of fictional worlds. Mythologies. The idea that Tolkien could create such a setting from scratch -- languages, cultures, worlds! -- gripped me. The realization that I too was capable of this kind of creation inspired me to pursue art and writing just to do the same thing, and while I'm hardly very good at either, I still get a real thrill from the process. I think this desire to learn about and/or create mythologies is common to many people, and not just fans of the fantasy and science-fiction genres: sports fans follow detailed histories and rivalries between teams stretching back generations, while housewives retain decades' worth of soap opera back-story with convoluted and ever-changing relationships. This desire for mythology permeates our culture.
While the recent film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings have gone a long way towards bringing his books into the mainstream, they're still widely decried as worthless fluff; perhaps by bringing to light the things that made me enjoy these stories, others may consider giving them a chance. Maybe they'll like them the same way I do -- or maybe they won't like them at all. The genre just isn't for many people, and I'm fine with that. In any case, I hope that in the future I may change or challenge the way some people look at Tolkien. It never hurts to broaden one's horizons: there are whole worlds out there to find.
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Creative Writing Strikes Back: The Road to Gemstead
This is a short story I wrote in high school five years ago -- the only work of fiction I've ever actually finished. It's essentially a D&D fanfic, using original characters and my personal (and still-yet-unused) campaign setting. Looking back on it, I'm surprised that I was so proficient a writer. Not to say that it's a classic -- I find it rather mediocre -- but what can I say, I need to give myself a bit more credit.
Incidentially, I got an "A". ;P Woulda been an "A+" but for spelling. :P
Anyway.
The Road to Gemstead
A Short Story
By William B. Staples
On the edge of the cobblestone street by Davinport's old inn, two Gnomes waited for a carriage. The male was the taller, about three-foot-six, with a big nose and a brown beard and mustache flecked with strands of gray and white. He wore a typically Gnomish red felt cap that stuck up a foot and a half and a shining diamond set on a silver chain around his neck. The woman was about three inches shorter with a floppy gray hat and long, light brown hair tied into a braid down her back.
It was nearing the fifth hour after noontide when a carriage drew near. The streets weren't crowded: most of the locals were at home, at work, or at the inns and taverns, so the Gnomes saw it coming early on. Drawn by a pair of sturdy ponies, it rattled down along the brick road. The driver was hunched over in his dark brown cloak, but his size and the air of dour seriousness he exuded made it clear enough that he was a Dwarf.
"Hello? Hello, sir?" The male Gnome stepped out onto the street and waved at the driver. "Sir?"
The Dwarf looked up at the Gnome and grunted to himself. Pulling on the reigns, he guided the ponies to a stop.
"What do ye want?" asked the driver bluntly, looking up. A Dwarf in the prime of his life, he had a short sandy-blond hair and a rough, leathery-looking face that was all sharp angles and flat planes. He had on a faded green-and-yellow-striped tunic over an old chainmail vest and he wore huge boots.
"Uh, yes, sir," replied the Gnome. "Do you know the way to Gemstead?"
"Any merchant worth his salt does."
"Good... uh, can you take me there, and my wife?"
"Couldn't say. Sun'll be settin' in an hour or two, an' that's when the bandits an' Goblins come out. The road ain't as safe as it used to be."
The Gnome lady stepped forward. "Please, sir... it's urgent. My sister there is due to give birth any day now. We've been on the road for two days, and Gemstead is less than a day's journey from here."
"I'm sorry, lady, but it just ain't worth me while."
"Wait." The husband held up his hand to silence the Dwarf. He removed the necklace he wore and held it up for him to see. "If you agree to take us there today, you can have this."
As the old Dwarven longing for riches stirred in his heart, the carriage-driver looked spellbound upon the diamond on the necklace. "Well," he said thoughtfully after a moment, "that changes things. That stone's likely worth more than I make in a month's time." He paused, looking at it longer. "Well then, I suppose I can. But it's out of me way; remember that. I've got to be in Wend in two days, an' this'll put me off me schedule."
"Oh, thank you so, sir," said the Gnome. "We perfectly understand."
"Good. Climb in the back of me wagon then, and keep quiet."
The did so, and the Dwarf promptly started the ponies down the road again. They rolled past the town of Davinport's old stone and wood houses on their way, and the Gnomes looked up at the blue summer sky, watching the puffy clouds float overhead.
"I was goin' to stay at that an inn for the night before leavin' for Wend," said the Dwarf. "This really ain't good for me."
"I'm really very sorry, sir," said the Gnome.
"It's all right," growled the driver, not really meaning it. "Anyways," he went on, "Since we'll be together for some six, seven hours, we might as well get to know each other's names. I'm Palin Narisson, from Danbarg off west in the Granite Hills. I'm a Hill Dwarf, mind ye, not one of those pompous Mountain Dwarves that ye see so much of in these parts." He sounded a bit pompous himself as he said this. "What about the two of ye?" he asked, not bothering to look back.
"Uh, I'm Farnin Silversmith, and this is my wife Ruby. We're Rock Gnomes, from Nindlheim."
"Nindlheim. Dornin Glittergold's kingdom, weren't it?"
"Still is, sir. Have you ever been there?"
Palin grunted. "I'd be daft to. The lands about it're crawlin' with Kobolds and worse."
"It's really not so big a problem... we keep the Kobolds well in check."
The Dwarf grunted again, growing bored with the conversation.
They continued on, passing eventually through Davinport's gates and onto the rolling plains of the Kingdom of Wendia. A number of travelers passed them by, most of them Humans, a few Elves, Dwarves, and others. Most were heading for Davinport from the smaller farms and villages nearby. The silvery Dunlamere River flowed to the south, barges and rowboats coming into and going out of Davinport's docks.
"We left Nindlheim two days ago," Farnin was saying. 'We didn't see much after we left the mountains. Hitched rides most of the way like this... it's just too far to walk. We arrived in Davinport around noon today."
"Mmhm," nodded Palin, uninterested. "Aye, aye."
The sun was just staring to set, the sky turning red on the horizon. The moon, a disk of white, green, and blue, was just beginning to rise. Palin pointed to a tangle of woods and hills off to the northeast that the road disappeared into. "There's Whetmar Forest up ahead. The most dangerous leg of the trip, but also the quickest way to where we're doing. It'll take us some three hours to get out." He turned to look back at the Gnomes. "The Forest's infested with Goblins, ye see. They ain't very strong an' they ain't very smart, but they swarm like ants. They hate Dwarves, too, for some ancient grudge no one can remember. I'm good enough with an axe," he laid a hand on the weapon at his side, "but I can't say if it'll do us much good."
"Well," ventured Farnin, "I can do a few magic tricks, if it helps... most Gnomes are taught the use of illusions from a young age." Ruby nodded in affirmation.
Palin chuckled morbidly. "As superstitious an' tribal as Goblins are, I don't know if some smoke and mirrors'll scare 'em off."
Within an hour they reached the eaves of Whetmar as the sun set fully beneath the horizon and night took over. The trees were mostly oak and pine, grown so thick together that they made it impossible to see the sky overhead. Vines hung thickly, and moths fluttered silently from tree to tree. There was a smell of rotting wood on the humid summer air, and no wind. The heat, even at night, was oppressive. Occasionally, a shape moved in the shadows to either side of the road, perhaps a wild animal, perhaps something else. A sense of dread fell upon the Gnomes.
Palin was the first to break the silence. "Keep an eye out for wolves," said the Dwarf. "Especially the big Worgs: Goblins ride them like horses. Smart they are, too. Some can even talk."
Before long, about an hour and a half after they'd entered, the three in the carriage came upon an old wooden road-sign nailed to a tree that had probably been put there years earlier. It read, "Forest Edge - Five Miles," with an arrow pointing in both directions to show that this place was the center of Whetmar forest. Below, in what looked like dried blood, was crudely scrawled: "Beware Goblins."
"Goblins," breathed Ruby. Farnin looked into the gloom warily, and Palin grunted upsettedly.
"We'd better hurry," muttered Palin, spurring the ponies on again. "It'll be an hour or two before we're safe on the plains again."
