Trawling

So, I've read a few more books recently and not mentioned it here. I finished "Shadows in Freeport", a Goodman Games module written by Rob Schwalb and set in Freeport from back in the 00s, "Vengeance in Freeport" also written by a third party, Ronin Arts, but which is a direct sequel, or coda, to "Madness in Freeport". I've also read Monster Compendium: Monsters of Faerun and I've almost finished the Savage Tide adventure path. It's my intention that, if not today then certainly tomorrow, I'll finish Savage Tide. 

I wasn't sure what to think of the Goodman Games module. It clearly wears on its sleeve the old school dungeon-crawl style, which I don't usually have much interest in, so I didn't expect to love it. However... I actually do. Although the format wasn't a great one for reading, I'll admit, the actual module looks like it's fantastic. Although structured as an old-fashioned dungeon-crawler, which it mostly is, it's actually quite a clever and well-done expression of a haunted house experience. It lacks (mostly) silly and hoaky dungeon-crawl staples like tons of unbelievable traps and puzzles—there's one of the latter, but it can simply be written out, I'm sure, and while there are a few traps, they mostly represent regular hazards rather than actual traps; weakened and structurally unsound floors, and stuff like that. It also shows that you don't need fancy new monsters; for the most part, the memorable encounters are with pretty standard stuff that's in the SRD; ghosts, allips, babau demons, etc. It goes to show you; it's about how they're used. Execution trumps innovation every single time. And this is excellently executed. If the module kind of springs fully formed without any backstory to speak of like Minerva from the forehead of Jupiter†, that's OK; you can find reasons within your own game to actually engage the module. 

I do like reading adventure paths and more modern modules that propose hooks and backgrounds, but I find that it's hardly necessary, it's just mostly to make the module a bit more readable for the GM. This is a perfect example of how that isn't really needed though. You go to the haunted house because people have been going missing. They're all ghosts and they attack you once you're inside. Put the monster down at the end to stop the disappearances. Beyond that; any GM worth his salt can work that in. As much as I like the stuff that the writers' come up with for modules, I admit that I frequently have to change what they wrote anyway if I intend to actually use their material. 

Next up on the Freeport Trawl would be "Crisis in Freeport." I've often complained that Freeport is often too silly; although I don't think I've ever read Crisis, my understanding is that it swung perhaps too far in the other direction; very dark, serious and edgy, or at least attempting to be, with gratuitous rape and crap like that. Pendulum's are often like that; when they go too far in one direction, the correction is an over-correction. But I'll read it before I judge it. 

(This paragraph is a rambly aside. Feel free to skip.) Because so many of my books on my trawl are books that I have in pdf form, my Sumatra (I prefer it to Acrobat for simple reading) is pre-loaded up with the next one or two for each of my trawls, and I think that I'll continue to do that. So, I've got at least two more Freeport books loaded up; Crisis and "Gangs of Freeport", I've got the next Eberron module, which is next for that trawl, I've still got my Savage Tide fan compilation (it was easier than finding all of my old Dungeon magazines in whatever box they're stacked in in storage), Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Magic of Faerun and The Voyage to Farzeen. But just because I have the next chapter of each trawl loaded doesn't mean that I'm going to read them all equally. For one thing, I'm also reading other things besides my trawl books, and for another, I want to prioritize some over others. Of the books currently on deck or in process, I want to finish (in physical copies) Heroes of Horror, Tales from Celtic Mythology, and the Driz'zt prequel trilogy in the next days (or weeks for the last one; I'll start it when I finish Celtic) and I've got other physical books to add to the list. I'm also listening to audiobooks; I'm probably going to finish At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs (I've read it before, of course, but this is my first time in audio) early next week, if not this weekend. I'll also finish Savage Tide within the next 24 hours or so, as I mentioned, and then I'll load up the first of the Rise of the Runelords adventures again. I've read that at least twice before, and played it at least once, but never as part of the trawl, so it gets to go again. Freeport and the Adventure paths are kind of the priority to read first, with Eberron and the Sandy Petersen Sagas next; the 5e campaigns and the 3e Forgotten Realms books are at the bottom. In addition, on the physical book side, I've had a lot of stuff in mind to read, including an undocumented mini-trawl of the 3e monster books (my recent finishing of Monster Compendium: Monsters of Faerun thus killed two birds with one stone, and I'm almost done with the environmental books too; only two left to read.)

