A blog about sewing machine repairs,but mainly my hobbies which include old school role playing games, science fiction,films, horror, and general geekery. Sit down and stay a spell.
"The Heroic Fantasy Handbook is a rules supplement that brings the flavor of heroic fantasy to your favorite role-playing game. Cleaving away decades worth of assumptions and expectations about how characters heal, fight, and adventure, how magic works, what spells do, and more, the Heroic Fantasy Handbook offers a fresh way to play with familiar D20 fantasy mechanics."
Its been over a year since I looked over the Heroic Fantasy Handbook from Autarch for the Adventurer, Conqueror, King rpg. Looking back over the events surrounding this game still raises bile in the back of my throat. I love the denseness of ACK's & mentally began to quickly read through the Heroic Fantasy Handbook. There's so much to love about this book from the corruption system to the density of the classes. But this is not an easy book for the faint of heart but this is a tome for the players & their dungeon master. The Heroic Fantasy Handbook is its own tome with 16 new character classes inspired by the archetypes of heroic fantasy but what they really do is straddle the line someplace between Robert E Howard & Tolkein. But this book is very much its own beast & closely tied in with the domain rules from ACK's. Now this isn't a bad thing at all & I've probably gonna have the physical book printed out at some point. This book is a stand alone piece of the ACK's system & this ties in closely with the entire ACK's line of products. Looking in from the outside of this book I can't help but once again be drawn into the spell that the system weaves. I feel like grabbing my copy of the ACKS Player's Companion then go to town on a one shot adventure!
Its here before a single dice is cast that the DM is going to have to decide what systems from ACK's & these books are gonna see use at the table top level. ACK's presents lots of options for the DM to pick & choose that they'll need to bring the game that they want. This can be quite vexing for the newbie DM but with a bit of practice things should fall easily into place. Why because its all about domains. If it was a game that focused a lot on managing domains, I'd go with ACKS because in that particular element of the rules it's better (and note that the Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia did the best job with domain management of any official D&D ruleset). But we're not talking about that instead I'm here looking to bring a Sword & Sorcery domain game to life. This is where the Heroic Fantasy Handbook shines because of its magick system & well thought out PC classes.
The entirely new magic system, eldritch magic, designed to capture the flavor of heroic fantasy does an excellent job of doing just that. It takes the forms of Vancian & twists it to suit its own needs but in a quite clever way; "Magic in heroic fantasy is more subtle than the spectacular
effects which are commonplace in traditional ACKS games.
Spells tend to work with the existing environment, rather than
conjure effects from thin air. Enchantments and illusion are
commonplace, while elemental blasts are less so. This subtle, but
powerful magic, is called eldritch magic, and it constitutes a new
type of magic that has facets of both arcane and divine magic.
The spells on the three Eldritch Spells lists (on p. 120) represent
the common spells known to the practitioners of the eldritch
arts. These are by no means meant to be complete lists, for
eldritch spellcasters are a secretive lot that do not share their
knowledge easily; and many spells that were once known have
been forgotten, existing only in dusty tomes and rare grimoires,
or in the minds of slumbering undead lords.
Note: Some spells which could be built with eldritch magic
under the rules in the Player’s Companion have been
purposefully left off the Eldritch Spells lists because we felt
they did not fit with the flavor of heroic fantasy. The Judge
has the ultimate say over whether a particular eldritch spell
exists in his heroic fantasy setting.
Any spells on the Eldritch Spells list can be learned when
advancing in level. Spells not on the Eldritch Spells lists cannot
be learned when advancing in level, only by studying with
teacher, reading a book or scroll, or researching the spell in the
campaign world." All of this builds on what was put forth into The Auran Empire Primer & you get the sort of free flowing weirdness that we've come to expect from Adventurer,Conqueror, King. The question is where do I as a dungeon master take it?
The one thing that I've found with many of the products of Autarch is how they fit together as pieces of a mosaic system modular in execution. And how well defined as a whole they really are. For domain level play there is no other system that I'd use for OSR play. Please note that I have little interest in OSR kurfuffles or other controversies that seem to surround & confound my hobby. The only thing I'm interested in a fantastic game at the table top level
"The king requests your presence in the honorable kingdom of Norwold. If you're worthy, you may be appointed lord of a dominion filled with friendly villages, sturdy fortresses, and raging band of monsters.
