Support Staff of the Magi

A treat for D&D fans, today: I worked this up as part of a book I did for a game company, but the line it was written for crashed and burned, so I've got two sourcebooks on my hard drive. (If anyone wants to publish them, I do own the rights free and clear, and the books are designed to be stand-alone. And they're, y'know, already done.) In any event, this was one of the magical items in the book, designed to be an artifact for a slightly tongue-in-cheek game...

Support Staff of the Magi: One of the strangest, yet most sought-after items in the Gardener, the support staff of the magi resembles its near-namesake physically. However, in terms of its power, it is very different. Once a character capable of using magic items grasps an inert support staff of the magi (“inert” meaning one whose wielder is dead), the five people with spellcasting abilities nearest to him must immediately make a Willpower saving throw with a DC of 20 or be placed under the thrall of the holder of the staff. If any of these five people succeed at their saving throw, the effect continues to radiate outward until it has ensnared five magic-users.

Once the staff has been activated, the holder can command the mages to cast any spell they are capable of casting. Each spell uses up a number of charges in the staff equal to the level of the spell cast. (Hence, a ninth-level spell uses up nine charges.) The holder commands the mage mentally, meaning that they can use the staff even if they cannot speak. They must maintain a hold on the staff, however, in order to cast spells. (If the wielder lets go of the staff, the mages are not freed—they instead enter a default state, remaining motionless until the staff’s wielder picks it back up.) The staff’s wielder cannot command the mages to do anything other than cast spells; however, they will perform any tasks they are capable of that can help the wielder of the staff, so long as it does not endanger them. This function does not use any charges on the staff.

Wielding the support staff of the magi gives characters a spell resistance of 20; they can, however, voluntarily lower the spell resistance of the staff in order to have it absorb spell levels as per a rod of absorption. This is the only way to recharge the staff. If, however, the number of charges exceeds the maximum the staff can hold (50), the enslaved mages go on a retributive strike, awakening from their trance with a compulsion to kill the person who has held them in thrall. Recharging the staff can be risky, since there’s no way of knowing how many charges it already has or how many levels a spell being cast at the holder will be, but since it is the only way to build charges in the staff, it can sometimes be necessary.

If the staff ever runs out of charges, it loses all its abilities save the ability to absorb spell levels. Any mages held under its thrall return to normal, without any memory of their entrancement or any sort of enmity against the wielder of the staff. As soon as the staff absorbs any spell levels, it will enslave new mages as though it had just been grasped.

If someone tries to take a support staff of the magi away from its holder, they must make a Willpower check with a DC of 25 in addition to their Strength check. Success means that they are now considered to be the wielder of the staff, and the original wielder joins the enslaved mages. Failure means that the would-be thief falls under the spell of the staff, and is subject to its effects. (This is the only way that a holder of a support staff of the magi can increase their following—by hostile takeover.)

Nobody knows who created the few support staffs of the magi in existence, but it’s suspected that a wizard with a fondness for very bad puns is responsible.

Caster Level: 20th; Prerequisites: minor artifact, cannot be duplicated; Weight: 5 lbs.

Iron Man Vs. Dracula

I've been saturating my brain with 'Tomb of Dracula' lately (guess what next week's 'Storytelling Engines' entry is going to be about?) and it occurred to me that it'd be a lot of fun to see Dracula's reaction to the SHRA madness currently running its course in the Marvel Universe. Then it occurred to me that no, really, it would be a lot of fun...and my brain sort of worked out how it would go as a one-shot special. Namely:

The series opens at an abandoned mansion in Boston at dusk, with Iron Man descending on boot-jets outside. He is greeted by a servant, who ushers him into the presence of a slightly gaunt, but very much alive Dracula, Prince of Evil, Ruler of Vampires. "Up until recently," Iron Man says, "I was under the impression you were truly dead. Blade blew up the SHIELD helicarrier where your body was stored, but--"

"Blade did not have time to finish the job," Dracula sneers, "and the cemeteries are filled with men who have thought Dracula truly dead. How did you find me here? The eyes of technology cannot see the vampire."

