Mordicai

Today, I get to announce an exciting first for Tor.com. In 2016 we will publish Infomocracy by Malka Older, our first full-length novel. Published in partnership with Tor Books, Infomocracy will be traditionally distributed to bookstores near you.

We’re pleased to be collaborating with Tor Books on this title, and to be expanding our mission on behalf of such an intriguing book. Infomocracy is a science fiction political thriller that provides a fascinating vision of one possible future in which nation-states have died and been replaced with a globally distributed micro-democracy, overseen by an Information monopoly.

[Malka Older on her upcoming novel Infomocracy]

Malka Older, a debut author with years of experience in humanitarian aid and development, had this to say about her novel:

“I’m so thrilled that Tor.com is publishing Infomocracy, because it reflects a lot of the issues we see in democracies and governance today, reimagined in a complex, dangerous politics of the future. The adventure and sense of urgency in Infomocracy are drawn from my experience as a humanitarian and development worker, traveling around the world to help communities respond to, prepare for, and recover from disasters. One of the things you learn in that job is that there are many people who, for one reason or another, don’t exactly fit into their designated national borders; that even in democracies, when they are large and complex, there are always going to be people without representation. At the same time, geography seems to matter less and less, when you can conference in with people on four different continents and share events anywhere in the globe in real time. In the Infomocracy future, these trends have led to the creation of micro-democracy. Every group of 100,000 people, called a centenal, can vote to belong to any government, meaning that where you live has almost nothing to do with what nation you live in. As the decennial election rolls around though, it becomes clear that the system is far from perfect. Each of the characters in the novel is driven by a deep conviction that the difficulties and danger they face are worthwhile to make the world a better place; of course, they each have different definitions of better, and they can’t all be right. As they defy threats and sabotage, mercenaries and bureaucrats, they find that saving the world is far more complicated than it seems.”

As with all Tor.com titles, Infomocracy will also be available worldwide as ebooks and audiobooks. Keep an eye out for further annoucements about Tor.com’s novella and short novel publications.

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Carl Engle-Laird is an editorial assistant at Tor.com, where he acquires and edits original fiction. You can follow him on Twitter here.

Tor.com’s novella program is once again open to unsolicited submissions! For the next month, Lee Harris and I will be reading and evaluating original novellas submitted by hopeful authors to http://submissions.tor.com/tornovellas/. You can find full guidelines here, and we highly recommend you read the guidelines before submitting, but you can also check below the cut for a brief summary of what we’re looking for.

[Read more]

Tor.com is looking for complete, original science fiction and fantasy stories of between 30,000 and 40,000 words. We are seeking stories with commercial appeal that take advantage of the particular strengths of the novella format. We will consider stories that are slightly shorter than 30,000 and slightly longer than 40,000, but we won’t look at anything under 17,500 words. For all shorter stories, please submit to Tor.com’s Original Short Fiction program, which you can find guidelines for here.

At this time, we are particularly seeking science fictional novellas of all varieties. Lee Harris is particularly interested in space opera, time travel thrillers and interesting new approaches to classic science fiction themes, while Carl Engle-Laird is seeking near-future science fiction and technothrillers that trace their lineage from cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk, as well as space operas with the sense of grandeur and mystery that remind readers of the closeness between space opera and fantasy. We will also be happy to accept fantasy and urban fantasy stories, though we will be prioritizing the SF submissions.

In addition, both Lee Harris and Carl Engle-Laird actively request submissions from writers from underrepresented populations. This includes, but is not limited to, writers of any race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, class and physical or mental ability. We believe that good science fiction and fantasy reflects the incredible diversity and potential of the human species, and hope our catalog will reflect that.

If reading has taught me anything, it’s that pop stars are not to be trusted. They’re all up to something—whether they’re fleshy marionettes of literal spiders from Mars (as in David Lapham’s Young Liars) or just run-of-the-mill Satanists and serial killers. And that’s just the talent. If you have the extreme misfortune of meeting a producer… don’t take their card or shake their thick, ring-encrusted hand; just run.

[Read More]

(Some spoilers below.)

 

KILLER HITS In Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

This is—first and foremost—a book in which perpetrators of serious crimes are saddled with a physical manifestation of guilt in the form of an animal, a literal monkey on their back. It’s called animalling, and our protagonist, Zinzi, is “cursed” with a sloth. Also: an ability to find things, through which she gets involved in a number of missing person investigations that all seem to lead to a sinister producer and a brother/sister super group. Come for the always-fantastic Lauren Beukes; stay for the giant albino crocodile (and the sloth).

 

DAVID BOWIE DOOMSDAY in Coin Locker Babies by Ryū Murakami

The premise: two brothers abandoned in a train station locker grow up with the singular purpose of destroying their mother, Tokyo, and the world. I originally picked up this book by accident, and have lovingly referred to it as “The Wrong Murakami” ever since. Amazon reviewers agree that the first sentence is a horrifying endurance test, and the rest of the novel is an exercise in nausea… but, if you can make it through the violence and nihilism, you get a glam rock star ruling over Toxitown (it’s exactly what it sounds like) while developing a doomsday poison from eggplants. These are spoilers, but trust me, it doesn’t really matter.

Fun fact: as in Zoo City, twins and pet crocodiles loom large in Coin Locker Babies.

 

DRUM AND BASS AND BASHING SKULLS in King Rat by China Miéville

It’s the 90s, and the Pied Piper of Hamelin wants in on London’s burgeoning dance underground. In a scene right out of Edward Gorey’s High Fidelity. Pete (the Piper) convinces a skeptical DJ (Natasha) to let him lay some elaborate flute tracks on top of her Jungle beats. Just to be clear, that’s not a euphemism. Pete wants to use enchanted club music to hypnotize and kill our protagonist, Saul—a freshly orphaned rat prince coming to terms with his new life living in shadows—and if the rest of the world becomes slave to the Piper’s killer beats, so much the better!

 

BLACK MAGIC MOSH PITS in Hellblazer: Rare Cuts by Jamie Delano

“Everyone who moved in occult circles knew Alex Logue as a crap-head of the first order—a sex and drugs magician,” begins Hellblazer #11 (“Newcastle: A Taste of Things to Come”), “but he had this club, and we’d needed a gig for the band.” The band is Mucous Membrane, a Sex Pistols knock-off fronted by John Constantine, the antihero of the comic that got me into comics. Sure, Mucous Membrane isn’t necessarily trying to kill you… but Constantine invoked a demon at their first gig (in a haunted abattoir, obviously), and that was just a taste of things to come.

 

SEX BOB-OMBINGS in Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O’Malley

Scott Pilgrimis such a powerhouse in this genre—Pop Music Trying To Kill You—that it almost doesn’t feel fair to include, but I can’t write this list and not mention evil ex-boyfriends Gideon Graves (mastermind of the League of Evil Exes and owner of the Chaos Theater) and Todd Ingram (fake vegan, telekinetic bassist for The Clash at Demonhead, and all around terrible person). They’re not trying to wipe humanity from the face of the earth or create a dance party army, but they are standing in the way of true love, and that almost feels worse.

 

Bonus Round!

REPTOID CHAMBER MUSIC IS A-OKAY in Lizard Music by Daniel Pinkwater

I was tempted to make this a list of five Daniel Pinkwater novels since he’s been my favorite author since I was nine years old and has written four of my top five favorite novels (in order: Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars, The Last Guru, and Borgel). Pinkwater doesn’t write many psychotic pop stars, though… even if Victor, the eleven-year-old protagonist of Lizard Music, does worry that “lizards who can play clarinets and saxophones might be capable of anything” (emphasis mine). Instead, in Lizard Music, we learn that five feet tall, talking lizards are generally pretty nice.

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Nick Courage is a New Orleans-born writer who splits his time between Brooklyn and Pittsburgh, where he lives with his wife and two cats. His work has recently appeared in The Paris Review Daily, Story, and Full Stop. The Loudness, his first novel, is on sale April 7th.

First day of work at the new job, & I stay after to guest DM #TorDnD. Was hoping to tie it off after this session, but I under estimated how long a "ha ha screw you!" monster fight would take, & we started late & were a little more fun & social & a little less focused & slaying. Tim seems to be enjoying the vacation from DMing, so I don't feel too bad, but my plan wasn't to hijack the game this long. I'm having a lot of fun & learning a bunch about the system & it's quirks-- & how group & DM dynamics change-- so it works for me, but I will be happy to get a chance to be a humble player again, when we finish up the Comet. Pantaloon, I'm coming back for you! So, we had our laughs & our pizza & our beers & ciders & smashed some critters.

First thing first, the players went back to the Cynidicea Marjan's chamber to take a long rest. To peel back the curtain a little bit, I have a "what happens after a short rest?" & "what happens after a long rest?" logic to my monsters & NPCs, but they were wise & retreated to a safe place, Marjan & her pet hook horror Watson having offered them refuge in her igloo. They spent the night & returned to full fighting strength. As a side note: my favorite alternate rule in the Dungeon Master's Guide is to redefine a "short rest" as 8 hours & a "long rest" as a week. That keeps the class balanced, as "long" & "short" stay the same proportionally, but ratchets up the "grit" in a simple, elegant way. Not that I used that rule; just admiring it.

The conflict of the session is in a parallel to another star-shaped chamber, & in the hallway leading up to it. It is a "jerk monster" fight & I'm happy with how it went down. The "main" monster was a neogi, for which I just used the stats for a succubus. I mention that because a) it was a very successful reskin & b) a successful playtest of the succubus. A+, would charm again. The neogi enchants Kal-Ra, Scott's monk, & a little glorious "some harm, no foul" PvP combat commences. Later, the alien thing-- oh, a neogi, that's like a wolf spider the size of a large dog with a moray eel for a head that loves slavery-- puts the brain-whammy (the succubus' enchantment easily mimics the neogi's psionics) on Bridget's tiefling rogue Columbine, too.

Jonathan's paladin Aegwyn breaks one of the spells with protection from evil, & Tim is Mister Support as the Bard Satinsheets. The mate of the phase spider they fought earlier, & swarms of phase spiderlings, little albino babies, take it hard; Wren, Irene's human ranger, puts down the phase spider with bolts between the eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes. Carl's weird cleric Dolmen goes into a gate into the Ethereal & uses his spiritual guardians to kill the egg sacs of the phase spiders there. Oh that's right-- this room has stable portals, not spewing out semi-toxic fog. It also has a control column, like the one chipped out of the ice in Went & Alia's room. Playing with it, the neogi shoots a jet of toxic tear gas at the group, at one point; it also poison's Columbine, which the succubus' kiss also neatly duplicates.

Treasure: two larvae, amorphous maggot-like souls of evil. The paladin stomps them to death.

It is a good fight; the monk goes down hard, two PCs fail interesting saves, the players present a range of interesting solutions to fun problems. Terrain elements were a factor but not as much as I thought; "webs" are not much of a challenge for anyone other than low level players I think. I used the "collapsing ceiling" trap & it was part of the attrition that took down the monk. The pieces came together naturally without needing any edges smoothed, & for the whole adventure the re-skins have been big successes. I hope that with a little elbow grease we can get the comet sorted out next time, & then I'll give a better post-mortem of the whole thing: I know some people hate to have the illusion shattered, but others like to look under the hood & tinker.

(Hida Kaoru by Miguel Coimbra.)

The newest chapter in my current Oubliette campaign ended up being like a mid-season sweeps week episode; things went crazy at the end. Speaking of going to pieces at the end...we spent the first part of this session playing archeologist, piecing together the events at the end of last game. Hey, it was the shrine of the Monkey King; if we got a bit into our cups with the sake, it is just because we are so Method. I thought we'd left it with the start of the duel...but Lilly & Nicole have better memories, which is good, since they were in the mud, the blood & the beer, so to speak, of the whole thing. Amina o-Kitsune had already started dueling Kaori o-Foo, the lover of Iroha o-Lung, betrothed of Haru o-Kitsune. Lilly & Luke's characters are cousins in the Kitsune Family, & since Luke's character Haru is a Kuge courtier & Amina, Lilly's character is a Bushi warrior, she's taking his place: he was the one challenged. That's why he carries a wakizashi & she carries a katana-- in a real way, they are a matched set, a daisho. Amina & Kaori had begun to duel-- the latter being a giant hulking brute of a woman with an iron club studded with spikes-- & each had gotten in blows, with Amina coming off the worse. Amina had licked the blood from her katana, sealing a mystical bloodbond with Kaori.

Keku no-kin, Nicole's cyborg zaibatsu agent, intervened from behind the statue of Gyoja, the Enlightened One, poisoning both of the combatants with a fan of darts, each tipped with soporific venom milked from her serpent familiar, Nagini. That was where we'd left off, resolving the knock-out dart...& we started there again, with me struggling to pronounce "somnambulant." A short tutorial on damage later, & some rolls, & Anima is knocked out, while the larger Kaori shrugs it off-- & is enraged that someone interfered with her duel. Which is when Haru steps out-- having concealed himself in the cherry blossoms with a short bow, in case he needed to cheat to save his cousin's live-- & declares her challenge illegal. Neither Kaori (he guesses) nor Amina sought permission from their daimyos to die, nor did Haru for the seppuku he'd be obligated to perform if Amina lost. He makes some lawyerly intimidation rolls, & they postpone the duel-- & the wedding, till after the duel's conclusion. Kaori stalks off, & Nagini sucks out her venom from Amina, waking her, with Haru's assistance using some of the techniques he learned from the Royal Physician, & some Kitsune ashigaru soldiers.


(The Tree of Peaches & Onions; "Scorched earth" by Daniel Conway.)

There is a path that circles back around, a mirror to the one they just travelled...only they walked the one with Shojo the Monkey King statues, & this way is marked by Gyoja the Enlightened One's idols. Both meet at the Five Pillars, the graffiti covered structure linked with chains where Amina & Kaori had their battle. From there there is another path, going, well...inward. The shrine is built in the caldera of an extinct volcano, as you recall. This third path leads to an outcropping of rock, surrounded by leisurely magma flows, jutting out over the "Wizard's Lake" at the bottom of the bowl of the collapsed volcano. At the pinnacle of this protrusion is a tree unseasonally in blossom; like the peach trees of the monkey grove they passed through, like the black cherry tree Haru brought with him (through Gong, his majordomo, who rejoins them, having come along the servant's path).

Keku has a snake familiar, a childhood pet that became a minor naga spirit after being Awakened by Hebi-no-Hime, the naga of Joko Izumi, that she's with some hubris & minor blasphemy named after a goddess herself, the Naga Queen Nagini. She slithers into the tree to examine the fruit, & notices that onions also grow among the peaches. Strange. The incidental Judeo-Christian mythopoeia is duly acknowledged. Amina, staggered from her wounds but up, touches a peach, & it rots away from her thumb, in the shape of her fingerprint slowly blotting & corrupting the globe of fruit. Haru dares to pluck a peach, then an onion, each blackening. Frustrated at the bad omens & lack of clarity on the cosmos, Haru uses his wakizashi-- mounted with a snake tsuba, also a gift from the Joko Izumi naga, as Luke reminds me-- to hack at the trunk of the millennia old tree. All the signs are right, so I decide to put my cards on the table.


(Me as Nagini the Naga Queen; photo by Nicole S.)

As Haru's blade bites the tree, it spills forth red sap, like blood, & Keku's snake grows, expands till I'm turning off all the lights in the room & standing on a chair, waving my arms. On account of the many arms of the Naga queen, jutting from her feminine torso, stopping where it meets the loops of her serpentine lower body. She is crowned with fangs, & has been with the party ever since Keku gave her that crack into the universe by naming her snake "Nagini." What is the Naga Queen's relationship to Keku? That is unclear, but getting more so: they clearly have a past, an almost familial connection of guilt & flattery. Haru's desecration of the shrine gives her an opening, as does Haru's eerily prescient choice of a black cherry tree as his gift, & Keku's snake being in the tree, & Haru invoking his tsuba's blessing, which the group used to brand themselves with the sign of their secret cabal, the scales of the Blue Koi Society-- the stars align, & she demands from Haru obedience. Soul, souls, everything, & in exchange, she'll put his daughter on the throne of the Shogun...as long as Nagini can possess his daughter, use her as a way to be born into the world. Haru demands that Nagini additionally not deceive him, & she agrees. The deal is struck!

Hot time in the old town tonight! Or last night. Or Tuesday night. The return of my #TorDnD dungeon, Day of the Comet mini-game I'm running in the middle of Tim's campaign. Gives me a chance to take the 5e ruleset for a spin, gives Tim a chance to play, it's been pretty successful, though I thought I could do it in two sessions, rather than three. Three it is, though: next session ought to be the last, according to my pacing. I probably could have had one less beer & kept things moving a little more quickly but then, that's why they call it a beer & pizza game, right? The social aspect is a big part of the gun, anyhow. I just don't want to step on Tim's toes by dragging on & on, & as you know from my Oubliette campaign, pacing is something I struggle to nail down. I tried to keep things moving first game & was pretty pleased with how I handled it but this session I backslid! Still a ton of fun, just doing a post-mortem. (Map by Jonathan Roberts, miniature photos by Liz.)