Raging bands of monsters?
Well, yes, and you may have to lead your forces into a war or two. But you'll be ready for the challenge. You'll be ready for treacherous spies who conspire to steal you land. You'll be ready for a foul band of giants that raids your dominions. And you'll be ready for the inevitable clash of empires, the outcome of which may alter the fate of millions. You'll be ready! Won't you?
Test of the Warlords includes a complete campaign setting, several new NPCs, and dungeon and wilderness encounters, and guidelines for running a war between empires."
Even though CM1 Test of the Warlords by Douglas Niles is a BECMI Dungeons & Dragons module I've done very bad things with. A bit of history on this classic module; 'CM1: "Test of the Warlords" (1984), by Douglas Niles, was the first of nine Companion-level adventures for Basic D&D. It was published early in 1984.' We actually have to thank Frank Mentzer BECMI series for Basic D&D (1983-85) for raising the level of PC advancement and expanding the scope of Dungeons & Dragons. What CM1 Test of the Warlords does allows the player's PC's claim domains of their own & this makes the module very flexible in what it does. It puts your PC's center stage for the events of carving your own domains & empires. Make no mistake your PC's are going to be in the middle of vicious monsters & only the their king's purview to help hold things together.
This high level adventure makes the fortunes of PC's change with each encounter with winner takes all. Grab all of the maps from Atlas of Mystara. The PC's are going to be right in the eye of the storm to take all of the resources that are going to be up for grabs. "The Adventuring in the Northlands "by Giampaolo Agosta from Threshold Magazine issue 6 puts the layer of adventuring in the Northlands theme to the next level giving the dungeon master the advantage they need when dealing with this level of play. This high level adventure contains everything that's needed to have the PC's establish baronies of their own, build castles, rule a populace, and explore the wilderness. All of this is because the king of Norwold wants to expand the boundaries of his empire. But the mini empires of the PC's are going to be dealing with a coup back home. They'll have to step into the big shoes now once the coup happens.
Let's talk about the fact that this module is the merest skeleton of a campaign. Coupled with the war machine system this module makes it an empire building adventure that the dungeon master can use to customize their own campaign setting. Your PC's are going to have to deal with slicing the monster's throats & then building civilization assets. According to Timeline of Norwold by members of the Italian MMB on the Vaults of Pandius website you get a fan overview of the history of the area. Using this module with OSR systems there be adjustments in the details and levels are going to have to be made. For Test of the Warlords will be a simple matter of fifth grade mathematics in three places: the levels, the combat, and the domination systems.
Just like playing in a game of King Conan's era, the PC's here are going to be doing it all, from wilderness exploration to two wars and dealing with the machinations of several high level enemies across the board. The sword and sorcery vibe is strong along with the war gaming aspect of CM1. Your going to be dealing with a cast of characters straight out of a Shakespeare play all of exceptional level. Here's your cast of characters and their wonderful positions on the chess board of Test of the Warlords:
King Ericall of Norworld: lawful 28th level fighter ()
Lernal the Swill: neutral 6th level fighter
King Yarrvik the Just: lawful 9th level fighter (Oceansend)
Tarn Oakleaf: neutral 24th level druid
Madiera the Counselor: lawful 21st level magic user
Christina Marie Alanira: Neutral 25th level magic-user
Alak Dool: chaotic 19th level magic user
Sir Ernest Day: lawful 16th level fighter
Rutger Dag: neutral 15th level fighter
Sandralane of Glantri: lawful 16th level cleric
Max the First: chaotic 15th level fighter
Alissa Patrician: lawful 15th level fighter
Longtooth: chaotic 20th level thief
Mequisa, the Lawful:
Bethidia, the Neutral:
Chasandri, the Chaotic:
Oh don't worry only a few of them want to slit your PC's throat or get you into a bind or two or perhaps make sure you owe them a favor or two. All of the politics and intrigue give CM1 a bit of a back room good old boys aspect to the war that comes your way folks. The PCs must fight an epic war and go on several adventures to assure the survival of their newfound lands which will take months to play out in its entirety. Highly recommended!