Not fifteen minuted after the three read the sign on the tree, the sounds began. The snapping of twigs and rustling of leaves underfoot, the low growl of some large animal, the quiet rasping of voices in the black. Palin whispered to Farnin and Ruby without looking back at them that the Goblins had found them and that they did have Worgs with them, and that they should no means look at the Goblins or do anything to let them know they knew the Goblins were there. "When they attack, they'll think we're unprepared. I want to keep up that charade as long as possible."
It seemed like an eternity before the Goblins attacked. An arrow came suddenly speeding out of the forest, narrowly missing the Dwarf's head. Not caught unaware, Palin sped the ponies to a gallop, the carriage rumbling along the dirt road. Immediately two Goblins mounted on Worgs broke from the cover of the brush and rushed furiously after.
Ruby screamed. The Worgs, huge wolves as large as ponies with yellow fangs and gleaming red eyes, growled and barked at each other in their own unhuman language. The Goblins astride them, hunched-over Dwarf-sized humanoids with angular faces, grimy orange-yellow skin, and primitive features, wielded short swords and hand axes with surprising ferocity for such small creatures. They rushed toward their intended prey.
Meanwhile arrows, darts, and spears shot out of the woods on either side. Most were off the mark, but a few embedded themselves in the sides of the wagon. Palin continued to urge the ponies onward, seemingly oblivious to the danger.
Farnin made a few quick gestures at the mounted Goblins, and an explosion wracked the road behind them, flames illuminating the woods.
Palin looked back and gaped in surprise. "What in the world was that?" he yelled at the Gnomes.
"It's just an illusion!" shouted Ruby in response. "To scare them! Keep going!"
"I've never seen smoke and mirrors do that," Palin growled under his breath as he cracked the reigns again.
Illusionary flames continued to explode behind them, and the Worgs lept aside back into the woods. Goblins continued to shoot at them but their aim was confused by the excitement and all of their missiles flew wide.
It was then that the three saw the tree fallen across the road, felled by the Goblins as a roadblock. Goblins hunched atop it, spears and short swords in hand, crude wooden shields on their arms. Palin quickly tossed his hat down and reached into the back of the wagon, grabbing a battered metal helmet and putting it on his head. "Now's the time for any more of those illusions," muttered the Dwarf as he slowed the ponies to a stop.
"Goblin worms!" shouted Palin, jumping to the ground. The Goblins hopped from the tree to the ground, but did not advance. Farnin and Ruby, wary for Goblins in the woods trying to flank them, moved closer to the front of the carriage.
Palin's battle-axe waved in the air. "Goblin worms! If ye want to die, then come at it!"
The Goblins did not move. Instead, in response to the Dwarf's call, a huge shape bounded over the roadblock and stood growling at the three. It was shaped like a Worg, but much larger, as big as a bull. Rather than the Worgs' dull red gleam, the creature's eyes glowed a bright, sickly orange with excitement.
Palin stared. "By the Maker," he whispered, "I pray that ain't what I think it is."
Slowly the wolf-beast began to change shape, growing thinner and longer. Its paws became longer and more dextrous, and its face grew shorter.
"In Garl's name," muttered Farnin, staring in disbelief. "What is it?"
"A Barghest," responded Palin. "A creature of pure evil. They ain't if this world. They're from... Somewhere Else."
"I can't move," said Ruby, dread in her voice. Farnin found that he couldn't either. Palin told them is was a spell of the Barghest's, and to fight it.
Slowly the Barghest took a humanoid shape, grizzled hair turning to blue skin and leathered armor. A full nine feet tall, the Barghest resembled a huge Goblin, save for its size and color. With a gesture, it summoned a long spear, wickedly sharp from thin air. The Goblins took a few steps forward, and their eyes began to glow a faint orange; they were clearly being controlled by the Barghest. It grinned with evil delight at the Dwarf before it.
Palin wasted no time. He swung his axe at the creature, but it parried with its spear. Blue sparks flashed. The Barghest thrust its weapon forward, but Palin twisted aside and swung his axe again; it deflected off the Barghest's armor.
Meanwhile the Goblins were advancing on the carriage. There were about seven of them, crawling like spiders around the wagon, their eyes orange lanterns. Ruby, freed from the spell as the Barghest concentrated on the Dwarf, grabbed a few apples from a barrel on the cart and hurled them at the nearest Goblins. They flinched, but did not turn away. Farnin had pulled a whittling knife from his belt in defense and was gesturing for another illusion.
Palin swung furiously at the Barghest, but it leaped into the air, hovered backward a few yards, an touched down again out of the Dwarf's reach. It swung its long spear in an arc, but Palin jumped back. It tore his tunic, but did not pierce his armor.
With a sharp flick of Farnin's hand, a wall of stone jutted up out of the earth between the Goblins and the Gnomes. The Goblins jumped back, but a few passed through the illusion, unfooled. The others followed. Farnin let the wall fade back into shadow and continued to gesture. Ruby joined him in creating another illusion.
A wall of flames leaped up before the Goblins, accompanied by a jolt of lightning from seemingly nowhere. Many of the Goblins were genuinely shocked, and in three, the orange glow in their eyes flickered and went out. Scared by the illusionary fire, they ran off into the woods screaming, leaving four still under the Barghest's control.
The Barghest struck back again, and its spear struck Palin's left arm. Blood trickled from the wound as the fiend gloated. Oblivious, Palin charged forward with a roar and slashed at the Barghest. It was caught unprepared for the Dwarf's lightning-fast strike, and with a cry of pain the Barghest's left hand fell writhing to the ground. Black blood oozed from the stump, and the beast snarled in pain. It lept back, and its eyes faded to a dull yellow. It began to change again, becoming lupine, until it was once again the Worg-like monster that the three first encountered.
Shadows swirled about the Barghest, and a hole as black as midnight opened in the air. The Barghest's eyes flared orange again for a moment as it snarled and bared its rotting, razor-sharp teeth. Then it turned and disappeared into the shadows. The portal closed behind it.
The Barghest's spell broken, the four remaining Goblins' eyes retained to a dull brown, glazed and staring. Seeing the illusory wall of flames before them, they backed off and ran off the road into the woods. Farnin and Ruby let the flames disappear and turned to his wife. They held each other tight.
Palin stared after the Barghest. It was by pure luck that he had bested it. He looked down at the creature's still-moving hand on the ground. Already it was bubbling and disintegrating, turning to a pool of black ichor. Palin frowned and turned back to the Gnomes.
"We'd best be gone," he said bluntly. "The Goblins won't come at us again soon: we scared some sense into them. But the Worgs might be back."
Farnin looked up. "How will we get past the trees?"
Palin glanced at the roadblock and scowled. "We'll have to leave the cart behind - and the ponies, and the goods. One of them's already been struck by an arrow, see? Poisoned, most likely. The whole affair will set me back some thirty gold pieces and a pair of faithful companions, but we'll live and that's what's important. Come on."
The Gnomes did not argue. Farnin jumped off the wagon and helped Ruby down. Ruby, thinking ahead brought a good number of apples for the road. The two followed after Palin.
The three scrambled carefully over the tree and continued along the road on foot. They walked quickly, and were out on Wendia's verdant plains in a few hours. They saw no Goblins or Worgs on the way out of Whetmar Forest. It was about three hours after midnight, Palin guessed. They saw little on the road: a few farmhouses in the distance, animals out to pasture, the usual country scenery. They passed a few drifters, but did not speak with them. It was nearly dawn when they found the trail to Gemstead. They paused to rest under the road-sign for a few hours, exhausted.
When they woke, it was nearing noon. They followed the trail for a few more hours before they finally arrived in the sleepy Gnome community of Gemstead. The sun was shining brightly, a relief after the gloom of Whetmar. There were a few Gnomes sitting outside little wood and clay houses on the ground and homes built into the trunks of a few large trees, enjoying the day, but the three knew that most of the town's population lived underground, beneath the old hills before them. They approached the front gates, a pair of seven-foot tall iron-braced wooden doors left open to accommodate visitors.
A young man on guard saw the three approaching. Standing up straight, he picked up his bow and waved. He was a Forest Gnome, several inches shorter than the two Rock Gnomes, and fairer of skin with light brown hair. Like Farnin, the guard wore a tall, green cap as part of his uniform, with a loose-fitting beige tunic depicting the town's arms, a diamond set in a gold nugget on a red shield. He smiled at them.