Anyway; the two Freeport modules I just read could be used in an Old Night game easily enough without major alteration, although both of them are kind of non-essential. "Shadows in Freeport" was absolutely stand-alone and had nothing to do with anything else going on in Freeport. It could easily have been set anywhere, and tying it to Freeport in the first place seems kind of superfluous and unnecessary, and "Vengeance in Freeport" was tied very much to the story of Milton Drac; although it could easily be run as a stand alone without that backstory, and the backstory linkages aren't actually important. It's a superfluous coda rather than one that adds or contributes to the ongoing "Freeport meta-narrative" if you will. Neither of those are surprising, given that both are third party additions to the Freeport thread.

† I don't often talk about this kind of thing, but because for some reason I used the Roman rather than Greek version of this story, it sparked in my mind some thoughts. Jupiter, Juno and Minerva are the Capitoline Triad, seen as among the most important three gods worshipped on Capitoline Hill in Rome in the later Roman period, after the Hellenization of many aspects of their culture. That said, it appears that Minerva was borrowed from the Etruscans rather than the Greeks, only later "merging" with Athena. She seems to come almost exactly as is from Etruscan Menrva and the coming out of the forehead story was adopted from the Greeks, as well as (sometimes) imagery associated with Medusa's head shields, but her essential character and her place in the Triad predates the Hellenization of the Romans, and comes directly from the Etruscans instead. In spite of the Hellenization of Roman mythology, it still always retained a lot of its own original character. Mars was never really seen as having the character of Ares, for instance, even though they were often conflated—Ares was an entitled villain to the Greeks, while Mars was a heroic ideal. The Archaic Triad, which predates the Capitoline Triad, was Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus, where Quirinus may have originally been a Sabine equivalent of sorts to Mars who was adopted into the early Roman pantheon when the Sabines joined the early Romans politically and culturally. 

My favorite god of Roman specific mythology is Sol Invictus, however, not only because what a cool name, but... well, mostly because it's such a cool name. Sol was an old Roman god, which should be obvious given that his name is a clear cognate with the word for Sun in all kinds of other Indo-European languages, but his worship largely faded during the early Republican times. Aurelian, the Emperor who ended the Crisis of the Third Century and revived Rome's flagging fortunes is the most responsible for bringing the worship of Sol back, now with the subtitle Invictus (he was occasionally called Sol Indiges previously.) There's even some discussion among modern students of Rome's religious practices and mythology if Sol Indiges, or "Old Sol" is even the same deity as Sol Invictus or not.

I don't have pagan pantheons in my fantasy anymore, but if I were to ever decide to use that for a setting, I'd probably use real life mythological gods rather than making them up, and Sol Invictus would absolutely be part of my pantheon, probably replacing Pelor in the D&D pantheon. (4e and 5e did a real number of the specific pantheons of specific settings, and mixed them all up. Pelor seems to have made the cut in the 5e DMG, if I recall, however.) Borrowing other gods from Celtic, Slavic Germanic and Roman and/or Greek pantheons, to the degree we can recreate them, I'd make my own mishmash pantheon. Or better yet, I simply wouldn't define any pantheon at all, and just let players pick whatever gods they want from whatever source that they want. 

But my own characters would be most interested in worshipping Sol Invictus, Cernnunos the Horned King, Perun the Thunderer, (or maybe Taranis the Thunderer instead), Mithras, a martial god, Chernovog, a dark underworld style god, and Veles, a trickster god associated with magic. 

Heck, that's at least 75% of a workable pantheon right there. Add a couple of goddesses; some kind of nurturing/healing chick like Nerthus or an equivalent and maybe a moon goddess like Artemis or Selene or something, and you're mostly good to go. Some tripartite witch/oracle goddess trio like the Norns, the Fates or the Morrigan would fit (I like the Graeae or the Gray Sisters for them) and Nodens, the Silver-handed, who is a god of seas, hunting and fishing. Of course, I could also use Dagon as god of the sea, but that makes the sea altogether much more unfriendly. There would be other gods, but they'd be unlikely to be selectable as "PC gods"; Dagon and other monstrous or "demon lord" inspired gods who inspire dangerous cults would be the equivalents here. Heck, I'll probably lay out this alternate pantheon in a separate post—I don't need it for Old Night, but whenever I actually get back to work on whatever name I come up with for High Fantasy Hack; well, pagan pantheons seem to go pretty hand in hand with high fantasy. 