This session was a lot of fun; we left them at a crossroads, a hub with several passages going off of it. They had burned the spider-webbing closing up one passage; I would have given them smoke inhalation damage but I'd already established the ventilation in the "dungeon" because I zoned out the carcinogenic fog's path to know what zones had obscured vision. They took that path first, heading up to encounter...the mother & sister that the pale human woman Marjan had told them to expect. Went & Alia, with Went's pet, a Chuul named Pan. The two strange women get the drop on the monk & the thief, but plenty of Charisma checks go around the table & they talk. In the room is a metal column, melted & chipped free of the ice, with all kinds of levers & dials & knobs & greebles & whosits & whatsits, that periodically rearrange themselves-- ticker-ticker-ticker-- like a Rubik's Cube. Carl's cleric Domen plays with it, unleashing a lightning blast that destroys one of Went & Alia's igloos. Only after making some random rolls first though! There are suspicions all around, of course; Went offers them a shield with a blinking, peering eye on the front, if they bring her the Horn of Zargon or piece of a broken rod...



After a short rest & a Constitution saving check ("no, no reason at all!") they are off, & back down to the collapsed tunnel they discovered on the way in. The party descends on Tim's bard Satinsheet's magic rope & wades into the fog. Thick & heavy, they push against it...only for Bridget's rogue Columbine to feel a strange magnetic force jerk the weapons out of her hands-- a force enough to send Aegwyn, Jonathon's paladin, flying to stick to one. Inside, there are furry man-apes, things with a single narwhal tusk snaggletoothing out of their mouth pouch, below their spider-eyes. With them is a rickety golem, a robotic contraption that seems to be made from a disassembled pillar much like the one they found near Went & Alia, with some kind of glass tank with a crystalized brain in it on top? The room is star shaped, in three dimensions, & there are portals to the Ethereal Plane opening & closing & teleporting at each of the corners. In the middle are five pillars, like larger versions of the pillars with lights in Marjan's camp, & they exert a strong magnetic force as you get close to them.



They fight & it is pretty brutal; the two furry alien beings use weapons made from the bones & horns of other ape-monsters the PCs have seen. Spells seem to bounce off the golem, but they bring it down & kill the two creatures. They carry a bisected blue sphere, visually similar to the driftglobe Scott's monk Kal-Ra found, but while it does shed a strange blacklight effect, it doesn't seem to float. They are able to disassemble enough components from the golem to get one-use items functionally identical to scrolls for colour spray & confusion. From there it is uphill-- but not back up the hole-- towards a web-choked doorway. The PCs wisely conclude that this is probably the same chamber that the room with the iron golem also led to, the slippery tunnel with the webs at the end they didn't explore. To be entirely honest, this chamber was going to have a hook for Irene's ranger, Wren, but since she was out & it was late & I'd had a couple of IPAs...well, I just skipped right ahead to violence. With a little menacing. Drider!



You know how I like driders. This one had a body more like a furry wolf-spider than a sleek weaver. It also had a pet phase spider &...a web golem!? Now then this is a fight! Driders are nice & easy to run; they get three attacks a round & can ignore webbing & gravity. Done! So I filled the whole room with webs, & different levels. Didn't take as much advantage of the terrain as I meant to, but the web golem did get to engulf someone, so I take it as a win! I was also pretty tame with the phase spider's etherealness. Having the fight earlier & more sober would have showcased some of the stuff in the room better, but I have no complaints! Just self-evaluating. It was fun, & I had the players scared-- there were death saves being made. When the battle was done, they found a book of ancient elven poetry, an IOUN stone &...thirty-seven electrum pieces I've decided I like electrum, as the ancient defunct coinage of dead kingdoms. Make non-decimal nature of it do narrative work. Better storytelling though numismatics!

James L. Sutter, the managing editor at Paizo Publishing, and Mordicai Knode, a National Accounts Coordinator for Macmillian, visit Rocket Talk to discuss the Pathfinder Tales novels and their new arrangement with Tor Books. The conversation looks at the nature of series fiction, how tie-in fiction works (or doesn’t work), and what Pathfinder is all about.

[Listen Now!]

James L. Sutter is the Managing Editor for Paizo Publishing and a co-creator of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. He is the author of the novels Death’s Heretic and The Redemption Engine, the first of which was nominated for the Compton Crook Award. He lives in Seattle with his wife and plays in a band. Find him on Twitter @jameslsutter.

Mordicai Knode is a regular contributor to Tor.com. By day he works on the Macmillian sales team. By night, he’s a die hard gamer and a huge fan of the Pathfinder system. Find him on tumblr or on Twitter @mordicai.

Rocket Talk, Episode 44 (51:34)

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To be honest, for #TorDnD, I was worried about my usual curse, over-preparing! I can't help but sprawl & build outward, & learning the pace of a group is hard. The good news is, no worries! The pacing is pretty alright. Oh, so I asked Tim the other week if I could have a crack at DMing 5e as guest spot, & he said "actually, the trail is about to go cold on the PCs, wanna jump in next session?" & so I did! Over xmas I ran a game & TPK'd everyone right out of the gate, first fight. This time I did the math to balance the encounters, though now I'm starting to think I may have gone too far in the other direction. Six fifth level characters are dangerous as heck, & spiritual guardians is a pretty potent spell, as I was warned. It seems broken but I don't have enough sense of scope & scale to really say for sure. Also, I was a little too "third edition" with the monster's multiattack, which is a rules error I will not make a second time! So I lugged in my books & minis though the slush! There was a discussion about rescheduling, but we were all too gung-ho for that! In fact staying late actually worked out; the rush hour trains were apparently a disaster.

Ioun's Tear is a comet that passes in the night sky every 55 years, except for the times when it...doesn't. Every so often it skips a cycle, or so the long-lived elves say. I broke out DC 10, 12, 15 & 20 Intelligence checks for Arcana, Religion, Nature & History. Note: that was stupid, why did I do that. It's not like I didn't tell the PCs in front of all the other players when they made their check. The Tear of Ioun is an omen sacred to the Neutral goddess of knowledge & prophecy, & when it comes near the world just starts having more ioun stones...& abberations & warlocks. The ethereal boundary weakens & elemental cold strengthens; there have been reports of a acid rain, jewels falling from the sky...& they say the critters of the underdark wriggle up when it draws near, like worms after a heavy rain. Some sages-- the wisest-- say that comets go around the sun, & that this one passes through the dark bodies far beyond the planets, & sometimes slingshots off, even farther. Archmages say it is a hoard of ioun stones kept by the Ethernaut, either the child or creation of Ioun. I put Fantômas' Delìrium Còrdia on repeat, & we're off.

I set out to make this a very classic "Dungeons & Dragons" adventure, but then I veered into weirdness almost immediately. Sorry folks, you can take the Dungeon Master out of the Oubliette, but I guess you can't take the Oubliette out of the Dungeon Master. That's fine, plenty of room for oddity in the game! Tim sat it up with a mardi gras festival to celebrate the comet, & then all the players were lovely little ducklings who were like "oh, a star fell? We all should go check it out." Thank you, adventurers for adventuring, sometimes prying folks out of the inn takes doing. Not this time. Stavenham, Tim's bard, already knows the omens of the crashing comet-- so does my tiefling wizard, exit stage right pursued by ape-bear. Or more like enter, since the party concludes that he went into the comet. Wait. Crashing comet?! Oh yes, & Aegwyn the paladin with his spyglass-- I told Jonathan it wasn't useless!-- saw the comet in the sky coruscate with the colours of the rainbow randomly, then fuzz, exploding into...fragments, one of which just coincidentally lands right outside of town. Carl's cleric of the luck goddess loves coincidences, & he & Aegwyn buddy up as holy gamblers, crowing.



The sliver, a chunk of an iceberg smashed into chunks, is six avenue blocks long-- we use common units of measure, like civilized folk, here at the Flatiron-- lying in a crater with yellow, metallic fog billowing out. Adding the bard to their ranks, in they go. Careful, careful...their cautious entry & careful use of spells overcomes the dual disadvantage of the fog & the white fur of the creature within a snowbank! Tim dubs them the IceSpaceNarbeapes, "with imaginary horn" because I describe them thus: "like a giant gorilla with four arms, only instead of evolving from primates, it evolved from bears, & had a narwhal tusk jutting from it's brow, one eye cataracted over white, & it's wasp-like eyes sink into yours with an icy hand of coooooold!" The miniature, of course, lacks a horn, & I think Tim's masterful mini wrangling has spoiled them. Luckily enough, I brought more minis! Sloth-apes with metal pipes who clang on the paladin's heavy armor while the cleric's spells dig into them & Irene's ranger, Wren, sprays their green blood all over the rest of the party with a brutal barrage of arrows. I worry that the cleric's spell spirit guardians is broken, having been warned about it, but I think I figured out the missing piece of game balance; concentration checks for spellcasters taking damage. Extra incentive to kill the cleric! The guardians-- little gems instead of the intended little coins-- still create a messy neon green splatter of alien ichor, themselves. Stavenham, with panache, stays spotless. I'd like to say my adopted daughter Columbine did well, but Bridget's dice were turned against her; it was a rough hex & it stuck on her all night. In the snow the party finds a carnelian & a zircon.



While the rest of the group goes on, Scott's curious Kal-Ra wades into a slushy puddle & kicks at the cracks in the ground: he triggers the "hazard" of the collapsed ice-- there is a blocked tunnel that it extends from-- triggering a cave-in at the mouth to the sphere where they just fought the Barsoomian wampas. In the next bubble, they are lost in the swirling ochre fog, surrounded by dancing white-blue lights...Domen announces them, addressing the wil-o-wisps, but a bald Tilda Swinton of a woman, bearing a black greatsword five feet long answers. She is Marjan, a Knight of Zargon, & her unicorn sigil'd-plate-clad form is shrouded in a cape of white feathers buckled with a silver clasp of a smiling child's face. Impressed by the groups courteous approach, she also introduces Watson, her pet hook horror. "Tame is not the word I'd use." She speaks in my general Transylvanian accent & the camaraderie of the group leads her to open up about being from a forgotten people, the Cynidiceans. Within the comet, she says, there is a horn, the horn of Zargon; she asks that the party bring it to her, for which she will reward them. Her mother & sister also seek the horn, & they have...philosophical disagreements. Marjan seeks to keep the horn safe, control it. She offers to cover their retreat, to keep a place for them to return to rest, & on they go, slanting down into the deeper fog...& out onto a collapsing ice sheet, the floor caving in & crumbling down thirty feet, leaving a twenty foot drop to the rubble. The party teeters on the edge but grab each other, falling back safely. Stavenham's enchanted rope of climbing snakes across the gap, & thanks to the magic of advantage, they all make it across alright, the bard showing off with a tightrope walk. Yup, his backstory about him & Pantaloon being friends sure seems to check out to me!



The next dome has a collapsed tunnel on one end with sludgy, frozen water pouring out of it, freezing into ice fangs & stalagmites & solidifying around a rusted out iron golem...& two more horned mutant apes with the frozen glare! Shaggy & Smiler, though Tim dubbed him Scooby: I gave them names to differentiate the critters, the really hirsute one or the one with the torn cheek & the ragged black shark teeth zig-zawing out. They make short work of them thanks to Wren's deadly aplomb & help from the rest-- but boy does the ranger's bow go thwang. Columbine gets some hits in but still, the dice...I commiserate. I've been there. I tell her about my ranger who had favoured enemy: dragons & didn't land a single hit on the black dragon at the end of Forge of Fury. It's on the cover, shut up about spoilers. Domen is interested in golem, & goes over to it...only to have his chainmail start rusting out as the shy tentacle of a rust monster tickles his leg! Aegwyn & his magic sword spear it handily, but it is easy to see how the golem ended up wrecked so badly. Domen gets it to take a stuttering half step by building a bonfire beneath, knowing that fire helps iron golems. Kal-Ra wades into the icy slush...& is rewarded! By finding a driftglobe, a bisected glass sphere that when twisted lights up a white-blue light & hovers, following him. From here, there is the collapsed tunnel, the tunnel they came through & the new pit leading down to...somewhere with even more fog. There is an iced out corridor going up, with...spider webs at one end. & another corridor choked with webs, which Aegwyn sets ablaze; luckily for them, the reason the fog isn't clouding this room is because I figured out the ventilation in the place, so the nylon-ozone burning smell of webbing is a modest Con save. Now from here, where do they go?



("Inside The Comet" & game play photo by Jonathan Roberts. Miniature photos by Liz!)

A royal wedding is what most girls dream about. It means one celebration after another: balls, fireworks, and revelry until dawn. But to Kestrel it means living in a cage of her own making.

As the wedding approaches, she aches to tell Arin the truth about her engagement: that she agreed to marry the crown prince in exchange for Arin’s freedom. But can Kestrel trust Arin? Can she even trust herself? For Kestrel is becoming very good at deception. She’s working as a spy in the court. If caught, she’ll be exposed as a traitor to her country. Yet she can’t help searching for a way to change her ruthless world… and she is close to uncovering a shocking secret.

Marie Rutkoski’s follow-up to The Winner’s Curse reveals the high price of dangerous lies and untrustworthy alliances. The truth will come out, and when it does, Kestrel and Arin will learn just how much their crimes will cost them. The Winner’s Crime is available March 3rd from Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

[Read an Excerpt]

 

1

 

She cut herself opening the envelope.

Kestrel had been eager, she’d been a fool, tearing into the letter simply because it had been addressed in Herrani script. The letter opener slipped. Seeds of blood hit the paper and bloomed bright.

It wasn’t, of course, from him. The letter was from Herran’s new minister of agriculture. He wrote to introduce himself, and to say he looked forward to when they would meet. I believe you and I have much in common and much to discuss, he wrote.

Kestrel wasn’t sure what he meant by that. She didn’t know him, or even of him. Although she supposed she would have to meet with the minister at some point—she was, after all, the imperial ambassador to the now independent territory of Herran—Kestrel didn’t anticipate spending time with the minister of agriculture. She had nothing to say on crop rotation or fertilizer.

Kestrel caught the haughty tone of her thoughts. She felt the way it thinned her mouth. She realized that she was furious at this letter.

At herself. At the way her heart had leaped to see her name scrawled in the Herrani alphabet on the envelope. She had hoped so hard that it was from Arin.

But she’d had no contact with him for nearly a month, not since she’d offered him his country’s freedom. And the envelope hadn’t even been addressed in his hand. She knew his writing. She knew the fingers that would hold the pen. Blunt-cut nails, silver scars from old burns, the calloused scrape of his palm, all very at odds with his elegant cursive. Kestrel should have known right away that the letter wasn’t from him.

But still: the quick slice of paper. Still: the disappointment.

Kestrel set aside the letter. She pulled the silk sash from her waist, threading it out from under the dagger that she, like all Valorians, wore strapped to her hip. She wound the sash around her bleeding hand. She was ruining the sash’s ivory silk. Her blood spotted it. But a ruined sash didn’t matter, not to her. Kestrel was engaged to Prince Verex, heir to the Valorian empire. The proof of it was marked daily on her brow in an oiled, glittering line. She had sashes upon sashes, dresses upon dresses, a river of jewels. She was the future empress.

Yet when she stood from her carved ebony chair, she was unsteady. She looked around her study, one of many rooms in her suite, and was unsettled by the stone walls, the corners set insistently into perfect right angles, the way two narrow hallways cut into the room. It should have made sense to Kestrel, who knew that the imperial palace was also a fortress. Tight hallways were a way to bottleneck an invading force. Yet it looked unfriendly and alien. It was so different from her home.

Kestrel reminded herself that her home in Herran had never really been hers. She may have been raised in that colony, but she was Valorian. She was where she was supposed to be. Where she had chosen to be.

The cut had stopped bleeding.

Kestrel left the letter and went to change her day dress for dinner. This was her life: rich fabric and watered silk trim. A dinner with the emperor… and the prince.

Yes, this was her life.

She must get used to it.

 

The emperor was alone. He smiled when she entered his stone-walled dining room. His gray hair was cropped in the same military style as her father’s, his eyes dark and keen. He didn’t stand from the long table to greet her.

“Your Imperial Majesty.” She bowed her head.

“Daughter.” His voice echoed in the vaulted chamber. It rang against the empty plates and glasses. “Sit.”

She moved to do so.

“No,” he said. “Here, at my right hand.”

“That’s the prince’s place.”

“The prince, it seems, is not here.”

She sat. Slaves served the first course. They poured white wine. She could have asked why he had summoned her to dinner, and where the prince might be, but Kestrel had seen how the emperor loved to shape silence into a tool that pried open the anxieties of others. She let the silence grow until it was of her making as well as his, and only when the third course arrived did she speak. “I hear the campaign against the east goes well.”