"Hello, there. Welcome to Gemstead! What's your business?"
"Thank you," said Farnin. "I don't suppose you know a Garnet Gemcutter?"
"Aye, I do," responded the guard. "You're not her sister and brother-in-law, are you?" He looked carefully at the two Gnomes. "You fit her description pretty well."
Ruby nodded. "We are, yes. Ruby and Farnin. Is she all right?"
"Good, good!" said the young Gnome. "She's just fine yes. Oh, I'm Tib, a friend of the family."
"Tib," repeated Farnin. "It's a pleasure meeting you. Could you go tell her we're here?"
"Well, I'm on duty, but... wait." He called to a fellow guard, lounging by the gates enjoying a light lunch. "Tarin!" called Tib. "Go tell Mrs. Gemcutter her family's here, will you?" The youth promptly nodded, stood up, and hurried off into the hill. "There you go, sir, ma'am," smiled Tib.
"Thank you so much, Tib," said Ruby. "Could you you pardon us for a moment?" He obliged, stepping back to his post.
Ruby turned to Palin. "Thank you, sir, so very much. We'd not be here now if not for you."
"That reminds me... your payment..." Farnin slipped the silver necklace with its shining diamond from around his neck and held it out to the Dwarf. He smiled almost sadly.
Despite the old Dwarven greed whispering in his ear, Palin held up his hand. "That's all right. Ye can keep it." When Farnin shook his head, the Dwarf held his hand up again to silence him. "The two of ye saved me life as sure as I saved yer's. That's all the payment this old Dwarf could ask for."
Ruby smiled and blushed. "Why, thank you, sir... er, Palin."
"Think nothin' of it," said Palin gently.
Farnin scratched the ground with his foot anxiously. "Well, then... I guess they'll be waiting for us inside. Mister Narisson, Palin, if ever you're in the area, do come and visit us in Nindlheim. We'd love to have you over."
Palin grinned. "I don't head that way too often, but I'll take some time off to head out your way. But only if you'll look me up in Danbarg." He winked.
"A deal," said Farnin and shook Palin's hand. They stood a moment in silence, then Farnin turned to the young guard. "Tib? We're ready to go now." Tib nodded and started ahead.
"Well... so long, Palin," smiled Farnin with a sigh. Ruby said her farewell too, and the two Gnomes turned and walked in through the gates behind Tib, disappearing into the shadows beneath the hill. The Dwarf sighed as he watched them go, then smiled. He turned around and went on his way.
The End
Incidentially, I got an "A". ;P Woulda been an "A+" but for spelling. :P
Anyway.
The Road to Gemstead
A Short Story
By William B. Staples
On the edge of the cobblestone street by Davinport's old inn, two Gnomes waited for a carriage. The male was the taller, about three-foot-six, with a big nose and a brown beard and mustache flecked with strands of gray and white. He wore a typically Gnomish red felt cap that stuck up a foot and a half and a shining diamond set on a silver chain around his neck. The woman was about three inches shorter with a floppy gray hat and long, light brown hair tied into a braid down her back.
It was nearing the fifth hour after noontide when a carriage drew near. The streets weren't crowded: most of the locals were at home, at work, or at the inns and taverns, so the Gnomes saw it coming early on. Drawn by a pair of sturdy ponies, it rattled down along the brick road. The driver was hunched over in his dark brown cloak, but his size and the air of dour seriousness he exuded made it clear enough that he was a Dwarf.
"Hello? Hello, sir?" The male Gnome stepped out onto the street and waved at the driver. "Sir?"
The Dwarf looked up at the Gnome and grunted to himself. Pulling on the reigns, he guided the ponies to a stop.
"What do ye want?" asked the driver bluntly, looking up. A Dwarf in the prime of his life, he had a short sandy-blond hair and a rough, leathery-looking face that was all sharp angles and flat planes. He had on a faded green-and-yellow-striped tunic over an old chainmail vest and he wore huge boots.
"Uh, yes, sir," replied the Gnome. "Do you know the way to Gemstead?"
"Any merchant worth his salt does."
"Good... uh, can you take me there, and my wife?"
"Couldn't say. Sun'll be settin' in an hour or two, an' that's when the bandits an' Goblins come out. The road ain't as safe as it used to be."
The Gnome lady stepped forward. "Please, sir... it's urgent. My sister there is due to give birth any day now. We've been on the road for two days, and Gemstead is less than a day's journey from here."
"I'm sorry, lady, but it just ain't worth me while."
"Wait." The husband held up his hand to silence the Dwarf. He removed the necklace he wore and held it up for him to see. "If you agree to take us there today, you can have this."
As the old Dwarven longing for riches stirred in his heart, the carriage-driver looked spellbound upon the diamond on the necklace. "Well," he said thoughtfully after a moment, "that changes things. That stone's likely worth more than I make in a month's time." He paused, looking at it longer. "Well then, I suppose I can. But it's out of me way; remember that. I've got to be in Wend in two days, an' this'll put me off me schedule."
"Oh, thank you so, sir," said the Gnome. "We perfectly understand."
"Good. Climb in the back of me wagon then, and keep quiet."
The did so, and the Dwarf promptly started the ponies down the road again. They rolled past the town of Davinport's old stone and wood houses on their way, and the Gnomes looked up at the blue summer sky, watching the puffy clouds float overhead.
"I was goin' to stay at that an inn for the night before leavin' for Wend," said the Dwarf. "This really ain't good for me."
"I'm really very sorry, sir," said the Gnome.
"It's all right," growled the driver, not really meaning it. "Anyways," he went on, "Since we'll be together for some six, seven hours, we might as well get to know each other's names. I'm Palin Narisson, from Danbarg off west in the Granite Hills. I'm a Hill Dwarf, mind ye, not one of those pompous Mountain Dwarves that ye see so much of in these parts." He sounded a bit pompous himself as he said this. "What about the two of ye?" he asked, not bothering to look back.
"Uh, I'm Farnin Silversmith, and this is my wife Ruby. We're Rock Gnomes, from Nindlheim."
"Nindlheim. Dornin Glittergold's kingdom, weren't it?"
"Still is, sir. Have you ever been there?"
Palin grunted. "I'd be daft to. The lands about it're crawlin' with Kobolds and worse."
"It's really not so big a problem... we keep the Kobolds well in check."
The Dwarf grunted again, growing bored with the conversation.
They continued on, passing eventually through Davinport's gates and onto the rolling plains of the Kingdom of Wendia. A number of travelers passed them by, most of them Humans, a few Elves, Dwarves, and others. Most were heading for Davinport from the smaller farms and villages nearby. The silvery Dunlamere River flowed to the south, barges and rowboats coming into and going out of Davinport's docks.
"We left Nindlheim two days ago," Farnin was saying. 'We didn't see much after we left the mountains. Hitched rides most of the way like this... it's just too far to walk. We arrived in Davinport around noon today."
"Mmhm," nodded Palin, uninterested. "Aye, aye."
The sun was just staring to set, the sky turning red on the horizon. The moon, a disk of white, green, and blue, was just beginning to rise. Palin pointed to a tangle of woods and hills off to the northeast that the road disappeared into. "There's Whetmar Forest up ahead. The most dangerous leg of the trip, but also the quickest way to where we're doing. It'll take us some three hours to get out." He turned to look back at the Gnomes. "The Forest's infested with Goblins, ye see. They ain't very strong an' they ain't very smart, but they swarm like ants. They hate Dwarves, too, for some ancient grudge no one can remember. I'm good enough with an axe," he laid a hand on the weapon at his side, "but I can't say if it'll do us much good."
"Well," ventured Farnin, "I can do a few magic tricks, if it helps... most Gnomes are taught the use of illusions from a young age." Ruby nodded in affirmation.
Palin chuckled morbidly. "As superstitious an' tribal as Goblins are, I don't know if some smoke and mirrors'll scare 'em off."
Within an hour they reached the eaves of Whetmar as the sun set fully beneath the horizon and night took over. The trees were mostly oak and pine, grown so thick together that they made it impossible to see the sky overhead. Vines hung thickly, and moths fluttered silently from tree to tree. There was a smell of rotting wood on the humid summer air, and no wind. The heat, even at night, was oppressive. Occasionally, a shape moved in the shadows to either side of the road, perhaps a wild animal, perhaps something else. A sense of dread fell upon the Gnomes.
