NSFW More B/X Mars art

As thing grind to their inevitable conclusion ( I could proably relaease this thing as is right now) art most of it is NSFW, begins to pile up. For those who are more interested in dudes- soon.  

Midnight Tides, Steven Erikson

No, picture. Blame google.

I have a horrible compulsion. Short of leaving the house, prose fiction is the only way to get me away from the drawing table. Getting me to read fantasy fiction wrought in the 21st century is a tough nut to crack- but I need something long, and life too short to rush through Dickens (I only do one or two a year).

I am not going to equivocate or qualify. These are good, solid books- at least up until a point- things get dicey at around book 7. Each has three act structure- something most fantasy authors seem to have a bit of a problem with; a crazy huge cast of characters; and enough head scratching to keeep you baffled, but not too baffled.

EDIT: Gardens of the Moon and Deadhouse gates are not quite as good as the others, imo.
Honestly, if it’s your first time, baby- I’d just skim the wikipedia articles and be done with them- I know this is counter intuitive, but start with Midnight Tides and skip to House of Chains, which is its direct sequel; go back later if you want more.

Antyway, the fifth book released, Midnight Tides is actually the first book of the series were to be ordered chornologically.   So WE”RE going to do this one first, and then we’ll move on to Gardens of the Moon and Deadhouse Gates and so on.  So if you’ve got ‘tides holding a door open someehere in your house get it out and lets have a go at it. Used copies are crazy cheap, especially considering these books are viable weapons.  We can figure shit out- without resorting to the fan wiki.

“Ooh, I hate the sisters , I’ve got dish-washing duty again!” Naneve tugged her braid.
“Well we blew through the Fellowhip of the Ring structure and book one; kitchen politcs all we’ve got,” Rand tugged his braid.

“So winter’s coming.”
“I guess?”

Also unlike some of the other popularr franchises- shit actually happens thoughout the books.

Random thoughts:

Deep time: The deep time flashbacks don’t really set up action or explanation of relationships or past events centered upon the viewpoint characters. Generally the deep time stuff relates foramtive events that have the impact of natural disasters or geological shifts in the ay they set the stage for ages later. Some of the deep time characters might show up, but they harley ever do shit.

Warrens: alternate dimesions that exist as plationic ideals of the funimental forces of the Malzan univers. These realms can be traveled throigh and sorcerers can draw power though them as well.also the warrens seem more of a reflectionshadow of the main world, but twisted in the direction of the warren itslef. The past is also a warren.

Anyway, do some curls to get ready, and haul this one out.

Voyage to Mars in 4 parts (art)

Cosmic Tales print run?

Just in case you were drunk (again) earlier and missed my first post today, check it out- it has a naked woman and a table too; I heard tell you like tables.
http://themetalearth.blogspot.com/2018/10/bx-mars-saving-throw-table-and-olga-of.html

Cosmic Tales print run

I’d love to do this just as POD, but Indy Planet refuses to find my W-9; I have sent them three times. Their advice is always send us your W-9. Not send it again, mind you, just send it. Communication is not really a thing with IP. 

So, I’m doing a print run. 

5.95 USD plus shipping (I don’t know yet) unless you’re Trey, his is free. 

If you’re in Space or Europe (as an American I’m a little fuzzy on the difference, really) shipping is going to suck- but not that bad. I mailed Jez a copy of Moldvay and it cost like 10 bucks; with Australia being in Eastern Europe and all, I figured it would be about the same to send it to Brazilistan or whetever that one with the weird food next to France is called. 

Anyway, It’s 48 pages of story 2 pin ups and previw splash page. 

If you think you might be interested please leave a comment. 

Thanks. 

B/X Mars: Saving throw table and Olga of Mars (fomerly of earth)

NSFW: B/X Mars, Princess Class

Get a load of this, pal.

48 Big Pages! Cosmic Tales Update! Get in here!!!!

The first issue Cosmic Tales contains Book One of The Planet Eaters, a superhero story set in the 33rd century. You get 48 issues of story! A two page pin up! A splash page preview of the next issue!
Within the next two weeks, I’m going to order a small print run of perhaps 20 copies and sell from here, the through paypal.
The price will be 5.95$ + shipping and handling, if there is sufficient interest I will make a second print run.
Here are some interior pictures and the cover.

BX Mars, some arts and maps of Xards and Zerzura

An illustrations and two maops. Yes those peoplae are naked- get used to it. AC on mars is based on class and level, bot armor. Nobody wears shit, for a variet of reasons. 

I have no idea how many illustrations I’ve done for this thing. The other day I found 10 that I’d forgotten about. All the art is by me, beacuse I am both competent (That’s something I would not have written just two years ago) and really cheap. 