“So your father writes from the front. I must reward him for an excellently waged war. Or perhaps, Lady Kestrel, it’s you I should reward.”

She drank from her cup. “His success is none of my doing.”

“No? You urged me to put an end to the Herrani rebellion by giving that territory self-governance under my law. You argued that this would free up troops and money to fuel my eastern war, and lo”—he flourished a hand—“it did. What clever advice from one so young.”

His words made her nervous. If he knew the real reason she had argued for Herrani independence, she would pay for it. Kestrel tried the painstakingly prepared food. There were boats made from a meat terrine, their sails clear gelatin. She ate slowly.

“Don’t you like it?” said the emperor.

“I’m not very hungry.”

He rang a golden bell. “Dessert,” he told the serving boy who instantly appeared. “We’ll skip ahead to dessert. I know how young ladies enjoy sweet things.” But when the boy returned bearing two small plates made from porcelain so fine Kestrel could see light sheer through the rims, the emperor said, “None for me,” and one plate was set before Kestrel along with a strangely light and translucent fork.

She calmed herself. The emperor didn’t know the truth about the day she had pushed for an end to the Herrani rebellion. No one did. Not even Arin knew that she had bought his freedom with a few strategic words… and the promise to wed the crown prince.

If Arin knew, he would fight it. He’d ruin himself.

If the emperor knew why she had done it, he would ruin her.

Kestrel looked at the pile of pink whipped cream on her plate, and at the clear fork, as if they composed the whole of her world. She must speak cautiously. “What need have I of a reward, when you have given me your only son?”

“And such a prize he is. Yet we’ve no date set for the wedding. When shall it be? You’ve been quiet on the subject.”

“I thought Prince Verex should decide.” If the choice were left to the prince, the wedding date would be never.

“Why don’t we decide?”

“Without him?”

“My dear girl, if the prince’s slippery mind cannot remember something so simple as the day and time of a dinner with his father and lady, how can we expect him to plan any part of the most important state event in decades?”

Kestrel said nothing.

“You’re not eating,” he said.

She sank the clear fork into the cream and lifted it to her mouth. The fork’s tines dissolved against her tongue. “Sugar,” she said with surprise. “The fork is made of hardened sugar.”

“Do you like the dessert?”

“Yes.”

“Then you must eat it all.”

But how to finish the cream if the fork continued to dissolve each time she took a mouthful? Most of the fork remained in her hand, but it wouldn’t last.

A game. The dessert was a game, the conversation a game. The emperor wanted to see how she would play.

He said, “I think the end of this month would be ideal for a wedding.”

Kestrel ate more of the cream. The tines completely vanished, leaving something that resembled an aborted spoon. “A winter wedding? There will be no flowers.”

“You don’t need flowers.”

“If you know that young ladies like dessert, you must also know that they like flowers.”

“I suppose you’d prefer a spring wedding, then.”

Kestrel lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Summer would be best.”

“Luckily my palace has hothouses. Even in winter, we could carpet the great hall with petals.”

Kestrel silently ate more of the dessert. Her fork turned into a flat stick.

“Unless you want to postpone the wedding,” said the emperor.

“I’m thinking of our guests. The empire is vast. People will come from every province. Winter is a terrible time to travel and spring little better. It rains. The roads become muddy.”

The emperor leaned back in his chair, studying her with an amused expression.

“Also,” she said, “I’d hate to waste an opportunity. You know that the nobles and governors will give you what they can—favors, information, gold—for the best seats at the wedding. The mystery of what I’ll wear and what music will be played will distract the empire. No one would notice if you made a political decision that would otherwise outrage thousands. If I were you, I would enjoy my long engagement. Use it for all it’s worth.”

He laughed. “Oh, Kestrel. What an empress you will be.” He raised his glass. “To your happy union, on the day of Firstsummer.”

She would have had to drink to that, had not Prince Verex entered the dining room and stopped short, his large eyes showing every shift of emotion: surprise, hurt, anger.

“You’re late,” his father said.

“I am not.” Verex’s hands clenched.

“Kestrel managed to be here on time. Why couldn’t you?”

“Because you told me the wrong hour.”

The emperor tsked. “You misremember.”

“You’re making me look the fool!”

“I am making you look nothing of the kind.”

Verex’s mouth snapped shut. His head bobbed on his thin neck like something caught in a current.

“Come,” Kestrel said gently. “Have dessert with us.”

The look he shot her told Kestrel that he might hate his father’s games, but he hated her pity more. He fled the room.

Kestrel toyed with her stub of a sugar fork. Even after the prince’s noisy course down the hall had dwindled into silence, she knew better than to speak.

“Look at me,” the emperor said.

She raised her eyes.

“You don’t want a summer wedding for the sake of flowers, or guests, or political purchase,” he said. “You want to postpone it for as long as possible.”

Kestrel held the fork tightly.

“I’ll give you what you want, within reason,” he said, “and I will tell you why. Because I don’t blame you, given your bridegroom. Because you don’t whine for what you want, but seek to win it. Like I would. When you look at me, you see who you will become. A ruler. I have chosen you, Kestrel, and will make you into everything my son cannot be. Someone fit to take my place.”

Kestrel looked, and her look became a stare that searched for her future in an old man capable of cruelty to his own child.

He smiled. “Tomorrow I’d like for you to meet with the captain of the imperial guard.”

She had never met the captain before, but was familiar enough with his role. Officially, he was responsible for the emperor’s personal safety. Unofficially, this duty spread to others that no one discussed. Surveillance. Assassinations. The captain was good at making people vanish.

“He has something to show you,” the emperor said.

“What is it?”

“A surprise. Now look happy, Kestrel. I’m giving you everything that you could want.”

Sometimes the emperor was generous. She’d seen audiences with him where he’d given senators private land in new colonies, or powerful seats in the Quorum. But she’d also seen how his generosity tempted others to ask for just a little more. Then his eyes went heavy-lidded, like a cat’s, and she would see how his gifts made people reveal what they really wanted.

Nonetheless, she couldn’t help hoping that the wedding could be put off for longer than a few months. Firstsummer was better than next week, of course, but still too soon. Much too soon. Would the emperor agree to a year? More? She said, “Firstsummer—”

“Is the perfect date.”

Kestrel’s gaze fell to her closed hand. It opened with a sweet scent and rested empty on the table.

The sugar fork had vanished against the heat of her palm.

 

 

2

 

Arin was in his father’s study, which he probably would never be able to think of as his own, no matter how old the ghosts of his dead family grew.

It was a clear day. The view from the study window showed the city in detail, with its ruined patches left by the rebellion. The pale wafer of a winter sun gave Herran’s harbor a blurry glow.

Arin wasn’t thinking of her. He wasn’t. He was thinking of how slowly the city walls were being rebuilt. Of the hearthnut harvest soon to come in the southern countryside, and how it would bring much-needed food and trade to Herran. He wasn’t thinking of Kestrel, or of the past month and a week of not thinking of her. But not thinking was like lifting slabs of rock, and he was so distracted by the strain of it that he didn’t hear Sarsine enter the room, or notice his cousin at all until she had shoved an opened letter at him.

The broken seal showed the sigil of crossed swords. A letter from the Valorian emperor. Sarsine’s face told Arin that he wouldn’t like what he was about to read.

“What is it?” he asked. “Another tax?” He rubbed his eyes. “The emperor must know we can’t pay, not again, not so soon after the last levy. This is ruinous.”

“Well, now we see why the emperor so kindly returned Herran to the Herrani.”

They had discussed this before. It seemed the only explanation to such an unexpected decision. Revenues from Herran used to go into the pockets of the Valorian aristocrats who had colonized it. Then came the Firstwinter Rebellion and the emperor’s decree, and those aristocrats had returned to the capital, the loss of their land named as a cost of war. Now the emperor was able to bleed Herran dry through taxes its people were unable to protest. The territory’s wealth flowed directly into imperial coffers.

A devious move. But what worried Arin most was the nagging sense that he was missing something. It had been hard to think that day when Kestrel had handed him the emperor’s offer and demands. It had been hard to see anything but the gold line that had marked her brow.

“Just tell me how much it’ll cost this time,” he said to Sarsine.

Her mouth screwed into a knot. “Not a tax. An invitation.” She left the room.

Arin unfolded the paper. His hands went still.

As governor of Herran, Arin was requested to attend a ball in the Valorian capital. In honor of the engagement of Lady Kestrel to Crown Prince Verex, read the letter.

Sarsine had called it an invitation, but Arin recognized it for what it was: an order, one that he had no power to disobey, even though he was supposedly no longer a slave.

Arin’s eyes lifted from the page and gazed upon the harbor. When Arin had worked on the docks, one of the other slaves was known as the Favor-Keeper.

Slaves had no possessions, or at least nothing that their Valorian conquerors would recognize as such. Even if Arin had had something of his own, he had no pockets to hold it. Clothes with pockets went to house slaves only. This was the measure of life under the Valorians: that the Herrani people knew their place according to whether they had pockets and the illusion of being able to keep something private within them.

Yet slaves still had a currency. They traded favors. Extra food. A thicker pallet. The luxury of a few minutes of rest while someone else worked. If a slave on the docks wanted something, he asked the Favor-Keeper, the oldest Herrani among them.

The Favor-Keeper kept a ball of thread with a differentcolored string for each man. If Arin had had a request, his string would have been spooled and looped and spindled around another one, perhaps yellow, and that yellow string might have wound its way about a green one, depending on who owed what. The Favor-Keeper’s knot recorded it all.

But Arin had had no string. He had asked for nothing. He gave nothing. Already a young man then, he had despised the thought of being in debt to anyone.

Now he studied the Valorian emperor’s letter. It was beautifully inked. Artfully phrased. It fit well with Arin’s surroundings, with the liquid-like varnish of his father’s desk and the leaded glass windows that shot winter light into the study.

The light made the emperor’s words all too easy to read.

Arin crushed the paper into his fist and squeezed hard. He wished for a Favor-Keeper. He would forsake his pride to become a simple string, if only he could have what he wanted.

Arin would trade his heart for a snarled knot of thread if it meant he would never have to see Kestrel again.

 

He consulted with Tensen. The elderly man studied the uncrumpled and flattened invitation, his pale green eyes gleaming. He set the thick, wrinkled page on Arin’s desk and tapped the first line of writing with one dry finger. “This,” he said, “is an excellent opportunity.”

“Then you’ll go,” said Arin.

“Of course.”

“Without me.”

Tensen pursed his lips. He gave Arin that schoolmaster’s look that had served him well as a tutor to Valorian children. “Arin. Let’s not be proud.”

“It’s not pride. I’m too busy. You’ll represent Herran at the ball.”

“I don’t think that the emperor will be satisfied with a mere minister of agriculture.”

“I don’t care for the emperor’s satisfaction.”

“Sending me, alone, will either insult the emperor or reveal to him that I’m more important than I seem.” Tensen rubbed his grizzled jaw, considering Arin. “You need to go. It’s a part you must play. You’re a good actor.”

Arin shook his head.

Tensen’s eyes darkened. “I was there that day.”

The day last summer when Kestrel had bought him.

Arin could feel again the sweat crawling down his back as he waited in the holding pen below in the auction pit. The structure was roofed, which meant that Arin couldn’t see the crowd of Valorians ranged above at ground level, only Cheat in the center of the pit.

Arin smelled the stink of his skin, felt the grit beneath his bare feet. He was sore. As he listened to Cheat’s voice rise and fall in the bantering singsong of an expert auctioneer, he pressed tentative fingers to his bruised cheek. His face was like a rotten fruit.

Cheat had been furious with him that morning. “Two days,” he’d growled. “I rent you out for only two days and you come back looking like this. What’s so hard about laying a road and keeping your mouth shut?”

Waiting in the holding pen, not really listening to the drone of the auction, Arin didn’t want to think about the beating and everything that had led up to it.

In truth, the bruises changed nothing. Arin couldn’t fool himself that Cheat would ever be able to sell him into a Valorian household. Valorians cared about their house slaves’ appearance, and Arin didn’t fit the part even when his face wasn’t half-masked in various shades of purple. He looked like a laborer. He was one. Laborers were not brought into the house, and houses were where Cheat needed to plant slaves devoted to the rebellion.

Arin tipped his head back against the rough wood of the pen’s wall. He fought his frustration.

There came a long silence in the pit. The lull meant that Cheat had closed the sale while Arin wasn’t paying attention and had stepped into the auction house for a break.

Then: a locust-like whir from the crowd. Cheat was returning to the pit, stepping close to the block on which another slave was about to stand.

To his audience, Cheat said, “I have something very special for you.”

Each slave in the holding pen straightened. The afternoon torpor was gone. Even the old man, whose name Arin would later learn was Tensen, became sharply alert.

Cheat had spoken in code. “Something very special” conveyed a secret meaning to the slaves: the chance to be sold in a way to contribute to the rebellion. To spy. Steal. Maybe murder. Cheat had many plans.

It was the very in what Cheat had said that made Arin sick with himself, because that word signaled the most important sale of all, the one they’d been waiting for: the opportunity for a rebel to be placed in General Trajan’s household.

Who was there, above in the crowd of Valorians?

The general himself ?

And Arin, stupid Arin, had squandered his chance at revenge. Cheat would never choose him for the sale.

Yet when the auctioneer turned to face the holding pen, his eyes looked straight into Arin’s. Cheat’s fingers twitched twice. The signal.

Arin had been chosen.

“That day,” Arin told Tensen as they sat in the winter light of his father’s study, “was different. Everything was different.”

“Was it? You were ready to do anything for your people then. Aren’t you now?”

“It’s a ball, Tensen.”

“It’s an opportunity. At the very least, we could use it to find out how much the emperor plans to take of the hearthnut harvest.”

The harvest would be soon. Their people needed it badly for food and trade. Arin pressed his fingertips against his brow. A headache was building behind his eyes. “What is there to know? Whatever he will take will be too much.”

For a moment, Tensen said nothing. Then, grimly: “I’ve heard nothing from Thrynne for weeks.”

“Maybe he hasn’t been able to get out of the palace and into the city to reach our contact.”

“Maybe. But we have precious few sources in the imperial palace as it is. This is a dicey time. The empire’s elite are pouring out gold to prepare themselves for the most lavish winter season in Valorian history, what with the engagement. And the colonists who once lived in Herran grow increasingly resentful. They didn’t like returning their stolen homes to us. They’re a minority, and the military is solidly with the emperor, so he can ignore them. But all signs point to the court being a volatile place, and we can never forget that we are at the emperor’s mercy. Who knows what he’ll choose to do next? Or how it will affect us? This”— Tensen nodded at the invitation—“would be a good means to look into Thrynne’s silence. Arin, are you listening? We can’t afford to lose such a well-placed spy.”

Just as Arin had been well-placed. Expertly placed. He hadn’t been sure, that day in the market, how Cheat had known that Arin was the perfect slave to pitch. Cheat had a knack for spotting weakness. An eye for desire. Somehow he had peered into the heart of the bidder and had known how to work her.

Arin hadn’t seen her at first. The sun had blinded him when he stepped into the pit. There was a roar of laughter. He couldn’t see the mass of Valorians above. Yet he heard them. He didn’t mind the prickling shame spidering up his skin. He told himself that he didn’t. He didn’t mind what they said or what he heard.

Then his vision cleared. He blinked the sun away. He saw the girl. She raised one hand to bid.

The sight of her was an assault. He couldn’t quite see her face—he did not want to see her face, not when everything else about her made him want to shut his eyes. She looked very Valorian. Golden tones. Burnished, almost, like a weapon raised into the light. He had trouble believing she was a living thing.

And she was clean. A purity of skin and form. It made him feel filthy. It distracted him for a moment from noticing that the girl was small. Slight.

Absurd. It was absurd to think that someone like that could have any power over him. Yet she would, if she won the auction.

He wanted her to. The thought swept Arin with a merciless, ugly joy. He’d never seen her before, but he guessed who she was: Lady Kestrel, General Trajan’s daughter.

The crowd heard her bid. And at once it seemed that Arin was worth something after all.

Arin forgot that he was sitting at his father’s desk, two seasons later. He forgot that Tensen was waiting for him to say something. Arin was there again in the pit. He remembered staring up at the girl, feeling a hatred as hard as it was pure.

A diamond.

 

Excerpted from The Winner’s Crime © Marie Rutkoski, 2015

Fifth Edition Feedback Survey http://bit.ly/1yrKuKT  #dnd

Do you know what’s popular on the web right now?

If you ignore search engines, social media, and shopping, the most popular content on the web is sports (espn.com), news (cnn.com, huffingtonpost.com, foxnews.com), and porn.

If you ignore celebrities like Katy Perry, the most popular stuff on Twitter is mainstream news sites (CNN, BBC). 

If you look at what’s popular among The Old Reader users, you get a much different picture. 

