Sunday, March 17, 2024

Helena and Ivara Graymalk

Hemlock Hollow’s most powerful villains are Helena and Ivara Graymalk, two Devil-bound witches.

Helena Graymalk
Helena Graymalk is the matriarch of the Graymalk family and the unofficial burgomaster of Hemlock. The townsfolk look to her for guidance, as it is acknowledged openly that her witchery keeps the town and its mines thriving. 
    • Appearance: Helena appears to be a comely woman in her mid-thirties; she is especially proud of her mane of curly auburn hair. 
    • Personality: She finds pleasure in exercising power and bending others to her will.
    • Motive: She hopes to summon the Devil from Hell so that he might bring the world under his sole dominion.
    • Flaw: She knows that if she were to ever displease her master, he would revoke her longevity and let time ravage her body.

Ivara Graymalk
Although she plays the part of a bookish and naive young woman, Ivara Graymalk is an accomplished witch who does the Devil’s bidding. She is unafraid of using others to get what she wants. Ivara is currently Helena Graymalk’s favored child, but they both know it is inevitable that they will strive against each other.
    • Appearance: Ivara poses as innocent and scholarly girl, dressing like a prim and proper schoolteacher, but this guise is calculated to make her appear harmless or perhaps even in need of protection. 
    • Personality: She is a patient schemer.
    • Motive: She desires to replace her mother as matriarch of the Graymalk witches.
    • Flaw: She burns with impatience to to recognized as a powerful witch in her own right.
      

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

The Philosophy of Hellraiser, Devil's Rejects: Anatomy of a Franchise, The Crow

Three videos that I think are worth your time:

The Morbid Zoo, The Philosophy of Hellraiser
Really solid analysis of Hellraiser and how it transcends a Judeo-Christian understanding of its main themes.

In Praise of Shadow, The Devil's Rejects: Anatomy of a Franchise
I don't agree with everything in this retrospective on Rob Zombie's "Firefly Family" movies, but there's a lot here for fans of the movies.

Cartoonist Kayfabe, The Crow
This is pure appreciation of a classic comic. It makes me want to dig it out and read it again.

Monday, March 11, 2024

Our Lady of the Blood Reborn

After a big cliffhanger last time with the arrival of a mysterious stranger, we had to wait a week to pick up our Savage Krevborna campaign. We are definitely in the part of the campaign where the consequences of prior adventures are now coming home to roost. 

Characters

Catarina, unconventional prioress

Pendleton, rogue anatomist

Raoul, necromancer

Geradd, swashbuckling nobleman

Daytona, dhampir gunslinger

Panthalassa, empowered feral child

Asudem, undead antiquarian

Events

Catarina, Panthalassa, and Serafina approached the Convent of the Blood Reborn from the road. They found the gate in the outer wall guarded by two templars, who relieved them of their more obvious weapons before letting them inside. Upon entering the convent's chapel, they found a nun, Sister Bronwen, praying at the altar. Posing as folks in need of healing, Catarina and Panthalassa expressed interest in taking advantage of the convent's sanitarium treatments. Serafina posed as their servant, but took the first opportunity to sneak away.

Sister Bronwen took the pair on a tour of the facilities, which included some grim, asylum-like treatment rooms and an operating theater, and also performed an examination of both women--though she could find nothing physically wrong with either of them. Panthalassa had to distract the nun while Catarina stripped to make sure that Sister Bronwen didn't notice Catarina's hidden pistols.

After signing themselves over into the convent's care, Panthalassa and Catarina were shown to their lodgings in the infirmary ward. Inside was a tall young woman who bore a resemblance to Raoul. They had discovered where Lenore had been stashed away in the convent! Once the nun had left, they introduced themselves and told Lenore that they were friends of her brother and that her rescue was immanent. 

Meanwhile, Geradd had independently made his way to Selvik's Hollow because his great enemy, Cardinal Radinov, had been spotted headed for the town. (Cardinal Radinov had a habit of extorting noble families for tithes to the Church; Geradd's family had suffered the Cardinal's depredations.) As Geradd approached the Green Cauldron inn, he saw Raoul, Daytona, Pendleton, Asudem, and the Widow talking to a very tall, pale man of military mien out front. 

