Results so far, our campaign

 G3, third level, mostly clear.  Room 8 and room 15(?). 

Wand of viscous globs… used the 5e version.  Will only last an hour… sunlight (sunsword) will destroy in one hour. Kid beat me to it, used dimension door.  Smart.  

Killed 8, aka half the drow with a level 8 spell. Rest of drow retreated.

Then uncovered… the Entrope (2e monster). For next time!

The Entrope is a fairly difficult sounding foe till you figure him out. 

• https://adnd2e.fandom.com/wiki/Entrope
• https://www.completecompendium.com/appendix/entrope/
• Some 2e stats below... so think of them in 2e terms and convert.
• For 5e conversion: I'm going to add 1 die to each super attack AoE thing... hell maybe I should add two, but we'll see. 
• For 5e conversion: Maybe add a +5 per melee dmg. 
• WHAT ELSE
• 2e stats below, as I was saying...
• Hit Dice: 11+6  --->>88+6 max,  so in 5e terms probably stay around that 100-150HP area. 
• XP Value: 10,000 for 2e, (that means dangerous at medium to even medium high levels maybe even in 5e).
• Dangerous tone right off the bat in description- There are holes throughout the multiverse. Call them conduits, portals or any other name, they're still holes. The Inner Planes are no exception. In fact, these planes in particular are full of tiny leaks where bits of one element seep into another plane. Some graybeards theorize that one day, in the far distant reaches of the future, the borders of the Elemental Planes will completely break down and all the elements will combine. Such a thing could signal the end of the multiverse, if it's true.
• Combat: Because the entrope can literally break down the fabric of reality, it's nothing to fool around with. Anywhere within the Inner Planes, the beast can “eat” through elermental borders, creating a small, temporary hole in space leading to any other Inner Plane. The rent results in a mass of the foreign element bursting into the plane with great power. While the entrope itself isn't harmed by this action, anyone within 25 feet is subject to the elemental explosion. The results depend on which plane the hole leads to (a decision made by the entrope):
• Air, Earth, Mineral, Ooze, Salt, Water: Matter or air explodes through the hole with great force, inflicting 3d10 points of impact damage (save versus breath weapon for half). Victims must save versus breath weapon or be knocked down and/or back 10 feet; they're also stunned for 1 round afterward.
• Ash, Dust, Smoke, Steam: Particulate matter bursts through the tear, inflicting 2d6 points of impact damage (save versus breath weapons for half). What's more, all victims must save versus poison or cough and choke for 1d6 rounds, incapacitated.
• Fire, Lightning, Positive Energy, Radiance: Raw energy gushes through the rent, inflicting 8d6 points of damage (save versus breath weapon for half).
• Ice, Magma: Energy (along with varying amounts of matter) erupts through the tear, inflicting 6d6 points of heat or cold damage (save versus breath weapon for half). Victims must save versus breath weapon or be knocked down and/or back 10 feet.
• Negative Energy: This hole sucks the life energy from all victims, draining one experience level from each.
• Vacuum: Matter and energy is drawn into this rent. The implosion inflicts 3d6 points of damage (save versus breath weapon for half) on victims and requires them to make a save versus death magic to avoid being pulled into the plane of Vacuum before the hole closes.
• The entrope can open these holes once every three rounds. The rest of the time, it defends itself with two huge claws (1d8 points of damage each) and a gigantic tooth-filled maw (1d12 points of damage).
• 
  
• The strange creature is also immune to the effects of all elements, even ignoring impact damage from thrown boulders or similar attacks. Graybeards know of only two ways to harm an entropy[entrope they meant]: strike it with a magical weapon of +2 or greater enchantment, or subject it to nonelemental-based spells such as cause light wounds, magic missile, and so on.
• ok
• So in 5e Terms - can say arcane type dmg would work, like magic missile or eldrich blast. I might still stick to +2 magic weapons or greater, since the party has SOME of those. 
• NOPE, they mention Radiant. Would RADIANT dmg count... that'd make the sunsword yet another counter to something so... not sure it should count. Think about it though. Radiant spells aren't super common, the warlock has them and has eldrich blast. Maybe that'd be OK since only Sunbeam would work for Druid....