First off, you like comics. Really, really like comics. XKCD, Dilbert, and the Oatmeal dominate the list of most popular feeds on The Old Reader. 

After comics, the majority of feeds are tech blogs and tech news sites. Then comes lifestyle stuff like Lifehacker. There is also a lot of longer form content like TED Talks or in-depth magazine reporting. We also see national news sites like nytimes.com and what might be considered local news sites, like Boston.com.

Interestingly, there is very little sports in our feeds. That might be because our users are just not sports fans. Or it might be that sports is easy to consume on Twitter. 

Looking at all of the data, I’m starting to think that The Old Reader is like a newspaper. Our readers are using it to compile a single source of information, news, analysis, satire, and opinion. It’s a source of information that you would have to work really hard to get just going online or using social media.

In fact, I think that the popularity of comics on our list supports my theory. It seems to me that just like in the days of the newspaper, comics are the one thing everyone can agree on. 

And as a comic fan, I’d like to point out that the comics you like are not childish entertainment. These comics are satire. Satire is only useful or interesting to people who have a good handle on what’s going on and are looking for a more subtle, sophisticated take- a way to make sense of the all the other stuff they read.  

On the Internet or social media, most people don’t read much beyond the headlines on mainstream news sites. But judging from our most popular feeds, The Old Reader makes it possible to consume a broader range of stuff, from comics and satire to news and analysis, to blogs and feature-length content.

Having information and being informed are not the same thing. Our users are looking to be informed. The paradox of our time is that you can have all of the information in the world available and learn less. There are more sources of information, but you need new literacy skills to decode messages in the way news and information are presented.

Most of us don’t have the time or mental energy to really analyze everything coming at us. But if you use it right, I really believe The Old Reader can help you get a better handle on a complicated world. 

Most “monster manuals” are a perfect blend of “fluff and crunch,” of ideas and mechanics. I say perfect, because there is enough material in a decent monster book to satisfy those who are just looking for rules—perhaps just intending to re-skin the monster and call it something else to suit their homebrew campaign, even—and there is enough description and inspiration to interest someone who doesn’t even run the system but is enjoying the art, the ecology, the mythology and inspiration.

I think the Fifth Edition Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual is a triumph of fluff, with story hooks that synthesize past edition’s mythology into well-packaged blocks. There is also a lot of great crunch here, but I am ready for the mechanics to go to the next level—they just need a little house ruling to get there, if you ask me.

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Before I talk at greater length about the rules and math, I want to give unreserved kudos to the setting description and teratology. This edition takes the monsters’ sometimes contradictory backgrounds from past editions and does a careful balancing act with them, while injecting no small measure of new context along the way. The first thing I flipped to check? “Do the kuo-toa still worship Blibdoolpoolp?” Not only is the answer “yes,” but it is a much more interesting and complex “yes” than expected.

One of the things that most impressed me about Dungeon World was the “show don’t tell” worldbuilding of their monster descriptions, and I can happily say the same about 5th Edition. Making sphinxes explicitly fans of magical tests gives context to the Sphinx’s Riddle, and gives a plausible reason for having magical tests in your dungeon: win/win.

The Gnoll Fang of Yeenoghu is a perfect example as well: I think of gnolls as being the “next level” monster minion after the orcs who replaced the hobgoblins who replaced the goblins who replaced the kobolds. Could be boring. Giving them an infectious, demonic angle is very welcome, and this Monster Manual is packed with similar small flourishes, fresh ideas that give new life to old monsters.

I decided that the best way to try to understand the utility of this Monster Manual was to try to build a dungeon with it. I ran into my first speedbump, here: no index by challenge rating? The alphabetical index is one page, front and back, and the book is already more or less in alphabetical order. What I need when I sit down to populate an adventure with monsters is a spread of challenge ratings; they appeared later, in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, and while that is fine I really don’t like having to flip back and forth between the two books to populate an encounter.

I miss Fourth Edition’s “roles” as well: as the whole Brute, Artillery, Controller, etc paradigm was a good tag to understand at a glimpse what the monster was up to, but losing them is no big deal. I am sad to see minions disappear; that was an idea with some legs, if you ask me. Hopefully they’ll stick it in a subsequent Monster Manual as a variant notion, sort of an Unearthed Arcana for critters. Or maybe there is another clever way they can carry the philosophy of the minion over that we’ll see in Monster Manual II or the next Fiend Folio. Spin an old idea into new mechanics like they did with Solos and Legendary actions.

Legendary actions are the “Solo monsters” of 4e, brought into the new edition. I am a big fan. I never quite made up my mind about 4e’s decision to decouple humanoid opponents from the character generation rules, making the enemy cleric (for example) a monster rather than an NPC. There were up sides and down sides, to my mind, but solo monsters were a brilliant way of giving a Big Bad teeth. Not just six attacks when it’s turn comes up, which massively increases the danger of a TPK while keeping the initiative order a boring back and forth, but with triggered reactions. 5e streamlines it even more, but conserves the heart of the concept: acting out of turn order. I’m into it, but trying to build a dungeon for first level characters I couldn’t find a creature with legendary actions within the right range of difficulty. A major bummer.

When I started reviewing Pathfinder’s Bestiaries, I made my criteria for a good stat block pretty clear. What I’m looking for, first thing, are a cool core mechanic. If a monster is just a list of hit points and a damage die, I think it is kind of a waste of space. I don’t need mechanics on basic stuff like holding its breath or if it is amphibious—if it has a swim speed and aquatic fluff, I can figure out that it lives in water on my own—but if it doesn’t have a rule mini-game, you’ve missed the mark.

The ghoul’s paralyzing touch is a good, old school example of what I mean, integrated seamlessly into a monster; the beholder (in every edition) is a great example of this ethos taken to the extreme. The new Monster Manual does pretty well with this, but not always. Some monsters, like Mummies and Mummy Lords, pack a lot of mechanical cleverness into a little package, but then the three pages preceding it give the rules for Modrons, all of which are rather identical, barring slight numerical increases and the pentadrone’s paralysis gas. A particular disappointment to me, since I’m a big Planescape nerd.

My solution to not having any creatures with Legendary or Lair actions appropriate for low-level PCs is to do what any good Dungeon Master would do: just graft one creature’s Legendary actions onto one creature, and the Lair actions onto another creature, scaling the difficulty on the skill checks and saves as appropriate. I like the Demilich’s Lair options; it has a re-charge that keeps it chaotic, and is easily adapted by swapping dispel magic for antimagic field. I’ll throw a couple of ghouls and a ghast into the adventure, and just have the ghast keep re-spawning, until the PCs find it’s grave and fight it with it using Lair actions.

Thanks for the inspiration, Castle Ravenloft. For Legendary actions...well, if you liked the 3e ethos of having a chicken in every pot a dragon in every dungeon, or if you wanted to make sure this low level dungeon at least had a dragon in it—say, if you were building it for new players and wanted to give them the “full experience”—that’s the way to go. Grab your black dragon wyrmling and give it the legendary actions of an adult black dragon, scaled appropriately.

Don’t read the above as complaints, read it as critique. This is a great book, and my biggest complaint are that the cool rule systems in it don’t play a bigger role. That’s practically Dickensian; please sir, may I have some more? Or Animal House, I guess, if you are the Player Characters being beaten up by a monster’s Legendary actions while being hampered by their Lair: thank you sir may I have another! The new edition of Dungeons and Dragons is going to generate lots more of these books. This is a promising monster collection, and I think there is room for improvement in those inevitable follow-up volumes. Drop in an index by challenge rating; heck, drop in an errata index for this Monster Manual, while you are at it. The Fifth Edition is incredibly promising; judging by the comments in my review of the Player’s Handbook, I may have been premature in saying the Edition Wars are over, but I still think there is something for everyone here.

Art courtesy of Wizards of the Coast.

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Mordicai Knode was putting the finishing touches on a dungeon for new characters the other day when he accidentally outlined a 1st-to-20th level campaign from start to finish. Oops! Find him on Tumblr and Twitter.

Tor.com’s offices are here in the Flatiron Building in New York City, a distinctive architectural wedge. Seeing Korra face down Kuvira’s giant platinum Colossus in The Legend of Korra series finale from atop a sharp triangular building in Republic City was a fun coincidence, huh? Really makes you feel like you’re in the thick of it...but then, I felt the same way when they put the Daily Bugle in the Flatiron Building in Spider-Man. Hey, and J.K. Simmons, Tenzin’s voice actor, played J. Jonah Jameson. Weird.

I know I’m rambling, but I’m still filled with nervous energy from the cliched-but-truly stunning conclusion of the series, and trying not to use a spoilery image at the top of the post. The Legend of Korra ended with action and romance and most importantly of all, the series ended with Korra continuing the arc of the Avatar spirit, begun in Aang: towards greater compassion, greater empathy.

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I’m going to go ahead and consider “Korasami” confirmed and canon. There is part of me that says: “oh, this is the Modern Family issue, give us the kiss, we got a kiss with Mako, didn’t we? Heck, we got the kiss with Aang and Katara!” I hear that. I feel that. But the next thought that popped into my head was “at least they seem to be going about starting a new relationship in a more mature fashion!” I mean, Korra just started getting over her trauma, Asami’s dad just died, they’ve both been part of an awkward love triangle in the past... frankly, riding off together into the sunset is the romantic ending I want. But let’s be clear: there’s nothing “friendship” about it. I wonder how much a “Korasami” fight was at the heart of The Legend of Korra’s difficulties with Nickelodeon?

Last season, last Book, ended with Korra crying in a wheelchair. This season, this series, ends with her hand in hand with Asami, going on walkabout in the Spirit World. To me, that’s even bigger than Avatar: the Last Airbender’s peace, as least as far as character arcs go. The Gaang were kids, and their story ends with a bow on it. It’s the Buffy: the Vampire Slayer ending. The Legend of Korra gives us the Angel ending. It doesn’t end, because life doesn’t end until you die. Korra’s story isn’t over, Korra’s growth isn’t over...and she choses to explore her future with Asami. She choses to grow with Asami. That sure sounds like love to me.

Watching Korra and the team go Skywalker and Dak against the AT-AT of Kuvira’s Colossus was so great. For a moment there I really thought they were going to bring it down with Bolin’s lavabending, Airbenders doing stunts,Meelo coming through in the clutch with the paint bomb plan, Korra pelting it with chunks of masonry, and the Beifongs and Bolin dropping a building on it. Everyone just going, as they say, HAM.

Nope; apparently the Colossus uses Palladium’s MDC rules and no amount of normal damage can really make more than a scratch. And, of course everything is made of platinum, which, looking into, could be plausible? I mean, assuming there was just oodles of platinum somewhere in the Earth Kingdom. Maybe in a secret tunnel. Or under a cabbage patch. It’s still really impressive to see our team, all grown up, paragons of their crafts, cutting lose on the Colossus. The Spirit Cannon is like trying to swat a housefly with a howitzer, but the collateral damage is extensive.

Meelo also gets the snatch to save Tenzin, as Ikki saves Jinora after they dodge for half damage and are knocked from the sky. I gotta tell you, between that and making a face at Kuvira—leading to a “why are you hitting yourself?” slap to the chrome dome—he did good this finale. Alright Pema, you’re right, if you raised that little fart machine, you can wrangle the crowds with Wu. Everyone gets in on the action this episode, even Tahno. Hiroshi Sato is back as predicted, and well, you didn’t really see him getting out of this alive, did you?

Once the two-seat set-up of the Hummingbird/Mosquito was clear, I had a pretty good idea of where that was going, and Varrick and Zhu Li’s use of Chekhov’s Ejector Seats crystalized it. Still, score a big point for reconciliation: if Asami hadn’t started to forgive her father, they never would have gotten inside the Colossus.

How great is it when Lin and Suyin disable the Colossus’s Spirit Gun? How awesome is it when Kuvira just rips the damn arm off? That kind of disproportionate response—that solves the problem, as it takes the Beifongs out of play—is why I like Kuvira as a villain. That’s her “by any means necessary” ethos, playing out on a personal scale, rather than a political one, for a change.

Remember last week when I waxed poetic about mecha interfaces? Well I didn’t know one key factor: the balls are meteoric iron! As gravy, Kuvira turns ’em into a whirling buzzsaw of metaldeath in her melee with Korra. The rest of the fights aren’t with scrubs, either; Kuvira’s elite suffer no Law of Inverse Ninjas problems, no Stormtrooper clumsiness Purple Death Star pits, zappy Saw Boss Mother Brain lookin’ Tesla core, ornithopters, plasma torches; all the high-tech gizmos you could ask for.

Speaking of personal ethos on a grand scale: I had wondered whether the Avatar learned over incarnations. If Aang’s struggles and lessons carried over into Korra’s spiritual fiber, if Roku’s life experiences informed Aang’s spiritual journey, and so forth. I think with this finale I say yes: Korra extends the open hand, not the closed fist, as Aang before her; Korra not only doesn’t kill Kuvira, she saves Kuvira. That’s better than most cinema Batmen. She sees herself in Kuvira, not just because it is true, but because Korra has learned empathy.

It isn’t just her, either: it’s Asami and Hiroshi, and Opal and Bolin, and Suyin and Batar Jr, and Mako and Kai...the list goes on and on. Heck, in the cluch Wu comes through and abolishes the monarchy, even!

It’s hard for a show about the chosen one who is the link between the spirit and the flesh not to get a little messiah complex at the end, and why not? They earned it. As did Korra. Seeing her with Kuvira, saying they are alike and shutting down Kuvira when she says the obligatory “I’m nothing like you!” That was a class act. You’ve come a long way, Avatar Korra. And we’ve all come a long way together; thanks for being such a great community to discuss this show with! It’s been great having a built in group of friends who want to pick apart each episode each week. I’ll see you around!

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Mordicai Knode was completely wrong about reuniting Vaatu and Raava, okay, he admits it. Maybe in the comics, though! He definitely didn’t tear up at all when Iknik Blackstone Varrick and Zhu Li Moon get married! Keep in touch with him on Tumblr and Twitter.

That’s...quite an eponymous ploy, hm? This episode of The Legend of Korra is named “Kuvira’s Gambit,” and I frankly was expecting something like the inverse of the Gaang’s invasion of the Fire Nation, or the Rebel’s plan on Endor, or Suyin’s assault on Kuvira in the first place. Make a distraction and let an elite team take out essential targets. I was expecting Kuvira and a crack assault time to ride in on, I don’t know, a heavy paratroop drop, and hit Republic City in the heart.

But no, I had it all wrong: Kuvira’s gambit is a 25 story tall mecha suit. It’s a short jump from last week’s “Operation Beifong”: now that the crew is back together—kit and caboodle—they’ve almost got a chance to prepare...

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Ever since I first discovered one of the McKinney Robotech novels in the lost and found in junior high while waiting in the principal’s office—and absconded with it—I’ve had a passing interest in mecha interface systems. Inexplicable systems of pedals and switchs, brain scanners, ZERO systems, the enigmatic and mystic union between humans and protoculture, the Proustian inquiries of gothic machines in Big O, and now metalbending.

Metalbending your Megatron mecha with giant Centipede cueballs? I didn’t see that coming, but it makes a lot of sense. The there is already a union of movement to effect, with bending; abstracting it from movement, to bending effect, and back to movement on a larger scale—a mecha-scale—just makes intuitive sense.

I can’t help but think that you could do the same with waterbending—bubble chambers and waterclocks—or lightning bending electronics, or airbending, like the temple doors in Avatar: the Last Airbender. I thought we weren’t going to see the flying mecha, but they went from blueprint to prototype pretty quickly. We still haven’t gotten one in the air, but I’m much less dubious now, even with the hangar destroyed. See, now I’m wondering about the future of technological and bending advancement; The Legend of Korra has turned me into a futurist for their fictional world: thanks Asami Sato, Varrick, Zhu Li...and I suppose Batar Jr., as it would be remiss to overlook the giant freaking robot.

It’s a good thing our team is on point, because everybody else—except, against all odds, Wu?—is getting on my last nerve. I can appreciate that President Raiko is in a difficult position but he’s just so slimy. He’s the epitome of a politician, and while it is great characterization by Spencer Garrett and the writers, it just leaves me feeling like a cabbage bugslug crawled all over me.

Varrick, you are so close, but why you gotta be like that? A jerk and a dolt? At least Bolin has no sympathy for the moron. Batar Jr.’s all “I’m a big dumb idiot” and that’s to be expected but still, how hard my eyes rolled? So hard. Meelo’s farts, sigh. What can I say, I don’t want to act like I’m Mister Mature or like the show can’t be silly, but the scatalogical humor continues to miss the mark.