"Dungeons of Dread is a collection of four classic, stand-alone Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventure modules -- S1: Tomb of Horrors, S2: White Plume Mountain, S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth -- complete with original black-and-white interior art."
Stay in a hobby long enough & you might witness your own play as you go at the table top coming back to haunt you. This is the case with Dungeons of Dread by Gary Gygax & Lawrence Schick. I was challenged today to create a campaign that uses the Astonishing Swordmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea and this cycle of adventures. Yes this has been done before with Realms of Horror. But Realms of Horror has some very weird choices in editing & content when it comes to actually running that super module as a campaign. But add to this the idea of running these as a Hyperborean campaign & things get even more interesting. But I've got some ideas for actually running these adventures as an adventure cycle on AS&SH's Hyperborea.
Let's start off here with the idea of S1: Tomb of Horrors (1978) by Gary Gygax & what the original killar dungeon is doing on Hyperborea. The idea is rather simple really not unlike Clark Ashton Smith's Empire of the Necromancer's story. Our demi lich has deep connnections to the royal bloodlines of Hyperborea especially within the capital & he's now challenging the best of the best adventurers of the land. Why?! Well to eliminate the competition of course. Our Demi lich awakens after the Green Death & goes about testing the best of the land.
If the characters survive their little vacation within S1: Tomb of Horrors (1978) by Gary Gygax then something that they've done within the tomb activates the original fun house of horrors Lawrence Schick's S2: White Plume Mountain (1979). This little bit of menace has been the product of its returning lunatic wizard whose now testing & killing adventurers by the score not to mention the reappearance of one of the original 'swords of power'. This is a sign that some prophecy of Hyperborea has been fulfilled & now the objects of power are hearkening a dark harbinger from space heading for favorite Sword & Sorcery setting. This sets up Gary Gygax's S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (1980) which is the original science fantasy crossover module. Here Pre Green Death era space craft has crashed into the Hyperborean mountains & is creating havoc as the monsters ravage the local countryside.
The entire module doesn't really have to change at all to suit AS&SH's Hyperborea. The space craft is intact but totally insane as factions & monsters fight for dominance over the various inhabitants of the space craft. The robots are still dumping the alien monsters into the countryside but there's the brave adventurers to take them on. I suggest using this adventure in a temperate zone of hyperborea because of the distribution of the monsters. My suggestion is to locate Gary Gygax's S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks at the base of the spiral mountains so to easy the PC's into the thick of things.
While dealing with S3 the PC's find a lead onto an ancient hoard of Hyperborean treasures beyond compare. The player's PC's must find the The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth & deal with the blow back from this classic module by Gary Gygax. The spiral mountains make a very tempting target once word gets out about The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth By Gary Gygax is a classic & this module is easily adaptable to your old school campaigns.
Adventurers by the score descend upon this location & turn up dead or not at all. The reputation of the caverns grows with each telling and the players are gonna have to deal with rival NPC adventuring parities. They'll also have to deal with the tons of monsters that serve a behind the throne toadies. All in all these are classic modules and highly adaptable to any dungeon master's old school or OSR needs.
And no I'm not looking for a free module or any such crap as that. What the kickstarter has got me thinking about is how to morph in some of the unconventional monsters of the Monster Manual II into my interpretation of the Hyperborea setting. So I'm essentially thinking of doing a one off adventure with one of the Monster Manual II monsters.
Of the two modules featured in the kickstarters are mini campaigns unto themselves. What I'm looking for is a powerful monster for a one shot with the potential to grow into something really interesting & challenging. I think I've found my candidate in the form of the thessalhydra. These horrors make perfect avatars of the big bad from AS&SH's world background. Here's the publication history on this horror from the Monster Manual II; "The thessalhydra first appeared in first edition in the originalMonster Manual II(1983).[1]The thessalmera appeared inDragon#94 (February 1985).[2]
The thessalmonster (including the thessalgorgon, the thessalhydra, the thessalmera, and the thessaltrice) appeared in second edition for the Forgotten Realms setting in the Monstrous Compendium Forgotten Realms Appendix (1989),[3] and reprinted in the Monstrous Compendium Annual Volume Three (1996).[4]
The thessalhydra appeared in third edition in Dungeon #134 (May 2006)." So given its background there's some really nice room to add it into a game as a Sword & Sorcery mid level boss monster.Why?! "This family of hybrid monsters was created by Thessalar, a powerful lich of the World of Greyhawkcampaign setting dwelling in the Wormcrawl Fissure.