Sidenote, what is this?! https://www.reddit.com/r/dndmonsters/comments/yl9ims/monster_manual_expanded_ii_2nd_edition_update_2/

Movie - Night of the Comet

 Better than expected. What a slice of 1980s west coast teen movie… favorite pieces so far are

• The competition around initials on arcade games… Tempest was cool. 
• After practice with a Mac-10 machinegun, it keeps jamming… the younger sister says something like “That’s the problem with these things. Daddy would have gotten us an uzi.”  This is definitely 1980s lore we all knew. 

Origins and future influence 

• 28 Days Later.  Speed zombies.  Empty city. 
• Saun of the dead. Zombie comedy. Empty city.  

The Odyssey TV Series from 1997 is truer

 Things I'm liking:

• Christopher Lee's scene... that whole into the lava with the goat scene was great. The poetic language, great. 
• Scylla is freaky and scary. Looked 10 times cooler than the Aliens-Egg-Laying-tube-worm-tail looking one from the 2026 movie. 
• Main guy being of Italian heritage makes him seem a lot closer than Matt Damon being Greek. 
• 
  

Art - covers of Dragon mag in 1990s

 Supermgood, but what IS that thing https://www.completecompendium.com/catalog/dr/Dragon172/

Dozen more https://www.completecompendium.com/catalog/dr/

Foreshortening dragon face is great https://www.completecompendium.com/catalog/dr/Dragon238/

The Odyssey 2026 movie... whelp, kind of disappointing, but some good

Disappointing. I tried to like it more for the kid. It's not terrible. But it was disappointing in:

• 1. Setting. Drab as fk. Where's that cool Mediterranean cave & island world? 
• 2. Casting
• 3. Historical accuracy in look
• 4. Modern day dialog, dear lord
• 5. The monsters were not cool, they went for gross. The cyclops was passable, maybe, but... I lie, I did not like the design look, a twisted face and nose with a "missing" eye, though the actor/CGI was fine. Scylla... lol, you will never see a picture of it online b/c it was so.... meh.
• 6. Body horror, yes body horror in this tale is about as weird as you would imagine. 
• 7. Audio sucked. Whispering dialog all day, hard to hear. Then super loud terribly distorted sounds during action. 

And this reddit post , the first couple of paragraphs, knocks it out of the park on what it did incorrectly. Once it rants about Matt Damon's Odysseus as being too "above reproach" i disagree. I can get past that because in a MOVIE I do like a hero who is a good guy. The kids were flipping out about how in class, they taught how bad Odysseus was, etc. While, yeah, as a kid myself I was completely pissed at him for leaving his family for 10-20 years, and shacking up with the Nymph and witch, ... I hate all hero types in most stories when I think about them in a realistic way b/c they are ALWAYS screwing over their family ... when I want entertainment, I like the hero to be likeable. That's all. 

And then the post says what they did to Odysseus is "This downgrading of the moral architecture of the original work reminds me of what Guillermo del Toro did to Frankenstein." I say wrong wrong wrong, it is an UPGRADE of the moral architecture. I hate it when critics think being morally a shitbag is a better story. Fuck 'em. Well I'll excuse this b/c it is perhaps the main point of the original story, for some reason. I guess it as a story has endured for two reasons 1) supernatural coolness for my brain types and 2) shitbag morals for the gossip crowd brain types.