It is a nice character piece, this episode. The bit with Kuvira and Batar Jr. at the end is very film noir, right? Hardboiled as heck, if you overlook the strange circumstances. The Legend of Korra may have gotten off on wobbly footing when it comes to romance, with the controversial Mako and Korra relationship, but since then? Telling love stories in the margins is something they’ve always been good at. Zaheer and P’Li had passion and charisma, but Kuvira and Batar’s tragedy springs from betrayal, and that’s hard to top. The anime-cute relationship between Varrick and Zhu Li is vindicated by her standing up for herself; now all that remains to see is if they can pull off the dismount. Lots of emotional story arcs advancing this week!

Nice to see a few breaks go our guys’ way for a change. The Air Nomads are part parkour, park basejumping; they’ve got this urban combat thing down to a science. Once again, the choreography of this show is ridiculous. The plan to jump an airship and grab Batar Jr.? No problemo! Korra’s in charge, and now that people are finally listening to her for a change, they are on a hot streak.

Maybe it’s just ’cause I’m a nerdy guy with thick glasses in love with his wife, but poor dumb Batar Jr. really got me as the patsy this episode. It’s not done to try to exonerate or absolve him, so it works to generate empathy. The very lopsided exchange of “I love you” still stings. Sure, he built the Death Star, and he still just had his heart broken...but by a giant freaking mecha with a superlaser. I can’t stress that enough.

You can see the scars of colonialism all over this episode. The United Republic was a compromise precisely to prevent this sort of thing, but in the words of the season three intro to Babylon Five, it failed. Even with Kuvira shooting a giant laser into Republic City, I still think that “Balance” will end not with Korra bringing defeat, but with Korra bringing peace. It may be an elegant yin-yang sort of peace, or it may be a series of ugly compromises, but I think the theme of the season will win the day.

As for my “Korra re-unifies Vaatu and Raava” hypothesis, the last legs is for a climactic spiritual scene in one of the last two episodes: the purple beam could provide this, in theory—Korra gets hit with it, flash-sideway ensues—but we are running out of time for weird cosmological theories.

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Mordicai Knode can’t stop, won’t stop making up cosmological theories. It’s just the way he’s wired; he’s a worldbuilder. He also just doesn’t care about the finer points of distinction between robot and mecha. Find him on Tumblr and Twitter.

What is the sibling term for “Linsanity?” Su-per Sa-yin? Okay, that’s pretty dumb, but Suyin cutting loose in this episode of The Legend of Korra, oh boy! I should say all the Beifongs bring the pain, and I do mean all the Beifongs—excepting Batar Jr. I suppose—because guess who came out of retirement to kick some butt? That’s right, the Original Beifong. Yeah, it’s a Beifong blitz!

But despite the episode title “Operation Beifong,” it isn’t all about the Beifongs. The heroic Bolin from “Battle of Zaofu” steps up to maturity, Zhu Li gets up to some new tricks, and Korra reaches out to the Spirit World. After last week’s more focused character piece, I am ready to see some earthbenders go toe-to-toe-to-toe...to-toe-to-toe! There are a lot of bare toes in this episode is what I’m sayin’.

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Oh, grown-up Bolin, I’m so glad you’re here. I would have liked to see your character arc start earlier, but here we are now, and it was worth the wait. Now, Bolin, at long last I think it is fair to say you are “the Sokka.” Oh, it seemed pretty clear from the get-go, but you can’t just provide a bit of comedic relief and call yourself the Sokka of the group. No sir, you’ve also got to a) have clear and exceptional character growth and b) you’ve got to be the man with the plan. Unofficially you could add in (c) have the most romantic development on the show. And you’ve got to do it all without going grimdark, either! Bolin isn’t the sharpest pencil in the box, but he makes up for it with teamwork and stepping up to the plate. Bolin made a bold, risky choice to side with Kuvira—and when he was wrong he acknowledged it and took concrete steps to fox his mistake. Hardcore Bolin, you’re swell.

Speaking of Sokka, we can put the rumor of him and Toph firmly to bed. Lin’s dad is Kanto, an anti-climax adeptly handled and used—again, by a Bolin who has really come into his own in this final act—to skewer Avatar: the Last Airbender’s “Zuko’s mom” mystery.

This episode really dug in to the Beifong family dynamic. It’s no surprise to me that Toph doesn’t know how to get along with her children; her own parents definitely didn’t know how to get along with her. Talk about bad role models. The show crams a grandkid in, too. Opal really carves out an identity in this episode, and in the end we get to see the whole clan, sans Batar Jr., in a massive bending brawl with the Earth Empire.

How great is the choreography on this show? A brief digression. My favorite Flash is Jay Garrick, but Barry Allen had a manner of speaking where he would say “Flash Fact” and then rattle off some quirk of high speed physics that justified whatever superpowered trick he was trying to pull off. Portal had that same effect on my brain when I played it, of weaponized physics, where your avatar’s momentum and inertia become a sort of intuitive sixth sense thanks to portal chicanery.

Anyway, that’s what the fight scenes in this episode made me think of: earthbending techniques used to Cirque du Soleil the fight. The Beifongs use earthbending to propel themselves, they bend metal to accelerate themselves by linking cables, or to make sudden high-g turns... it’s aerial but brutal. It’s...well, it’s a little Attack on Titan is what it is, come to think of it!

In Avatar: the Last Airbender we got to see plenty of firebender on firebender combat, whether it was Zuko against Zhao, Zuko against Azula or...well, Zuko against Azula. With Iroh in the mix and the Fire Nation as the antagonists, there were plenty of opportunities for fire-on-fire combat. Now it’s the Earth Kingdom’s turn. Earth Empire, that is. I wonder if the rise of nations runs counter to the cycle of Avatars, with Earth always coming after Fire?

Korra sits down at the meditation spot on Air Temple Island, unprodded, unprovoked, and to me it really showed how far she has come—from angry Korra trying to punch her way through learning airbending to cosmic Korra who thinks “I am the conduit between the Mortal World and the Spirit World and I should astral project to the World Tree to beseech their aid.”

Oh Korra, you’ve been dealt an awfully crummy hand. At least when Aang went to new places, he made allies. Everybody Korra meets turns on her, or is utterly useless. Wu seems for a brief moment to be looking out for someone other than himself—“will there be a series of checks and balances, a constitutional monarchy with Wu and Kuvira and the Beifongs sharing the real power?” I think to myself—but then lapses into MRAish white knight garbage. So close!

“Batar’s Big Blaster.” That’s what I’ve started calling it, anyway. Zhu Li is not to be underestimated; we’ve suspected she was a double agent, avoiding coercion by collaborating and using the opportunity for sabotage. Attagirl! Her monkey-wrenching is figured out and her rescue is heroic, which means now we’ll get to see her thrown in with Varrick to see how that particular B-plot resolves.

On the subject of the oft-malfunctioning death ray: boy oh boy oh boy, kudos to the foley artists on this episode. The noise that Batar’s Big Blaster makes is so, so great. Reminds me of the sound made by Slave I’s mines in the Star Wars prequels.

Lots of cute little tip o’ the hats this episode, if I’ve pluraled that correctly... A piping hot meal of Flameo Instant Noodles around the campfire. Opal blowing on a “silent” sky bison whistle, like we’ve seen in Avatar: the Last Airbender. Boogery sky bison “Juicy,” however, is that strain of scatological humor running through the series that... isn’t my favorite. Toph using her earthbending senses to check for liars. Asami and Varrick teaming up to become a couple of mad scientists? Flying mecha, huh? Seems like “mad scientist” is infectious, but luckily “evil” seems to be curable, as Varrick’s stand on weapons of mass destruction is the counterpoint to Wu’s similar pretenses, but seems sincere. What will happen when Zhu Li gets back?

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Mordicai Knode has stumbled into the seasonal madness of the holidays and is sorry the post is late! You can find him on Tumblr or Twitter.

One consistent theme in The Legend of Korra is: Korra trains. It’s a motif consistent with Avatar: The Last Airbender, in fact. Aang traveled the world looking for bending teachers, and Korra has been doing the very same thing, right under our noses, learning from both friends and enemies. Airbending from Tenzin, pro-bending from Bolin and Mako. She’s learned spiritbending from Unalaq, she’s learned metalbending from Suyin, she’s studied with Toph...and now Zaheer. Korra’s problems stem from her being cut off from the Spirit World, which is ultimately caused by the anxiety caused by trauma, and with Zaheer’s guidance—as crazy as that sounds—she accepts what he did to her, and accepts that she survived it. The what is, not what might have been.

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A quick word on last week’s episode, “Remembrances.” I don’t get angry about clip shows. I skip clip shows, sure, but I don’t get angry about them. Some weeks a baseball game or the network’s schedule will result in me not getting to see a television show I like, right? I don’t get angry about there not being a show that week; that’s the reality of television scheduling. It’s a business and there are business conventions like “seasons” and “sports” that are factors. I shrug and move on, or put the clip show on while I eat dinner or do chores just to have it in the background where I can half pay attention to it. I’m not disappointed, because I just consider it a bye-week. Given Nick’s treatment of The Legend of Korra, however, I can’t say I’m surprised that this had to happen.

So Zaheer just...helped? No...strings attached? I saw three plausible ways Zaheer could go after being captured. One, full Azula, all screaming and ruin, madness inspired by frustration; two, Captain Regret, where defeat led to him seeing the error of his ways...and three, the Zaheer we got. Hannibal Lecter, sitting in his cage, not as much of a prisoner as we’d like him to be, but more than he would like to be. As soon as they showed him floating there in chains, I figured it was the latter option. Unfettered by earthly concerns...except literal earthly fetters. What a great image: Zaheer really is a home run as a villain. He seems to regret paving the way for Kuvira; I wonder just how incarcerated Zaheer is, and just what he gets up to in the Spirit World. We also have the blue and white glow of Raava with Korra engaged in high level spiritbending in the Spirit World, despite thinking she had no powers there. Could be more cobblestones on the road to re-unifying Raava and Vaatu, if you ask me.

Everyone seems ready to accept Bolin back with open arms...except Opal. It is great to see the original Team Avatar back together, hugging it out. Bolin is apologetic, and the others are understanding. I would be too; Bolin escaped with crucial top secret information, spurred by the first injustice he sees. Papu is more than eager to help Bolin with his half-baked plot to woo Opal; while I sympathize with his intention, there’s no way a cute protestation of affection is going to win her over. Opal is a Beifong; they don’t take crap like that sitting down...but Opal is a good enough communicator that she’s the one who tells Bolin that he should make a grand gesture and come with her and Lin to rescue their families. It’s a good sign that she and Bolin are a good couple; Bolin needs someone who can clarify what he is supposed to do next.

Is there a single greater moment in this episode then when Asami flips Varrick’s handshake into a joint lock? I do not think there is. Not even seeing hipster Ryu again. Not even Jinora’s backflip landing. As a side note, regarding Jinora being abducted by the spirit vines, I can only respond: “So Dawn’s in trouble? Must be Tuesday.” Korra using earthbending to play with Naga was another standout for me; this was a good episode for reminding us that the critters exist and that they have distinct personalities.

I guess the other moment is hearing Fire Lord Honora—I mean, Izumi—finally speak up. Look at those glasses. Look at the glower. Don’t tell me Mai isn’t her mother. It is yet another meeting where President Raiko demonstrates how useless he is as a leader—I sure don’t like that guy—but the scene is handled deftly. Having everyone unite to take down Kuvira would be too easy; having Fire Lord Izumi decline to go on the offensive given the Fire Nation’s history? Well that’s downright plausible! As is Tenzin’s reluctance to escalate things to a military solution, I suppose. But...giving Wu a seat at the table, while excluding the Avatar? I told you I hated Raiko.

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Mordicai Knode didn’t want to finish this without writing the phrase “spirit pods” at least once. “Spirit pods.” Find him on Tumblr or Twitter.

Well, this is the edition to play. Dungeons & Dragons has gone through some vicissitudes over the last few years, but I think the 5th edition of the Player's Handbook puts any edition controversy to bed.

The 3rd edition, its Open Game License, and its 3.5th revision were a golden age for the hobby, but the more tactical combat-oriented 4th edition turned a lot of folks off; and it all went down while Pathfinder, the unofficial 3.75th edition, was coming on strong.

We all remember the dark days of the Edition Wars; they never left some dark corners of the Internet, but 5e seems to be largely immune. I playtested it in early versions and have been playing it with folks from around the Tor offices since then... and now it's bound and printed and finalized! It's different enough from rivals to be its own thing, and it's learned smart lessons from previous editions, combining AD&D 2e's relative simplicity with 3e's customization. There's more of 4e in there then some people will want to admit, too: at-wills, short rests, hit dice, all the bonus actions, races and powers.

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Let me get this out of the way up front, since I've written about diversity in Dungeons & Dragons before: It's really wonderful to see this book showing a range of heroes. Not just purples and blues, but human diversity, in the races, classes, and the rest 0f the book. People with dark skin tones. Women. An explicit acceptance of non-binary gender and sexual orientation. Yes. This is what a book published in the 21st century should look like. No playable orcs as the default, sadly, but half-orcs, at least.

A friend of mine pointed out the Warlock class to me in 3e and said, “This is the class for you.” I'd written it off before, thinking the Invocations sloppy and the free eldritch blast over-powered. This was just on the cusp of that sea change, where we all realized that “hey, no, it isn't over-powered, that's basically what fighters have.” I playtested one on my friend's advice and it was, in fact, my favorite. Come 4e and the addition of Pacts—but the loss of “inexhaustible magical power” as a defining trait, since every class had that now—and the Warlocks were my go-to class. 

We all have that favorite class, and maybe it changes over time... but it's always there, right? For me, that's Warlocks (and Paladins), so that was the first class I flipped to. I'm incredibly happy with it; you can see the fingerprints of Aragorn on the Ranger, Barbarian has Conan, and now Warlocks show a clear line of descent from Moorcock's Elric. Which isn't to say playing an Elric pastiche is the only, or even the default, option; but come on, you can't read about a Fiendish Pact of the Blade and not think of blood and souls for Lord Arioch...

One of the big tricks that 5e plays with classes is to provide “kit”-like specialization in each, and letting those sub-classes get... really diverse. By way of example: The Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight, which were once prestige classes that you needed to really work to qualify for, are now playable options for the Rogue and the Fighter right out of the box; and they're very robust partial casters, too.

Some of the sub-classes are narrower in focus than others—one Shadow Monk is going to have powers pretty much identical to another Monk on the Way of Shadow, whereas two Battlemaster Fighters might know entirely different powers—but that's okay! A new sub-type for any class could be published in any book. Come up with a variant Defiler sub-class for the Wizard in your Dark Sun setting book, or a Pirate kit for the Rogue in a nautical supplement, or new Paladin oath-type for a divine class-themed splatbook—they are hooks for further content.

Races are designed the same way, with some exceptions. You have half of your racial bonuses under “elf” or “dwarf,” but then the other half of your racial modifiers come from your subtype. Are you a “high elf” or a “wood elf,” a “hill dwarf” or a “mountain dwarf”? More potential for expanding the sub-races in later books for, say, campaign settings... sure makes me hope there is a robust open game license of some kind for this edition. Also, non-level-adjusted drow—thank you for that gift! I'm declaring drow no longer cliché and now just canon. It's time for people to play more drow in non-stereotypical ways. Or stereotypical ways, if you want; spiders are my favorite animal, so playing up the whole spider elf motif has strong appeal.

Humans are the first obvious exception. I still remember cracking the 3e Player's Handbook for the first time, looking at humans and then, I think, pumping my fist in the air triumphantly. I don't usually play humans, but I found previous editions' “Humans are neutral, other races get bonuses and neat powers” to be a bummer for them. Giving them big but generic racial rewards was a wonderful solution, and 5e continues it. +1 to every attribute? That's a strong statement.

The other exceptions are mostly the non-standard races. It's not a hard boundary, but elf comes before dragonborn. It ain't alphabetical, exactly, which I like; it creates a “mainstream.” 5e tieflings—another bellweather for me, like warlocks—are choice. Planescape is where I first fell under their spell, but these are probably my favorite rules for them since then. The use of flexible spells to spice up the more magical races works nicely and, again, lends itself to homebrews and DM tweaks. Wanna replace hellish rebuke with armor of agathys or hex? Lemme know how it works. And thanks for putting in a text box that says dragonborn are the same things as draconians, with some variant rules. I like how it better connects your IP together.

My biggest complaint is one that cuts across pretty much every edition of the game: I don't like balancing classes by creating individualized spell lists. Why not is pretty simple: Remember above when I was applauding the open-ended nature of the classes and races, because further publications can add to and deepen what already exists? Balancing a class by spell list is the opposite of that ethos, to me.

Hundreds—thousands?—of new spells will be written for this edition in forthcoming books, as well as many dozens of new classes. Now each new spell has to be evaluated for every class to see if it should be added ad hoc to their list, and stranger or partial casting classes are likely to fall through the cracks; anybody who played one of the less supported classes from a previous edition knows that pain. Maybe 5e will break that curse?

