Amazonia: The Mysterious Cities of Gold

It is the 16th century. From all over Europe, great ships sail west to conquer the New World, the Americas. The men eager to seek their fortune, to find new adventures in new lands. They long to cross uncharted seas and discover unknown countries, to find secret gold on a mountain trail high in the Andes. They dream of following the path of the setting sun that leads to El Dorado and the Mysterious Cities of Gold. 

If you watch the intro (do it, do it now!), You'll notice that the title sequence starts in space. Theres a reason for that - the Olmecs (the bad-guys) are in fact a race of alien beings, who use solar energy to power super high-tech equipment, made out of gold, such as the eagle aircraft, to rule over South America, except they've forgotten it. or something, I can't quite remember.

Olmec:  Alien Mekon Types : Stat as Drow / Dark Elves

South American Alien pyramids sound vaguely familiar? Well it could be you remember the writings of Ancient Alien funky mojo proponent, Erich Von Daniken. Unable to believe that anyone who isn't a modern white European was able to do anything remotely significant in terms of culture or structural engineering, Von D jets around the world claiming every ancient structure bigger than a mud-hut was built by aliens.

Mexican Zigurats? aliens
Nasca lines? aliens
Egyptian pyramids? aliens
Stonehenge? aliens

Not only that, but all these ignorant people worshiped the aliens as gods....

No, Erich, God was not an astronaut.

Chariots of the Gods was first published in 1968. A film was made, with awesome music (tho' not up to Cities of Gold sing-a-long in a broom-cupboard level) and by the power of youtube you can watch it, it's fun romp with some killer imagery, as long as you remember it's as silly an idea as Uri Geller's spoonbending. I loved reading this stuff as a kid, aliens, exotic landscapes, unearthing ancient mysteries, the adventure and the hodgepodge of ancient art, so when the Mysterious Cities of Gold aired, I felt right at home.

And of course, this makes for cool D&D campaign background stuff. Hmm, prehistoric aliens with advanced technologies, leaving remnants of their ancient super-civilisation behind. Kinda reminds one of M A R Barkers Tekumel, where of course, the humans are the aliens. And I'm sure there is something Warhammerish about the idea...

John Blanche illustration | Slann | AD&D stat as Bullywugs

Oh yeah! A quick recap of the Warhammer 2nd Edition timeline, ice-planet, ruled by dinosaurs / dragons /lizardmen and a small population of human-like Amazons (see the Hammer fur bikini trilogy: One Million Years B.C. (1966) Prehostoric Women (1967) and When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth (1970)) Warhammer worlds secret pulp-adventure origins... Then the alien Slann arrive, with names like Gotta-lotta-botl and Koppa-Ketl who proceeded to put warp-gates at the north and south pole for easy interstellar access, and begin terraforming the planet, and building pyramid-engines to stabalise the atmosphere and stuff.

Chariots of the Frogs | John Blanche Concept Art | Bullywugs

The Slann then genetically engineered various slave-races for different jobs,  " Eldest of all, the elf-children, Dwarf the delver, dark are his houses; Ent the earthborn, old as mountains; Man the mortal, master of horses" Oh no that's something else. Elves to psychically control things, Dwarves to build, Orcs to Waaaagh... Anyway, the frogmen created a world-spanning empire of genetic mutants, controlled the climate and battled with the Evil Forces of Skeletor Chaos spewing forth from their increasingly malfunctioning dimensional portals.

Alien Bullywug Overlords, 2nd compendium 1984 | Dave Andrews

Although, of course, by the time the adventurous westerners of the Old World in a fantasy version of the 16th Century, discovered the Slann on their steamy tropical continent of Lustria, their warp-gates had long-since collapsed, sending raw-chaos material into the world, their empire had crumbled, and they had decayed into barbaric tribal ways, haunting the jungles that had overgrown their once mighty city-states. The Slann had long lost all grasp of their ancient technology, although others, of course, had not entirely forgotten...

RBG & Oubliette Kickstarters

Red Box Games

RBG are back again with a new Kickstarter, this time kicking off with some Goblins, including these lovely footmen which have just been unlocked.

Goblin Footmen

Much in the vein of John Bauer / Brian Froud, with scavanged equipment it's kind of thing going on that really make these goblins stand out against many other goblinoids out there. I tend to use the words folksy and woodsy a lot to describe things I like, and I think they apply equally well here.