And this dude gives details on all the good parts of the movie, which I seem to agree with mostly (except I hate not seeing real Greece, not seeing cool monsters, etc.): by thigerlel

"There's no Greece in the movie because it's not about Greece. It uses Odysseus's journey to talk about the 20th Century, which is also why there' s the Bronze Age line. By coming up with the Horse, Odysseus breaks the implicit mythical trust humanity had on each other, a la Pandora or Eve unleashing sin. The veterans of Troy become the Sea People, who spread arround genocide in Troy, pillaging in other islands, rape if Cercei hadn't been prepared. Odysseus isn't curious in this version because he's guilty, and his delay in getting home is reframed as him having become so twisted he can't look at his old family in the eyes again. He listens to the sirens not because he's full of whimsy, but to suffer for all that he's done.  He created an atomic bomb, there's no putting it back in the box, and their civilization will crumble until another one rises that will forget their mistakes and repeat them (us). It's an origin story for our current affairs. Odysseus is certainly a story teller. The structure of the film is less about him being passive and more about him orally narrating events to Calypso just as the story was originally spread around. In fact, there are no fantastical elements in the movie; creatures only appear in stories told to other characters. The landscapes in these tales often lack delineation, becoming surreal, endless beaches reminiscent of the Freudian sea of the unconscious as Odysseus's tale is nothing but a way for him to work though his feelings. Athena, who seems the most tangible mythical element, is revealed to be the face of the child Odysseus caused to be beheaded in Troy, just Odysseus's conscience. The actors look modern and the armors look out of place because it's a story about all time periods, extending into the future perpetually (they still look like shit)"

History medieval Europe

 Greatly done by an Irishman, no bloddy ai crap  

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kVEldvGXg4w&t=337s

Free pdf Dolmenwood module

 The Weaver and the Redcaps. On the official website of anecrotic gnome. 

Old Star Wars concept art paintings

 Are the best  this yt has more than ive ever seen

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Eepb2B4z3uE

Ettercap, Ettercop, Cobweb, Spiderweb

 These things are all related. Check out the whole Wordsmith entry for it:

This week’s theme
Words with hidden animals

This week’s words
auspicate
ettercap

The Crying Spider, 1881

Art: Odilon Redon

ettercap or attercop

PRONUNCIATION:

(ET-uhr-kap or AT-uhr-kop)

MEANING:

noun:
1. A bad-tempered or spiteful person.
2. A spider.

 

ETYMOLOGY:

A variant of attercop, from Old English attorcoppa, from ator (poison, venom) + coppa (spider). It’s the same element that shows up in cobweb, literally spider’s web. Earliest documented use: before 1525.

NOTES:

If you know someone who is always spinning webs of gossip or ready to bite your head off, this is the perfect label for them. The form attercop got a modern boost from J.R.R. Tolkien in The Hobbit. Bilbo Baggins uses it to taunt the giant, venomous spiders of Mirkwood, and the insult works. No spider, Tolkien tells us, has ever liked being called attercop.

USAGE:

“At least we can see the auld ettercap into the ground now, Christ be praised.”
Pat McIntosh; The Counterfeit Madam; Constable; 2011.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead. -Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist, Nobel laureate (21 Jul 1899-1961)

Sound of fantasy horn (real) - Carnyx horn, Iron Age.

 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=68Hds0OYrbg&ra=m

Time 8:27

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/06/06/the-carnyx-a-long-curved-instrument-used-by-the-celts-during-the-iron-age/ says -- Prior to 2004, fragments of only five such instruments had been preserved, from Germany, Switzerland, France, Scotland, and Romania, but in November 2004 archaeologists discovered more than 500 fragments of unique military and religious objects in a Gallo-Roman site at Tintignac, in southern France. These objects, all made of iron and bronze, included 10 helmets, a dozen swords and scabbards, iron spearheads, a shield, two animal heads, one foreleg, a cauldron, and seven carnyces. Once one of the carnyces was restored, it proved to be the most complete carnyx ever found.

wikiped -- Six of the carnyces had boar's heads, while the seventh appears to be a serpent-like monster. 