BX Mars Previw: The Dragon Keepers

THE DRAGON KEEPERS:

Stewards of the last dragon clan. 

Places of Power: The Dragon Towers; the Dragon Garden

Leader/Hierarchy: the thirteen dragon riders command great respect, but the fourteenth dragon, the legendary and rarely seen Brood-mother aka the Empress rules and administers the day to day affairs of  the Towers through her mind controlled warrior-priests. 

The Shape of Things: The Dragon Keepers command the skies over this part of the Great Dry Sea through the power of the thirteen adult dragons. The queen has the best spy network in the region, which is said to extend beyond the Great Rift,  to the strange and savage wastes of the north.   

Goals: The Empress-Mother desires nothing more than to maintain the status quo, but, even so, an opportunity to destroy the Bleeding God would not be unwelcome. 

Demeanor: Dragon Riders are selected seemingly at random. No two are alike.

Mars Preview The Grax

THE GRAX

Thark! horde, 10,000 strong, as of late, ruled over by Goom a huge and savage warrior of limited intelligence. 

Places of Power: The Grax make their camp at the edges of Ruined Xumos.  

The Shape of Things: The Horde stagnates and goes nowhere. A decade or more ago, the Grax defeated their traditional enemy the Huuurn, a horde to the north. They have been at loose ends ever since. Furthermore, continuous leadership struggles, and the resulting deaths,  have undermined the brain power of the Grax elite. Many warriors of renown have walked away from the horde in disgust. The struggles have mostly died down, now that Goom has taken control, but the damage has been done. 

Pastoralists, foragers, and horticulturists, the Grax Horde takes sustenance from their herds and secret gardens in the deep city, unaware that they have reinvented food production. 

Goals: Best described as the sleeping giant of Zerzura, the Grax Horde is aimless and without purpose or momentum. 

Demeanor: Violent and Savage, the Horde takes what it wants and asks, nor expects, any mercy

Weird canyon MAP

The players map for weird canyon, the curent BX Mars game. 

B/X Mars, Weird Canyon, Session 3, Part One

Mars: Weird Canyon Session 3. 

We rejoin our heroes, mere minutes after the close of our previous episode- still trapped within the lair of doctor Stitch. 

The cast: 

Leopold the Terran- currently missing.

Quas Joktar, thark! of the Grax horde. 

Cyno Drox, Menton.

Xeibrixia Nelvo Menton.

The hours grind past. The poor wretch on the table twitches and moans. Dr. Stitch and the Whip enter the room, stare at the prisoners and talk in giggling whispers between themselves. 

As they depart, Nelvo uses his cloud-mind power to confuse Doctor Stitch. The doctor opens Nelvo’s cell door and departs. 

Nelvo  exits his cell, grabs his gear from the pile in the corner and lets the others out. 

Once everyone is geared up, they concoct a plan. Drox climbs up into the pipe-works and hangs a noose over the threshold. The others lie in wait. 

Dr Stitch enters.

The noose closes around his windpipe- and yanks him upward!

A flurry of stabbing and psionc attacks follow.  

Dr Stitch’s Skull flares and a wave of warp energy explodes outward,  but it is a feeble attempt and does no damage.

Doctor Stitch expires; his corpse begins to seep a stinking and viscous, boiling yellow ichor; gummy and hot it drips, smoking, onto the floor

The party exits the cell block and comes once more (see the session 2 AP) into the huge cavern full of vats. They see some creepy half formed monstrosities and vat-goons floating in the vats. 

The party wanders in a vain attempt to find a way out and stumbles into the the vat-goon kennel. Oriented now, they flee towards Dr Stitch’s office, goons and their master hot on their heels. 

They make their way over the floating bridge; past the giant sslarg; and into the office- which they quickly loot. The acquire a sun beam pistol and ray gun tubes. 

After exiting by the only remaining door, the party runs down a long flight of eroded steps, and finds themselves in a magna rail station, like the one they visited under the rocket tower in session one- except in good repair. 

Before them a train floats at the platform’s edge.

The noise of pursuit comes from behind. 

Someone places a mystery triangle with a green center into an identically shaped depression alongside the train door. The door opens. The party piles in, stumbling over one another. 

Vat-Men and stitchlings swarm the platform.

The door whisks closed and train shoots away from the station.

End part one. 

B/X MARS PREVIEW: THE DREAMERS

Another Atlas entry:

I’m finishing up this product now and getting the last little bit of writing and the final details squared away. I still have about 1k words and a few random tables to write.