What Star Wars got Right

http://sorcerersskull.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-star-wars-got-right.html

Trey Causey revisited an older post recently, and he's still 100% correct in what he notices.  However, I don't think he gets the whole story.  He correctly notes a few things:

• European-style swashbuckling action; here he means "Euro-style" in the sense of the Ruritanian romance with princesses, nobles, swordfights, etc.  He specifically references Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Mad King, which was his own take on the Ruritanian romance (and is therefore one of the better ones); he doesn't mean that the authors are necessarily European.  Specifically mentioned both Burroughs and Alex Raymond, who are both Americans—rather, the setting has a kind of romanticized European Old Country charm.
• The more pulp type of square-jawed science fiction with jet packs and robots and stuff.  The vibe of The Rocketeer or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (although both post-date Star Wars; maybe the original Buck Rogers stuff is the best analog.  I'm not 100% sure that a clear line can be drawn between works from this oeuvre and the one mentioned above; or maybe he just happens to have examples that often blur the lines (specifically Flash Gordon and Barsoom.)
• Fun exoticism that takes the elements that made Orientalism and chinoiserie popular, but even more alien; funny-headed aliens speaking Huttese that actually sounds like a real language, for instance.
• Nostalgia for the Americana that Lucas himself grew up with; many have remarked that there is much more in common between Star Wars and American Graffiti than initially meets the eye.

What he doesn't point out, which I think is also part of it, is that all kinds of other genres get heavily mixed in.  There's a lot of Western influence to the point where the cantina scene is almost exactly a straight up saloon with Han Solo and Greedo as gunfighters.  There's a lot more noir influence than many realize (although it became much more overt over time, especially in certain episodes of the prequels and the Clone Wars series).

The fact that the Star Wars setting can credibly work for everything from Graustark to a train heist to Roman gladiators to steely-eyed gunfighters with tumbleweeds rolling by to walking the plank pirate stories to Raymond Chandler to Godzilla stories to zombie plague stories—and none of it really feels too forced or out of place—is part of the charm.  The original movie trilogy didn't literally use all of those elements, but it used a lot more than some people realize.  They are somewhat subtle, I suppose, and because they're just embedded in our cultural psyche, we don't really think much about them, but Star Wars is basically every single type of romanticized boy's adventure story rolled up into one.

This is also where Star Wars is going to go wrong in the future, to the extent that it isn't already, though.  Those who are making new Star Wars movies have embraced the feminist imperative.  Because the feminist imperative is fundamentally at odds with biology, there's nowhere to go with this but down.  There's a reason that Star Wars is a melange of boy's adventure tales, and making all of the boys bumbling comic relief and making Mary Suewalker act like a boy, except even more capable at anything and everything isn't going to make Star Wars more appealing.

As an aside, I watched the 1981 Clash of the Titans last night while holed up in the house due to lots of falling snow, inability of our infrastructure to clear the roads well, and stuff getting canceled across the board that I would otherwise have been out doing.  It's not a great movie, but I've kind of got a soft spot for those old cheesy sword & sandal movies, especially with the stop-motion mythological monsters.  I imagine most D&D players kind of do.  Now, I might watch the 2010 remake here soon, but even if I don't, I think I can remember well enough why that failed compared to the 1981 version, and much of it comes down to that.

