Flamesong: Out Now In Trade Paperback

 

I'm delighted to share the news that the Tekumel Foundation has brought M.A.R. Barker's Flamesong back into print in a new trade paperback edition with the original, stunning cover art. You can also purchase it for Kindle. To order either the print or Kindle edition, go here. 

I reread The Man of Gold a few years ago, and followed that by rereading Flamesong. I really enjoyed both of them, but Flamesong struck me as the stronger novel of the two. I was surprised both by how much I had forgotten in the decades since I had last read it, as well as how the positively Howardian name for a secret passageway in an ancient palace ("The Serpent That Winds Within") had stuck in my head all these years!

It's great to see Flamesong available again!

#StayAtHome: "The Revenge of the Rose"

I don't know whether Professor Barker read and enjoyed Michael Moorcock, but in spite of Phil frequently being called "the other Tolkien", there are aspects of his work that resonate more with the multiverse of Michael Moorcock.

Now don't get me wrong: Moorcock has never shown much interest in the kind of anthropological realism and sociological nuance that the Professor has built into Tekumel. One often gets the impression that the Young Kingdoms and most other settings in Moorcock's novels are just set pieces or backdrops where an Eternal Champion can have adventures and mishaps.

But a couple commonalities - at least on an aesthetic/thematic level - include science fantasy, interplanar travel, demons, and the weird. Oh, and Chaos. Or Change.

Both authors were also quite fond of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

As I started reading the second of the "late" Elric novels, The Revenge of the Rose (1991), I kept thinking of Tekumel from time-to-time. I read the novel in about a week. Like past Elric novels, there is plenty of the weird, and plenty of interplanar travel. There are also more female characters with agency than in the early Elric novels, including the Rose, who may be an incarnation of the Eternal Champion herself, and a creepy but beautiful young seeress named Charion Phatt, herself a distant descendant of Corum, an incarnation of the Eternal Champion from ancient Cornwall.

None of the women are Elric's love interest, nor do they show any interest in him. The women do scheme and work effectively with each other. In fact, Elric doesn't even fully understand the Rose's motivations, which really have nothing to do with him (he is just the Rose's instrument), until the last few pages of the novel.

The Revenge of the Rose is disjointed, and has some borrowings or parallels with The Dragon in the Sword (1987), an Erekose novel. The latter is a much more coherent novel, although Revenge has one of the most chilling examples of willful self-destruction and mass suicide that I have ever read. It is perfect reading for the pandemic.

Since finishing Revenge, I have started on the first of the late Elric novels, The Fortress of the Pearl (1989). I am about 60 pages in and it is a much more coherent, tighter narrative. I am looking forward to continuing with the Pearl before I tackle some of the LONG late Elric novels.

There are at least three more of those.

Fate of Tekumel for Dave Arneson Day at the Source

On Saturday, October 1st, Source Comics and Games will be running its annual Dave Arneson Day event. Since Dave Arneson was one of the "greatest generation" of Empire of the Petal Throne players and GMs, I am going to run a playtest of the newest iteration of the Fate of Tekumel rules as my contribution to the day's festivities.

My game will run from 2-6 PM on October 1st. 

The map above may give you a sense of the real estate involved.

Don't be surprised if you meet Dave Arneson's signature character on Tekumel, the pirate, smuggler, and all around Haida Pakalan rascal, Harchar. 

The adventure might involve frogs. Maybe even a temple.  Possibly a god.

We shall see. 

Happy Sourcebook Day!

One of the challenges with diabetes and astigmatism is that you can't always tell from a PDF whether text and images are sharp. My hard copy of the republication of the Tekumel Source Book arrived today, and I am happy to report that The Tekumel Foundation's new edition reproduces the sharp, small text of the original. It is very readable. 

The original edition of the Sourcebook came out in 1983, the year I graduated from College. It is the most important text for understanding the world of Tekumel. It is a source of constant inspiration for me. In fact, as I travelled this summer, I marked up a spiral bound photocopy of the Sourcebook with all sorts of notes about possible adventure ideas I might run. Even a couple of sentences in the Sourcebook can plant those seeds; Professor Barker's writing is just that good.