Palin was the first to break the silence. "Keep an eye out for wolves," said the Dwarf. "Especially the big Worgs: Goblins ride them like horses. Smart they are, too. Some can even talk."
Before long, about an hour and a half after they'd entered, the three in the carriage came upon an old wooden road-sign nailed to a tree that had probably been put there years earlier. It read, "Forest Edge - Five Miles," with an arrow pointing in both directions to show that this place was the center of Whetmar forest. Below, in what looked like dried blood, was crudely scrawled: "Beware Goblins."
"Goblins," breathed Ruby. Farnin looked into the gloom warily, and Palin grunted upsettedly.
"We'd better hurry," muttered Palin, spurring the ponies on again. "It'll be an hour or two before we're safe on the plains again."
Not fifteen minuted after the three read the sign on the tree, the sounds began. The snapping of twigs and rustling of leaves underfoot, the low growl of some large animal, the quiet rasping of voices in the black. Palin whispered to Farnin and Ruby without looking back at them that the Goblins had found them and that they did have Worgs with them, and that they should no means look at the Goblins or do anything to let them know they knew the Goblins were there. "When they attack, they'll think we're unprepared. I want to keep up that charade as long as possible."
It seemed like an eternity before the Goblins attacked. An arrow came suddenly speeding out of the forest, narrowly missing the Dwarf's head. Not caught unaware, Palin sped the ponies to a gallop, the carriage rumbling along the dirt road. Immediately two Goblins mounted on Worgs broke from the cover of the brush and rushed furiously after.
Ruby screamed. The Worgs, huge wolves as large as ponies with yellow fangs and gleaming red eyes, growled and barked at each other in their own unhuman language. The Goblins astride them, hunched-over Dwarf-sized humanoids with angular faces, grimy orange-yellow skin, and primitive features, wielded short swords and hand axes with surprising ferocity for such small creatures. They rushed toward their intended prey.
Meanwhile arrows, darts, and spears shot out of the woods on either side. Most were off the mark, but a few embedded themselves in the sides of the wagon. Palin continued to urge the ponies onward, seemingly oblivious to the danger.
Farnin made a few quick gestures at the mounted Goblins, and an explosion wracked the road behind them, flames illuminating the woods.
Palin looked back and gaped in surprise. "What in the world was that?" he yelled at the Gnomes.
"It's just an illusion!" shouted Ruby in response. "To scare them! Keep going!"
"I've never seen smoke and mirrors do that," Palin growled under his breath as he cracked the reigns again.
Illusionary flames continued to explode behind them, and the Worgs lept aside back into the woods. Goblins continued to shoot at them but their aim was confused by the excitement and all of their missiles flew wide.
It was then that the three saw the tree fallen across the road, felled by the Goblins as a roadblock. Goblins hunched atop it, spears and short swords in hand, crude wooden shields on their arms. Palin quickly tossed his hat down and reached into the back of the wagon, grabbing a battered metal helmet and putting it on his head. "Now's the time for any more of those illusions," muttered the Dwarf as he slowed the ponies to a stop.
"Goblin worms!" shouted Palin, jumping to the ground. The Goblins hopped from the tree to the ground, but did not advance. Farnin and Ruby, wary for Goblins in the woods trying to flank them, moved closer to the front of the carriage.
Palin's battle-axe waved in the air. "Goblin worms! If ye want to die, then come at it!"
The Goblins did not move. Instead, in response to the Dwarf's call, a huge shape bounded over the roadblock and stood growling at the three. It was shaped like a Worg, but much larger, as big as a bull. Rather than the Worgs' dull red gleam, the creature's eyes glowed a bright, sickly orange with excitement.
Palin stared. "By the Maker," he whispered, "I pray that ain't what I think it is."
Slowly the wolf-beast began to change shape, growing thinner and longer. Its paws became longer and more dextrous, and its face grew shorter.
"In Garl's name," muttered Farnin, staring in disbelief. "What is it?"
"A Barghest," responded Palin. "A creature of pure evil. They ain't if this world. They're from... Somewhere Else."
"I can't move," said Ruby, dread in her voice. Farnin found that he couldn't either. Palin told them is was a spell of the Barghest's, and to fight it.
Slowly the Barghest took a humanoid shape, grizzled hair turning to blue skin and leathered armor. A full nine feet tall, the Barghest resembled a huge Goblin, save for its size and color. With a gesture, it summoned a long spear, wickedly sharp from thin air. The Goblins took a few steps forward, and their eyes began to glow a faint orange; they were clearly being controlled by the Barghest. It grinned with evil delight at the Dwarf before it.
Palin wasted no time. He swung his axe at the creature, but it parried with its spear. Blue sparks flashed. The Barghest thrust its weapon forward, but Palin twisted aside and swung his axe again; it deflected off the Barghest's armor.
Meanwhile the Goblins were advancing on the carriage. There were about seven of them, crawling like spiders around the wagon, their eyes orange lanterns. Ruby, freed from the spell as the Barghest concentrated on the Dwarf, grabbed a few apples from a barrel on the cart and hurled them at the nearest Goblins. They flinched, but did not turn away. Farnin had pulled a whittling knife from his belt in defense and was gesturing for another illusion.
Palin swung furiously at the Barghest, but it leaped into the air, hovered backward a few yards, an touched down again out of the Dwarf's reach. It swung its long spear in an arc, but Palin jumped back. It tore his tunic, but did not pierce his armor.
With a sharp flick of Farnin's hand, a wall of stone jutted up out of the earth between the Goblins and the Gnomes. The Goblins jumped back, but a few passed through the illusion, unfooled. The others followed. Farnin let the wall fade back into shadow and continued to gesture. Ruby joined him in creating another illusion.
A wall of flames leaped up before the Goblins, accompanied by a jolt of lightning from seemingly nowhere. Many of the Goblins were genuinely shocked, and in three, the orange glow in their eyes flickered and went out. Scared by the illusionary fire, they ran off into the woods screaming, leaving four still under the Barghest's control.
The Barghest struck back again, and its spear struck Palin's left arm. Blood trickled from the wound as the fiend gloated. Oblivious, Palin charged forward with a roar and slashed at the Barghest. It was caught unprepared for the Dwarf's lightning-fast strike, and with a cry of pain the Barghest's left hand fell writhing to the ground. Black blood oozed from the stump, and the beast snarled in pain. It lept back, and its eyes faded to a dull yellow. It began to change again, becoming lupine, until it was once again the Worg-like monster that the three first encountered.
Shadows swirled about the Barghest, and a hole as black as midnight opened in the air. The Barghest's eyes flared orange again for a moment as it snarled and bared its rotting, razor-sharp teeth. Then it turned and disappeared into the shadows. The portal closed behind it.
The Barghest's spell broken, the four remaining Goblins' eyes retained to a dull brown, glazed and staring. Seeing the illusory wall of flames before them, they backed off and ran off the road into the woods. Farnin and Ruby let the flames disappear and turned to his wife. They held each other tight.
Palin stared after the Barghest. It was by pure luck that he had bested it. He looked down at the creature's still-moving hand on the ground. Already it was bubbling and disintegrating, turning to a pool of black ichor. Palin frowned and turned back to the Gnomes.
"We'd best be gone," he said bluntly. "The Goblins won't come at us again soon: we scared some sense into them. But the Worgs might be back."
Farnin looked up. "How will we get past the trees?"
Palin glanced at the roadblock and scowled. "We'll have to leave the cart behind - and the ponies, and the goods. One of them's already been struck by an arrow, see? Poisoned, most likely. The whole affair will set me back some thirty gold pieces and a pair of faithful companions, but we'll live and that's what's important. Come on."
The Gnomes did not argue. Farnin jumped off the wagon and helped Ruby down. Ruby, thinking ahead brought a good number of apples for the road. The two followed after Palin.