-- The carnyx (pl.: carnyces; /kɑːnɪks/, KAR-nicks) is a wind instrument that was common in Celtic cultures during the Iron Age, between c. 200 BC and c. 200 AD. It is a type of trumpet made of bronze with an elongated S shape, held so that the long straight central portion was vertical and the short mouthpiece end section and the much wider bell were horizontal in opposed directions. The bell was styled in the shape of the head of an open-mouthed boar or other animal.

The Celts used the carnyx in warfare, probably to incite troops to battle and to intimidate opponents, as Polybius recounts.[1] The instrument's significant height—typically around 1.8 metres (6 feet), standing as tall as its player—allowed it to be heard over the heads of the participants in battles or ceremonies.[2] The carnyx was not only used by the Celts but also by the Dacians in modern Romania, and depictions have even been found on a Buddhist sculpture in India, attesting to the far-flung connections of the Iron Age world.[3]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtefactPorn/comments/10dvmb3/a_nearly_complete_1st_century_bce_carnyx_found_in/ says -- A nearly complete 1st century BCE carnyx found in 2004 at Tintignac, France (the one in the left picture, with a reconstruction in the right). Fashioned as a snarling boar, the carnyx was a war horn used by the Iron Age Celts between c. 200 BCE and c. 200 CE

Swords in the Mist, Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser - I now read

 Starting Swords in the Mist now.  

Wikiped says Contents

"The Cloud of Hate" (1963)
"Lean Times in Lankhmar" (1959)
"Their Mistress, the Sea" (1968)
"When the Sea-King's Away" (1960)
"The Wrong Branch" (1968)
"Adept's Gambit" (1947)

Origins

• Could the 1980s movie “the fog” by Carpenter be influenced by this first story of an evil sentient fog with an evil red light in it… disguised as normal fog. Pg. 17 has four killers walking nearly invisible through the fog… with weapons attacking folks and feeding the fog. 
• Dnd - eldrich things (magic from wizards at least in part) mentioned - lightning from clouds, black coalescing shadows that suffocate men in a forest, sea serpents, smoke from a wizard’s fire that snakes out to strangle. 
• Pg. 27 Issek of the jug vs. Jugged Issek, who was confined in an earthenware jar for 17 years. Could it be the idea for the weird goofy living Jug/pot people of Elden Ring???
• Mingol glue, pg.59…. Mayne lead to dnd super glue… i forget the name. 
• Pg 89, zombies it looks like. Tho watery sailors turned zombies of some calmer sort.
• 
  

Trivia

• Mouser is revealed as perhaps slightly evil, more so than Fafhrd for sure, on pg. 18. The fog was easily resisted by Fafhrd, not so easily by Mouser. 
• Sheelba is described as demonic and Ningauble as alien and multi-serpentine… through others’ views… in “Lean times in Lankhmar”. 
• Fafhrd is pronounced close to “fafherd” so it says in “Lean times…” pg. 24.

Analysis

• Story 1. Solid. Freaky cultists, magic fog monsters, fighting. 
• Story 2. Overly descriptive (of boring or silly religious dudes) in the first half of story 2. I mean it is kinda entertaining, but it’s too much for me. Need action. Need weird and fantastical. Update - the whole thing was a comedy, no fantasy. This was the "change up the heroes... make them look different... one gains weight, etc." thing. 
• Story 3,super short… probably written to tie stories together.  Nothing happens really... they ride in their boat and become "normal" again.   
• Story 4 is starting kinda slow. They’re “jumping” into a magical air tunnel through the ocean to find sea women. A shark has been the only action for about 2 seconds. It has mostly been about Fafhrd not being worried and Mouser being very worried they’d die when the magic tunnel of air breaks. Like pages and pages of this. OK, then they had like 1 paragraph of watery zombie-type undead and something else they killed. Then they got with the sea ladies with blue or green or something skin. End of story basically.
• Story 5 was confusing at the beginning, I thought it said it was going to be on Earth around the Roman empire days due to Ning's caverns that lead to other times and universes... I skimmed through 5 or 10 pages of stuff, then I started seeing Ilthmar references and very very VERY briefly references of 1 and 2 and 3 headed sea dragons. So I don't know if this is supposed to be Earth or not. LATER… ok they do get transported to Earth and all thst. Weird. 