• In the 2010 version, Perseus is kind of whiny and reluctant.  I hate the trope of the reluctant hero.  Men that women love and other men aspire to be are movers and shakers.  Leading men who are passive, or even worse, surly and whiny, just are incredibly unlikable.  The Perseus of the earlier version, on the other hand, is happy to go find his destiny; he's even impetuous about it, which gives him a kind of youthful charm.
• In the 2010 version, Andromeda isn't even the love interest.  Oh, she's pretty enough, but she's cold, distant, and there's nothing feminine or charming about her at all.  (For that matter, the same is mostly true of the actual love interest, some new character played by Gemma Aterton.  She's credited as Io, but has absolutely no connection to the mythological Io, so I don't know why.)  Judi Bowker's Andromeda, on the other hand, is everything a young princess should be; full of youthful, virginal sweetness, compassion, femininity, and very, very beautiful.  When she runs off on her horse in front of the guys, it's not because "I'm a manly pseudo-woman in the feminist vein, here me roar!" it's because she's young, impetuous, in love, and it makes her even more cute and more feminine rather than less so.  It's not unlike the famous line from A Princess of Mars; "Fly Sola, Dejah Thoris stays to die with the man she loves."  The men react to it fondly.  But they protect them, even from themselves, and when Andromeda wakes up to find that everyone except old Burgess Meredith has already left and there's nothing for her to do except go back home, it's sad, but not as sad, reckless or foolish as taking the girl you love into harm's way.  These two are where I say that the feminist imperative fights against biology; the story that the feminist imperative would have us tell simply isn't a story that most people are going to react to very well, because it makes men into low-T losers, and it makes women into pseudo-men.  And then to make it worse, these pseudo-men have plot immunity to even minor setbacks, because the shrieking harpies who write this stuff can't bear to see them suffer even that.  So the stories not only feature unbelievable and unlikable characters, but they also feature unlikable, boring plots with no real tension or suspense.
• Poor Sam Worthington is probably a decent guy, but I've never yet seen him in a movie where he had any charisma or chemistry with the other actors.  Harry Hamlin, on the other hand, isn't a particularly talented actor, but even so, he had a kind of dumb jock charm, and it was credible that Perseus and Andromeda were victims of young love.
• On the other hand, the 2010 version had much better special effects, and usually better action sequences (although I actually think the Medusa scene works better as a tense horror scene than as an action scene, so 1981's version actually wins there.  By a little bit.)
• Yes, I admit that my exploration of The Serpent's Skull eventually led me to believe that I did need snake-men instead of merely lizardmen.  And yes, I did gravitate towards making them different by going more with a yuan-ti abomination than with just scaly people with snake heads.  And yes, that led me to Medusa, and proposing a link between Medusa, lesser medusae, and the snake-men.  And yes, that led me to watching Clash of the Titans, mostly to see the Medusa scene all over again.

Myths Revisited: Part II, the Olympians

Zeus, the Skyfather, Lord of Lightning and Thunder, is the King of the Gods of Olympus according to most treatises on Classical Mythology. Most treatises on Classical Mythology, however, ignore the long history and historicity of the cults of the gods of Olympus, where they came from, and what happened to them. Consequently, these details are shrouded in over-simplified myths and metaphor.

In reality, Zeus came upon the Greek pantheon as a new god prior to its identification with Mount Olympus. At the time, a loose collection of gods including Artemis, Athena, Dionysos, and the Mistresses (Demeter and Persephone), Hephaestus, Hermes and Hera, along with a number of gods that later became more or less forgotten—Paean, Erinya, Eileithyia, and Despoina ruled a small pocket dimension that was tied to Greece on planet earth, allowing them to occasionally roam over this circumscribed geographical area. Over this loose collection of gods, Poseidon was champion and “first among equals”—a powerful force individually, but their loose collection made them vulnerable to another militaristic pantheon, the so-called Titans of Mount Othrys, who’s own pocket dimension was anchored in another part of the Greek peninsula, putting them at odds because of proximity.

Zeus arrived with some of his young and untested allies: Ares, Apollo, Hades, Aphrodite, Herakles, and others, and due to his own war-like nature and off-the-charts personal magnetism and physical power, was able to unite the disparate Mycenaean pantheon into a powerful force. They set up their paradise on Mount Olympus (in reality, a pocket dimension called Olympus, which is most often accessed via a semi-permanent portal on Mount Olympus in Greece) and waged the terrible war known as the Titanomachy. This was one of the first and most terrible examples of open warfare between pantheons of Outsiders, and the triumvirate of Zeus, his “brother” Hades, and Poseidon, the champion of the region before the arrival of Zeus and his entourage, proved to be unstoppable.

The New Olympians overthrew the Titans, incorporating some few of their members who surrendered into their own growing pantheon and imprisoning the rest so that they couldn’t be reborn to threaten their rule later. Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, the most powerful of the new Olympian pantheon, declared themselves brothers, retroactively declared themselves sons and heirs of Cronus, the King of Othrys and the Titans overall, and ruled Olympus jointly, with Zeus the new “first among equals.” In truth, Zeus, Hades and Poseidon don’t always get along, or trust each other too much, and the lusts, envies and politics between them are often brutal and cruel. However, all three of them recognize that it is the power of their joint triumvirate that has led to their long dominance. Breaking their triumvirate will expose them to their enemies (of which there are many, mostly due to their own aggressive nature) and creates a situation in which as much as they may not like it, all three have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Indeed, all three of the triumvirs have at times been killed, but on being re-embodied and reborn, the other two remaining triumvirs made sure that they were raised and taught their place so that they could assume it smoothly again on reaching their full maturity of power.