The three scrambled carefully over the tree and continued along the road on foot. They walked quickly, and were out on Wendia's verdant plains in a few hours. They saw no Goblins or Worgs on the way out of Whetmar Forest. It was about three hours after midnight, Palin guessed. They saw little on the road: a few farmhouses in the distance, animals out to pasture, the usual country scenery. They passed a few drifters, but did not speak with them. It was nearly dawn when they found the trail to Gemstead. They paused to rest under the road-sign for a few hours, exhausted.
When they woke, it was nearing noon. They followed the trail for a few more hours before they finally arrived in the sleepy Gnome community of Gemstead. The sun was shining brightly, a relief after the gloom of Whetmar. There were a few Gnomes sitting outside little wood and clay houses on the ground and homes built into the trunks of a few large trees, enjoying the day, but the three knew that most of the town's population lived underground, beneath the old hills before them. They approached the front gates, a pair of seven-foot tall iron-braced wooden doors left open to accommodate visitors.
A young man on guard saw the three approaching. Standing up straight, he picked up his bow and waved. He was a Forest Gnome, several inches shorter than the two Rock Gnomes, and fairer of skin with light brown hair. Like Farnin, the guard wore a tall, green cap as part of his uniform, with a loose-fitting beige tunic depicting the town's arms, a diamond set in a gold nugget on a red shield. He smiled at them.
"Hello, there. Welcome to Gemstead! What's your business?"
"Thank you," said Farnin. "I don't suppose you know a Garnet Gemcutter?"
"Aye, I do," responded the guard. "You're not her sister and brother-in-law, are you?" He looked carefully at the two Gnomes. "You fit her description pretty well."
Ruby nodded. "We are, yes. Ruby and Farnin. Is she all right?"
"Good, good!" said the young Gnome. "She's just fine yes. Oh, I'm Tib, a friend of the family."
"Tib," repeated Farnin. "It's a pleasure meeting you. Could you go tell her we're here?"
"Well, I'm on duty, but... wait." He called to a fellow guard, lounging by the gates enjoying a light lunch. "Tarin!" called Tib. "Go tell Mrs. Gemcutter her family's here, will you?" The youth promptly nodded, stood up, and hurried off into the hill. "There you go, sir, ma'am," smiled Tib.
"Thank you so much, Tib," said Ruby. "Could you you pardon us for a moment?" He obliged, stepping back to his post.
Ruby turned to Palin. "Thank you, sir, so very much. We'd not be here now if not for you."
"That reminds me... your payment..." Farnin slipped the silver necklace with its shining diamond from around his neck and held it out to the Dwarf. He smiled almost sadly.
Despite the old Dwarven greed whispering in his ear, Palin held up his hand. "That's all right. Ye can keep it." When Farnin shook his head, the Dwarf held his hand up again to silence him. "The two of ye saved me life as sure as I saved yer's. That's all the payment this old Dwarf could ask for."
Ruby smiled and blushed. "Why, thank you, sir... er, Palin."
"Think nothin' of it," said Palin gently.
Farnin scratched the ground with his foot anxiously. "Well, then... I guess they'll be waiting for us inside. Mister Narisson, Palin, if ever you're in the area, do come and visit us in Nindlheim. We'd love to have you over."
Palin grinned. "I don't head that way too often, but I'll take some time off to head out your way. But only if you'll look me up in Danbarg." He winked.
"A deal," said Farnin and shook Palin's hand. They stood a moment in silence, then Farnin turned to the young guard. "Tib? We're ready to go now." Tib nodded and started ahead.
"Well... so long, Palin," smiled Farnin with a sigh. Ruby said her farewell too, and the two Gnomes turned and walked in through the gates behind Tib, disappearing into the shadows beneath the hill. The Dwarf sighed as he watched them go, then smiled. He turned around and went on his way.
The End
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Creative Writing: Part Deux
A little while after I wrote my Arch-devil profile for Dicefreaks, I ended up writing another such profile, this time for a Demon Prince. I kinda like this one better -- it's an original character (albeit named after a Biblical figure), so I was able to be a little more creative instead of sticking to D&D continuity.
Read more...
Originally Rahab was named Dagon (and was largely inspired by the Lovecraft-derived B-movie of the same name), but I had to change it because the project already had a devil named Dagon. Oddly enough, a few years later, an official D&D sourcebook came out with a version of Dagon practically identical to the one I wrote below. (See here for Rahab w/full game stats done up by a fellow poster.)
RAHAB (Vepar, Sorath, Dagon)
The Demon Prince of the Lightless Depths, the Deep One, the Lord of the Deeps, Mariner's Bane, the Bringer of Storms
Symbol: A single round eye with no iris or pupil.
One of the most dreadful of the horrors of the Abyss, Rahab, the Demon Prince of the Lightless Depths, is a tentacled monstrosity that desires nothing less than the domination of all seas. One of the oldest demons in existance, the primordial horror that is Rahab is a creature of slime, darkness, and insanity that only the strongest of wills can stand to look upon without losing their mind.
Rahab's realm is the 873rd layer of the Abyss: the Lightless Depths. A water-filled realm, the Depths are literally without light: anyone without darkvision can see absolutely nothing in this layer. Here, Rahab swims through the black abyss, devouring the souls of those foolish or insane enough to call him their master. Unlike most other Demon Princes, Rahab shares his realm with several other powerful beings, including a number of myrmyxicuses. At one time he fought for his layer with dread King of the Deep, a demonic entity once beholden to the will of the now-dead goddess Takhisis, but the King was slain by heroes on the world of Krynn, and now Rahab's dominion over the Depths is unquestioned. It is likely that various other unique demons call the Depths home as well. These lesser horrors generally leave Rahab alone, and flee before his might when he approaches.
Like many fiends, Rahab is known by many names. Some of his followers speak of him as Vepar and others as Sorath. Some cultists know him as Dagon, but that name rightfully belongs to one of Hell's devils.
Because their "portfolios" overlap in regards to the slimy dwellers of the deep, Rahab is a sworn enemy of both the Demiurge Demogorgon and the dread Hadean god Panzuriel, but because of Rahab's relative weakness, clashes between their forces tend to be rare. Among the other powers he has made an enemy of are Sekolah of the sahuagin; Blibdoolpoolp of the kuo-toa; Eadro of the merfolk and locathah; Deep Sashelas of the elves; the Elemental Prince Ben-Hadar; and the human gods Aegir, Umberlee, and Poseidon. Of these, Poseidon is by far his deadliest rival: the Sea Father has sworn an oath to rid his oceans of Rahab's evil influence. It is common for Poseidon to recruit powerful heroes to brave the Lightless Depths and spy on his cultists' doings in the hopes that some headway might be made in his war against the demon. The Duke of Hell known as Dagon loathes Rahab as well for allowing the demon's followers to know him as Dagon.
Unsurprisingly, Rahab has virtually no friends. The only ally he has is Olhydra, the Princess of Evil Water. Because of the distance between their realms, however, and Olhydra's fickle nature, he has not found her a very reliable ally.
The goals of Rahab are the destruction of good sea life (such as aquatic elves) and the domination of neutral and evil denizens of the oceans. He has many worshippers among the creatures of slime and muck that dwell on the seabed: koprus, anguiliians, kuo-toas, ixitxachitls, rogue sahuagin, and even some renegade merfolk pay Rahab homage. All of these races have their own unique, foul rites that they perform in Rahab's name.
Rahab has a fairly widespread following of human cultists on the Prime Material Plane. Many a coastal fishing town has found itself at the mercy of a poor harvest and turned to Rahab-worship in hopes of rectifying the situation. Indeed, Rahab frequently rewards his worshippers with greater catches of fish and harvests of grain, as well as gifts of gold. Such cultists make a common practice of summoning their demonic master to their plane of existance and offering a living sacrifice - indeed, Rahab actually encourages his followers to summon him. Such conjurations give him an opportunity to spread his corruption, transforming his worshippers into maddened inhuman reflections of their old selves, creatures of slime as hideous as their master. Such summonings typically involve a blood sacrifice and the destruction of a small golden pyramid inscribed on each face with his unholy symbol.