In a few weeks, I will be running one of those adventures at U-Con in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Just scroll down in the Tekumel Track for the Sunday, 9 AM event!

The Search for Stark!

Players T-Roy and Lisa show off the map of Leigh Brackett's Mars

Saturday was my third time running Warriors of the Red Planet. This weekend was Diversicon 23, one of the best small literary SF&F cons in Minnesota.

It's my tradition at this con to run roleplaying event that incorporates the work of our guests of honor (living and posthumous). This year's game was focused on three of our posthumous guests:

• Leigh Brackett, the author of numerous planetary romance short stories set on Mars and Venus, as well as the Skaith trilogy featuring her anti-hero Eric John Stark
• Gene L. Coon, who wrote a number of the best Star Trek episodes, including "Devil in the Dark"
• Sun Ra, the inventive jazz musician who Guest of Honor Ytasha Womack (author of Afrofuturism) and many others see as the one of the pioneers of Afrofuturism

My Warriors of the Red Planet game was set on Leigh Brackett's Mars. The players were charged with finding Eric John Stark. The PCs started in the adventure in a sleazy cantina in the Martian city-state of Kahora, adjacent to the Terran starport. After agreeing to take a large sum from a mystery woman (Terran? Martian?) to locate Stark, the PCs headed for the last location where he had been found, in the even more ancient city-state of Jekkara (a city "half as old as the world"). After recruiting a Martian scientist/gadgeteer in an even sleazier establishment, they headed south in a jury rigged flyer, exploring a mining site and polar ice tunnels leading to the lost city of Sun Ark.

The PCs survived an encounter with a new creature, a Temporal Displacer Beast, which is something of a cross between a Horta, a Displacer Deast, and a Beholder (oddly enough at the Diversicon 23 auction later that evening, we saw a reproduction of the magazine featuring A.E Van Vogt's short story "The Black Destroyer", the inspiration for the Displacer Beast!).

I had four players, all women, all great players, including my friend Rachel Kronick (author of the Blade & Crown RPG). Rachel is the most consistent player in my Diversicon RPGs. Like a fair number of GMs, I am sure, I often get performance anxiety right before RPG events, and an inner voice tells me not to run my game. Rachel is usually the friend who talks me off the ledge, and nudges me to run the game.

Another player was very new to roleplaying. This was her second game ever, but she's clearly a natural and I have no doubt that she will go on to game A LOT after this adventure! Another of the players who made a quick cameo was Phyllis Ann Karr, the author of one of my favorite fantasies from the 80s, Wildraith's Last Battle. I didn't even know she was a roleplayer, but that makes sense given her collaboration with Greg Stafford as the author of the King Arthur Companion.

Once I began the game, of course, all the anxiety went away. It always does, especially when you have a group of players who have good energy with each other. 

I'm not sure yet who the guests of honor will be for next year, but I'm so glad I ran the game this year that I am sure I'll be back for more. 

Princess Determination Table 1: Leigh Brackett's Solar System

Use the tables below to generate a space princess character for a game set on Leigh Brackett's Mars or Venus. 

Step One: Determine Planet of Origin

Roll 1d6:
1-2: Venus
3-5 Mars
6: It's complicated*

*Might involve transmigration of souls, such as occurs in temporal, planar, and transworld intrusions.  Might be an Earth agent in disguise. Think something up.


Step Two: Determine Region

If Mars:**
Roll 1d12:
1: Polar City
2: Polar hill tribe
3: Northern Drylands/High Desert well-tribe
4: Northern Drylands/High Desert nomadic tribe
5: Northern Drylands/High Desert city
6: Kahora or adjacent spaceport (equatorial region).
7. Other equatorial city-state (there are many)
8: Equatorial well-tribe
9: Equatorial nomadic tribe
10: Old Ocean Bed/Eastern drylands well-tribe
11: Old Ocean Bed/Eastern drylands nomadic tribe
12: Old Ocean Bed/Jekkara-Valkis-Barrakesh region (pick one city)

**Based on the map provided in The Sea-Kings of Mars and Otherworldly Stories by Leigh Brackett, Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks #46.