The first thessalmonster was so genetically unstable that it could breed with other monsters to create new variants. When the original was killed, no new breeds of thessalmonsters could be made." This monster is completely wrong for AS&SH I can already here the naysayer's out there shaking their heads. Well,there's already a Pathfinder version of the the thessalhydra here. So its already in the OGL. But there's a Clark Ashton Smith connection with the CAS story the Coming of the White Wyrm part of the Hyperborea cycle. The idea here is very simple, one cycle of the world of Earth is ending & the new world is about to begin. The old world is being swept away by the Great Old Ones in the form of the White Worm. In AS&SH the thessalmonsters are the middle management of the old world cycle, left overs that time has passed by & their rather a bit pissed about this turn of events. So any humans that they run across are gonna suffer.
These are not your garden variety monsters instead these are the creations of the Old Ones and appropriately are only found guarding the remotest outposts of the Hyperboreans and their ilk. I'm going to be sticking with the 'Ecology of the Chimera' By Ed Greenwood from Dragon issue #94.
In point of fact I'm going to be constructing the dungeon & adventure around the monster not vice versa. The monster is very much connected with my campaign history of the Hyperborean setting. That's part of the beauty of using an OSR campaign setting or any Dungeons & Dragons setting to customize it to suit your personal table top level campaign world. Then inviting others to come in & play in it. More as this develops.
The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide By Gary Gygax & Mike Carr has some very iconic parts to it but the book itself is a classic. The book is a snap shot in time when Advanced Dungeons & Dragons ruled the table. But what makes the The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide stand out even today to me is the utility of the book. Everything for the AD&D dungeon master is here from how to host a good game to how to do house rules fast as well as on the fly.
The wiki entry has a small thumb nail review of the AD&D DMG; "The original Dungeon Masters Guide was reviewed by Don Turnbull in issue #16 of the magazine White Dwarf (December 1979/January 1980). Turnbull commented mostly on the size of the book, "I would say that only the most severe critic could point at a minor omission, let alone a serious one." What I love about the original AD&D Dungeon master's Guide is the random dungeon generator; "A feature of the first edition Dungeon Masters Guide was the random dungeon generator. The generator allowed the Dungeon Master, by the rolling of dice, to generate a dungeon adventure "on the fly". A dungeon complete with passageways, rooms, treasure, monsters, and other encounters could easily and randomly be constructed as the player progressed. It could be used with several people or a single player. The generator was not included in subsequent editions of the Dungeon Master's Guide but made a re-appearance in the fifth edition Dungeon Master's Guide." I'm trying to think about how many campaign nights I've used this book with?! I've used the DMG with Boot Hill & Gamma World even when running OSR games such as Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Because of the conversion guidelines from the Dungeon Master's Guide I has successful Gamma World games. Boot Hill it was the same thing especially using the Random Strumpet table as a stand in for those Western Brothels.
The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master Guide book saved my behind more then once when I had players due in fifteen minutes. Some folks see the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide as," The only TRUE version of Advanced Dungeons & Dragon!". I'm nor really that sort of a DM. But I'm more then paying attention this because what it mean in the 20 or thirty minutes of combat, that you can see coming. The AD&D DMG is also usable because of the tons of random table generators." figuring damage and resolving encounters in a typical adventure, tables and rules for creating characters, and lists of the various abilities of the different classes of characters." This is the heart & soul of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons experience & while I'm waxing on nostalgically. There actually is a point to this blog post & that point is that the triumphant work of the Dungeon Master's Guide.