The stranger was exceedingly polite and introduced himself as "Count M." Count M. invited the group to dinner; Daytona wanted to decline, but he felt the Count bending his will. Count M. remarked, "Extraordinary how quickly the fog rolls in." When the group turned to look, they watched as a solid wall of gray fog sped down the valley, obscuring everything from view.

Once the group retired to their rented chambers, Daytona was able to divulge Count M.'s identity: they had come face-to-face with Count Magnus Draghul, one of the more powerful and feared vampire nobles of Sibersk. During this conversation, part of Daytona's history was revealed: he outed himself a dhampir. Later, during dinner hosted by Count Magnus, the vampire lord made it clear why he had taken an interest in the group: when they killed Countess Vlodeska, they killed a vampire of his bloodline. As recompense, he wanted one of the party to take her place as one of his vampire vassals. However, he was willing to give them time to think over who the sacrificial lamb shall be; after all, he has eternity on his side.

Catarina and Daytona communicated via the psychic connection enabled by one of the bone daggers in the prioress's possession. Daytona informed Catarina about Count Magnus. Asudem brought a very excellent plan to the fore here as well: he had Catarina summon the convent's matria, tell the nun that the real reason they had sought sanctuary was that there was a vampire afoot, and pleaded with her to send templars to hunt the undead beast in town. This would at least keep Count Magnus busy while they attempted to rescue Emily and Lenore from the convent.

Under the cover of the unnatural fog, the rest of the group was able to make their way to the convent unseen. They found a hastily constructed rope ladder thrown over the convent wall. Once again utilizing the psychic connection, the group was able to locate the infirmary. However, they saw that there was a figuring lurching toward them down the dark hall; the figure was dragging something heavy with it. When the figure heaved into Daytona's eyeline, it was revealed to be Serafina, who was dragging Panthalassa's maul--which she had managed to steal from the guards at the front gate. 

Raoul and Lenore had a touching reunion. The Widow was put in charge of Lenore's safety while the group searched for Emily's body in the convent. Exploration led them to an elevator guarded by a nun and several templars. After battling their way down into the next level of the convent, the group were confronted by another nun and more templars. The nun used her miraculous prayers to bolster the armor of the templars, making them quite difficult for the party to put down. 

Things went from bad to worse as waves of enemies began to stream in from adjoining doors. Sister Mary Augustine, the convent's matria, arrived with templars in tow. Catarina managed to put two bullets into the matria, but before she died she uttered a prayer and struck Catarina with a cat o' nine tails; the lash blazed with holy light and sent Catarina to the ground incapacitated. Cardinal Radinov also arrived with a squad of templars. "Geradd, I should have known that you would be involved in this!" he bellowed as he attacked the swashbuckler with a poisoned sword. Geradd was grievously injured, but he managed to rally and plunge his glaive through the cardinal's heart. 

After a harrowing battle, the group stood victorious and was able to tend to their wounded. They quickly explored the remaining chambers of the convent's cellar until the found a ritual chamber with twelve incorruptible corpses in glass caskets arranged in a circle. At the center of the circle was an empty pedestal. They quickly identified the casket that held Emily's remains. Before they made their escape, Pendleton sawed the heads from the rest of the corpses so that they could not be used in the ritual; he took them as objects of scientific curiosity for Viktoria Frankenstein to examine.

Before leaving Selvik's Hollow, they stopped in to see the apothecary. Irena had packed up all of her belongings and moved on, but she left behind a letter for them under a rock painted with peonies. The letter read:

If you want to return the dead to life, you may wish to seek the Mantle of Iron Tears–a magical artifact crafted by the first members of the Crucifuge. As I am sure you are well aware, the ultimate goal of restoring life to the departed requires a tremendous amount of arcane energy and occult mastery. It’s also an endeavor fraught with peril. Even the slightest mistake can prove catastrophic. The Mantle of Iron Tears can mitigate that peril.

If you wish to lay your hands on the Mantle of Iron Tears, it was last known to be hidden among the oddities of the Skarnesti Circus.

