Fresh Zalchis Art

This is a sample of the stuff we've been up to lately. We're in the process of statting this critter up above for Zalchis, but we need some new spells for the write-up, so we're sifting through our old Scroll Cards and other notes and compiling a grimoire of fresh & weird spells for Zalchis, a sampling of which was just sent off to Blair for possible use in The Jewel Throne zine.

We're about to start uploading the next round of Genocultures and other fun stuff to Riskail for the week, clearing the way so that we can get to the pieces that Trey & Porky are looking for or asking after, which is cool. We're always happy to get positive and insightful comments on our work.

More to follow...

Open World Gaming

Michael Curtis over at the Society of Torch, Pole & Rope blog has really and truly hit the proverbial nail on the head in his Welcome To My World post. Chris over at the Hill Cantons blog likewise has been posting about Open World Gaming, and he has launched a wonderful Domain-Level Campaign playtest that has developed into a live example of just the sort of Open World gaming that used to take place way back when the whole gaming thing was still too new to even really be mocked by the hipsters.

Curtis, author of the Stonehell Dungeon & the Dungeon Alphabet, has also made a couple of other posts that bear on the topic of Open World Gaming--including an excellent piece on The Immigration Policies of Kinan M'Nath, and some advice for those considering Visiting Kinan M'Nath. It is also very thoughtful of Mr. Curtis to point to an excellent online example of how Dave Arneson used to do this same thing way back in the early days of the hobby, as recounted by the one and only Robilar himself.

Johnathan Bingham of the Ostensible Cat blog has just made his Basalt Keep of Wilven the Yellow an Open Source artifact that can appear in other people's campaigns, games and settings. Once Johnathan has the Basalt Keep ready for release, Netherwerks will be running a game through it as part of the Zalchis project. Game Session Reports will be posted to the Netherwerks blog. We're also launching a special Zalchis play-by-email micro-campaign for a playtester to enter Zalchis from a fairly standard Greyhawkian D&D/LL sort of world. That should get interesting...

Dave Hargrave used to engage in this sort of Open World gaming with his Arduin, and we've been regaled with tales of the misadventures of a certain disreputable pirate distinguished nautical enthusiast and kindly merchant who once sailed-over from a particular tropical pocket universe paradise to Blackmoor and back from Jeff Berry. In some ways the whole notion of Open World gaming feels a great deal like the creative efforts of H. P. Lovecraft and his circle of correspondents as they built the Cthulhu Mythos as a new type of shared world.

So, perhaps developing an Open World megadungeon across a group of freely collaborating blogs and making it all one big sandbox people can contribute to as they will, borrow from as they like, and just generally have some fun developing apart from the crass commercialism might just be worth considering after all. Maybe it's not such a bad idea after all.

Just take a look at what Zak is doing with the notion of an Open World built off of what he calls Gygaxian Democracy--Gigacrawler. Wow. Gigacrawler is one of the most exciting and hyper-collaborative projects to ever hit the RPG community in a long, long time. The creativity that emanates from this effort is like electricity crackling all over everything the way we as kids always thought it really ought to when something was this fresh, new and amazing...

We're going to spend some quality time getting to know Gigacrawler and hopefully we can contribute, participate, cheer the process on from the sidelines, whatever...this is a radical New Thing that seriously kicks some major axe...

Zalchis is Now Live...

http://zalchis.blogspot.com/

What Once Was...Is No More.

Everything is Permitted. Anything is Negotiable. Nothing is Inevitable.

The Worlds are Broken, Lost or Forgotten.

The Stars are Dead, Imprisoned or Beyond All Hope of Recovery.

There are No Cities, No Nations, No Empires...only Ruins, Wreckage and a Dangerous Wasteland curdled and curled about the seething vortex at the Heart-Center of a Dying Universe.

Time is Running Out.

The End is Nigh, Known and Inescapable.

Zalchis endures...for now.

Alternative Demonologies, A Preview

Dedicated to G. Benedicto

All the safe and normal assumptions are thrown out the window with Zalchis.  The universe is collapsing, the suns are going out, the end of the world is already over and all that's left is less than a thousand years until the great big black hole at the center of whatever is left finally swallows the bits and pieces of wreckage, debris and ruins that make up the Great Ring.  Life in Zalchis is grim, the kind of grim more in line with decapitation than with a paper-cut.  Nasty, brutal and short only come about half-way to describing life in Zalchis.  Death is not the worst thing that walks astride the broken remains of a thousand-thousand shattered worlds.  Fear doesn't carry the same nerve-killing charge any longer.  Doom is at hand.  But there are those who fight against the final dying of the light.  And there are those who seek to bring on the darkness once and for all.

Of those who are determined to hasten the work of the great black Anti-Sun, there are those idolaters of entropy known as the Cancelariat.  Foul, mummified abhuman beings seething with the cold malice of their beloved outer-most emptiness, the various members of the Cancelariat wander the ruined regions of the Great Ring, each searching hungrily for lost souls, wandering minds or the choice remnants of what once might have been gods long ago, before the Monocrat first set his mad scheme into motion.  They crave an end to all things.  They demand that the universe die, once and for all, that they might be released from their terrible bonds to unforgiving, unmerciful things.

Each of the Cancelariat has lost something of themself in the horrid rites that they underwent in order to become as they are now.  But far from thrusting a clenched fist into the slavering maw of some misrule-embodying god-begotten beast, or any heroic sacrifice on behalf of another, the Cancelariat instead have mutilated their own souls and cut-out from deep within themselves that deepest, most precious thing that once made them completely other than they now are.  Selfish, cruel and vicious in the extreme, the Cancelariat worship themselves as the self-chosen avatars of the Final Darkness which is but a pallid mask hiding entropy itself.  They especially delight in destroying the last vestiges of hope amongst those trapped or lost within the Great Ring.

Javrudeum of the Forlorn Waste
He has lost all sense of humor along with his voice. There is no joy in this mind-withering titan who leaves only bitterness in his wake as he stalks the innermost shores of the Genesistrine Layer and the littoral tatters of the Ectosphere.  It is within Javrudeum's powers to remit one's enemies to silence and to evoke a form of sinister laughter that can kill.  His symbol is a triple-lined jagged spiral of scratches, usually hacked into flattish sheets of metal.  It is said that the type of metal used is important in how Javrudeum responds to one who would call upon him or petition the wizened old monstrosity for a pact...but nowhere is it recorded which metals mean what to this fearsome being. 

--To Be Continued at Zalchis--

EDIT: Zalchis will debut January 1, 2011--as per the Sneak Peek we offered previously.  The Official Launch of the Zalchis blog will be announced both here and at the Netherwerks blog.  If you really, really must get a preview of the site, contact us and we cna arrange something. We're reasonable people.  Really. We apologize for any confusion. 

Sneak Peek of Zalchis

A little sneak-peek...

Zalchis will debut January 1, 2011

The End of the World Wasn't What They Expected