I actually saw this movie at a drive in back in 1979, I was nine years old. It pretty much screwed me up for life. The movie plot is as follows: It is the year 2130 A.D. An Earth exploratory ship, the USS Palomino, discovers a black hole with a lost ship, the USS Cygnus, just outside its event horizon. Deciding to solve the mystery of the Cygnus are: the Palomino's Captain, Dan Holland; his First Officer, Lieutenant Charlie Pizer; journalist Harry Booth; scientist and ESP-sensitive Dr. Kate McCrae, whose father was the Cygnus's First Officer; Dr. Alex Durant, the expedition's civilian leader; and the robot known as V.I.N.CENT. The Palomino attempts a dangerous fly-by of the darkened ship. As they come within close range of it, the buffeting they experience (due to the black hole's gravity) suddenly ceases. They bring more instruments to bear on the derelict, but do not even realize the gravity-free zone is artificial; slipping outside it, they are almost drawn into the black hole, an abyss from which no one can escape...
.There are a few things about the movie that just jump out at you The black hole is one of them. To my mind it was like a bath tube drain on reality. Crushing, sucking, eating everything around it. It might have been a new god if there ever was one. It was relentless. The thing was like a red hued hell mouth. The soundtrack brought this right in. Then there are the robots but maximilan is the one that really stands out in my mind's eye. This evil red thing looks like a robot designed by Satan himself. This multi tooled thing of evil is straight out of a Lovecraftian nightmare. I've seen all kinds of theories about Max on the internet. The bot was the devil watching over the Doctor, the bot was actually the doctor & the mad scientist was simply a clone, & Max was the embodiment of the doctor's genocidal evil in robot form. The list is pretty endless.
Then there's the The U.S.S. Cygnus. WOW!!! What a beautiful ship.That holds more then a few deadly secrets!
Vincent & Old Bob are great little bots & somewhat in the vein of R2D2 & C3PO but they have their own charm. As can be seen from this scene. Robert Forster is the quietly authoritative captain of an exploration ship that stumbles across the seemingly derelict ship, and Anthony Perkins, Yvette Mimieux, Ernest Borgnine, and Joseph Bottoms fill out his crew.
Then we've got this guy! Dr. Hans Reinhardt is the heart & evil soul of this outfit. He is both the past of the Cynus & its present. He's a Dr.Nemo, Mr.Spock, & Victor Frankenstein all rolled into one. Only he's got the ego to wrestle with the black hole & the will to develop the technology that allows him to survive amid the most destructive force in the universe! At a price though.
I'm not mentioning the crew because well go watch the movie.. The influences on another film like say Event Horizon are pretty clear
The Black Hole & The OSR
One wouldn't think that there's a lot to work with here. One would be wrong. Let hit the highlights..
The Cynus - This ship has megadungeon all over it. Seriously this monstersity has a number of decks plus hydroponics, factories, drones, abandon sections, etc. The ship is made to be explored! Do you think that the crew of the Palomino is the first aboard this haunted derelict of a ship? What other secrets are aboard. The gravity generators keeping the ship away from the monster black hole, the incredible reactor systems, the secret note books of Hans himself!
ESP-sensitive scientist Dr. Kate McCrae & here relationship with the rest of the crew. Hans treats her as if Psionics isn't that big of a deal. Perhaps its not in 2130 A.D.
What's up with this future world of 2130 A.D.? The world seems pretty exploration happy. We're expanding outward into the universe in this movie & not all of space is a happy place at all. What's up with those other ships that the Palomino goes through while identifying the Cynus? What happened to those other ships? Maybe there's an adventure waiting in the wings right there.
The movie tests the boundaries of reality at the edge of the event horizon. There's an atmosphere here. What's up with that? Perhaps the black hole touches the outer darkness between the stars? Who knows what might emerge from some planar nether world
Could there have been a few survivors of the Dr. Hans Reinhardt mutiny? Perhaps their still out there in cold sleep. There might be an adventure right there.
Perhaps the hell that the crew of the Cynus reaches isn't entirely closed off & there may be those willing to serve vs working in the strange hell like place.
Perhaps a rescuae ship is sent after the Palomino & encounters the remains of the ship. The trail leads to the black hole where the Max/Dr. Hans Reinhardt entity are still trapped. Things might go from bad to worse.