The Olympian pantheon later made war against two smaller pantheons; those later known as the Etruscan gods and the Roman gods. After suffering a number of losses in lightning raids that left their forces imprisoned and depleted, the Etruscan and Roman pantheons merged, and brought a titanic battle to the Olympians. Echoes of this struggle remain in mythology in garbled form as the Gigantomachy, but the effects of the war are better illustrated on the practices of the worshippers of these pantheons. The Etruscan pantheon, as transmitted to archeologists, adopted more and more Roman and Greek influences, and the Roman pantheon adopted the stories and personalities of the Olympians, although in most cases the names remained Roman. As with the titans, many of the original Roman and Etruscan deities were imprisoned and their places taken by Olympians, who adopted their names and titles for local worshippers, while others were integrated into the Olympian pantheon.

There were some bitter and brutal moves during this integration. Ares was slain and his reborn soul was hidden by the Romans, for example. Later, the Roman Mars took his place in Olympus, leaving Ares as an exile with no knowledge of his heritage for many centuries. Today, Ares remains a bitter outsider, unconnected with the Olympians, since Zeus and the triumvirate had to “adopt” Mars as part of the cessation of hostilities with the remaining Roman pantheon. Hades “adopted” a number of deities with similar interests—Orcus, Ploutus, etc. and announced that they were permanently part of his entourage.

This was the last great Outsider war in which the Olympians participated—following the naked aggression of Zeus and his brothers against the Roman and Etruscan pantheons, few other outsiders would trust or deal with the Olympians anymore, and many would rather make common cause with their rivals against the Olympians rather than give the powerful Zeus a chance to work his way into another pantheonic conquest. That said, two additional powerful deities were later associated with the Olympians during the later Roman times—Isis, a goddess from the Eqyptian pantheon who dallied for many years with Poseidon and had a powerful alliance with him (and him alone, not with the rest of the Olympians). Zeus also befriended Mithras, a wandering deity who was part of an pre-Avestan pantheon that imploded in brutal warfare and politics, and the Mithraic mysteries were an important part of Olympian worship for some time. Mithras eventually wandered again, although his friendship with Zeus remains an important trump card that Zeus can pull when needed, for Mithras was a solar figure and infamously powerful warrior.

The Olympians had a long-running “Cold War” with a Celtic pantheon that was separate from the later attested Irish and Welsh mythologies, but this never erupted into full-scale war. While historically the Roman mortals did eventually conquer and assimilate most of the continental and many of the insular celtic groups, their pantheon was able to form a temporary alliance with the up and coming Teutonic pantheon, an early incarnation of what is later known better to us as the Norse pantheon, where it was actually transmitted to archeologists via writing. Having just come off a war of their own, in which the Æsir and Vanir gods merged to form a much stronger Teutonic pantheon, they were a militarily powerful group and rival for the Olympians that the Olympians were not ready to tackle. Some small part of the warfare and politics between the Teutonic—later Asgardian, Celtic—later, Avalonian, and Olympian pantheons is reflected in the complex relationships between the Celtic, Germanic, and Romano-Greek peoples, but as all three populations were eventually Christianized and became significantly intermingled culturally and ethnically over time, later events in the pantheons are not reflected in mythology or history, but in the secret history of the Outsiders, which is unknown to most peoples.

This later history, however, mostly coincides with that of the other pantheons—as worship of the Outsiders as gods has faded and failed, they have found that their connections to Earth have become less stable and predictable. This has also led to a dampening of hostilities between pantheons, as without easy access to Earth and “the Porch”, they don’t have the means to make war on each other. It also means that individuals are often stranded on Earth, and sometimes are even killed here. Re-embodied without the ability of their “home” pantheons to raise them to take the same place that they held before their deaths, many pantheons have holes missing in them, and the presence of Exile outsiders, who have little or no knowledge of who or what they are, is growing. Some believe, for example, that Samson or Beowulf (or perhaps both!) were actually lives of Herakles, who while wandering far from Olympus was slain, grew up amongst a foreign people when re-embodied and reborn, and became a local hero to them before being killed again.

Myths Revisited, part I: what are the gods?