Photos by Mordicai Knode, art courtesy of Wizards of the Coast

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Mordicai Knode has a great pitch for a drow fey pact warlock who is romantically entangle with the White Candle, the one Yochlol that didn't Fall with Lolth.  Find him on Tumblr or Twitter

Well okay, with this episode of The Legend of Korra, Kuvira seems to be well and truly beyond the pale. Ethnic concentration camps, Kuvira? Yep, you’ve gone and Godwin’d yourself. Not to mention that all the guys have the sides of their heads shaved, all Hitler Youth style. It’s a good look in Sleep No More, but here it is frankly just ominous. There is no doubt in my mind that the next stage in Kuvira’s plan is the “re-unite” the Earth “Empire” is marching to conquering Republic City. It looks like she’ll be in black-and-white by the time she gets there, though this season’s theme of “Balance” still gives me hope of some nuance in the final ethical calculus.

Worry not: this is a fun episode; a nice change from last week’s episode that features Asami’s stun glove, Bolin’s hot lava, the Noah’s Ark of Bumju, Naga, Pabu and some sky bison & flying lemurs, and Korra back in Water Tribe duds.

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Having Varrick run back in to mess with the wires and generators at the Berlin Earth Empire Wall to jury-rig an electro-magnetic pulse to take out the mechs? To me that’s a perfect example of how Avatar: the Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra have always choreographed battles with an active environment. The work of Sifu Kisu and his team are rightly lauded, with each bending style having their own complex physical backstory in the form of martial arts and signatures characters have their own unique variants. Very cool, but equally as cool is how rarely static the fights are. Fighters change the battlefield as they brawl. Earthbenders forming walls, ramps, holes; waterbenders making ice sculptures, slip-n’-slides, floods, that sort of thing. Even powerless Jet used the hooks on his swords to turn the trees into an active environment, and non-bending Sokka and Piandao’s battle was explicitly environmental, bamboo trope and all.

Avatar gave us the start of technology as an “environment,” from the deep sea oil rig prison with Evil Sulu to it’s apotheosis in Toph and Sokka taking on the Fire Nation airship fleet on the Day of the Comet. In The Legend of Korra, the prevalence of metalbending and the exponential growth of industrial technology have evolved that battlefield even further. Tearing the roof off a train and airbending off a bridge or using your know-how to hotwire whatever’s on hand is par for the course. Think laterally!

I just wanted to take a moment to appreciate that; it’s the opposite of old lo-fi Hanna-Barbera cartoons where things were foreshadowed by the fact that active cells were a totally different color than the background. Now everything is in play, through what I imagine must be really well integrated communication among choreographers, animators, writers.

Varrick’s really become an interesting character study. Going from amoral and gonzo to developing a conscience (but still with plenty “mad science”) has been a winding road, which makes it all the better. No watershed moment, no big catharsis, just slowly inspired to be better by Korra and the crew. That’s my take on it. He’s the case study on the benefits of mercy and rehabilitation. He’s still a fast-talking scoundrel with a penchant for monkey-wrenching, but now he’s doing it for the side of the angels and not just his own short-term profit. It certainly doesn’t hurt that his slapstick works in a way Meelo’s doesn’t, either. Hog-monkeys! Speaking of people who, like Meelo, would be annoying in larger doses, we get Prince Wu again.

Fine, he gets kidnapped—Wu-napped—and we get a nice set piece out of it. A fairly minor conflict, but it gives us a chance to see the real conflict, the character interactions. Why did Korra write to Asami but no one else? Mako’s like “what’s going on...” and I’m like “oh crud, shipping intensifies.” Asami is mad that Korra presumes to judge her or her relationship with her dad after she bounced for three years. Their arguing tips off the bad guys, having very real consequences.

Feelings are hurt, but in the end it is resolved in a healthy way, through catharsis and talking about it and then hugging it out. Grandma is a nice bow on Wu’s story, and on Bolin and Mako’s extended family’s story. Remember, this series never forgets about it’s continuity.

Bolin is the star of this one, I am very happy to report. I think I’ve been waiting for this episode from the moment the brothers showed up. Showcase Bolin! This was a watershed episode for him. First off, how awesome is he when he’s lavabending all over the place? So awesome. Then he knows when to hold ’em, knows when to fold ’em; he communicates subtly with Varrick (“do the thing!” having established their teamwork skills) and seizes opportunities, knows when it’s time to stop talking and start doing. He turns enemies into allies and is all brave and leadershiping...it’s great and I think his star is on the rise. Team Bolin.

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Mordicai Knode wonders if Toph will perish in battle defending the Spirit Banyan or if that’s how we’ll discover she was a ghost the whole time. He also thinks it would be funny if his prediction was right, and Korra bonds with Raava and Vaatu and that restores her ancestral memories and it’s just Avatar Kyoshi screaming “JUST EARTHBEND IT INTO AN ISLAND!” Find him on Tumblr and Twitter.

The real winner of last week’s episode of The Legend of Korra was Zhu Li, making the winner of this week’s episode is fair turn about: Varrick! The absence of his much-needed assistant has made his heart grow three sizes. The other big winner in this episode is Kuvira, which means—you guessed it—that everybody else from Korra to Suyin is a loser. Varrick and Bolin are the only non-losers, and while I’m proud of those two disasters for somehow managing to evade trouble—Varrick, above all else, has a knack for that—I don’t quite know if “winning” sums up Bolin’s rather desperate situation. I think “not losing” just about covers it.

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I’m excited to see as much Huan as we got this episode; maybe it’s just me, but I’m tickled pink by Suyin’s goth kid. His art critique of the Air Nomad kids was probably the highlight of the episode for me. That sounds sort of weird, picking something so tiny as my favorite moment, but having him applaud Ikki on her emotional depictions while chastening Meelo for his representationalism? I am not to proud to admit that I cracked up at that. It could have only been improved by making it a meta-commentary on Meelo being a “bit much” earlier this season, but then, that’s just me. The moral of the story is: Huan rules.

Seeing Korra get schooled by Kuvira was painful to watch. For me, it was in part because there was some level at which I wondered if Korra going Avatar State could turn the tide; after all, we’ve seen Aang pull a “lol, nope!” using the Avatar State when he was fighting Yakone. No such luck for Korra, and I think we all saw that coming. Kuvira is at the top of her game, at the pinnacle of her ascent. Like Azula, she’s a prodigy, and if Korra is going to beat her, she’ll need to be in tip top shape. She may have gotten the poison out of her veins, but as we saw, that battle doesn’t seem to be over, yet...

We’ve been talking all season about the nature of Korra’s recovery. Will she be magically healed? How many episodes will it take? Will there be a MacGuffin or Deus Ex Machina or what? Well, it seems like those questions are still up in the air, even after Korra used metalbending to pull the quicksilver poison out of her body after Toph played Yoda to her Skywalker.

Given Korra’s “vision” fighting Kuvira, I think we can safely say that there is still a psychological element still at work. Now the question becomes one of boundaries: is it strictly psychological, or is it spiritual as well? In a world like the Avatarverse, especially after Korra opened the gateway to the Spirit World after Harmonic Convergence, where do you draw the line between mental health and spirituality?

Korra still has a few cards up her sleeve. Asami, Mako, what are they up to? Okay, Asami is starting a journey of forgiveness; I wonder if that will dovetail in with Korra needing to forgive herself? Mako, though, where have you been, buddy? Bolin’s on the loose, he’s a fly in the ointment for Kuvira; I thought for sure we’d see Bolin facing off against his brother, but now? I’m guessing the brothers will re-unite and cause some real problems with the would-be Earth Empire. Lin and Tenzin are still out there, as are Iroh II and Zuko; will we ever be introduced to the new Fire Lord? Questioning minds want to know!

Batar Junior seems to be on the ball, I’m sad to say. That is, he knows enough to pay attention when Varrick is working—but not enough to see where all those extra baffles and the feedback loop he was building were for—and it seems that not even Varrick’s sabotage can stop the Spirit Vine weapon from happening, one way or another. I wondered if that was a red herring, for a moment, when the bomb went off, but nope; the Spirit Vine Deathstar remains on track to play a pivotal role in the end of things to come. Varrick and Papa Sato as assistants to Asami as she reprograms the whole thing? That’s what I’m hoping for, though a “Vaatu ray” still seems plausible as well.

At the end of the day, it boils down to this: Korra is not in balance. Kuvira is not in balance, either, but she’s been operating on borrowed time. The Earth Kingdom was deeply out of whack, and so Kuvira had a lot of things to shake up before they became an issue...but now they are slowly starting to come to a head. This episode seems like an unequivocal Kuvira victory, but I suspect we’re on the fulcrum. Kuvira’s losing control, starting with Bolin and Varrick, and I suspect we’ll see the chaos arriving for her teeter-tottering back and forth ensuing forthwith. She may have won the battle, but she won’t win the war.

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Mordicai Knode is glad to see Jinora taking her place along side Korra; she’s not just another kid, she’s a master! Talk to Mordicai on Twitter or on Tumblr.

The Associated Press has learned that in the days after the August 9th shooting death of Mike Brown, the no-fly zone requested by the Ferguson, MO police was meant specifically to avoid airborne media coverage. Read the rest

This episode of The Legend of Korra, “Enemy at the Gates,” is a nice beat in the tale. It isn’t rushed to get to the bang-pow-smash ’em up bits, but it isn’t treading water, either. After last episode’s healing, Korra is ready to get back into the story, and this episode eases her in, gives us a wiser Korra trying to take the high road, while forces work around her escalating the conflict.

The main story happens out of Korra’s sight, as Bolin and Varrick figure out that Kuvira might not be all that benevolent a dictator after all, and have an all out mecha brawl escaping. So okay, maybe a little whammo-biff-sock brawling, after all... plus Asami Sato, solo, sorting out her life all on her own. So much for friends!

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I’ve been reconsidering the “Korsami” romance. Or the increasing plausibility of it, anyhow. I’ve mused about Nickelodeon’s meddling with the show, with it being pushed into digital distribution after double episode dumps and an accelerated release schedule. The creators kept a cheerful face on during the whole thing, looking at the bright side; partially, of course, there is the fact that they didn’t really have a choice, but I wonder if there is an upside of freedom, of being insulated from executive whims. Making Korra bisexual might not be on their radar, but then again, looking at the shenanigans around the show’s broadcast, maybe there is an opportunity? It could happen at this point, is all I’m saying.

It’s on my mind because this episode shows Asami attempting to reconnect with her father. It seems like every week I give this show accolades for remaining internally consistent, and here we are again. The Legend of Korra could have assumed that they locked Hiroshi Sato up in prison and threw away the key and never circled back around to him...but that’s not the kind of show this is. This is the show that makes Suki the longterm love interest even though she’s “just” a side character in an early episode, that brings back Jun the bounty hunter time and again. So now Asami is playing Pai Sho with her Hayao Miyazaki-looking dad. Prediction: he’ll be instrumental in deactivating Kuvira’s laser canon superweapon when all is said and done.

The swamp was very Dagobah, and Kuvira’s Earth Empire is very... well, Imperial. Airships sliding through the air slowly, pregnant with menace—it’s very Star Destroyer, and I don’t think it is just the LEGO commercials making me think that. Look on the works of the Mechanist and despair: from the Phoenix King to Kuvira, airships have revolutionized warfare in the world of the Avatar. That SDF-1-esque laser blast from the spirit vine? Well, there’s that game changer I was predicting, I suppose—and how much more Deathstar can you get?

Varrick was looking for spirit batteries, but what did we get instead? A superlaser. Not for nothing, but the light was purple; I don’t know if that means it is associated with Vaatu but I’m keeping my eyes peeled, because I still think Korra is going to be the real great unifier, and join together with both Raava and Vaatu; maybe this is related? Just keeping my options open.

So Kuvira’s flip is pretty convincing, because the show used such a soft sell. Well, relatively; yes, arresting main characters and threatening them with “re-education” is pretty clear cut, but it wasn’t an over-the-top “muah-ha-ha!” moment of cacophonous self-parody, so I’ll take it. She (rightly) stymies Korra with her “tough love” rhetoric; Korra is just as guilty of using force and intimidation when she didn’t get her way in the past. Kuvira wants to “do it right” when it comes to Zaofu, Korra wants to reason with her; it almost seems like things can come to a diplomatic resolution right up to the end of the episode, when we find out Suyin has taken her kids (Wing & Wei anyhow; where is gothy Huan?) to go all Navy SEAL ninjutsu on Kuvira. Good luck with that.

That mecha fight! Oh man, how much better than the glimpse we got in the teaser was that!? This is the first time we got to see the next generation battlesuits in action and boy oh boy do the come fully equipped with bells and whistles! Lightning balls, flame throwers, net cannons, grappling guns, even Glitter Boy leg braces. Zhu Li goes hardcore, a mixture of micronized Miriya Parina-Sterling and Attack on Titan-ish wirefighting. Finally we get some lavabending from Bolin the Peacemaker, too!

There is probably some specific anime term for Zhu Li and Varrick’s relationship, and I enjoy seeing the show skirt and flirt with subverting the trope: I think Zhu Li’s betrayal is probably a double-cross, but if not, we’re in trouble, as she’s obviously hyper-capable. I keep talking about Robotech, but I can’t help but see references or parallel evolution to it all over this episode. The impossibly dangerous canon, the mecha battles, and the art aesthetic specifically look like the Southern Cross, especially Kuvira’s guards with the full-body armor and covered faces.

We’re on the cusp of the Metal Wars, on the brink of the war build by the Mechanist, and Future Industries, and the Red Lotus’ destabilization of the Earth Kingdom, and Korra’s absence and Suyin’s refusal to lead. It’s a world that seems inevitable given the chain of history leading all the way back to Firelord Sozin’s unbalancing the world with Fire Nation imperialism. So the scale has tilted to chaos in the Earth Kingdom, and it is up to Korra to “balance” it without the whole thing falling over like a Jenga tower. Will her new, wiser methods work? Or does this situation call for a little of the old Korra aggression, or a middle path of force tempered by her new found patience and mercy? We’ll find out soon enough!

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Mordicai Knode thinks that Team Avatar will be reunited in two more episodes; that’s his guess anyhow. If you like spooky or silly things, find him on Tumblr or Twitter.

The front of the book calls Demon: The Descent a “game of techgnostic espionage,” but what the heck is that? Imagine you are playing a cyberpunk game, but instead of having an implanted set of Wolverine-like spurs...you have an implanted flaming sword that chants “hosannah” in a blasphemous growl. Imagine a game of top secret cat and mouse like The Matrix, but rather than men in black and hackers wirefighting, H.R. Giger-esque shapes with the names of angels clash. It’s Twin Peaks, where the death of Laura Palmer was engineered by a false gnostic machine-god at the heart of the Black Lodge and Agent Cooper is an enlightened angelic freedom fighter (which he sort of already is, to be fair).

Demon is a game about building up a mortal life as a “Cover” and using that Cover to strike back at the horrifyingly Lovecraftian God-Machine that keeps the World of Darkness in chains. You know how to hit it where it hurts because you used to serve it as one of it’s constructs, one of it’s robots, one of its angels. Before you Fell.

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I’ve played World of Darkness for a long, long time, and I have always been leery of the calls from fans for a “Demon” game. The World of Darkness games that work are successful because they have a paradigm that makes the material fresh. Vampires...are immortal beings who play at being the Illuminati. Werewolves...are fighting a spiritual war against pollution. Mages...are arguing about the very nature of reality. Demons seemed...too blunt. Inelegant, not so much as creatures—Promethean is my favorite new World of Darkness game and there’s nothing particularly poised about frankensteins and golems—but as a trope, as a fictional creature. Demons just have too much religious baggage to star in their own line; Dungeon and Dragons only managed to make them interesting by using the alignment to delineate Lawful Evil devils and Chaotic evil demons, and putting them in a fantasy context. Demons in the modern day? What’s the hook to that? A splatbook, sure, but a whole game line? How do you pull that off?

Going full Phillip Pullman is the answer; gnosticism and a heaping spoonful of cyberpunk, as well. Those two things take the religious angle and distort it enough to make it a playable idea. They re-contextualize it in very appealing fashion. When I read The God-Machine Chronicle I described the God-Machine as a mechanical Azathoth, an oppressive god-thing responsible for the “darkness” in the World of Darkness. It creates the status quo, it is the reason the world is the way it is. The Demiurge, the gnostic anti-god, all sputtering engines and crackling electricity.  and in Demon: The Descent, that’s the “god” from whose grace you’ve fallen. The god of murdering firstborns and of Morgellons, of black helicopters and pillars of salt.

The rules for demons are simple enough that during character generation you could pick out the options that you feel like having without too much difficulty just by following the directions...but they also have a crazy secondary system that lends itself to those more inclined to game mechanic puzzles. Embeds are the glitches in the Matrix you exploit to get relatively covert powers. Pull out a lynch pin that wasn’t there a moment ago and disable any mechanical device, show a psychic paper passport to breeze past authority, or emit a Babel signal that renders the mortals nearby unable to understand each other’s languages, even if they speak the same one. Stealthy powers as you hack reality.