How did Hans Reinhardt build all of those robots & Max plus those anti gravity generators, the reactors etc. Where might he have gotten those types of technology? May be he found an artifact of this type & had his intellect boosted Here
There are times when conversations with friends can be engaging and eye opening such as today when I got together with friends to discuss and play a bit of Mutant Future. We began the second half of the conversation that we were having two weeks ago about HG Well's Time Machine and the Morlocks
Tonight we started to talk about the Eloi and the relationship between the Morlocks & the Eloi. Its actually the Eloi who are really the key. Lately I've been revisiting Mutant Future and mixing it up with the Advanced Labryth Lord Companion. This all comes down from HG Well's Time Machine and the caste system ecology of the novel. But not all is as it seems as I learned tonight.
When I think of the Time Machine I think of the iconic George Pals Time Machine from 1960. The Pal film takes on a journey into a possible AD802,701. His Eloi are degenerate elf like short beings with mostly human traits and a very passive society preyed upon by the Morlocks. The film is so entrenched in science fiction fans minds that it has appeared in countless television shows, books, and pop culture references. The Eloi go back much further though.
In 1895 the Eloi first appeared in HG Wells novel the Time Machine and Wiki has a very good breakdown of the post human species; "By the year AD 802,701, humanity has evolved into two separate species: the Eloi and the Morlocks, whereof the Eloi live a banal life of ease on the surface of the earth, while the Morlocks live underground, tending machinery and providing food, clothing, and infrastructure for the Eloi. The narration suggests that the separation of species may have been the result of a widening split between different social classes. Having solved all problems that required strength, intelligence, or virtue, the Eloi have slowly become dissolute and naive: they are described as smaller than modern humans, with shoulder-length curly hair, pointed chins, large eyes, small ears, small mouths with bright red thin lips, and sub-human intelligence. They do not perform much work, except to feed, play, and mate; and when Weena falls into a river, none of the other Eloi helps her (she is rescued instead by the Time Traveler). Periodically, the Morlocks capture individual Eloi for food; and because this typically happens on moonless nights, the Eloi are terrified of darkness.
A portion of the book written for the New Review version, later published as a separate short story, reveals that a visit by the Time Traveller to the even more distant future results in his encountering rabbit-like hopping herbivores, apparently the descendants of the Eloi. They are described as being plantigrade, with longer hind legs and tailless, being covered with straight greyish hair that "thickened about the head into a Skye terrier's mane", having human-like hands (described as fore feet) and having a roundish head with a projecting forehead and forward-looking eyes that were obscured by lank hair." Here we get our first glimpse into a possible artificially evolved species. But why do I say they're an artificially evolved species? Well according to the Mutant Future wiki Eloi gain the following mutations; "Mutations: Atrophied Cerebellum, Bizarre Appearance (nymph-like features), Weak Will.
This is a weak PC, so a player would have to play carefully or treat as a challenge." Eloi are known to be; "
The Eloi are a race of meek, delicate humans, who are the descendants of the social elite. Generations of having every and all needs taken care of has resulted in them becoming vary docile and hedonistic. They are also not really smart, nor are they considerate of others. In their isolated, well hidden communities, they live in a perpetual bliss of drug-induced fantasies and sexual orgies. In the wild, they are just helpless animals to more savage creatures, who see them as easy pray. Some industrious creatures (like Morlocks) would provide all their needs -- from food and shelter, to drugs and protection. The only price is that they are nothing more then human livestock. Do to their unearthly beauty, docile nature and willingness to preform any carnal act, they have become highly valued sex-slaves.
An untouched Eloi community is usually an underground arcology, space station, or generation spaceship with a limited capacity. Population is controlled by special enforcers that hunts down rogue Eloi, who refuse to die a after their "last day" - an expiration date, based on their birthday (the maximum age could range between 16 - 30). "last day" could range between a trip inside a suicide booth, to an elaborate mass-suicide ritual." Yes there is a solid connection between Logan's Run and the Time Machine for reasons that we'll get into in a moment. And these reasons are tied within their origins.