Rahab is truly hideous. Only vaguely humanoid in shape, the Demon Prince of the Lightless Depths is a gargantuan cephalopoid monster. He looks something like a bloated, rubbery octopus, with a head like a human skull, a single cyclopean eye with no pupil set in its center. In place of a mouth, Rahab has a mass of ten-foot-long tentacles that dangle writhing from his head. Rahab has two huge tentacle-arms like those of an octopus that branch at each of their midpoints into ten squirming appendages. From his 'waist' depend twenty or more tentacles. His overall color is a dark green-brown, but Rahab can change his color to suit his whim. In addition to this hideous form, he can also change at will into a handsome merman some twenty feet from head to tail, with dark green skin and green-brown scales; he adopts this shape when summoned to the Prime by his human followers.
Read more...
Originally Rahab was named Dagon (and was largely inspired by the Lovecraft-derived B-movie of the same name), but I had to change it because the project already had a devil named Dagon. Oddly enough, a few years later, an official D&D sourcebook came out with a version of Dagon practically identical to the one I wrote below. (See here for Rahab w/full game stats done up by a fellow poster.)
RAHAB (Vepar, Sorath, Dagon)
The Demon Prince of the Lightless Depths, the Deep One, the Lord of the Deeps, Mariner's Bane, the Bringer of Storms
Symbol: A single round eye with no iris or pupil.
One of the most dreadful of the horrors of the Abyss, Rahab, the Demon Prince of the Lightless Depths, is a tentacled monstrosity that desires nothing less than the domination of all seas. One of the oldest demons in existance, the primordial horror that is Rahab is a creature of slime, darkness, and insanity that only the strongest of wills can stand to look upon without losing their mind.
Rahab's realm is the 873rd layer of the Abyss: the Lightless Depths. A water-filled realm, the Depths are literally without light: anyone without darkvision can see absolutely nothing in this layer. Here, Rahab swims through the black abyss, devouring the souls of those foolish or insane enough to call him their master. Unlike most other Demon Princes, Rahab shares his realm with several other powerful beings, including a number of myrmyxicuses. At one time he fought for his layer with dread King of the Deep, a demonic entity once beholden to the will of the now-dead goddess Takhisis, but the King was slain by heroes on the world of Krynn, and now Rahab's dominion over the Depths is unquestioned. It is likely that various other unique demons call the Depths home as well. These lesser horrors generally leave Rahab alone, and flee before his might when he approaches.
Like many fiends, Rahab is known by many names. Some of his followers speak of him as Vepar and others as Sorath. Some cultists know him as Dagon, but that name rightfully belongs to one of Hell's devils.
Because their "portfolios" overlap in regards to the slimy dwellers of the deep, Rahab is a sworn enemy of both the Demiurge Demogorgon and the dread Hadean god Panzuriel, but because of Rahab's relative weakness, clashes between their forces tend to be rare. Among the other powers he has made an enemy of are Sekolah of the sahuagin; Blibdoolpoolp of the kuo-toa; Eadro of the merfolk and locathah; Deep Sashelas of the elves; the Elemental Prince Ben-Hadar; and the human gods Aegir, Umberlee, and Poseidon. Of these, Poseidon is by far his deadliest rival: the Sea Father has sworn an oath to rid his oceans of Rahab's evil influence. It is common for Poseidon to recruit powerful heroes to brave the Lightless Depths and spy on his cultists' doings in the hopes that some headway might be made in his war against the demon. The Duke of Hell known as Dagon loathes Rahab as well for allowing the demon's followers to know him as Dagon.
Unsurprisingly, Rahab has virtually no friends. The only ally he has is Olhydra, the Princess of Evil Water. Because of the distance between their realms, however, and Olhydra's fickle nature, he has not found her a very reliable ally.
The goals of Rahab are the destruction of good sea life (such as aquatic elves) and the domination of neutral and evil denizens of the oceans. He has many worshippers among the creatures of slime and muck that dwell on the seabed: koprus, anguiliians, kuo-toas, ixitxachitls, rogue sahuagin, and even some renegade merfolk pay Rahab homage. All of these races have their own unique, foul rites that they perform in Rahab's name.
Rahab has a fairly widespread following of human cultists on the Prime Material Plane. Many a coastal fishing town has found itself at the mercy of a poor harvest and turned to Rahab-worship in hopes of rectifying the situation. Indeed, Rahab frequently rewards his worshippers with greater catches of fish and harvests of grain, as well as gifts of gold. Such cultists make a common practice of summoning their demonic master to their plane of existance and offering a living sacrifice - indeed, Rahab actually encourages his followers to summon him. Such conjurations give him an opportunity to spread his corruption, transforming his worshippers into maddened inhuman reflections of their old selves, creatures of slime as hideous as their master. Such summonings typically involve a blood sacrifice and the destruction of a small golden pyramid inscribed on each face with his unholy symbol.
Rahab is truly hideous. Only vaguely humanoid in shape, the Demon Prince of the Lightless Depths is a gargantuan cephalopoid monster. He looks something like a bloated, rubbery octopus, with a head like a human skull, a single cyclopean eye with no pupil set in its center. In place of a mouth, Rahab has a mass of ten-foot-long tentacles that dangle writhing from his head. Rahab has two huge tentacle-arms like those of an octopus that branch at each of their midpoints into ten squirming appendages. From his 'waist' depend twenty or more tentacles. His overall color is a dark green-brown, but Rahab can change his color to suit his whim. In addition to this hideous form, he can also change at will into a handsome merman some twenty feet from head to tail, with dark green skin and green-brown scales; he adopts this shape when summoned to the Prime by his human followers.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Creative Writing
This is an exercize in creative writing I undertook a few years ago as part of a project on a D&D community I frequent: a profile of an Arch-devil, sans game stats. It never made it into the final project, but it was still a fun experience and I enjoyed writing it.
I only wish I could harness this kind of creative power to write fiction.
Why yes, I am stroking my own ego by posting this, why do you ask?
Note that originally her name was "Zariel" and her successor was "Bel", but I had to change them to "Astarte" and "Bael" because that's what the mods wanted. I didn't like that because the actual Astarte and Bael were benign deities who had nothing to do with Hell. As a compromise, I tried to distinguish between the infernal versions of Astarte and Bael and the original deific versions by using alternate names for the latter (Ashera and Baal) and explaining the reason for the similarities in the names within the text.
ASTARTE
The Archdevil of Destruction, Deposed Lord of the First
aka Zariel, Zavebe
Shortly after the Great Fall, the Seven Virtues of Heaven saw the need to keep a watch on the fallen angels that descended into the Hells. The Supreme Virtue of the Seven Heavens chose one of its most powerful servants, a solar named Astarte, as the chief watcher over the fallen celestials in Avernus. Astarte was originally a vassal of the Virtue of the Sixth Heaven, and the general of one of the greatest flights of celestials in the Upper Planes; unlike her fellow solar Triel - now the devil Beelzebub - Astarte had never shown any signs of corruption, and seemed a perfect choice for the job of warden. So it was that, with an army of angels, Astarte flew through the planes of Arcadia, Mechanus, and Acheron to the blasted plains of Avernus in Hell.
Fighting off the hordes of devils that inevitably resisted their arrival, the forces of Astarte built a celestial fortress of bronze on Avernus, her stronghold against the evil of Hell. Their task was to keep a watch on the doings of fallen celestials in Avernus: to make sure that they made no attempt to return back to Heaven to exact vengeance. They repulsed several such attempts on the fallen angels' part, and the Bastions were confident in the outcome of their decision.
Unfortunately, they underestimated the corrupting nature of Hell's very fabric. The methods Astarte employed grew colder and harsher with each passing century, and the celestial fire that burned in her heart dimmed. Before a millenium had passed, Astarte and her similarly dispassioned followers began working with Hell's devils, who also sought to control the fallen celestials. Astarte stopped communicating with the Lords of Heaven and focused entirely on keeping the fallen in check. She allied with Urukbaramael, a solar who had fallen with Eblis and Triel, who employed similarly violent methods with his fellow fallen in his vain attempt to fall back into the Virtues' favor; together the two, both filled with misguided single-minded righteous fervor, struck fear into many of the fallen, and Astarte sank deeper into cold heartlesness.