If Venus***
Roll 1d10:
1: Mountain city
2: Lowland city
3: Lake Village (may be built onto lake)
4: Lake City (may be built onto lake)
5: Lost city (no doubt beyond the Mountains of White Cloud)
6: Marsh tribe
7: Wetland tribe
8: Jungle tribe
9: Jungle city
10: Seaborne fleet-clan
11. Polar city
12. Undercity (under the surface of Venus or under one of its odd gaseous seas, such as the Red Sea)

***I haven't seen a map of Brackett's Venus, but many of the location types here make sense for her version of the world. and examples of several are found in her short stories.


Step Three: Determine Livelihood

Roll 1d8: 
1: Clan wealth
2: Banditry/piracy
3: Rulership of a tribe, clan, or city-state
4: Religious or cult leadership (mesmerism is a common skill)
5: Trade
6: Influence peddling
7: Guild leadership (assassin's guild, thieves' guild, etc.)
8. Knowledge (ancient secrets, favorable trade routes, etc>)


Step Four: Prized Possession

Roll 1d12:
1: Devoted and obedient slave or retainer
2: Ancestral weapon or other artifact
3: Ancient technological artifact
4: Empathic animal companion
5: Map of lost or legendary city-state or well
6: Letter of passage/carte blanche from a powerful sovereign (might be a clever forgery)
7: Personal flyer OR full plate armor
8: Animal mount (on Mars these are bipedal lizards)
9: Crown, signet ring, mace or other symbol of office
10: Legendary or rare ancient text
11: Gems or other treasures
12: Terran technological device

Warriors of the Red Planet

This weekend I'll be running a game of +trey causey's Strange Stars SF setting using my Fate Core rules for the setting.  Because of the potential for a surge of players looking for games to play, I have been asked to have a back-up game ready to goon Saturday. The back-up game is going to be Al Krombach's Warriors of the Red Planet, a very crisp 1st edition style planetary romance RPG. The book has beautiful art by Thomas Denmark, which really reinforces the tone of the game.

The game will be set on a version of Barsoon, a world that Professor Barker's Tsolyani PC parties periodically visited. It's an inspiring setting with a number of commonalities with Tekumel. This scenario may have some Tekumel crossover too, but the PCs will be natives of the Red Planet (Mars, not Kashi). They will be charged with investigating strange signals emerging from sand-lost ruins deep in the desert beyond their city-state.

Should be a fun game - and certainly the first old school game I have run since the late 70s.

Vimuhla Baby Armor?

This armor was recently discovered in ancient ruins far to the north in Yan Kor. When brought back to the Empire, it was quickly if somewhat irreverently dubbed the "Vimuhla Baby Armor". Soon enough, representatives of the Temple of Vimuhla showed up to claim the suit of armor as an ancient Bednalljan relic of their temple. They claimed it was the armor of a princeling from Fasiltum, one who joined his Vriddi clanmates on a storied invasion of the cities to the north.

But several scholars have argued that there are much more likely origins for this suit of armor. The fact that the armor is charged with energies attuned to the Temples of Change does not necessarily mean that it was forged for the use of a follower of Lord Vimuhla. In fact, a scholar-priest of Sarku from the Ito clan claims (quite persuasively in the eyes of scholars from a number of different temples on both sides of the Stability-Change divide) that the use of copper strips suggests that this armor was commissioned by a noble follower of Lord Sarku - or even possibly the kit of a child-jajgi. (In which case it might still have a "living" claimant.)

The location in which the armor was discovered casts still further doubt on the identity of its intended wearer. A priest of Lord Thumis has dared to suggest - with all sincerity - that the armor is of approximately the right size for use by a Pygmy Folk adult. Since the ruins where the relic was discovered are also quite close to the remains of an underground city of the Pygmy Folk, this priest argues that the only real question is who took the armor from the Pygmy Folk - and why?