The Eloi's origins can be traced into the novella "A Story of the Days To Come" written in 1897 and was first published in the June to October 1897 issues of The Pall Mall Magazine. It was later included in an 1899 collection of Wells's short stories, Tales of Space and Time. "This novella depicts two lovers in a dystopian future London of the 22nd century and explores the implications of excessive urbanization, class warfare, and advances in the technology of medicine, communication, transportation, and agriculture. Like "When the Sleeper Wakes", published in the same year, the stories extrapolate the trends Wells observed in nineteenth-century Victorian London two hundred years into the future.
The London of the early 22nd century is over 30 million people in population, with the lower classes living in subterranean dwellings, and the middle and upper classes living in skyscrapers and largely communal accommodations. Moving walkways interconnect the city, with fast air-travel and superhighways available between cities. The countryside is largely abandoned." It also happens to be the precursor to When The Sleeper Wakes which was published in 1910. The plot of ' A Story Of The Days To Come ' is interesting on several levels and goes something like this;
A wealthy heiress falls in love with a middle-class worker of romantically quaint disposition. In part one, the woman's father hires a hypnotist to program his daughter to instead choose a more appropriate suitor selected by him. When that plot is unraveled, the couple secretly marry and flee into the abandoned countryside and attempt to live off the land. After being driven back into the city, the couple live a modest middle-class lifestyle until their money runs out. At that point, they move to the "underneath" area of London to toil in physical labor as lower-class workers. Finally, their issues are resolved through the machinations of her spurned would-be suitor, and they resume a middle-class lifestyle.
Among other things, this short story appears to anticipate technical developments toward massive urbanization, skyscrapers, moving sidewalks, superhighways, and intercontinental aircraft traveling at jet speeds.
Socially and economically, however, it predicts a very stratified class structure and a largely communal society where few mega-corporations control all means of production. It also predicts hypnosis as a supplement or replacement to psychology, "creches" where child-rearing is transferred from parents to professionals, and a megapolis served by city-wide moving walkways and escalators, with enormous cities (four in England) separated by abandoned countryside." All of the plot elements of When The Sleeper Wakes are in play and we get to see the very mechanisms of the Eloi starting to be played out in the society of 'A Story of The Days To Come'. The dystopian future dovetails quiet nicely into the Logan Run's style stratified culture of Wells world.
When the Sleeper Wakes is a about Graham a man from contemporary London who sleeps over the course of decades, and awakens exactly 203 years later, in futuristic 2100. This is a stratified society where hundreds of thousands of Morlock like workers toil underground and the elites of the White Council rule from above. The elite society resembles the decadent Eloi and the novel traces the protagonist's journey into subversion and rebellion among the various factions of the city. London is portrayed as a dehumanised, industrialized quagmire caught in perpetual darkness. The lower classes are forced to work day and night in the factories, having nothing more to look forward to than some cheap amusements. As he examines this grim scene, Graham learns that Ostrog has ordered his troops to London to disarm the remaining revolutionary workers.
It is from these elites that we start to get the clearer picture of who these Eloi are or will be. There is a further class of warrior Eloi who carry out the will of the White Council in the form of Hunter Eloi or the Sand Men from Logan's Run. These are dirrived from the armed forces that carry out the will of the White Council.
And what about the White Council themselves? Those ruling elite are Hyper Eloi who have developed hyper consciousnesses and gain the following mutations Bizarre Appearance (nymph-like features), Empathy, Frailty (infertility), Metaconcert, Mind Trust, Neural Telepathy, Tinker Affinity, Reduced Immune System from Mutant Future. Who are these elite bastards? "Hyper-Eloi are a class of Eloi who have developed a degree of "super conscious." They are considerably more intelligent then normal Eloi, and they consider their own judgement and morality to be superior of all other races, but they are actually quite arrogant, aloof, and self-righteous. They may ignore the plight - the starvation; the brutality; the human-condition - of the outside world, but those that don't, would ether force outside to conform to the methods that allowed is type of Eloi to become Hyper-Eloi, or to exterminate the "animal-like savages" like vermin. In the later, they would rather bread a race of super-soldiers to carry-out the extermination, then to do it themselves" This would go on to explain the machinations of Ostrog from When The Sleeper Wakes. This species would later go on to evolve into the Eloi that we have come to know but they are not the only example of the seemingly docile post human species.