On the topic of G+:
I probably will not be joining all of you on any of the new sites or old sites. I am going to move back in here and at my webcomic site.
The blogroll is a work in progress. You have to import everything one by one. i’m still working it. i want to put your blog up.
You may speak:

B/X Mars: The Black Hand

G+ hurtles towards destruction as B/X Mars nears completion.
Anway, I have slowly been moving back over here, anyway. The big hold up was reconciling the different technolgical eras of all the hardware and software invovled.
I’ll be restructuring and turning back on comments over the next few days.
Here’s the thing:

It took me the better part of an hour to figure out how to move a photo from one google ap to another. It’s like 2004 up in here.

BX Mars session two AP

Mars play report

Session one: two mentons and thark find a map, a weird triangle thing; explore a tower and kill an albino ape. 

Not so Brief AP from session two. 

Lured in by the scent of bbq Ape, Leopold from Terra joins the boys. Together they set off over the desert for the Pyramid. 

The pyramid is a day and half walk away. Twice along the way the group is accosted by ant-men. Drox and Quas are able to scare them off with crazy lucky energy weapon shots each time. Many ant-men die, cooked meat and red shell fragments rain from the sky; it’s like a bomb went off in a lobster tank. 

Death comes easy on the Red Planet- or so one would think. 

Upon arriving at the Pyramid they find a huge pool next to the monument. Water pours into the pool from an eroded fountainhead half way up the pyramid’s side. 

They slake their thirsts, fill their water bottles and see a giant tattooed croc in the bottom of the pool. As they begin to discuss killing the croc and breaching the Pyramid, like common vagabonds, the ground begins to shake. The tripod strides over the dunes. And looks down on them from its single eye. It is twenty feet tall. Eventually, although it harms no one,  the tripod drives them away from the pyramid. 

From there the group heads east towards an Airship wreckage. A strange atonal melody lures them off track however and they find themselves standing in front of a battered bell like structure topped by strange metal tines- which coupled with the wind account for the desert music. 

After entering the structure and descending a ruined escalator, they find a small facility of technological design, but ruined beyond use or understanding. 

A huge cybernetic arachnid  attacks from a pit in the floor; a few savage blows from the fellas sends it back into its hole. 

Nelvo discovers a tunnel in the wall of the larger of the place’s room. Stooping, the party enters the tunnel and finds a monorail, with a handcart. Mounting the hand cart, they set off down the track. 

Things are pretty swell really. 

The track and tunnel end. A rough hewn set of stairs leads upward to a door. The door opens on a wide natural cavern with several pits cut into the floor. Huge one-eyed shark-toothed THINGS begin to climb out of the pits. Laughing and midnight hued, a boneless seeming and obscenely thin humanoid with a head of flashing lights and impossibly long fingers snapping like whips, begins to moonwalk towards the characters whispering “Morsels for the Master; morsels for the master” 

Everybody runs, not back the way they came, but through an archway to the left. 

The interior surface of the corridor they enter is pulsating veiny pink flesh, milky misshapen eyes start to open all along the walls. 

Someone says- fuck this place! or something to that effect.

Creepy pursuit noise spurs them on into another room. A cavern again, but this time full of high tech gear.  A mist clings to the floor. Tubes and vats, vaguely humanoid shapes stirring within,  stand in rows, vanishing into the mist towards the back of the room. 

There is no time to linger and they run through a natural arch and into a another flesh hall. A series of twist and turns bring them to heavy door- they pass through into a circular room with a pit in place of a floor. A huge sslorg writhes at the pit’s bottom, reaching hungrily upward with its tentacles.   The controls for a retractable bridge can be seen on the pit’s far side. Leopold grabs Drox and leaps across the pit. The sslorg attacks grabbing Drox’s leg!

On the other side of the pit Nelvo and Quas Joktar look back they way they came only to see a score or more knife and cleaver wielding little humanoids apparently stitched together from spare parts, boil into the passageway crawling on the walls and ceiling like a swarm of roaches and screaming “Morsels for the Master!” Over and over again.

Quas closes the door. 

Leopold rips the tentacle clean off the sllorg. The bridge is extended, just as the outer door starts to cave in as if from some great force. The group opens the door on the far side of the pit and enters the room beyond.

They meet Dr Stitch.

He kills them all, except Nelvo who runs into a wall with a spearpoint against his chest.

Later, they wake up.

Each has been completely healed, and lies behind an energy field, alone in a cell, one of several lining the outside of an oval room.  In that room there is a large slab. Dr Stitch hovers over the slab as the horrible butchered thing upon it shudders and dies. 

The doctor takes a tarry looking black sphere about the size of grapefruit from his lab coat and holds it over the corpse. 

It flows away from his hand and covers the corpse in a thick black sheath. Minutes later, it contracts back into a ball, leaving a living and seeming healthy Red warrior strapped to the slab.

He wakes looks around him.

He  begins to scream.

Dr Stitch laughs long and hard and then leaves the room. 

End session. 

vat goon