We cut to the view through Iron Man's eyes, as Dracula appears as a silhouette in his viewscreen. "We tracked reports of vampire activity to this vicinity, and our psy-ops division pinpointed this house as a site of paranormal activity. As to how I'm perceiving you now, my armor is mapping disturbances in the air currents and using them to extrapolate your mass. I'm here to inform you that you, Vlad Dracula, also known as Vlad Tepes, Vlad Tepesch, and Vladimir Drake, that you are in violation of the Super-Human Registration Act, which requires all beings of post-human capabilities to register said abilities with the appropriate governmental body and--"

He's cut off by a hard backhand that sends him sprawling. "You dare make demands of Dracula? I, who have stalked the earth at my pleasure for more than five hundred years? I, who have buried all those who came to slay me?" As he talks, he's slapping a surprised Iron Man around. "I am Dracula. You are mere cattle in my eyes, meat for the slaughter. Do not seek to presume upon me."

After a moment of this, Iron Man recovers and starts fighting back. He's more than Dracula's equal in physical strength, but Dracula is fast, has centuries of battle-savvy, and has shape-shifting abilities. Finally, just when Iron Man seems to be gaining the upper hand, Dracula vanishes altogether. He hears the vampire's voice around him, though. "You see where I am through the movement of the air, my modern-day knight. But how shall you see Dracula...when he becomes insubstantial mist?"

Drac seeps in through Iron Man's atmospheric filters, gathering in his mouth and nose, choking him with the stench of death and worse than death. Barely able to breathe, Iron Man smashes his way out of the mansion and flies west at top speed. Blinded, out of control, he nonetheless chases the embers of the fading sun to the point where they are too bright for Dracula's taste, and the Lord of Vampires retreats. Nonetheless, his mocking laughter resounds in Tony Stark's ears...

Cut to the SHIELD helicarrier, where Iron Man is addressing a team of agents--and Blade, who is a registered super-hero and thus a logical guest-star. "This is who we're dealing with," Iron Man says, delivering a potted history of Dracula for the benefit of people who haven't read 'Essential Tomb of Dracula'. "He's no horror movie--this is the real thing, an honest-to-God vampire with everything that comes with it. Both in terms of strengths...and in terms of weaknesses."

We pan out to a long shot of the helicarrier, which is floating over Dracula's mansion. Dracula comes out to look at the commotion, and even the lord of the undead is shocked at the sheer mass of the floating fortress...and more shocked to see dozens of SHIELD agents, Iron Man, and Blade descend from the skies. He moves to run, but the helicarrier projects a spotlight onto him with a cross dead in its center. The holy symbol saps his strength, forces him to stay in his human shape, and as SHIELD agents surround him armed with stake-guns, he spits impotent curses at them all.

"Last chance," Iron Man says. "You can either register, sign up as a deputized SHIELD agent, and work with us to root out and destroy the vampires you've helped create...or I can give you to Blade here, who's really hoping you choose Option B."

"Never!" shouts Dracula. "Never shall I bow and scrape to a mortal who is nothing more to me than a walking feast!" He looks up to the night skies, using one of the lesser-known vampiric powers...the ability to control the weather. A strong gust shifts the helicarrier just a few feet before its pilot compensates, but that few feet is enough to move the spotlight off of him. Shifting his form into a bat, he flies away, dodging stakes and silver bullets.

Later, in a dark cave, he nurses his wounds and rails at the injustice of having to flee the field of battle. But, he swears, he will not flee again! For he is Dracula, and he has prepared many snares and traps for his enemies over the years...some overt, but some most subtle indeed...

Cut to a few nights later, and a young woman walks through the darkened streets of Boston. She hears a noise, and her footsteps quicken. Then quicken more in dread, as she feels a dread presence behind her. She looks around, sees nothing, but her instincts tell her to run ever quicker. Another glance behind her reveals nothing...

And she runs headlong into Dracula, who waits for her with fangs bared. He leans in for the kill, only to be startled when the woman (one Ms. Carol Danvers) gives him a hard right cross that sends him flying. Infuriated, he charges towards her to give battle.

But just then, one--then many--then dozens of crosses expand out of the very air all around him. Dracula recoils, recoils again, realizing in horror that there is no place to recoil to. At bay, he snarls and bares his fangs...

And Iron Man descends on his boot-jets again. "Miniaturized holographic projectors," he says to the helpless lord of vampires. "They can follow you wherever you go, and if need be, I can deploy over a hundred more. There's no escape for you this time."

Just then, a balding man in a suit approaches. "Mister Tony Stark? AKA Iron Man, Director of SHIELD?" Tony pauses, uncertain, then nods. "Mister Stark, I have here an injunction ordering you to cease and desist all harassment of my client, Mister Tepes, and to immediately and forthwith vacate the whereabouts of his person pending a full and complete investigation of your conduct in this circumstance. The Super-Human Registration Act clearly applies to living beings, of terrestrial and non-terrestrial origin, while my client is equally clearly deceased. As a result, he is not subject to SHIELD jurisdiction as either a citizen or a foreign national." The lawyer hands Iron Man a sheaf of papers. "I think you'll find these are in order."

