OSR Review & Appendix 'N' Commentary - The Michael Moorcock Library: Erekose, The Eternal Champions - The Swords of Heaven, The Flowers of Hell by Michael Moorcock (Author), Howard Chaykin (Author, Artist)

 Sometimes its all about going back to the well of Sword & Sorcery in this case its The Michael Moorcock Library: Erekose, The Eternal Champions - The Swords of Heaven, The Flowers of Hell. It was ages ago when this collection crossed my desk a gift from my wife. Maybe it was Michael Moorcock's prose or the artwork of  Howard Chaykin. 

This aspect of the Eternal Champion is a hard one for me to digest. And its the themes of love found, lost, & the aspects of this story that in only sixty pages ring true. The romantic in this reader takes the whole affair on board & it really echoes here. The prose of Moorcock is strong & the artwork set's it off. Howard Chaykin solidly captures the tone, artwork, & feel of The Swords of Heaven, The Flowers of Hell here. He does it in a different flare then the usual Sword & Sorcery. This is a different Chaykin for this reader. The tone & graphic is hard & soft in the places it needs to be. The action is swift & dangerous but it does so with a different brush. The tone is the same as the Erekose paperbacks but the art takes it in another angle. 
Moorcock's writing keeps pace with the art & doesn't drown in it. The volume is one of slim but packs the punch where & when its needed. This is a truly good collection worthy of Appendix N. 
The whole graphic novel is tight & taunt in a way that gives the reader exactly the right amount of the Erekose, The Eternal Champion dosage without cutting them up with yet another 'over the top' Sword & Sorcery adaptation! The whole graphic novel works because it does all of the heavy lifting with Chaykin's artwork hit all of the high notes. Highly recommended! Thanks honey for the wonderful collection! 

Review & OSR Commentary On Lobo Blanco By Patricio González The Free Michael Moorcock Elric Fan rpg

"In this game you take the role of adventurers who pursue their own commitments and, during their journey, encounter numerous situations that escalate in intensity. Will you side with Law? Or Chaos? Can you survive to achieve your dreams? Or will you rest too long in the comforts of Tánelorn the Eternal?"

 There are not enough hours in the day to sometimes cover all of the games & retroclones take for example Lobo Blanco. Clocking in at over 219 pages of Micheal Moorcock Elric weirdness Lobo Blanco is a game that really tries to take everything we've seen before & repack it a system that works for eternal champion play. Oh did I mention that this is a free down load? Lobo Blanco is a dice (Primarily d8),skill based (buy or gain skills), & trait / Aspect Based (personality affects gameplay) motivated system. Lobo Blanco is centered around the world of the Young Kingdoms from the ground up. It motivates the players with a very well done system that works well for its Sword & Sorcery style of play. 

Lobo Blanco is a love letter to Michael Moorcock's Elric world setting & the eternal champion mythologies crafted over Moorock's writing career. The system while a bit dry emulates just the right amount of weirdness & solid strangeness  of the Young Kingdoms. Is Lobo Blanco trying to replace the classic Choasium Stormbringer? Hell no! What its trying to do is to bring the Young Kingdoms to gamers who might not even know it exists. And no its not its not  Mournblade rpg or that lines books at all. Lobo Blanco takes its own path & strives to create its own mark on the world of Sword & Sorcery gaming. There's a bit of PC customization going on within its bounds & it strives to build on it. Remember the mythologies that Moorcock created & how it Pulpy origins pull right from the classic writers that Mr.Moorcock grew up reading. 

So what does this mean for the DM looking to start a Lobo Blanco campaign set within the Young Kindgoms?! Well you get everything & we mean everything you need to pick up and play within the download from the ground up. You can literally download Lobo Blanco & with an IPad start playing with dice & friends! This is very appealing because of the drag & play aspect of the game. The layout, the system, & pretty much the entire book or is it two books because you get a black & white as well as a colour. 

Is Lobo Blanco perfect?! Not at all & for really bringing home the weirder aspects of Young Kingdom magick. I'd add in the Bronze Grimiore from the Elric rpg which has some of the best flavor of the Young Kingdoms magick that have been seen on the table top level.  Yes this is from 1994 but its cracking useful at the table top level especially for adding in that elusive Young King's weirdness & wild to the magick system. 

