A to Z: Z is for Zontar: The Thing From Venus

Finally this A to Z thing is over.

Z is for Zontar. I’ve never watched the John Agar movie, “Zontar: The Thing from Venus.” I’ve seen clips and stills and read a brief plot summary, but, by all accounts “Zontar” is boring, which, for me, is one of the few ‘dealbreakers.’ Monster movies can be silly and hokey and stupid for all kind sof reasons and I will still watch them ,but a movie is boring I find that unforgivable. “Zontar” was originally made as a ‘straight to television’ film in 1966 by Larry Buchannan. In those pre-cable days there was a market for cheaply made monster, crime and science fiction films for television. Zontar was actually a remake of Roger Corman’s “It conquered the World!” (1956). Plot synopsis: Zontar convinces an Earth scientist that he (Zontar) can help solve the Earth’s problems. Zontar hitches a ride back to earth on an unmanned rocket and hides in a cave. Zontar can grow little flying bat-bugs on his skin… they fly off, attach to people’s necks and implant little antennas that control people’s minds. He starts controlling the minds of important people and taking over the world, using his power to stall cars and cut power to throw earth into confusion. Zontar is immune to bullets but the scientist who originally helped bring Zontar to earth redeems himself by using a crystal from the device he used to communicate with Zontar in the beginning to destroy the invader from Venus (but getting killed in the process). The Earth is saved. A longer and more amusing plot synopsis (with pictures) can be found here. Just because a movie is really crappy (and may even be too crappy for me to watch — which is really BAD), doesn’t mean that it can’t end up becoming fodder for some gaming fun. At some point I suspect Zontar shall invade Aldeboran. Look forward to it!

A to Z: U is for Ummamrod

U is for Ummamrod!

A to Z: S is for Swamp (or Stone Heads)

S is for swamp.

I’ve been drawing and redrawing the maps for Aldeboran for years… moving things around and changing them… but the lower left hand side of my map always seems to be occupied by a large swamp variously named ‘Soutron Swamp’ or “Southron Swamp’ or something similar.

These swamps are notable for the difficulty they present to the traveler… and thus have become a haven for hermits, bandits, cultists and others who would just prefer to be left alone. Inhabitants include swamp snakes, giant rats, gators, gar, poisonous insects, voodoo priests, swamp-dwelling lizard men and other creatures. Hazards include poisonous gasses, quicksand and mires, ghosts, diesease and other dissapointments.

The swamps are dotted with gigantic stone statues or stone formations that resemble men’s heads, hands and other body parts. These statues are always sunken into the muck and mud and covered in vines and moss, so their true extent and size is difficult to determine. Some insist that these ‘statues’ were not carved from stone, but are the petrified remains of a race of giants.

One particularly amusing (and probably apocryphal) tale from the swamp concerns an expedition by the famous adventurers, Karrl and Bluddo. These two worthies had set out from Eord with a band of mercenaries into the swamps on some errand or another. While there, they approached one of the stone heads and began to poke around in the massive cave that served as the carvings’ mouth. Here they found a large quantity of a possibly valuable substance that resembled gigantic slabs of ivory embedded in the walls which they eagerly began to remove. Since the mosquitos and biting flies were quite unpleseant, the mercenaries built a fire in the mouth of the cave to drive away the bugs.

At this point the tale grows less clear and the many different versions diverge. Some of the more rational tales claim that the mercenaries were too greedy and removed too much of the ivory-like substance embedded in the walls, provoking a collapse in which everyone in the cave were killed. Karl, Bluddo, one or two other mercenaries and the crew of the boat they had hired rowed back to civilization where the of ivory that had been removed from the cave was sold. Others claim that an earthquake crushed the mercenaries inside the cave.

One particularly lurid tall tale claims that the giant, provoked by the fire in his mouth and the pain of having several of his ivory teeth removed, awoke and began to stir, freeing his massive stone body from where it had been buried in the swamp. The majority of mercenaries were ground to death by the giants’ remaining teeth or spit out to fall to their death to the swamp that was suddenly hundreds of feet below when the giant abruptly stood up. A few unlucky mercenaries who had been exploring the twin caverns of the giant’s nostrils were shot hundreds of miles to the east when the giant sneezed.

Karrl And Bluddo, who had been seeking to explore the shaft that was actually the giant’s throat via a rope tied to the giant’s uvula, were nearly killed when Karrl, in desperation, invoked a nausea-inspiring spell that caused the giant to fall to his hands and knees and vomit them into the swamp.

An individual of dubious reputation who claims to have witnessed these events along with the crew of a swamp boat and a mule named Daisy (Djamm Flenders, recently of Eord and suddenly enriched by unknown transactions), claims that the stone giant, estimated to be at least two hundred feet tall, was last seen staggering off into the swamp in a southeastern direction.

In any case, the single large slab of ivory that was retained later found it’s way to the King’s palace where it has been rumored to have been used to manufacture a royal toilet seat and other various items of domestic royal comfort.