Exploits are Embeds taken to eleven, subtlety be damned, pun intended. Possess a house or factory and haunt the place. Kill someone and retroactively erase the last thing they did when they were alive...throw fireballs, raise zombies, the curses of Exodus, the works. Embeds and Exploits are easy, you pick and choose. You also have a Cipher, which is the way the game is built to allow the player and storyteller to design their own custom powers to fit the character. The explanation is a little wonky, but the idea is sound; everyone wants to tweak some spell or power. Build it into the mechanics, but make it so that it’s not really germane till you’ve been playing for a while, unless you really want it to be: sort of like Vampire: The Requiem’s bloodlines.

Demons have Covers. A cover is a life, an existence, rendered artificially and in abstract. At it’s simplest it can be “the electrician,” a bare bones cover with no frills used only to keep under the God-Machine’s radar...but it can become much more complex. “Darrell Fishburn, single father of Sarah and Tyrell Fishburn, who lost his electrician job in the Recession and has been struggling to make ends meet working two minimum wage jobs, who loves the bounty hunters from Star Wars.” Covers are as good or bad as they needed to be for the God-Machine’s purposes, before the demon fell. If you need an angel to slip in to a public building to rig up an electrical fire, “an electrician” will serve the purpose; if you need someone to be such a good first date that he makes someone cancel their awkward plan with someone from OKCupid, thus preventing the birth of the Chosen One...you might get Darrell.

Maybe the demon falls because their cover is too good; “Darrell” can’t leave those kids when his mission is over. Or maybe the angel, a Watcher, has a crisis of “faith” as she questions the wisdom of setting an electrical fire in a library. Could be a random glitch, or anything. But you Fall, and from then on, you’re the enemy. The adversary. You can permanently blow your Cover, become the creature of burnt ozone and brimstone you truly are, flaming swords and rail-guns, and you will be a dark avatar of freedom...but without Cover, you’re doomed when the heavy firepower of an angelic hit squad comes after you. You can blow your Cover to invoke your demonic form, or strain against it to invoke single aspects.  

Seven different innate powers—though you can buy more with experience—that make you able to brawl on equal terms to the worst the World of Darkness and the God-Machine can toss at you. A xenomorph-esque barbed tail, a crown and aura of glory, plasma drives, turning into swarms of locusts: pick your poison. How do you get Cover back? Well, you can hijack it from Heaven next time they prep for a new angel to infiltrate the mortal world...or you can bargain for it, piece by piece with mortals. Demonic Contracts are about stealing pieces of your life...because someone needs it more than the human. Sell your memories of true love to bring your aunt back from the brink of death...and now some demon out there has that “true love” as part of their Cover.

The God-Machine is out there. It wants to reclaim you for scrap, and to tie up loose ends, but meanwhile, the gears keep grinding. A new airport hanger full of creatures of smokeless fire...who are condensed into tanks and put onto commercial airliners to be spread a chemtrails is built. A kid in Queens has his science homework eaten by Cronenberg dog and fails his final project won’t grow up to cure Alzheimer’s. The events seem random, but they aren’t. There’s a vast game being played...and demons decide to take up the game. A spy story, a hacker story, a heist story; demons hijack the God-Machines plans for their own ends, or sabotage them or...try and fail to be taken back into it’s good graces. Build the right Cover and you can infiltrate the airport and take the jinn hostage, commandeer the facility to their own ends and then get out fast before the hideous fist of the God-Machine’s retaliation comes in the form of screaming biomechanical angels. Hope the dice come up in your favor, bub.

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Mordicai Knode, of course, immediately thought about how to hack the game to pieces to customize it…and that’s a good sign. Find him on Tumblr or Twitter.

Great news everybody: the sad times on The Legend of Korra are over! Well, for now, anyway. Thanks to the Amazing Airbending Kids setting out last episode, and thanks to Toph playing Iroh and, ultimately, thanks to Korra. I was glad to see the “recovery story” take a sideways turn in the second episode and become its own weird story about Korra seeking for answers, for help, for her own path. I appreciated that but I’m pretty much always glad for a gloomy plotline to wrap up in television. Now it has.

I wish Toph could be telling this story— “...and Sokka fell in a hole.”— but you’ve got yours truly instead. Alright! Korra learned important lessons! She overcame her own conflicts! Now let’s get out of this swamp and have Korra go solve some external conflicts. In sweet glorious bending battle and what have you.

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Jinora may have inherited her grandparents' prodigious talents, and Meelo might have the most visible resemblance to Aang, but this episode convinced me that Ikki is the one who inherited his attitude, his disposition. Watching her go all Wendy Bird on Earthbending Norm from Cheers and his buddy really charmed me. That’s Aang’s story writ small; the bedrock that leads to him showing mercy sparing the Firelord. It’s the epitome of Aang: “Oh, hey, did you guys kidnap me? Let’s talk through your problems!” I half expected it to turn into an homage to the scene in beginning of the Avengers, where a tied-up Black Widow is interrogating her target while pretending to be a damsel; either way, Ikki taking her arms out of the ropes every so often was classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Classic “Aang in the stockades.”

So no, this wasn’t a Jinora episode, but okay, if you want to get technical about it I suppose she had plenty of time to shine in the last book. Making this an Ikki episode was a smart call and it paid off; Ikki is a great character to get to know. Plus, a little pet-like Nausicaä! Meelo...I wish Meelo would...talk less. This whole “boys vs. girls” thing is something Sokka got slapped out of him in like, four episodes, and the scatalogical humor...is becoming tiresome, frankly. Watching him Blair Witch Project their food into the river...let’s just say I’m ready for his character to pivot into something less...annoying.

I don’t find him cute. Jinora functioned as a dowsing rod, and it was Ikki’s episode, but Meelo’s bits just rubbed me wrong. Except the bits with the berries; that I actually found spot on, pretty funny. I almost wonder if Kai and Meelo are characters that exist to mollify studio executives. “Okay, look, we have a young male character, so we hit that demo, can we get on with the show now?” I don’t know, I’m a believer in the idea that studios and teams can help tell stories, but we’ve all seen them meddle with or cancel shows, too, so maybe I’m a little overly suspicious, looking for bloody fingerprints.

I have to say, the last thirty seconds of this episode I was convinced that my idle fancy of Toph being a g-g-ghost was definitely going to be confirmed. I thought the kids and Korra would fly off on Pepper, Toph would walk back inside, and then we’d see a skeleton in the bed. Dun dun dun! No dice but I’m not counting out the possibility of it happening later: Suyin and Lin reconcile with their erstwhile and estranged mother, and the: skellington! Or not. You know me, I like crazy theories.

Speaking of theories, explaining them seems to be Toph’s role, and I’m glad for it: she was the person who made plot metaphors clear to Korra. We readers have been talking about the upsides of the philosophies of Amon, Unalaq and Zaheer; Toph lays it out for Korra. Amon cared about Equality, Unalaq cared about Spirits, Zaheer cared about Freedom. Each noble goals, but their actions compromised their agenda, their ideology. Korra has a lesson to learn from each of them. If anything, it makes me think a peaceful—well, an ultimately peaceful, I’m sure it will be a hard road to get there—resolution with Kuvira may be in the cards.

It’s a cliche to talk about a setting as a character, but the Foggy Swamp really hangs over the episodes where it appears, in both The Legend of Korra and in Avatar: The Last Airbender. It’s the swamp that becomes Dagobah and turns Toph into Yoda, shows Korra her deepest fears. It’s the swamp that grabs Katara and Aang’s grandkids the same way it once grabbed them. Jinora, Ikki and Meelo are mid-montage, mid-argument even, when the swamp intervenes. We see the vast banyan tree at the heart of it and I’m left wondering about the world-tree in the Spirit Realm, and Varrick’s experiments with Republic City’s spirit-vines. What’s next, Legend of Korra?

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Mordicai Knode wants to put out a crazy idea: what if Lin’s dad was Huu? Tell him how wrong he is on Twitter or find him on Tumblr.

The politics in The Legend of Korra are getting down to brass tacks. It’s hard not to see Kuvira as a net positive. There is no reason whatsoever to support the royal dynasty. Heck, as far as I’m concerned, there was every reason to support its overthrow. An actual caste system, an apartheid of rings that is so culturally ingrained that even the mall in Republic City’s “Little Ba Sing Se” is segregated by class. A powerful secret police, kidnapping and press-gangs. Propaganda and cruel whim and extortion. I’m with Bolin on this one.

I think Kuvira should hold an election—why wouldn’t she, she’s beloved—and then just claim authority thus. President Raiko sets a precedent for it. Then there you go. We should be so lucky: I kind of want to see Bolin succeed at keeping her on the strait and narrow...even as tensions increase.

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Kuvira’s rise seems almost...inevitable. Combine the technocrat philosophies of Suyin’s Zaofu, the rise of the military in the wake of an imploding state, longstanding dissatisfaction with the current regime with a power vacuum and what do you get? The thing is, as much as the movements were undermined by corrupt leadership and tactics beyond the pale, the Equalists and the Red Lotus had a point. Kuvira has a point. It’s hard not to like her as she pushes the useless Prince Wu out of his fancy hotel rooms (even if he has some sweet dance moves). As I’ve been saying, as light a hand with making her a villain would be appreciated; make her an antagonist, but not a proper “bad guy.”

Great Uniter could go either way; but “Earth Empire” has an ominous ring to it. This book is called Balance; the brother-against-brother theme they are building up, along with the failings of the monarchy, make me think Korra will ultimately come as a peacemaker, compromising between Kuvira’s need for legitimacy and the Republic’s need for autonomy; like I said, I’d hold an election, with a vote in Republic City whether to remain seceded or rejoin the Earth Empire. Kuvira would win, and independence would win, and the legitimacy of one would hinge on the legitimacy of the other. Also, I want to see lavabending, Bolin. If it comes down to brother-against-brother...I used to think Mako would have taken it, but with Bolin maturing, I’d give it to him now that they’re older.

Speaking of things we want to see more of, Jinora is back. Meelo, be quiet, let the master speak! Very exciting to see the three of them tasked with recovering Korra. That’s what I’ve been asking for, and I’m ready to see how these characters have developed in the last year. Also I’m wondering if this means they meet Toph; if anyone could overwhelm her Oscar the Grouch exterior, it would be the airbending kids. They might just be the balm for Korra’s spirit that she needs to find peace—balance—to boot.

Can I talk for a minute about kid’s commercials? I saw one for this LEGO Star Destroyer, all pro-Vader, where the whole thing unfolds on hinges and turns into a playset for your minifigs. That. Is. Awesome. I want that, of course I want that! Then there was a commercial for these Monster High Freaky Fusion dolls that are these gothed up half-zombie, half-unicorns and centaur-harpies. I grew up in the midst of the witch-hunts and Satanic Panics of the 80s, and seeing stuff like this available like it’s no big deal makes the weird kid inside me happy, at least in a crassly commercial way.

I know some people who are freaking out about how great Toph was but...frankly, I just don’t care yet. I think it is fine? She’s not intrusive in the story, but apart from “I’m the original Beifong!” I haven’t seen why she’s here now. Just to mentor Korra? My theory is that Korra has crossed into the Spirit World proper, and that “tune in, turn on, drop out” Toph is a g-g-g-ghost. It will end with Korra’s catharsis and then an inversion of the Monk Gyatso skeleton reveal, where you realize Toph was Bruce Willis the whole time.

So it looks like the appearance of Toxic T-1000 Avatar wasn’t just symbolic in Korra’s last hallucination (if that’s what you want to call it), as Toph can sense the quicksilver of the Red Lotus’ poison still insider of her body. “Oh-ho! A straight forward physical explanation? I did not see that coming!” I was ready to be surprised by it...but no, no, of course there is a psychological aspect. Korra is keeping the metallic poison inside herself. Münchausen by bending? Toph, frustrated, tells her that she’s going to need to metalbend the poison out of herself, since Korra can’t relax. After, of course, Toph slings mud at her and knocks her around the swamp a bit.

What’s with the vines this episode? We hear Toph talking about them like they were Game of Throne’s weirwood, almost a vast fiber-optics network. Then we see Varrick with one. That’s where I see the heel turn coming from. The mad scientists are going to cook up something crazy. Bending machines? Spirit guns? Using captured spirits as batteries? Maybe Raava and Vaatu are hiding in the vines. Whatever it is, it’s the game changer. It’s the Sozin’s Comet. That’s what I’m predicting.

More little details of whimsy that brought joy to my life in this episode: the Kyoshi Medal of Freedom, since Kyoshi is the best, the cuteness of the frog-squirrel, seeing Eska loom in to do her doom and gloom—always glad to see character continuity—and even the old Earth King’s stuffed bear. Aw, Bosco! Maybe it’s just a wax replica? Nah, you know how these tourist traps are. This show is smart from the tiniest detail to the biggest clue. I wonder if they’ll even turn Wu around; after all, Orphan Black managed to turn Donnie inside out! The last season convinced me that The Legend of Korra can do anything. So I’m all in. I’m along for the ride. Buckle up. Bring it on.

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Mordicai Knode wonders if we’ll ever meet the new Fire Lord. He is on Tumblr and on Twitter, are you?

keprals-syndrome:

misanthrope-of-the-year:

shuffle-bot:

I’ve never even played Mass Effect and I love this.

I FINALLY FOUND IT AGAIN

Well this episode of The Legend of Korra was a lovely treat, and not just because we saw you-know-who. You might think it strange to call an episode that focuses entirely on Korra’s painful physical rehabilitation and distressingly empathizable post-traumatic stress disorder a “treat,” but “Korra Alone” really was.

What I didn’t want was a whining, emo, “feels” episode. I’ve sort of had my fill of them for a bit, not that they don’t have their due time. I was hoping for, at best, a recovering montage. What I got was something like I was talking about when I discussed Kuvira last week: neither one option nor the other, but a new, third path. We got Korra on her own self-motivated Hero’s Quest. She’s neither sulking nor recuperating: she’s proactive.

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The first thing I wrote down was “broken mirror (punched?)” and sure enough, the episode wrapped all the way around itself to come back up to that moment, even though it doesn’t answer my question. It’s a tidy little piece of non-linear storytelling, and it’s great to see it used with no fanfare. This isn’t the show attempting to be clever; this is clever people making the show. It neatly unpacks our assumptions: no, Korra hasn’t been brawling in the ring for six months, this is her first time, a random snapshot of her mendicant quest. She’s down and out but she’s fighting. Or better than fighting, she’s proceeding. Korra’s not defeated; she’s defiant.

We do get a little bit of that recovery episode, and mostly with Katara doing her best Beatrix Kiddo impression. “Wiggle. Your Big Toe.” There are healing baths and physical therapy and as a guy three-quarters of the way through a year of physical therapy for a rebuilt shoulder, I’m ready to identify with this suckitude. Luckily Mako and Bolin write perfect letters, and we get just enough prose between Asami and Korra to fuel the shipper’s engines, so it’s not all a down note. Eventually, we even get a little of the old montage magic, and Korra’s back in the game—Avatar Spirit AWOL, not quite 100% and struggling with her inner demons, but up and at ’em.

You know where I’m going with this. Korra’s chasing Avatar Korra—or vice-versa, depending on how you look at it—and to me this just comes back around to my pet theory. I predicted before this season started that this book would be called Balance, and I predicted long before that that Korra would unify the yin and yang of Raava and Vaatu. I think this plot line—especially as Korra walks in and out of the Spirit Worlds in a dreamlike Miyazaki quest—is still sizzling on the griddle.

And so we get to Yoda. Toph. Yoda. It’s fitting to find her in the swamp, as that is where Aang saw the flying pig that guided him to Toph in the first place. See, even before Korra re-aligned the Spirit World and the Physical World, these places overlapped. That’s concise, cohesive worldbuilding, with the closing of a thematic loop thrown in for good measure.

This episode is just so tightly written; when the Nick.com commercial break kicked in I thought it was the end of the episode, there’s so much storytelling jammed in there. And get Toph out of the way early in the season; like the flashbacks to adult Aang, there is a part of us that wants to see this, but this is a new story. Or heck, surprise me; maybe Toph will just stick with the show the rest of the way. That’s what she did in Avatar: the Last Airbender, after all.

While I’m admiring technical proficiency, how about the animation in this one, huh? When Avatar Korra goes all T-1000 on Korra? Oh, yikes, that poison is nasty. Here I thought the Creepy Avatar manifestation was cruel but perhaps ultimately benign...but this calls that theory into question. But the whole Exorcist Korra thing is really great, right? Perfectly in time for the holidays. Fits in with the first series’ Bloodbender episode in the “Horror” genre.