In time, Astarte and Urukbaramael laid plans to sack the infernal lair of the terrible Chromatic Dragon, Tiamat, the Lord of the First at the time. Normally such a campaign would have failed, but the fallen hosts of the two caught the Lord of the First unawares. Together, Astarte and Urukbaramael stormed the Caverns of Greed; fighting her way past Tiamat's five draconic consorts and to the Great Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Astarte laid waste to Tiamat's guard, withstood her foul spells and the attacks of her vile breath, and brought her sword to bear while Urukbaramael kept a pair of Tiamat's Dukes at bay. She lifted her sword into the air and prepared to plunge the enchanted blade into the Lord of the First's blackened heart - until a terrible row split the air, fire engulfed the hoard-room, and the face of Asmodeus himself appeared before Astarte.
While Urukbaramael, the Dukes of Avernus, and even the Chromatic Dragon herself cowered at the horrible sight, Asmodeus told Astarte that if she would let Tiamat live, he would anoint her as the new Lord of the First Hell. Astarte considered the proposition for a moment - and accepted. As the diabolic power of the King of Hell transformed her, she left behind any pretense of loyalty to the Supreme Virtue and Heaven; as she took her place in the Great Machine of Hell, the last scraps of goodness left in her disappated. She was now a devil.
Asmodeus left Tiamat and her brood to guard the passage into Hell from her dragonspawn pits, and Astarte, with Urukbaramael at her side as her consort and right hand, began to establish herself as the new Warlord of Avernus, ruling from her Bronze Citadel. Part of her agreement with Asmodeus was that she continue to keep the fallen angels under check, a task she found much easier now that she had Tiamat's legions of devils as well as her own host of "loyal" fallen angels at her beck and call. Urukbaramael gladly led her armies, torturing and destroying his fellow fallen. So terrible was the dark army of Astarte that the fallen dubbed her the Lady of Destruction, a title that stuck with her among the rest of the diabolic hierarchy.
The other Archdevils - especially the former celestials Belial, Moloch, and Beelzebub, who resented her for her original purpose in Hell - were quick to label Astarte an upstart, but she cared not. She had no allies among the fiends besides Urukbaramael. The only other entity in Hell with whom she had nonagressive contact was the goblin deity Bargrivyek, whose dogma of strength and unity against the dissident she respected. It was not uncommon for Zariel to send a small detatchment of devils and fallen angels from time to time to aid Bargrivyek's goblins and hobgoblins in their raids against Draukari, the realm of his rival deity, Kurtulmak of the kobolds. In those times goblinoid ambassadors were frequently stationed in the Bronze Citadel, and fiendish emmisaries made their residence in Bargrivyek's spectacularly misnamed realm, the Peaceable Lands.
Outside of Hell, Astarte had contact, aggressive or otherwise, with even fewer entities. Only one being cared about her appearance in Hell: the fertility-goddess Ashera of the Canaanite pantheon. Using the similarities between their names as a stepping-board, the cold-hearted Astarte took the opportunity to establish a few cults by subverting Ashera's worshipers; but since Astarte was under the protection of the Overlord of Hell, Ashera could do nothing about it. (Interestingly, in a repetition of history, Astarte's successor Bael would take advantage of a similar situation by usurping worshipers of Ashera's consort, the great thunder-god Baal; both devils contributed to the tragic villainization of the Canaanite pantheon.)
By no means did her lack of political ties did not stop Astarte from scheming against her fellow Lords of the Nine. She placed numerous spies in the courts of Dispater and Mammon, and had designs of conquering Dis (a notion which the other Lords found laughable). She reserved special hatred for Great Belial and the Lord of the Flies for reasons she no longer cared about, and laid countless plans to undo the two fallen angels. She paid little attention to the Blood War, focusing her attention on routing the fallen on Avernus; she left the front against the demons of the Abyss to her pit fiend general, the devil known as Bael.
When the civil war later to be known as the Dies Irae swept across the Hells, Astarte allied with Beelzebub, Belial, Moloch, and Mammon mostly to keep an eye on the four; she could not have forseen the outcome of that decision. When it seemed that the infernal hosts of Beelzebub and Mephistopheles would actually defeat Asmodeus, Astarte left the Bronze Citadel and made haste to Nessus with the other five Lords to witness the spectacle - and then Geryon sounded the signal and the armies of the Lords all turned against their masters. So the Reckoning of the Dies Irae came to pass.
For reasons still poorly understood, the King of Hell reinstated all of the Lords save Geryon (his only loyal vassal among the Nine) and Moloch (who foolishly challenged Asmodeus for lordship again shortly after), who were replaced by Leviathan and Lilith respectively. Astarte returned to her Bronze Citadel humiliated, with nothing but her newly kindled hatred for Asmodeus occupying her mind. If the Reckoning taught the devil Geryon the worthlesness of blind trust in Hell, it taught Astarte not to ignore the sovreignity of the Dark Lord.
After the Reckoning, the Lady of Destruction lived up to her name more than ever, wantonly laying waste to fallen angels, invading demons and yugoloths, and rogue devils alike. Her consort Urukbaramael was disturbed by what he saw. He, at least, had hopes of returning to Heaven; it was his monstrously cruel methods that kept him in Hell. He recognized that Astarte now had no purpose whatsoever, and resentment grew in his heart for his mistress. When at last her general Bael swept into the Bronze Citadel, his aim to usurp the Lordship of Avernus, Urukbaramael willingly let him into Astarte's throne room, looked on apathetically while his one-time mistress was routed, and then left to pursue his own twisted agendas in Avernus once again.
In the battle that ensued, Bael fought his way past Astarte's defenses in much the same way Astarte had fought past Tiamat's. Bael's ferocious onslaught surprised her: although she was perhaps the dullest of the Lords of the Nine, it quickly occured to Astarte that the King of Hell was setting his will against her. She fought Bael like a titan enraged, but in the end it was futile, and the pit fiend subdued her.
In a coup well-known throughout the planes, Bael imprisoned Astarte in a chamber beneath her throne - now his throne - and began siphoning off her power. Her Lordship stripped from her and given to Bael, Astarte could not hope to escape from the Warlord's snares. Still she fights Bael's magic with hers, but to no avail: unless Asmodeus himself sees fit to release her, there is no hope left for the fallen angel Astarte.
As already noted, a few scattered cults once existed that devoted themselves to Astarte, focusing on prolonging unjust wars and destruction, but upon his ascension, Bael saw to it that they were destroyed, generally by sending his devils to quash his prisoner's supporters.
In her prime in Heaven, Astarte was a beautiful yet powerful creature fourteen feet in height, with shining golden skin and flowing black hair; golden light shone from her eyes. Her beautiful appearance did not change with her ascension to Lordship - except for the loss of her wings, which simply disappeared. Over her years in Hell, however, her countenance grew weary and haggard, her hair turned gray, and the light in her eyes died. Now, held immobile in a chamber within Bael's fortress, she presents a stark figure in tarnished silver armor with dead gray eyes that stares down upon would-be visitors. She can still speak and use most of her spell-like abilities, but otherwise she cannot move (and so cannot cast spells with somatic or material components, etc.).
I only wish I could harness this kind of creative power to write fiction.
Why yes, I am stroking my own ego by posting this, why do you ask?
Note that originally her name was "Zariel" and her successor was "Bel", but I had to change them to "Astarte" and "Bael" because that's what the mods wanted. I didn't like that because the actual Astarte and Bael were benign deities who had nothing to do with Hell. As a compromise, I tried to distinguish between the infernal versions of Astarte and Bael and the original deific versions by using alternate names for the latter (Ashera and Baal) and explaining the reason for the similarities in the names within the text.
ASTARTE
The Archdevil of Destruction, Deposed Lord of the First
aka Zariel, Zavebe
Shortly after the Great Fall, the Seven Virtues of Heaven saw the need to keep a watch on the fallen angels that descended into the Hells. The Supreme Virtue of the Seven Heavens chose one of its most powerful servants, a solar named Astarte, as the chief watcher over the fallen celestials in Avernus. Astarte was originally a vassal of the Virtue of the Sixth Heaven, and the general of one of the greatest flights of celestials in the Upper Planes; unlike her fellow solar Triel - now the devil Beelzebub - Astarte had never shown any signs of corruption, and seemed a perfect choice for the job of warden. So it was that, with an army of angels, Astarte flew through the planes of Arcadia, Mechanus, and Acheron to the blasted plains of Avernus in Hell.