A to Z: Q is for Quasqueton

Q is for Quasqueton, hideout of Zelligar and Roghan. It has a mushroom garden, lots of containers with random contents, a room of magic pools, some traps and everything else a dungeon needs. One of my early experiences of D&D involved exploring Quasqueton as a player — I still remember how much we hated the magic mouths which would yell threats at us whenever we walked down the front hall, thus usually summoning wandering monsters which would attack us before we got anywhere and forcing us to return to town to replace all of our comrades who had been killed by the wandering monsters.

I completed an illustration a while ago (as of yet still unpublished) where one of the characters in the picture is drawing a map… and guess what dungeon the map resembles?

I can assure you that Quasqueton is jammed in somewhere in Aldeboran (I am not sure exactly where, but it is in there).

I also loved this adventure for the lists of characters in the back witht heir goofy names. For decades I used them as NPCs/hirelings. “Presto the Elf,” “Webberan of the Great North,” “Glom the Mighty,” “Eggo of the Holy Brotherhood” and “Philgo” have all made guest appearances in my games over the years.

Quasqueton is also the name of a small town in Iowa (just a guess here, but I’m betting that author Mike Carr took the name for “Quasqueton the Dungeon” from “Quasqueton the Town” and not vice-versa).

A to Z: O is for Oom Ambar in Thule

Today is brought to you by the letter O. (unfortunately, today is REALLY the 7th and I am writing this ahead of time and will probably get confused, but there you have it). O is the first letter of “Oom Ambar” (sometimes spelled “Oom Ambarr”; I am notoriously inconsistent in my Aldeboran notes). Oom Ambar (however I spell it) is in Thule. If you have been keeping up with my Aldeboran geography posts, you may know that Thule is east of The Vales, Eord, The Sinking lands, etc. Or you may not know that because I may not have mentioned it. First a word about my process (or lack of) in creating Aldeboran. I have a binder with a lot of paper jammed in it. Every once in a while I get an idea (often by sketching) which I then hopefully remember to jam into my binder (a lot of them are also just floating around my place getting stepped on and wrinkled or are here and there in various sketch and notebooks). The binder is really pretty full so I am going to half to figure something out eventually. That’s really it. Some things are more detailed than others. So here is a map of Thule and Ghent and part of Velar. Velar is one of those places about which ‘not much is known’ mostly because I haven’t made anything up yet.Thule’s inhabitants are (primarily) of 4 castes (each caste being mostly segregated by race, although humans occupy 2 of the castes). At the top are “The Lords of Oom.” There are very few Lords of Oom and they dwell in an underground city deep beneath their capital of Oom Ambar. They almost never visit the surface (most common Thulians have never seen a Lord) and are physically weak but capable of all sorts of miracles through their psychic powers (and possibly the use of ancient technological artifacts). They consider all other Thulians to be no more than cattle (although they might place The Priests in ‘useful trained dog’ category). The priests look like “Humans from the distant future” as envisioned by the authors of one of the pamphlets that they had in the SRA in my grade school.* Below the Lords are the priests of Oom. These are selected from the general population at birth if they have certain talents of the mind that make them useful in carrying out the wishes of the Lords of Oom on the surface. They can hear and communicate with the Lords of Oom via thought. Although physically weak (their mind disciplines and the drugs they take to increase their psychic abilities take a toll), they are a bit more durable than the Lords themselves. Guards and other commoners with special talents are frequently ‘honorary’ members of this caste because of their usefulness to the Priests in carrying out the wishes of The Lords. At the bottom of the caste system is ‘everyone else.’ Most Thulians live in virtual slavery and any individual who shows any sign of talent or ambition is either destroyed or recruited intot the priesthood, the guards, etc. A caste by themselves are The Moorlocks. These creatures dwell in the tunnels beneath the city and are permitted to feed on the general population to keep their numbers in check and maintain the proper state of fear that makes the general population so compliant. Oom Ambar is the capital located in the caldera of an extinct volcano. A single maze-like tunnel (as well as some secret and dangerous trails over the lip of the caldera) give access to the city inside. From my sketch of the entrance tunnel, it appears that the gate to the maze is guarded by a golem with what looks like a big dick… but, not to worry, it is just a loin cloth. *”SRA” was a learning tool for US kids in the 1970s. It was a big box of little color coded booklets where you selected a booklet, read it and answered ‘comprehension’ questions at the end. If you got a certain number right, you were allowed to check that one off your list and read another from the same color. Once you finished all the pamphlets of the same color, you were allowed to graduate to a different, more difficult color. The essays were usually about history or common knowledge — I remember an SRA about “The Cardiff Giant” fondly. One of them was about “The people of the future” whom, the SRA author said, would have machines to do all their work for them so they would have gigantic heads and little shriveled bodies… just like H.G. Well’s story of The Time Machine. This blogger can tell you more about SRAs.