Then there are all the little easter eggs scattered throughout. Goofy adult Aang, still in touch with his sense of whimsy, caught in a photograph. Toph’s distinctive body posture reminds me of how on the nose they are with adult Zuko’s slouch as well. Plus Avatar Kyoshi fighting a sharksquid, one-handed—have I mentioned lately that if there ever is another Avatar cycle, I think they should do a prelude about Kyoshi?

What we got this week was pleasantly surprising. Spooky Korra Zombie isn’t Korra out of control on power or sick with poison, but a restless shade playing Scrooge. Nor has Korra flaked out on her friends or abandoned her responsibilities; no, Korra’s operating on the thin sliver a twilight between fear and hope. Her mental trauma is mixed in with...what, the Avatar’s connection to the spirit world? Wandering Raava? Who can say, yet. Still, she turns away from Republic City not to hide, but to seek. For me, that makes a world of difference.

I’m finding it very easy to root for her right now, and coming from a place of trepidation about that, thinking we would get a Debbie Downer episode...well, it looks like last season wasn’t a fluke. This show has smoothed out all of the road bumps...just in time for Nick to dump it. I am not heartbroken about that: we still get the show. Everything comes to an end, and the alchemy of creation, between showrunners and writers and animators and directors and producers and yes, even the network, it’s all part of it. Avatar: the Last Airbender was so good in large part because it had a proper ending, it wasn’t milked or dragged out undue seasons. The Legend of Korra might not be ending as organically, but I trust them to end it as well.

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Mordicai Knode also appreciates the little costuming details, like Tenzin’s leaf button. Find him on Tumblr or Twitter.

(Shinobi; Art by Adam Tan.)

It's funny how time dilates in roleplaying game battles. The minis hit the table & everyone is waiting their turn to make split second decisions. The consequences of their choices require dice, math, description, & then the enemies go. Infamously, we used to count up the number of rounds in a Dungeons & Dragons fight in Scott's game, then say how long an hours long battle in a session had actually taken, & it was all like, a minute. In Oubliette I prefer to think of each round as being a cinematic take. If the camera cut to you in the big battle scene, what could you do before it cut away? World of Darkness metes out time according to "scenes" already, which is something else I like about the system, so I just want to keep the abstracts wibbly-wobbly. If I needed to set a timed countdown, I'd just tell them a number of turns anyhow. My point is: not a lot happened in the last session of my game, because quite a lot actually happened! Shinobi attack! Assassins in the night!


(Shinobi; Art by Adam Tan.)

I don't use a lot of obvious Japanese terms in this Oubliette campaign. Despite being very visibly Japanese in flavour, that's not the only source I'm pulling from by any means-- just the most visible slice. There are layers below it, in religion & language & history, so I prefer to call it "Pan-Asian" in influence, the same way that very Western fantasy settings are a blend of European mythologies & histories as well as new invention & artifice. That's what I'm going for, a broader base of inspiration rather than appropriation, so I try to avoid "samurai" as much as possible, though it can't be avoided & colloquially I'd rather stay in character than break immersion to try to correct someone so they could be, what, immersed better? Still I say "bushi" rather than "samurai"-- issues of aristocracy over pop culture aside-- & "geiko" instead of "geisha" to make the delineation clearer. It is very hard, however, not to call a spade a spade. I say "shinobi," but you should read: ninjas!


(Masui; Scarab cosplay by Shadow Wolf.)

This session was much more orderly than the previous two sessions, otherwise. Keku no-Kin, Nicoles character, the zaibatsu cyborg, had strange dreams in the night. "UTILIZING LIMINAL PROCESSING" said the strange letters, that she was somehow able to read...much as she was somehow able to read phrases from the scrawl on the wall in the Scribbler's Tower. Bits & pieces, as the mechanisms of her now-integrated cyber-eye used her subconscious mind for data crunching. The word "gods" appears multiple times-- the graffiti on the walls is written in many hands, at many times, with many materials, but seems to be read as one document by the Eye-- as does the words "incarnate" & "mortal vessels." Haru o-Kitsune, meanwhile, buys a dot of Mechanics & he & Amina o-Kitsune-- Luke & Lilly, respectively-- split up to explore the two towers further. Keku goes with Haru & she's able to get the Scribbler's Fort, with it's big steel plate making the mechanisms of the castle accessible, pretty much operational. She's a deft hand. Iroha goes with Amina & then-- ...shinobi!....



In the ninja battle I leaned on a lot of Fourth Edition philosophy. In particular, some of the ideas for solo monsters, like reflex actions. There were two groups-- I'll call them Red Clan & Black Clan, but obviously they've got backstory known only to the Dungeon Master (at this point)-- & one group was led by Masui, the woman from the auction who traded Goto "The Black Sutra," as Amina's sharp senses spotted under the distinctive face paint. Some of the reflect events included things like "attacks of opportunity if you move through the reach of the kusarigama" & "if they get hit they drop a smoke bomb & get a free Stealth check." There was a bunch of nested actions & things but...we all bought a ton of sake & sochu to game so...we were pretty drunk & I might have gotten...a lot sloppy with the complicated rules that I wrote while sober. Still, fun! & I haven't had a fight in forever. The shinobi fought hard, & took Amina to death's door-- where she lingers-- but withdrew when the going got tough; on the otherside, Haru similarly took a brutal series of stabbings, from blade & shuriken & poison; the shinobi retreated, but only because the soldiers were alerted & flooded up the stairs.

For someone who happens to have a show named after her, Korra sure doesn’t get much screen time in the premiere of the new season of The Legend of Korra! Doesn’t bother me none, personally; I’ve always like the without-the-Doctor Doctor Who episodes, myself. Still, can I tell you something? I’m well ready for this depressing plot line to come to an end already. Really, I hope the whole recovery story arc runs on an accelerated track. I’ve had enough emo Korra in this series; I’m ready for no-holds-barred, cage-match, all-or-nothing Korra to come back.

I think Korra’s ready, too. She’s brawl-bending, putting her in the underdog role that Bolin and Mako were in as pro-benders in season one, and they’re the authority figures with government ties; how the tables have turned. We’ve had three years of lapsed time, so I think it is possible. Plus...perfect opportunity for Korra to be taken under Toph’s wing as a mentor, just sayin’.

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I hope they don’t Godwin Kuvira. Avatar: the Last Airbender had a tendency to show the three dimensions of their villains, and thus the character portraits we remember of them are humanizing. Azula at the beach, Azula having a mental breakdown—not at her best, not at her worst, but as her more characterized. Old enemies could be turned to new allies, but even if they stayed enemies, or stayed neutral, their essential self is what we remember. The exception is Ozai, because the monstrousness of his deeds and ideology outweigh any meager time he had on screen.

I sort of feel like The Legend of Korra’s villains have been the opposite of both those examples. We got the characterization upfront and the villainy later, when it came to Tarrlok and Unalaq, in the form of betrayal. Again with Zaheer we got noble rhetoric and only dubious antagonism—violently overthrowing an unjust empire is as ambiguous as it gets—before he went full heel turn. Amon is another exception, but frankly Amon’s actions outweigh Amon’s backstory and exposition at least seven-fold, for me.

What I want for Kuvira is something better. I want the Avatar: the Last Airbender treatment. With her prodigious talents and taste for politics, she could easily be this season’s “Azula,” but I want them to tweak it: make Kuvira a necessary evil. If you read my recent review of The Emerald Spire, the first Pathfinder megadungeon, you’ll know my favorite alignment is Lawful Evil. It has conflict built into it! Perfect storytelling engine. Really I want her to be badass anti-hero. I want her to have her own agenda—order in the Earth Kingdom—and to oppose any more queens and puppet princes. I want her to have her own ideas about how far is too far and I want her to not give a damn what the Avatar thinks as an authority figure...but to care about Korra’s counsel as a spiritual leader. I want her to be her own faction; Lady Eboshi or Princess Kushana.

Sometimes enemy, sometimes ally, always her own person. I don’t want her to end up as a plain old “bad guy.” I want her cast as someone making hard choices. Does she only care about your province for the ore? Yes! Because she’s trying to run a country in the middle of a period of anarchy. She’s governing, yes she only cares about the trade route, the strategic ground, the precious resource. Those are things government needs to address. Does she employee bandits to act as the “bad cop” so she can roll in and solve the problem? Probably! I just want the story to give her depth and backstory and motivation. But yes, of course she’s going to decide that Republic City has to be “reclaimed” to re-unite the entire Earth Kingdom, that’s the obvious direction for the story to take; I just hope it has a less obvious conclusion.

I’m really happy with the conceit of turning the Air Nomads into world traveling problem-solvers in the Avatar’s absence. It gives them a reason to resume being nomadic, which is a clever flourish, but their low numbers and inexperience means it stretches them thin. As with Lawful Evil antagonists, a noble underdog plot like this can generate its own stories. Collaborate with the quasi-legitimate warlord, or be destroyed without their help. Attempt a hail Mary longshot to go it alone, and either failure or success will spawn new ideas... and cool fight scenes like the bison back brawl with the Point Break ending.

I do have one complaint though! Meelo’s “Meelo the Boy versus Meelo the Man” vignette was cute but something—someone—felt like they were missing. Do Opal or Kai start with a “J” and end in “-inora”? No? Then shut up and have Jinora do something more than smile when she hears Korra is coming back! Which of course, is something that holds true about Korra in this episode as well...

Before I go, let’s talk for a minute about how everyone looks. Which is to say, to recall the days of Iroh II, congratulations on your faces, everybody. and the costume design? The way the patagial wings on the Air Nation uniforms fold up like Star Trek movie uniforms fold over? The evolution of Lin Beifong’s weaponized metalbender armor taken to the extreme of a high speed ammo feed, Mako’s green collar...every little detail is just so. The fact that everything has changed so much is a testament to the characters original designs; change the outfits, the hair, and we still know who Korra and crew at a glance. Those changes tell a story in and of themselves; three years have gone by and Team Avatar has, excuse the pun, changed.

I’m guessing next episode is Korra’s flashback episode, complete with rehabilitation and a Battlestar Galactica grooming montage; fingers crossed that it ends on an up note! Hopefully Korra isn’t in the Earth Kingdom aimlessly, but is in fact entering the world of underground bending as part of her own, personal agenda to seek out Toph as a master?

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Mordicai Knode hopes the traffic at Nick.com is proving that Nickelodeon should continue pushing the Avatar-verse...or that they’ll let it go. Find Mordicai on Tumblr or Twitter.

So I think the chromatic dragons in Dungeons & Dragons are pretty much perfect. I don't think they should be staggered by difficulty-- I don't like them being ranked from red to white, & would rather they just filled different roles, like in 4e, with brutes & artillery & what have you-- but otherwise they are pretty great. Unique habitats, it's easy to remember who breathes what, it's cool that they have different breath weapons, & Tiamat rules. It's a nice paradigm & I think about the also-rans, the metallic dragons & the even less well known gem dragons. Years ago, I wrote about Apzu, who is my "missing sibling" for the colours not represented in the chromatics; purple, orange, yellow. I've revised that in my head to cram in gem dragons. Amethyst, Amber, Topaz, there's our neutral psionic dragons, the children of Apzu, a dead draconic god. (I've also had an idea that purple worms are the failed purples, rust monsters are failed oranges, but can't fit the two puzzle pieces together, yet. I thought before about linking their breath weapons to that-- rust dragons are my favorite non-standard dragon by a wide margin-- but that's just stuff to brood on).

With the metallic dragons, the "good," dragons, I've always been pretty annoyed at what a hodge-podge of too-similar metals were used. Brass, bronze & copper? That's...those are all copper alloys. What's the difference between which? Who breathes what, & what do they care about anyhow? Coppers have lightning, that's clever, & they are the...funny ones? I think. See, I don't even know, & so here is my fix: why not associate their colour scheme with historical or mythological paradigms? Just go ahead & cheat. Brass dragons, why they can summon genies & bind devils & live in desert climes because they remind me of Solomon & Arabian Nights. Bronze just makes me think "Bronze Age," so why not go ancient world? Golems of the statues of far antiquity, stone tablets of cuneiform & hieroglyphics & mysterious Linear A & B stuff. Copper dragons are the reverse, scaled Ben Franklins or Isaac Newtons, they love The Enlightenment & electricity & "high tech" treasures. Gold & silver you don't really need to mess with, & I would probably throw an "iron dragon" in while I'm at it. (Illustration by Wayne Reynolds.)

Dungeon World is having a very real, meaningful impact on how I look at games, and how I look at my game.

I’m a big believer in cross-product, system-neutral play, which is to say that I encourage everyone to steal from every game they own when building a campaign or creating an adventure. If the mechanical crunch doesn’t work, ignore it and take the story ideas or abstract rule concepts that you like. If flavor and genre don’t match, use the mechanical parts you like and just reskin the rest. I’ll use Pathfinder’s GameMastery Guide to roll up a random location for my World of Darkness game just as easily as I’ll repurpose the time travel rules from Transdimensional TMNT with a heaping serving of cosmic horror for my Great Race of Yith themed Call of Cthulhu mini-series.

No matter what, I’m always on the lookout for the next mechanical innovation to inspire my own homebrew campaign; last time is was Mouse Guard’s Trait system, and those are now being tempered by Dungeon World’s similar Tags and complications. I like this game enough to...already be thinking about how I could rebuild it from the ground up to suit my play style.

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Here is the biggest problem I have with Dungeon World. Again, I can’t stress this enough, this game is great. I would play it right now, as it lies...but with that due caveat, I really dislike one of the core pillars of the game. Basic Moves. “Moves” are one of the core mechanics of Dungeon World, and you can think of them as If-Then statements, based on the roll of the dice.

The class Moves are a good place to start, since they map the most easily onto what d20 players will think of as “class features.” The key flavor difference is that Dungeon World has a middle ground between “success” and “failure” that is more... complicated.

Take the Thief’s “Tricks of the Trade,” their version of picking locks and disabling traps. Roll 2d6, add your Dexterity bonus. Ten or better, success. 6 or under, you fail. 7-9 is the sweet spot: “...you still do it, but the GM will offer you two options between suspicion, danger, or cost.” For specific class Moves, that’s great. It looks to me— this may be heresy to some OSR devotees— like the lessons of Fourth Edition Dungeons and Dragons, taken to heart and stripped down to what works.

Basic Moves are just too specific to be “basic,” for my taste. I’ll agree that “Hack and Slash” is something a lot of adventurers do, and I think in practice the Basic Moves probably work swell, but something about it rankles. I want the foundation of the system to be more elegant, cleaner. Maybe tied to the attributes; link each attribute to a few suggested boons and complications. I understand the argument that having loose rules for the monsters and stricter rules for the players makes sense, as the Game Master can make the calls but the players need more structure, but...

Frankly while I buy that for the Class Moves, I feel like Basic Moves just reduces the apparent options to players. You’ve given them hammers and now everything looks like a nail. The “Move” system is a little too tight around the collar for my taste, but that brings me to something I really like about the system: it encourages you to strip it down and rebuild it to suit your preferences. Wish that a member of any race could be a member of any class? Easy! Want to redefine how the game works at a deeper level? They’ve got guidance for that, too. I’m not alone in wanting to get my hands dirty; John Harper’s “World of Dungeons” retro rebuild of the game is on the same wave length and I’m sure I’ll find others.

The orc warchief is blessed by both the orc one-eyes and the orc shamans, and bears the Iron Sword of Ages. The Cloak of Silent stars is a black and cosmic cape that lets you punch a lightning bolt to keep it from hitting you, using Strength instead of Dexterity, or charm the poison racing through your veins with honeyed words, substituting Charisma for Constitution. These little details hint at a campaign setting behind the logic of Dungeon World, but it doesn’t insist upon it, and they are left just...lying about, willy nilly. Sort of reminds me of Dark Souls, which told its story only through item descriptions and NPC dialogue without any clumsy exposition dump. Here’s this crazy, messed up world. Go!

Dungeon World’s mantra is narrative comes before rules, and I think that’s why I like the very loose and abstract system for Tags and monsters more than the more concrete mechanics for Moves. I’m planning on using the “Fronts” from the Game Master’s section to try to plan some adventures and campaign arcs as well; it seems like it would gel very nicely to my current system of checklists and vignettes. On a fundamental level, the vision behind monsters and magic items are why I became so enchanted by this system: make no mistake, my critiques above are only because I’ve taken so much of this book to heart.

Too much to heart, if anything; I can’t stress this enough, don’t take my criticisms as complaints. Dungeon World is so good that I just had to pop the hood and start tinkering around, I had to get into the nuts and bolts of it rather than just take it as is. For a guy with a Game Masterly bent, that’s the greatest endorsement that I can give a game.

_{Dungeon World interior art by Emily DeLisle.}

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Mordicai Knode is thinking he’d probably play a Fighter and try to convince the GM to let him play a Deep Elf or an Orc & modify the Elf racial power to add either “messy” or “forceful,” respectively. Find him on Tumblr and Twitter!