Today, I Unlocked A Weretiger!

Hot Lao God-Hero Art by Vongduane Manivong

You may not have heard of the Demonstra Kickstarter, but I would encourage you to take a look!  It has eight days left and it is an important project. 

In SF&F, we hear a lot about Western gods and monsters. 

And not so much about everyone else's.

This Kickstarter features speculative poetry and art by the award winning Lao-American poet Bryan Thao Worra and artist Vongduane Manivong. 

Here's a few words about the project from Bryan:

In 2013, my new book DEMONSTRA will be published by Innsmouth Free Press, with over 100 pages of Lao American speculative poetry. This collection includes poems of ancient Lao ghosts, secret wars, and creatures of mystery. There will also be glimpses at the distant future, from what the Lao space program might look like to where Lao might be in the year 40,000.  

2013 will be a particular milestone year in Lao history. I'd really like to release an edition that raises the bar for what we expect from books of Lao American poetry. This is also my first book I've released since representing Laos during the London Summer Games as a cultural olympian.

If the Kickstarter went a few days more (not sure if this is possible, but hint-hint), I would up my donation to $50 for the cover art poster and the special, frameable poem written for you on the theme of your choice. 

For the record, my request would be for a poem incorporating these two themes:

• Mao's saying that "When an idea is seized by the masses, it becomes a material force."
• A supernatural being from the Lao gay male imaginary

You can still do this Bryan! I challenge you!

Mayan RPG For The New Long Count

Cover art by Gustvo Lira
Image copyright. 2007-2010
by Obsidian Serpent Games

Now that the Mayan apocalypse is behind us - the real one started in 1517 anyway - perhaps we can look at some positive alternatives. I have been thinking a lot this week about Chad Davidson's Heirs to the Lost World, an indie RPG with a great world and some really fun gamist dice-based resource management mechanics. Heirs was the first free-standing RPG to take Aztec and Mayan cultures seriously in their own right. I have run this game many times. As someone who used to teach Latin American and Caribbean area studies, the setting hits my sweet spot.

Heirs to the Lost World is an alternate history 17th Century RPG set in Mexico and the Caribbean. In the game world, the Aztecs used magic to defeat the Conquistadors' armies and to treat European diseases. While the Spanish have some footholds in Northern Mexico and in the Caribbean (as do other Europeans), the Aztec civilization remains more or less intact, as do the Mayan city-states. You also have maroon colonies of escaped African slaves, pirates, the squicky Mayan underworld of Xibalba, the gods, and much, much more.

Play can happen anywhere in the region, but you are given the more or less open Mayan city of Xicalango in the Yucatan as a default multicultural setting for starting games and introducing players to the setting. This combines with the Order of the New Dawn to give PCs a narrative structure to plug into in the game. The Order of the New Dawn is a secret society which traces itself back to Dr. John Dee.

The Order of the New Dawn has several goals:

• Establishing a free, democratic society in the New World
• Abolishing slavery
• Establishing peaceful and equitable relations with the native peoples of the New World
• Ensuring freedom of religion, including freedom to practice magic, which is largely banned (and pursued by the Inquisition and numerous Protestant freelance witch hunters) in Europe. 

The New Dawn counts native peoples and Africans among its members and allies as well. This enables party diversity, as a PC group may include an Aztec Jaguar or Eagle Knight, a pirate or smuggler, a maroon priestess of Voudoun, a Mayan sun priest, and much, much more. So like I said, a pretty rich setting, with some straightforward ways into the game. I have a hankering to start playing some Heirs again, using either the existing game system, which has great rules for stunting, or using the setting to test drive the new FATE Core (maybe you have heard about the latter, yes?).

For more on Heirs to the Lost World, check out the Obsidian Serpent Games website.

You can also see the in-depth interview I did with Chad Davidson over on the Hereticwerks blog, here.

Blade & Crown Is At The Source

Rachel Kronick's new roleplaying game, Blade & Crown, is on the new rack now at The Source Comics and Games in Roseville, Minnesota!

The Source is a well-managed, extremely friendly game store. It is also one of the largest (if not the largest in the USA). The Source has been a consistent supporter of tabletop indie RPG authors, developers, and gamers.

They stock the games we want. They make demo and game space available for anybody that wants it. And most importantly, they take risks on new authors, giving their customers a chance to see new things. For example, they also stocked another truly outstanding indie/small press RPG that I have really fallen in love with this Fall: Broken Rooms.

So, if you live in the Twin Cities, and are considering a purchase of Blade & Crown, please consider picking it up at The Source. Nothing wrong with ordering from DTRPG if you just want the PDF, or from Lulu, if you don't live in the Twin Cities.

But if you are here in town, why not support an FLGS that does such great job supporting indie authors and gamers?

Table 1.2 Completed!

The Everwayan celebrates the completion of the second third of our Things Found Upon Spherewalkers mega-table! You can find the entire 36-item Things Found Upon Spherewalkers mega-table in the Everwayan's Indexes link page right under the blog's masthead. 

The first 12 items for the Things Found Upon Spherewalkers table are detailed and hyperlinked from Table 1.1.


Each item on Table 1.2 below is hyperlinked to a detailed item description. 