Fighting off the hordes of devils that inevitably resisted their arrival, the forces of Astarte built a celestial fortress of bronze on Avernus, her stronghold against the evil of Hell. Their task was to keep a watch on the doings of fallen celestials in Avernus: to make sure that they made no attempt to return back to Heaven to exact vengeance. They repulsed several such attempts on the fallen angels' part, and the Bastions were confident in the outcome of their decision.
Unfortunately, they underestimated the corrupting nature of Hell's very fabric. The methods Astarte employed grew colder and harsher with each passing century, and the celestial fire that burned in her heart dimmed. Before a millenium had passed, Astarte and her similarly dispassioned followers began working with Hell's devils, who also sought to control the fallen celestials. Astarte stopped communicating with the Lords of Heaven and focused entirely on keeping the fallen in check. She allied with Urukbaramael, a solar who had fallen with Eblis and Triel, who employed similarly violent methods with his fellow fallen in his vain attempt to fall back into the Virtues' favor; together the two, both filled with misguided single-minded righteous fervor, struck fear into many of the fallen, and Astarte sank deeper into cold heartlesness.
In time, Astarte and Urukbaramael laid plans to sack the infernal lair of the terrible Chromatic Dragon, Tiamat, the Lord of the First at the time. Normally such a campaign would have failed, but the fallen hosts of the two caught the Lord of the First unawares. Together, Astarte and Urukbaramael stormed the Caverns of Greed; fighting her way past Tiamat's five draconic consorts and to the Great Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Astarte laid waste to Tiamat's guard, withstood her foul spells and the attacks of her vile breath, and brought her sword to bear while Urukbaramael kept a pair of Tiamat's Dukes at bay. She lifted her sword into the air and prepared to plunge the enchanted blade into the Lord of the First's blackened heart - until a terrible row split the air, fire engulfed the hoard-room, and the face of Asmodeus himself appeared before Astarte.
While Urukbaramael, the Dukes of Avernus, and even the Chromatic Dragon herself cowered at the horrible sight, Asmodeus told Astarte that if she would let Tiamat live, he would anoint her as the new Lord of the First Hell. Astarte considered the proposition for a moment - and accepted. As the diabolic power of the King of Hell transformed her, she left behind any pretense of loyalty to the Supreme Virtue and Heaven; as she took her place in the Great Machine of Hell, the last scraps of goodness left in her disappated. She was now a devil.
Asmodeus left Tiamat and her brood to guard the passage into Hell from her dragonspawn pits, and Astarte, with Urukbaramael at her side as her consort and right hand, began to establish herself as the new Warlord of Avernus, ruling from her Bronze Citadel. Part of her agreement with Asmodeus was that she continue to keep the fallen angels under check, a task she found much easier now that she had Tiamat's legions of devils as well as her own host of "loyal" fallen angels at her beck and call. Urukbaramael gladly led her armies, torturing and destroying his fellow fallen. So terrible was the dark army of Astarte that the fallen dubbed her the Lady of Destruction, a title that stuck with her among the rest of the diabolic hierarchy.
The other Archdevils - especially the former celestials Belial, Moloch, and Beelzebub, who resented her for her original purpose in Hell - were quick to label Astarte an upstart, but she cared not. She had no allies among the fiends besides Urukbaramael. The only other entity in Hell with whom she had nonagressive contact was the goblin deity Bargrivyek, whose dogma of strength and unity against the dissident she respected. It was not uncommon for Zariel to send a small detatchment of devils and fallen angels from time to time to aid Bargrivyek's goblins and hobgoblins in their raids against Draukari, the realm of his rival deity, Kurtulmak of the kobolds. In those times goblinoid ambassadors were frequently stationed in the Bronze Citadel, and fiendish emmisaries made their residence in Bargrivyek's spectacularly misnamed realm, the Peaceable Lands.
Outside of Hell, Astarte had contact, aggressive or otherwise, with even fewer entities. Only one being cared about her appearance in Hell: the fertility-goddess Ashera of the Canaanite pantheon. Using the similarities between their names as a stepping-board, the cold-hearted Astarte took the opportunity to establish a few cults by subverting Ashera's worshipers; but since Astarte was under the protection of the Overlord of Hell, Ashera could do nothing about it. (Interestingly, in a repetition of history, Astarte's successor Bael would take advantage of a similar situation by usurping worshipers of Ashera's consort, the great thunder-god Baal; both devils contributed to the tragic villainization of the Canaanite pantheon.)
By no means did her lack of political ties did not stop Astarte from scheming against her fellow Lords of the Nine. She placed numerous spies in the courts of Dispater and Mammon, and had designs of conquering Dis (a notion which the other Lords found laughable). She reserved special hatred for Great Belial and the Lord of the Flies for reasons she no longer cared about, and laid countless plans to undo the two fallen angels. She paid little attention to the Blood War, focusing her attention on routing the fallen on Avernus; she left the front against the demons of the Abyss to her pit fiend general, the devil known as Bael.
When the civil war later to be known as the Dies Irae swept across the Hells, Astarte allied with Beelzebub, Belial, Moloch, and Mammon mostly to keep an eye on the four; she could not have forseen the outcome of that decision. When it seemed that the infernal hosts of Beelzebub and Mephistopheles would actually defeat Asmodeus, Astarte left the Bronze Citadel and made haste to Nessus with the other five Lords to witness the spectacle - and then Geryon sounded the signal and the armies of the Lords all turned against their masters. So the Reckoning of the Dies Irae came to pass.
For reasons still poorly understood, the King of Hell reinstated all of the Lords save Geryon (his only loyal vassal among the Nine) and Moloch (who foolishly challenged Asmodeus for lordship again shortly after), who were replaced by Leviathan and Lilith respectively. Astarte returned to her Bronze Citadel humiliated, with nothing but her newly kindled hatred for Asmodeus occupying her mind. If the Reckoning taught the devil Geryon the worthlesness of blind trust in Hell, it taught Astarte not to ignore the sovreignity of the Dark Lord.
After the Reckoning, the Lady of Destruction lived up to her name more than ever, wantonly laying waste to fallen angels, invading demons and yugoloths, and rogue devils alike. Her consort Urukbaramael was disturbed by what he saw. He, at least, had hopes of returning to Heaven; it was his monstrously cruel methods that kept him in Hell. He recognized that Astarte now had no purpose whatsoever, and resentment grew in his heart for his mistress. When at last her general Bael swept into the Bronze Citadel, his aim to usurp the Lordship of Avernus, Urukbaramael willingly let him into Astarte's throne room, looked on apathetically while his one-time mistress was routed, and then left to pursue his own twisted agendas in Avernus once again.
In the battle that ensued, Bael fought his way past Astarte's defenses in much the same way Astarte had fought past Tiamat's. Bael's ferocious onslaught surprised her: although she was perhaps the dullest of the Lords of the Nine, it quickly occured to Astarte that the King of Hell was setting his will against her. She fought Bael like a titan enraged, but in the end it was futile, and the pit fiend subdued her.
In a coup well-known throughout the planes, Bael imprisoned Astarte in a chamber beneath her throne - now his throne - and began siphoning off her power. Her Lordship stripped from her and given to Bael, Astarte could not hope to escape from the Warlord's snares. Still she fights Bael's magic with hers, but to no avail: unless Asmodeus himself sees fit to release her, there is no hope left for the fallen angel Astarte.
As already noted, a few scattered cults once existed that devoted themselves to Astarte, focusing on prolonging unjust wars and destruction, but upon his ascension, Bael saw to it that they were destroyed, generally by sending his devils to quash his prisoner's supporters.
In her prime in Heaven, Astarte was a beautiful yet powerful creature fourteen feet in height, with shining golden skin and flowing black hair; golden light shone from her eyes. Her beautiful appearance did not change with her ascension to Lordship - except for the loss of her wings, which simply disappeared. Over her years in Hell, however, her countenance grew weary and haggard, her hair turned gray, and the light in her eyes died. Now, held immobile in a chamber within Bael's fortress, she presents a stark figure in tarnished silver armor with dead gray eyes that stares down upon would-be visitors. She can still speak and use most of her spell-like abilities, but otherwise she cannot move (and so cannot cast spells with somatic or material components, etc.).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