I decided to name this little series and give it it's own tag: MYTHS REVISITED wherein I discuss a modern-day setting in which mythological characters--gods and heroes--are reinterpreted as superheroes, basically.  As I said in my previous post, this is hardly anything new: the Marvel comics character of Thor (as well as all the backstory around him) was quite successful, and spawned a fair bit of additional mythological Marvel stuff, including Hercules and later Ares as Avengers, the Chaos War storyline (as well as several others), as well as the spin-off (which was later integrated into the mainstream continuity) of the Eternals.  DC has done their part as well, since the character of Wonder Woman is strongly rooted in Greek mythology, and many characters from myth appear in their continuums as well.  And where Marvel has the Eternals, many see that as a reflection of Jack Kirby's New Gods; after it was cancelled, he filed off the serial numbers, changed a lot of the details, but basically explored a lot of the same themes--a science fiction adaptation of mythological concepts.  This more overtly science fictional presentation has a number of important legacies--Darkseid, one of the favorite mega-villains of the DC universe, for example, started as such.  Marvel, in integrating the Eternals, made the Titanians and the Uranians into Eternals, basically, so Thanos (often viewed as a Marvel counterpart to Darkseid himself) is one of them.  Curiously, although it's one of the "other" continuities of the Marvel multiverse, Superman analog Hyperion, i.e. Mark Milton, is specifically said to be an Eternal in that universe, although in the Supreme Power version of the character, he's even more overtly Superman-like, and he and Princess Zarda are aliens--bringing the concept full circle of tying mythology to science fiction.

For what its worth, the newish Thor movie, which establishes its own related but different continuity called the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Earth-199999 for the curious, who are into that kinda thing) also posits an Asgard where Asgardians, including Thor and Odin and Loki and the rest of the Norse mythological characters, are as much based on pulpish super-science as on magic and mythology.  I'd also be lying if I didn't note that the Percy Jackson movies (I never read the books, although my kids mostly all have) aren't an influence as well.

All that said, in Myths Revisited, what, then are the heathen gods of various mythologies?  Do they all exist, and how do they relate to the stories that we probably know (at least for well-known mythologies like Norse and Greek?)  The characters do exist, and they are (mostly) human-like in appearance, and in fact, often pose as human beings and live among us--or at least can do so.  Like comic-book characters, they exhibit superhuman strength, speed, reflexes, durability, resistance to injury and disease and aging, as at least a baseline.  Individual characters may have other superhuman abilities as well--Thor's ability to call lightning, for example, Hermes incredible speed, etc.  The named, known gods are characters who are more active in human affairs, and/or more heroic in terms of accomplishments than their compatriots, but in reality, there is a bigger population of these types of characters than are known on Earth.  Most of them live in pocket dimensions that "orbit" the dimension of the Earth (for lack of a better description) and are connected via a transitory dimension colloquially known as "the Earth's Porch" or simply the Porch.  Individuals from these worlds (as well as people from Earth, actually) may travel via the Porch to one or more of these pocket dimensions, and occasionally do so, but the journey is often harrowing, and requires specialized, esoteric knowledge that few in any dimension possess.

One of the great mysteries of humanity is exactly what happens to the souls of those who die, however, such is not the case with these Outsiders, as they are collectively sometimes called.  While not actually immortal, and certainly capable of being slain, the souls of Outsiders eventually re-coalesce and reform to be reborn when one is slain.  They will grow up to possess all of the abilities that they had before, although none of the memories of their prior lives.  This does grant them a measure of immortality, but a very limited one, since if you are killed, have to be reborn a number of years later, grow up, and then still don't have any of your prior memories, death to the Outsiders is fairly final, and is certainly a viable solution to dealing with the plans of a rival or enemy.

Certain rituals can give characters random (and usually more confusing rather than helpful) glimpses into their past lives, and can be done on occasion, although they are very fearful of doing so because prolonged exposure to these glimpses leads to insanity and violent, paranoid madness.

Outsiders can often manipulate "magic"--forces from beyond the boundaries of the Worlds We Know that leak through like dark energy directly from the bulk (to give a vague reference to brane cosmology theory. There are a number of other, more exotic beasts that live in these pocket dimensions--creatures that may be semi-human like, as in centaurs or rusalka, or others that are purely monstrous, such as trolls, hydras or worse.  In addition to this "magic", they have access to often advanced science--in fact, the magic is merely manipulation of energy from the bulk, and thus fits the old maxim of being merely sufficiently advanced science rather than actually magical.