TABLE 1.2 - Things Found Upon Spherewalkers

To use this table, roll 1D12:

1. A small collection of fine sword guards
2. A star-shaped porcelain tile, depicting a cheetah
3. A stone figurine depicting a boar headed goddess
4. A stone figurine depicting a goddess of war
5. Two identical metal bells, whose handles end in claws
6. A horn made of a conch shell, and surrounded by fine bronze metalwork
7. A black metal figurine of a dancing male god
8. A jeweled gold crossbow fibula
9. The Icon of Infinite Sorrow, painted on the inside of a seashell
10. A small booklet with dozens of square pages that have been stitched together with red thread, and then bound with resin. Each page describes a favor given to someone, or a favor owed to someone
11. A small, finger-length wooden figure of an oar, painted white
12. A metal scorpion, with a winding screw protruding from its back

A Goddess Of War

University of Michigan Museum of Art
Photo c.2012 by John Everett Till

This stone figurine depicts a goddess of war. A fiercer incarnation of the Mother of Gods and Goddesses, it represents the divinity whose titles include "The Inaccessible" and "The Invincible". Only fools approach  the goddess Durga under the illusion that they can best her in battle. Armed with a sword and a chakram, she is ready for battle - and willing and ready to aid you as well.

Durga grants two powers to the woman warrior who commits to carrying her image to the scene of the battle. With Durga's gift the woman warrior will be able to:

• Emit a great blinding light in the presence of demons or other evil supernatural creatures. This light will surround a woman warrior like a halo; it has the power to burn away and destroy the demons, nagas, and other evil powers.
• Roar with terrifying laughter in battle. This usually causes mortal enemies to flee in utter terror. It also causes earthquakes to devastate all areas within one hour's walk in any direction from the place of battle. Such power forces demons and monsters out of their hiding places to confront the goddess' champion. 

The Durga-stone is approximately one hand thick, two hands in width, and three hands tall. A warrior woman can carry it in a backpack, removing it when the time for battle has arrived. The bearer has an excellent disguise, for who would suspect that hunched old woman - perhaps the one making her way down the road right over there - is really an unstoppable demon slayer? 

EVERWAY MECHANICS

The Great Blinding Light is equivalent to the use of Fire magic at level 9. 

The Power of Laughter is equivalent to Earth magic of level 8.

Using these magics is extremely dangerous, however. The first use turns your Fault into a new Usurper force, determined by the player. The second use turns your Virtue into another new Usurper force, as determined by the consensus of the other players at the table. The third use turns your Fate into a new Usurper force, as determined by the GM. You become a force of nature the GM. removes you from play.

The Icon Of Infinite Sorrow

Sorrow Sun image courtesy of Hereticwerks

...Painted on the inside of a seashell. Centuries ago, the Icon of Infinite Sorrow was first discovered by the itinerant spherewalking priest Harbinger Moondance. He found it on a pedestal within a small shoreside shrine on the eternally twilit world of Gravelsea, an ancient grave-realm whose demise preceded the founding of Everway. 

An icon of unfolding gloom, this seashell has traveled to many different realms. It has been worshiped as the symbol of a goddess, revered as the royal sigil of a demoness, and venerated and feared as a terror-weapon and Doom Shell. 

Each realm which has guested it has suffered a novel and ultimate catastrophe. Because these disasters are never tied to a realm's existing Virtue-Fault-Fate tryptic, the Icon of Infinite Sorrow is a Usurper force in material form, a movable curse.

The Chamber Platinum has drawn out a spherepath for the Icon of Infinite Sorrow. It is headed on a lazy spiral inwards toward the First City. 

The person who currently carries the Icon of Infinite Sorrow is unknown to the Chamber Platinum. Spherewalkers are being recruited by the Chamber to find the icon-bearer and discretely stop them in their tracks.

Thanks to Jim and Jody Garrison of Hereticwerks for providing this great image. It is a perfect representation of the Icon.

A Horn Made Of A Conch Shell...

University of Michigan Museum of Art
Photo c. 2012 by John Everett Till

...And surrounded by fine bronze metalwork. This conch horn was one of those used to attract and kill the dragon Sea Hag who had terrorized the people of the realm of Wingspan. Brave shaman-sailors from the Sitting Dog Archipelago went to sea in the war-catamarans of the Archipelago's trader-pirates accompanying the war parties readying themselves for battle. The shamans blew horns like the one shown above to attract the dragon. Thirsty Ones, summoned from the deeps, and the thirsty arrows of countless archers did the rest.

But the story doesn't end there.

The horn depicted here ended up in the Dragon Trade, and has traveled from realm-to-realm across the spheres since the great sea-battle. While not made from a dragon's parts, this particular horn helped to kill a dragon, and is therefore considered relevant to the Trade. A dragon didn't touch it, but its sounds helped to attract and kill a dragon!

The horn has changed realms many times, but still has the power to call out to the dragons of a sphere, and to draw those dragons called toward the horn blower. The horn has also developed two novel abilities as a result of its travels: 

• It can call to a dragon in an adjacent sphere, opening a gate for them; and 
• It can sound out the 'branes of a realm for concealed, interpolated realms, such as Nest Realm

Several dragon-savants, dragon-servants, and dragon-priests are searching the spheres to find this horn. And because of its second novel ability, the Chamber Platinum would also like to find it.