Loads more  at the Kickstarter including Archers, Berserkers, Trolls, Wolfriders, yeah!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1103158358/red-box-games-miniatures

 

Advanced Character Sheet

Also a big shout-out to the Oubliette crew for resurrecting the original 1978 Games Workshop AD&D character sheet (if anyone asks, copyright duration on typographic arrangements is 25 years in the UK).

Add caption

Just to wax lyrical about hte graphic design here, it's full on, but rather than talk about fat-line, rounded corners, Star Wars toy packaging, Logans Run typography and architecture or the interior design of the Imperial Death Star. No, I'm not even going to suggest the elegant modernist rationality mirrors the design ethos of Dieter Rams and direct your attention to the flow of the Dex-box into the skills.

Instead I'm going to suggest you throw the pad on the front dash of your Volvo 245 Estate, drive to your DM's op-art bachalorette pad, put some Hawkwind on the Beosystem, pick up some Lambert and Butlers, grab your 3D6 and roll one up while she lays out the GW floorplans and pre-slotta Citadel Miniatures.

BANG & OLUFSEN BEOSYSTEM 1500

HAWKWIND: QUARK STRANGENESS & TIME

THE WORLD OF LAMBERT AND BUTLER

Glamorous Russian Chess Mistress
Welcomes you to the OSR

And there are some killer deals - including £12 for 2 printed A4 pads and all 8 issues of Oubliette zine as a PDF. Currently it's only £78 off making it's target goal of £300, go on, game like it's 1978.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1730454032/advanced-rpg-character-sheet-pad 

Apologies to Tre and Paul for lumping these together, without even so much as bothering to juxtapose them  other than them both being very cool, lazy Zhu. Commercial transmission ends, normal service will resume shortly.

Origin of the Species: Fimir

There's a one-eyed yellow idol 
To the north of Kathmandu; 
There's a little marble cross below the town; 
And a brokenhearted woman
Tends the grave of 'Mad' Carew, 
While the yellow god for ever gazes down.

Milton Hayes 1911(Kenneth Williams 1978)

Alan Lee | Formorian Balor One-Eye | Castles | 1984

Tony Ackland | Fimir | 1987 (?)

Steve Whitehead | Forge World Fimir | 2011

"Graeme Davis had been tasked with creating a new race. So between us we came up with the Fimir He working on the text and me on the visuals. The starting point was a book cover that Graeme found featuring a Fomorian as depicted by Alan Lee. I mutated the image and Graeme shortened the name and changed the vowels. Not the most original thing either of us did."

Tony Ackland, interviewed by Orlygg (2013)

The 3 fingers, odd bovine lizard face with pointed snout, the stooped shambling gait and prominent sharp teeth remain the stable genetic inheritance. Strangely Alan Lees image, Balor of the Evil Eye (not the exact image mentioned by Graeme - but another Formorian by Alan Lee) from his 1984 book  Castles appears maimed rather than cycloptic, like some rain soaked Odinic mutant goat. Always liked the Fimm, with their mist-shrouded nefarious activities, obviously based on the Fomorians of Celtic Myth, and all the better for it.

"I showed Jes an illo of a Fomorian on the cover of a paperback book of Irish folktales, and we went from there. It all started when Bryan Ansell decided that WFRP should introduce a new race to the WH world - "to be as distinctive of Warhammer as the Broo are of Runequest" were his exact words if memory serves ... So as I say, Jes and I came up with the concept for Fimir, Jes did the designs and I did the culture and game stats - and in the end, both Zoats and Fimir ended up in WFRP, and nobody much cares for either race. The popularisation of Fimir wasn't helped by a communications foul-up when Nick Bibby took over making the miniatures from Jes - Nick made them all Ogre-sized, compared to Jes' and my idea that they should be Orc sized. So we had big, expensive miniatures with low game stats, and nobody bought them. Sigh."

Graeme Davis, usenet post 1998

There are some discrepancies between Tony and Graemes accounts, mostly down to the involvement of Jes at the concept stage. Graemes statement is over a decade after the event and Tonys a quarter of a century, so perhaps it is to be expected that the exact details are hazy. That both speak of a book cover as original inspiration is interesting, especially as I cannot find a book cover with the Alan Lee image on it (not to say it doesn't exist, which it does, as eventually I found it, on the back cover of a book of Celtic Fairy tales see here ). So perhaps the true origins of Fimir will remain somewhat foggy, shrouded in the mists of time.

See part two: Fimirian musings on Henson & Froud