A Beautiful New Edition of A Princess of Mars

It's my understanding that Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars was a favorite of Professor M.A.R. Barker, and one of the early inspirations for Tekumel. IDW has just released a lovely oversized edition of the book, with wonderful illustrations by Michael Wm. Kaluta.

Here is the sky galleon from the endpapers:

And here is a fight scene:

I was very impressed at how reasonably priced this book is at $30. Kaluta's art was a good choice for this book. His style is pretty, and very reminiscent of the colorful and willowy character designs on the covers of earlier generations' Barsoom books.

Art by Frank E. Schoonover (1917)

If you are a Barsoom fan, you will want to pick this up.

Other Chariots, Other Gods

I've been reading Nathalie Henneberg's The Green Gods (1961), a French SF novel that was translated by C.J. Cherryh and published as part of the DAW SF imprint in 1980. The front of the book text on the DAW book identified N.C. Henneberg* as "The 'A. Merrit' of France", but don't let that fool you: the prose is good and the text isn't particularly racist. For sure though, it's a Lost World SF novel with strong planetary romance themes. It's evocative, dreamy, and surreal. And there is a strong Mesoamerican feel as in so much pulp Lost World literature inspired by the late 19th Century Atlantology of Ignatius Donnelly.

Imagine a human world that has fallen to a Cataclysm. It is cut off from other human worlds from millennia. Brave explorers from the human interstellar empire have tried to reach it and recover their lost world, but the world is trapped behind an impenetrable barrier.

Meanwhile on that lost fallen world, humanity has fallen. We are no longer on the top of the food chain. Intelligent insects rise from their hive-like mound cities, as well as from the ruins of our ancient cities, now abandoned or fallen to them. These creatures besiege humanity, and there are even more subtle threats that like among us as well. Human society has been engineered into a static caste system. In the city of A-Atlan, the various strata of humanity huddle within Mesoamerican-style step pyramids and stone courts. These great and crumbling structures hide the underworld ruins where ancient devices like "flamers" lie scattered among the human bones of those who succumbed to the Cataclysm and the horrors of later times.

Of course, the Lost World we're talking about here is Earth, not Tekumel. The Secret Masters aren't the Temple hierarchies, the Gods, the OAL, secret societies, the wielders of Mind-Bar spells, or the Blasphemous Accelerators. No, the Secret Masters are intelligent plants, in particular the mind-manipulating peyote plants and their spiny cactus soldiers.

While I couldn't find any references to the book on the Blue Room listserv search engine, I wonder if the book was an influence on M.A.R. Barker. I am sure it must have been an influence on more than a few contemporary SF&F authors including:

• M. John Harrison - The Green Gods has human warriors wearing insect armors here that resemble those of the better known Viriconium
• Michael Moorcock - Elric's drugged, decadent Dreaming City of Imyrryr is reminiscent of Henneberg's A-Atlan
• Jeff VanderMeer - Henneberg has drug-producing plant overlords rather than the drug producing fungal overlords of VanderMeer's Finch
• China Mieville - The Green Gods has an intelligent spiny cactus race that may have inspired those in Mieville's Bas-Lag
• Tanith Lee - Less the details or trappings of lost words and pulp SF than the dreamy decadence and romanticism; I had to keep reminding myself that C.J. Cherryh was the translator of The Green Gods, and not Tanith Lee

Of course, many of the above elements were just in the "soup" of adventure literature and occult movements of the late 19th/early 20th Century.

I'm sure there are other influences too. I wish more of Henneberg's work were available in English. Thankfully, The Green Gods is still available in English courtesy of the Black Coat Press. Interestingly, the Cherryh byline in the Black Coat Press edition says "adapted by"; that edition also includes four additional Henneberg stories translated by Damon Knight and  a new introduction by French SF scholar Charles Moreau.

This week at FATE SF we're doing some posts inspired by Henneberg's novel. Stop by and check them out.

*It's important to note that much of Nathalie Henneberg's output was intermixed with that of her husband, Charles Henneberg. He passed away in 1959, two years before Nathalie Henneberg's The Green Gods was first published in French.