Lobo Blanco isn't perfect but as a fan created Young Kingdoms, Elric, eternal champion emulator, & complete rpg system package this is a chaos god sent in many respects. 

You can download Lobo Blanco for free right from here & start your Sword & Sorcery adventures in the Young Kindoms today! 

Moorcock's Eternal Champion, Deities & Demigods, & Some Random Thoughts on The Cosmic Balance

“Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.”

― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity



Scale ships in the second Ether 


Never let it be said that I waste influences in this case the wonderful Boris Vallejo's 'A Fire Upon the Deep' book cover artwork. Man, this artwork grabbed me back in '92 when I was working in a book shop part time. Like many people I two or three part time jobs to make ends me. But man that artwork stays with you. Personally think these ships would make excellent scale ships. Sorry folks but I'm back to a bit of Moorcock musing. I'm using the Moorcock mythologies for campaign ideas but not directly copying from them. 




I've been thinking about 'Spelljammer' specifically the artwork for the cover the 'Legend of the Spelljammer box set from '91. The Nineties sure seem like the decades for manta style sky ships but I've been thinking about now! The now of the campaign promise of Spelljammer. Love the idea of the Spelljammer but the execution left a lot to be desired for me as a dungeon master. 




Never let it be said that I'm ever a guy to leave any stone or campaign idea alone. Now I've been toying with 'Cha'alt' by Venger Satanis for some months now. Over the last couple of months I've toyed with played around, folded,spindled, & mutilated Cha'alt in no uncertain terms. Because of Cha'alt's Lovecraftian  status is it a place that counts as 'Chaotic evil' ?


But then I started going over my Michael Moorcock notes on the Von Bek family;"The von Beks, also known as the van Beeks, the Beks, the Beggs and the Becks, are an ancient, extended family who are important players of the Game of Time. The von Bek family, possibly due to their origin and fact that many members are Eternals, have spread through the Multiverse, and they exist in many realities." Are the Von Bek's, the Beggs, etc. Are the  Eternal's actually spreading the misery & chaos that they are fighting?! Or is it simply a case that the 'eternal champions are drawn to death,destruction, & chaos?! These things seems to follow them in in his or her wake. 



The  Eternals are inherit to the alignment system of Dungeons & Dragons  going all the way back to original Dungeons & Dragons with Law,Chaos, & Neutral.The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition Deities & Demigod brings home Elric's eternal champion alignment & its not pretty folks. This is not a nice NPC & could wreck a campaign quite easily but again this is the point. Elric is fated & doomed to his fate to end the world. 



Elric is known as:" Elric of Melniboné, also called The Albino Emperor, Elric Womanslayer, Elric Kinslayer, the Pale Prince of Ruins, The White Wolf, and many other names beside, is the four hundred and twenty-eighth (and final) emperor of Melniboné and an incarnation of the Eternal Champion." He's not to be taken lightly at all & I've seen dungeon masters use him as a NPC once or twice. The roles that Elric played was straight up vile villain in both of those campaigns. And I've got no argument about. 



Elric isn't a guy you bring home to mom unless mom is an empress you want dead & her soul sucked out by a chaos blade. That chaos is a lower world evil that can be trade under foot & its the sort of thing we see on Cha'alt as well. Cha'alt  isn't the kind of place that one goes lightly too. Its a fallen world not unlike McKinney's Carcosa where sanity & reason are by words for adventurers to tread underfoot. These campaign world settings  take the lives of PC's by the score. 

It is within these 'fallen worlds' that one finds the most daring fare, the greatest treasure, & the most sanity bending monsters. But its nothing without the two halves of the same coin Law & Chaos.. Or is it sanity & in sanity!? I'm just playing about a very long campaign chain here. But without the AD&D alignment system none of this makes any sense. I would say that there's a meeting point of the lower tier cosmic balance of Moorcock vs the almost Christian cosmology of C.S.Lewis's Space Trilogy with deep smatterings of Lovecraft thrown in. I'm not sure if this is the beginning of a campaign or random philosophical mental masturbation. Only time will tell.