But the Eloi are not simply an artificial species that exists in one time line. In 1956 the science fiction film World Without End came out. The film proceeded the George Pal effort by four years and had a plot so similar to HG Wells Time Machine that the rumors are that the Well's estate sued the production company of the film.
The film is a reverse text book example of Eloi and Morlock ecology here's some of the background according to Wiki; "In March 1957, Commander Dr. Eldon Galbraithe (Nelson Leigh), engineer Henry Jaffe (Christopher Dark), radioman Herbert Ellis (Rod Taylor) and scientist John Borden (Hugh Marlowe), are returning to Earth from the first spaceflight, a reconnaissance trip around Mars. Suddenly, their spaceship is somehow accelerated to incredible velocities, and they are knocked unconscious. Their ship crash lands on a snow-covered mountain. When they venture out, they discover that they have become victims of time dilation and are now in Earth's future.
They theorize, from seeing time-worn gravestones and after their ship's instruments register heightened residual radiation, that a devastating atomic war had broken out in 2188, and that they are at least 200 years past that date. (They later learn that the year is 2508.) Jaffe is particularly hard hit, as he realizes that his wife and children have long since died.
After surviving an ambush by giant, mutant spiders, they are attacked by one of two competing remnants of human society. The "mutates" (as the astronauts label them) are violent, primitive surface dwellers. They have mutated due to generations of exposure to heightened radioactivity. (However, the background radiation has decreased to tolerable levels, and the men later learn that normal humans are often born to the mutates. These, however, are enslaved.)
Seeking shelter from the attacking mutates in a cave, the four men discover the entrance to an underground city, whose residents are the descendants of those who fled there from the atomic war. These people live in a high-tech, sophisticated culture. They are a peaceful group led by Timmek (Everett Glass), the president of the ruling council. Underground, the men have grown less virile, and there are fewer and fewer children born each generation. In contrast, the women remain physically vital (and ready for romance). Elain (Shirley Patterson), admires a shirtless Herbert Ellis, commenting that the astronauts are "more muscular than our men". Deena (Lisa Montell), rescued from the surface as a child, falls in love with Ellis.
The astronauts try to persuade the underground people to arm themselves and reclaim the surface, but they are content with their comfortable existence."
World Without End could be thought of as another alternative timeline for an old school retroclone campaign from the time machine all of the trappings are perfectly lined up with classic 1950's sci fi film. Since the video game series Fallout has been in vogue World Without End is a perfect post apocalyptic fodder. So Eloi might exist across multiple alternative dimensions and Earths, why would this be? This might be explained by the Morlocks themselves seeding various worlds with colony farms of Eloi to harvest at will. This might partially be true. But this might help to explain the existence of divergence in the existence of the Eloi from the 2002 Time Machine film. These Eloi though are no different then any of the others described in this article all stem from the same Eloi genome simply engineered for different traits and artificial genetic mutations.
There might be a far more insidious explanation; there are several races that use the Eloi as post human livestock and have for quite sometime. This also includes the Brain Lashers from Mutant Future. We've seen they're a race with a long line of using alien caste warriors, thinkers and more in their alien society. There are several reasons for this, easy of implantation, self sustaining live stock, & food source with a built in management group. The brain lashers have the mutations, time, and alien technology to clone, seed, and maintain these Eloi colonies. Other species of OSR monsters who deal with them are easily likely to pick up on their advanced alien super science methods.
Brainlashers also have the drive and incredible will power necessary to carry out extended exo colony farming projects such as this spreading the Eloi taint far and wide across several plane Prime time lines. I've used Skirmisher Publishing's Brain Lashers in the past. There have been several surprises when PC's have broken into the various palaces of green porcelain in the wastelands of my campaigns only to come face to face with these other dimensional farmers of the Eloi in the wastelands. The Forbidden Monsters of Foree: Brainlashers (Cardstock CharactersTM) From Skirmisher Publishing has been one of my resources when using these behind the scenes movers and campaign shakers in the past.
The Eloi should never be under estimated when encountered in the wastelands they are far more dangerous and degenerate then they first appear. Many PC's have died in the mistaken belief that these simple appearing wastelanders are all that they seem.