Iron Man looks them over, then looks up at the lawyer...and through his viewscreen, we see him as we saw Dracula, a silhouette of air currents. "You're a vampire too," Tony Stark snarls. "How do I know you didn't hypnotize the judge into granting you this injunction?"

The lawyer sneers. "An interesting argument, which you can save for your appeal. Rest assured, I have enough grounds for counter-suits to keep this tied up in court until your descendants are ancient."

Iron Man's fists clench. "But he's a mass murderer!"

"Not SHIELD's jurisdiction. Your job is to enforce the SHRA...and since that doesn't apply to my client, unless you want to trample over the laws you killed men to enact, I'd suggest you let it drop."

The holographic crosses fade. Dracula straightens up, dusts off his outfit, and smiles. "It pleased me, Anthony Stark, to best you in the field of battle you chose--the field of rules, and laws. Society's battleground. But I will never forget the insult you dealt to me. Do not sleep easy, man of iron. For one night, I shall come calling on thee..." Dracula fades into mist, and is gone. And even in his insulated armor, Iron Man feels the chill of the grave...

Special Guest Bloggers

Katherine Grace Henry and Cordelia Faith Henry, Official Youngest Nieces to Fraggmented!

They don't say much, but if a picture was ever worth a thousand words...

Torso Cut In Half (7)

As you may or may not have noticed, I recently went through the archives of this blog and labeled everything. I've got "crazy ideas", "depressing geek thoughts", "muppets", "zombies", et cetera et cetera et cetera. This is a relatively new technology, but it's proliferating at an alarming rate.

How alarming? When I went to do this entry (it was originally going to be a "bad movie lines" entry, but I couldn't find the quote), I looked on imdb.com for the relevant bad movie line. I didn't find it, but I did find that the movie in question had the plot keywords, among others, "shot in the stomach", "bitten in the throat", "exploding building", and bizarrely enough, "unisex bathroom". Clicking on "bitten in the throat", I find that there are dozens of related keywords, including "brain eating", "kicked in the face", "sister sister relationship", and, of course, "torso cut in half".

And I thought it was hard work coming up with labels for my posts. Who has the job of deciding whether a movie features "throat slitting" or "stabbed in the throat", and how many anti-depressants do they take each day?

Review: 300

Hunh. So that's what it'd be like if 'Fox News' taught Ancient History.

Or, to be less facetious, I understand that Hollywood distorts historical accounts to make for a more interesting story. I did not walk into the film '300' expecting an accurate account of the early days of the war between Greece and Persia, and of the Battle of Thermopylae. But there are distortions and there are distortions, and I did not walk into that movie expecting to see an account whose distortions were systematically performed to make the history conform to a right-wing political agenda.

'300' turns the war into a culture clash between the decadent, liberal Persians (Xerxes looks like he stepped off the float at a Pride march, has a harem of bisexual women, and in one scene stands behind the butch Leonidas, puts his hands on his shoulders, and tells him, "Kneel before me and I will give you everything.") and the moral, upright, tough and conservative Spartans (the historical record of Spartan culture isn't just brushed under the rug, it's nailed under the carpet. Spartans in this film mock and condemn "adulterers" and "boy-lovers", two practices which historians believe were common-place and accepted in Sparta, and they frequently talk about how they're "free men", equating Persia with slavery and slavery with evil. Nobody ever seems to ask who tends the crops in Sparta.) Through the film's imagery, the Persians are equated with deformity, deformity is equated with decadence, and decadence is subtly equated with liberalism.

The contributions of the other city-states of Greece are downplayed into non-existence; in '300', Leonidas is a king who alone among his people has the foresight to spot the need for a war, and when the cowardly and decadent Senate refuses to fund his troops, he's forced to go off alone without the men and equipment he needs, dooming him to failure. (This is, of course, not so much a distortion of history as a cut-and-paste replacement of it with the current conservative view of the present day.) The pre-eminent anti-war Senator turns out to be a traitor in the pay of the Persians, and is stabbed on the floor of the Senate by Laura Bu--errr, Queen Gorgo.