In the past, various populations of Outsiders usually had limited geographical exposure to Earth, but as the population of Earth has become increasingly scattered and intermingled, that is no longer true, and the various populations of Outsiders now interact not only with humanity, but also with each other quite a bit.  In addition, as their wars and often brutal politics proceed, in many cases, individual heroes are reborn, or hidden after their birth, on the Earth, where they may be completely unconnected from their forebears (and in an ironic twist, may in fact grow up to later become more familiar with a rival population of Outsiders.)  Also, the myths as presented show a point in time only--echoes of past upheavals are reflected in the mythology, such as in the Æsir-Vanir War or the Titanomachy--are merely past upheavals, and others of often similar scope have taken place since the time that the myths were first transmitted to "mortals."

When next I return to this topic, let's discuss some more specifics--starting with the Greek mythos and its reflection in the Myths Revisited settling.

Deities & Demigods

After watching Young Justice, I felt like I'd reached a critical point in terms of superheroes.  A number of things had come together to bring this about.  I've always loved superheroes, of course, but Young Justice added a new character, Wonder Girl to the mix.  She wasn't necessarily an important component of the cast, but I'd long been a fan of some Wonder Woman material in particular because of her connections to the DC Universe version of Greek mythology.  Marvel, too, has often had a long history of reinterpreting mythology as super-heroes, with Thor being one of the very early Silver Age characters and a founding member of the Avengers.  Hercules and Ares of Greek mythology were also Avengers for a time, and I still have the issues of a story-arc in which the Avengers must go to Olympus because Zeus is ticked off at injuries Hercules suffered in his capacity as a superhero.  Marvel also had the Chaos War in which all kinds of pantheons contributed to the story; and in the run-up to Thor #400, back in the 80s, Set, the Serpent God from Egyptian mythology invaded Asgard.  And Snowbird, a character with strong relations to Inuit mythology, plays heavily in Alpha Flight.  Although both comic book companies are not at all immune to concepts that are rooted in magic and mysticism, by and large, the mythological elements are often coated in a superficial technobabble of pseudo-scientific stuff.

This angle was later more explicitly explored by Jack Kirby first in the New Gods series for DC, which was cancelled after a short time, then in The Eternals for Marvel which explored many of the same themes.  In both cases, the New Gods and the Eternals were meant to be stand-alone stories, unaffiliated with the greater continuity, but in both cases, they were eventually brought on board, and some characters, such as Darkseid, becoming recurring characters in the continuity.  This was somewhat confusing, as it was the explicit conceit of at least the Eternals, that they were the source of legends about gods, but now they existed alongside the actual gods that they were kinda sorta based on themselves.  DC also retconned some history of the universe with the invention of the Godwave, a power called The Source that swept through the universe creating gods, then bounced off the edge and created superheroes on it's way back, and which now was bouncing back outwards yet a third time.

Other sources besides comic books have had mythology and modern times intersect, including Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, in which Odin and a few other Norse mythological creatures and whatnot make appearances (and its rumored that the next volume, coming out at the end of the year, may focus heavily on Greek mythological themes.)  My kids have been big fans of Rick Riordan's work, which includes two 5-book series on modern day demigods--New York teenages who are the counterparts of Theseus or Perseus.  He also has an unrelated series that has ties to Egyptian mythology, and it's rumored that he's also working on an all new series with ties to Norse mythology.  In fact, there's a new Percy Jackson movie due out this weekend, which no doubt we'll see, because the kids are all interested (and frankly, so am I.)  There's other ones out there that I've seen here and there, but haven't quite managed to get into yet, too.

Frankly, I kind of like the more pseudo-science interpretations, with Von Danniken-esque interpretations of where "gods" came from.  This just "feels" really comic-bookish to me.  I also like the notion of mythological characters are more like superheroes than anything else.  In the Supreme Power stories, for example, Power Princess (Princess Zarda) has (apparently) both an extraterrestrial origin, and a history as some kind of ancient Greek goddess.  This ambiguity between science fiction and "typical" mythology is desireable, in my opinion.  It's also important to not allow the super-powers to get carried away into craziness (a problem that most typically belongs to Superman rather than to the mythological characters, but y'know... you still have to watch it.)

Anyway, I'm going to continue to explore this concept for a few more posts, using the tags MYTHOLOGY and SUPERHEROES simultaneously.  The "world-building" itch has struck again, and rather than being focused on my normal DARK•HERITAGE topics, it's wandering a bit further afield.