Deathstalker - Steve Chenault

The ‘80s had a wonderful slew of fantasy movies that were horribly good. There is the famous Beastmaster, Sword and the Sorcerer, Krull, there was another that escapes me, it had two twins in it, who may or may not have been Playboy Playmates. There was a bunch of them. There were some exceptionally good ones as well, Excalibur, Legends, Dragon Slayer, Conan the Barbarian, and so on. It was a great time for cinema. I well remember going to some of the better ones at the theater (for Conan the Destroyer I was the only one in the theater). The others I watched on the television,  usually late at night, Cinemax, HBO, and another that began with an S or some such.

But of them all, one stands out as insanely hilarious. Or rather four, as I believe there were four of them. Deathstalker.

Deathstalker was unmatched in its camp and crazy. It is really indescribable. I remember a scene, in the fourth I believe, where one dude with a giant hammer splattered another one into a bug splat in an arena. Absolutely over the top, and under it, all around it.

It is good to know that Deathstalker has made or is making a return. It stars that guy that John Wick killed in the first movie, and that Nobody killed in the first Nobody. He’s the current heavy fist-a-cuffs for Hollywood I suppose. Regardless of his role or roles, I’ll be there when it opens, ticket in hand. For how can one miss Deathstalker V, or whatever it is.

Unfamiliar? Go have a gander online to the ‘80s versions. Absolutely crazed!

No Small Part - Steve Chenault

No small part of the games I’ve run over the years spills itself into the design work I do on Castles & Crusades, Aihrde, and the monsters I put together. Demons and devils have always been my favorite. I have long since broken them free of any real world connotations, landing them squarely in either a generic game context or, more often than not, an Aihrde-centric mythos.

Orcus is a great example of the first. I have never used Orcus at the table very much. I could not tell you why; no particular reason. I preferred others like Amon, who just had “that” feel about them I suppose. But in writing the entry for Codex of the Planes (should be out in 2026) for the Abyss, I spent some time on Orcus, marrying up that content with what I was fleshing out in the Codex Infernum (out now). That was a lot of fun and in my mind, Orcus was suddenly anchored to the Unclad Pate in the Glass Tower. I could feel him there, sitting upon his throne, laughing without mercy or humor.

For the second, Mephistopheles offers himself up as another great example. Some years back I ran a high level party into Aihrde’s Wretched Plains. These are a little different than what one might think, as they are really just
one big plain with varied terrain. Tartarus is in the Wretched Plains, but consists of a different terrain than, say, Pandemonium. I leaned heavily on my reading of Michael Moorcocks Corum and Elric series and the stark borders that he always describes between realms: suddenly you are here. Then there. It’s wonderful mind jumping, and lodges the concept in your mind that there is something more to this or that place than the terrestrial feel of earth and water. So it was that the party came to a Lake of Fire that surrounded a Mountain of Glass. They had to cross the lake to find a particular morsel of information (I believe they were looking for a lost soul). But when they crossed these obstacles, they came upon massive, gilded halls: the Hall of Merriment. They assumed it was a dungeon complex but it turned out to be the table and board of Mephistopheles. The devil welcomed them at his table, so long as they did two things: they ate what was put in front of them, and they discussed with him the current events of their day and age. What followed was a massive several hour long role playing session that we all enjoyed. And this image of Mephistopheles.

We only just released the Codex Infernum and it is beyond the pale in what we’d hoped for, the art, much of it by Zoe DeVos is breathtaking. As with the particular demon genteel persona.

Check out the new Codex Infernum and Codex Exaltum!

Tiny Pebbles - Steve Chenault

There was a momentary euphoric feeling as I flew. I remember the board beneath me, at a dead stop. I can see the pavement too, cavorting in unnatural angles. The pavement swirled through my vision, then grass. I couldn't find the sky as my face closed with the earth and my feet dashed heavenward. Impact. The pavement bends me as my face grinds to a stop, but my torso still has a few inches left to ride.  Sliding, rolling, pin points of pain as the asphalt breaks away in small pieces sticking to me and pieces of me to it. 

By the time inertia took over, I lay a jumbled heap of limbs and tube socks. I remember the grass more than the sky, so I must have been on my face.

I limped back home. Half carrying, half riding the dinged-up penny board. Scraped and scratched, cursing tiny pebbles.

That would have been about 1978 and the world was a wild and wonderful place. We were living at Fort Campbell, Kentucky and my dad had just taken command of some aviation unit with the 101st (Air Mobile or Airborne, I can't remember what they were in those long ago days). The Cold War was on. New York seemed to be perpetually falling into blackouts. Disco was storming the coastal cities. Movies were a crazed mix of weird camera angles and psychedelic colors. Comic books were not yet the sole purview of the elite, and I had just picked up Green Lantern/Green Arrow 95. I dove into all things DC (and pavement, evidently), but latched onto Mike Grell's Warlord and a few others. Star Wars was out, sinking its talons into all things. And a little game called Dungeons & Dragons was beginning to get its stride.

Davis and I had been playing D&D for some few years. It was quickly becoming a passion of ours though it was just another game in the small pile of SPI and Avalon Hill games that Davis had either bought or found under the Christmas tree. I remember my first character was Tarzan. He had 7 companions, all named after the apes in Tarzan's band. I had been reading Tarzan since I was knee high to a jumping frog and devoured all things about the legendary Ape Man that I could.

I don't remember much about those early adventures. Snippets really. A vorpal blade. Some character burning on an X, tree of woe type thing. I remember Dwarven Glory by Wee Warriors and other crazed adventures. I shot Arioch with a machine gun. In those days the game was a contest of survival, not in the 'this is too hard' type of thing, but in that it was more of a wargame and in war you either lose or you win. For me it was a little different. It was about the glory.

I played my characters then even as I do now. I'm not worried about figuring things out, or finding the treasure, or marking up my characters. What I devoured in print, reflected how I played on paper. In every comic the Warlord was always on the attack. Hal Jordan, Green Lantern, had only ONE pre-requisite: he was fearless. And Tarzan. What's to say about Tarzan? He is the primeval will personified in literature. More so than Conan, or any other, Tarzan is a beast first. One of the Great Apes.  He was written by Burroughs to have human morality as a second tier benchmark at best. 

So I played my characters in those early days. In the wild blacked-out, disco-fueled, Blondie-filled days of the 1970s when the world seemed reckless and everything was possible. I played my characters that way and they died that way. Countless characters. Fallen in the quest for glory, soon replaced by another character equally charged.

That didn't change, even when later in '78 Davis picked up the AD&D Players Handbook. I don't know where he got it or why. I was with him when he bought the Monster Manual, but he got the PHB on his own. I do remember seeing it for the first time.

He was VERY excited, probably 13 years old. I was leaning over a bed, knees in the shag carpet, scribbling on my note paper. He handed me the book. Whatever he said is lost to time, other than something like "before we play again, you have to read this book."

I took the book. The red idol, lizard man, the warriors. Soaking it all in. I thumbed through it for a minute or so. "I'm not reading that." I gave it back to him and went back to scribbling on my character.

We were playing in a few minutes and no doubt my character was soon euphorically tumbling down some chasm in a mad fight with some epic monster he never stood a chance against. 

Those tiny pebbles.