D&D ideas to use; Names: 

• Names: Gnarlag, Skel, Kreshmar. Sory 2- Pulg. 
• Cultists create the evil fog near a river. This fog turned into a squidlike fog monster w ten tentacles… grew a single red eye as big as a face. Had infected evil types to become truly murderous, and when it sucked up enough life force from whomever, that’s when it started to look like a giant monster with an eye. Can grab weapons. A single pinkish silvery thread connected it to the larger evil fog. Cut that, and you beat that one part. Dying, weapons drop, fog disperses, and a stink.
• X

Mistakes in continuity

• Pg.27, says the twain heroes split up… Fafhrd joined up as an acolyte with Bwadres worshipping Issek of the jug, a religious type “godlet”. But in another story I thought it said Mouser and Fafhrd met for the first time after that. 

Scifi trivia and Golden Age reads

 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GhNtYhvDsvo&t=856s

Time 14:20 shows that yeah, Ridley Scott probably stole this old idea of planting eggs in spaceship crewmen feom this story “Discord in scarlett” by A. E. Van Vogt. 

Or did that author van Vogt steal from John Campbell’s creatures in “Who goes there”?

Youtuber J. Scott Phillips. 

Ningauble of the Seven Eyes - art

Fantastic Stories cover "Adept's Gambit". 

Ningauble of the Seven Eyes. Wow, I guess that's what he looks like... was hiding his face and hands and feet in the stories I've read so far, but did freakily reveal his 7 eyes that can extend very very far... they're supposed to glow slightly green and have cat-like pupils. 

On the picture. Nice and freaky, I like it. Thanks/credit for picture (of an old maganize) to Goodman Games and the Lankhmar PDFs I got from that humble bundle last year. This was in the PDF named "DCCL 8 EightCities". 

BTW, that usual yellowish comicbook art you see everywhere of them incorrectly shows hands (wrapped and less fingers on Nongauble) on Sheelba and Ningauble. I just finished reading the stories in “swords against death” and specifically nobody knows if the two wizards have human anatomy on their faces or hands still (or feet). When Fafhrd gets to borrow the blindfold of true seeing, one of the wizards, I think Sheelba, says NOT to put it on right then or risk insanity and death (implying the perhaps Lovecraftian nature of the two wizards).

Trivia from that PDF (note that "The Twain" means Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser): 

Something that was produced though was the game of

Lankhmar, originally released by TSR in 1976 and ushering

in a long-time partnership between Leiber and the “Game

Wizards.” The game of Lankhmar was based on a wargame

of sorts created by Leiber and Fischer and played during the

years of the Great Depression. The original board, a massive

piece of cardboard that showed the terrain and geography of

Nehwon, was long lost along with the rules the two wrote.

When Gygax learned of this game, he expressed a desire to

reproduce it, leaving Leiber and Fischer with the chore of reconstructing the game from memory. These rewritten rules,

penned in longhand, can be found in the Papers Collection.

 As part of the development of the game, Gygax sent Leiber

and Fischer a number of illustrations done by David C.

Sutherland, III, each depicting his take on the characters

in the game. Fischer sent these back to TSR with a number

of corrections, pointing out where Sutherland had veered

away from Fischer’s own personal interpretations of the

characters and cultures of Nehwon. Sadly, these corrections

arrived too late for them to be implemented. The annotated

illustrations are preserved in the Collection, granting an interesting insight into how the Twain’s co-creator envisioned

the duo and the world they inhabited.

That B&W one is from https://dungeonfantastic.blogspot.com/2019/03/fafhrd-grey-mouser-by-russ-nicholson.html pointing to artist https://russnicholson.blogspot.com/2019/03/as-one-came-lets-see-if.html