And, of course, we get the conservative refrain that the military culture is "better" than the civilian culture; the volunteer forces that accompany the Spartans are shown as less worthy, less courageous, and ultimately cut and run when the going gets tough--the historical records say differently, but who needs history when you've got an agenda? And, in the end, we're shown how Leonidas' heroism inspired the Spartans to amass a huge army to finally destroy the evil Persians and end the threat they posed to America. (Sparta, sorry. I'm so bad at this.) The fact that Persia is, in essence, modern-day Iran should perhaps worry anyone who wants to read into the symbology of all this. We don't see the final battle, but of course, we know how it has to end...after all, the Persians lost, right?

They did, in fact. In a decisive naval battle. To the Athenian navy. (You know, the "philosophers and boy-lovers" the Spartans made fun of at the beginning.) But apart from that, it fits the right-wing philosophy perfectly.

ConBestiary #5

Grumbling Banshee: As far as cryptozoologists can determine, these creatures are close cousins to the banshee (spectralis amplificus). Unlike the legendary banshee, who predicts death with its loud, discordant shrieks, the grumbling banshee appears at conventions to predict discord, irritability, and lack of sleep. It floats, bodiless, into hotel rooms and lets out a series of low, growling rumbles, letting the inhabitants of the room know that they're in for a difficult night and an irritating morning of arguments about who's a loud snorer.

Cryptozoologists have tried explaining the concept of the "self-fulfilling prophecy" to grumbling banshees, but they apparently don't have the conceptual framework for it.

An Open Letter To Marvel Comics

Dear Marvel,

My name is John Seavey, and for a long time, I've been a customer of your company. Since I was a small child, I've been purchasing Marvel's brand of periodical publications, and I've come to associate the 'Marvel' logo with a certain quality, and more importantly, a certain identity in entertainment. Much as I expect to see light-hearted family entertainment when I watch a Disney film, I've come to expect that when I pick up a Marvel comic, I can be assured of upbeat, family-oriented, fast-paced adventure stories. You've published books in a wide variety of genres, something I admire and respect, but I've always felt that Marvel knew what its strengths were and played to them well. You've almost always done an excellent job in shaping a solid stable of continuing characters, and choosing writers and artists who publish new stories in keeping with the tone and ethos of your publishing history.

Recently, though, you seem to have forgotten what your customers are looking for--a fact that isn't simply dissatisfying, but actively worrying to me as a consumer. Your writers (and more worryingly, your editors) seem to be more interested in indulging their own personal whims than in maintaining a stable of characters and stories that have a long-term publishing future; the recent 'Civil War' storyline is a perfect example, in which both Iron Man and Captain America, two of your flagship characters, were portrayed in a light so unsympathetic that I have difficulty imagining myself wanting to read about them in future. Perhaps this was an interesting individual story, but was it really worth trading on the brand identity Marvel has spent so much time and money to establish?

Your company has worked very hard in associating its trademarks and logos with certain expectations; indeed, in an industry where "hot" writers and artists come and go, these expectations are the only thing of real, permanent value you have. When you sell a comic that I, as a consumer, expect to be "upbeat family enterainment", and when I read it, it's "bleak, depressing adult storytelling", you are essentially using my goodwill as a consumer to line your pockets. This is not to say that I do not read adult stories, or that I have no stomach for thought-provoking tales. But if that is what I wanted, I know where I can find it. I purchased your comic in good faith based on expectations you have worked hard to establish; if you're unwilling to live up to those expectations, you should not be surprised to see your consumer base shrink.

Goodwill is not available in an unlimited supply, nor is its supply predictable. What causes a sales spike now (out of belief in your company's future performance, buying habit, or simple morbid curiosity) will not last indefinitely; I can't predict exactly when or how, but I guarantee you, if you continue to neglect the publishing ethos that made Marvel a success, your company will founder. And, due to its position, it may well take an entire industry with it, a tragedy nobody wants. Marvel should tell the stories it's best at, not the stories that the "writer of the week" is most interested in.

I'm not going to conclude this with a statement like, "I'll never read Marvel again!" I will continue to read the comics that I enjoy, those that live up to my expectations of Marvel comics as a brand and as a company (such as your 'Marvel Adventures' line, or your collections of archived material). But the "Marvel Universe," the flagship line of publications you have worked so hard to nurture over the decades, is traveling in a direction that I have no interest in, and that I do not wish to spend money on...and unfortunately for you, I consider myself to be a reasonable barometer of customer opinion. Perhaps you are telling the stories that you want to tell right now. But at this rate, you might not have anyone left to tell them to.