Will the group find the Mantle of Iron Tears and be able to restore Emily to life? Will they choose one of their number to join Count Magnus Draghul among the undead or will they stand defiant against him? When will Dorian Margrave call upon them to honor their commitment to him as he plans for conquest? And what of the Brineblade and its ties to the Cult of Scylla? 

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

The Liturgy of the Twelve Radiant Apostles

"Theory board" made by Pendleton's player
After a cliff-hanger in our last Krevborna game, we reconvened a month or so later to see how our "heroes" deal with the new twist that promises to complicate and comprise their lives. We left off last time with Raoul receiving a letter that caused him to visibly pale; at the start of this game, the rest of the players found about about the contents of the letter: the magically preserved corpse of Raoul's beloved, Emily Rosaline Daae, had been stolen from the secret crypt in which she rested. 


The Characters

Pendleton Torst, rogue anatomist

Catarina Redmoor, prioress of an unusual convent

Panthalassa Laurentide, a very weird orphan

Raoul Carathis, necromancer

Daytona Midnight, dhampir gunslinger

Asudem, a drowned antiquarian brought back from the dead


Events

Once the party left Port Omera, the warm, sultry trade winds gave way to a howling tempest that buffeted and rocked the vessel they had booked passage on. Despite the violent gales, which did their best to send their ship to a watery grave, they eventually reached Piskaro. When they disembarked, the weather hadn’t improved. It was now the tail end of winter, and the pounding rain turned the snow and frozen earth to a morass of mud and slush. The group opted for speed over comfort, hiring horses and sleeping rough in the cold to make their way to Creedhall in haste.

The Widow was waiting for them with Viktoria Frankenstein's boat and dry cloaks. After the Widow ferried them to Viktoria's island at the center of Loch Riven, they had a brief encounter with Father Prim, the strange fey creature employed as guardian of the isle. He dragged a metal pail from his cottage because he had something to show Pendleton. After rummaging around in the pail, and tossing out a severed foot and an unidentifiable chunk of meat, Father Prim produced the head of the leader of the Black Rats gang--his mouth still hanging wide open in a silent scream. According to Father Prim, the remaining Black Rats had become desperate to locate and apprehend Pendleton, so they came to the island in search of him. In Father Prim's words, this was "a big mistake."

At Chateau Frankenstein, they were fed and given a place to rest before setting off to investigate the theft of Emily's corpse. The Widow and Serafina offered to accompany the group on this quest, but first Viktoria had her construct servants bring forth a number of belated Khristmas presents for each member of the party. Panthalassa received a maul made from galvanic stone; Catarina was given a number of pretty (and armored) corsets; Daytona was gifted a masterwork pistol and several special bullets; Pendleton was given what appeared to be a sheaf of paperwork; Raoul was presented with a reanimated draft horse to pull his cart; and Asudem was entrusted with a reanimated cat. 

Under the cover of night, the group stole into the secret tomb Emily had been taken from within Blackwater Estates. Catarina found a dropped medallion depicting St. Filiona; the medallion was identified as being from a convent known as Our Lady of the Blood Reborn. Asudem examined the secret door and determined that it had not been forced; whoever broke in might have shown some respect for a place of burial. Daytona could tell from the footprints in the dust that six figures wearing military boots were behind the theft; he also knew from the color of the some soil tracked in that the inreuders had recently been in the town of Selvik's Hollow in the Vespermark. Lastly, Raoul noticed that the arcane symbols he had scrawled upon the walls of the chamber had been "defaced" with holy symbols in an act of reconsecration.

Before they left, Raoul held a seance to contact the spirit of Emily Rosaline Daae. The temperature dropped in the chamber and swirls of green and purple eldritch energy lit the room. Emily did not appear as a spectral apparition, but Raoul could feel her presence in the room. She was able to relate that her body was still whole, that she was being kept in a holy space, and that there were eleven bodies in a similar state to her own wherever she was. The party's working theory was that her body had been stolen by religious zealots--quite possibly in league with both Raoul and Emily's families--and taken to the convent to be venerated as an incorruptible saint.

The group left Blackwater and lit out for the territories of the Vespermark. Selvik's Hollow was a small town nestled in a forested valley; they could see the Convent of Our Lady of the Blood Reborn perched on a hill above the town. Their first stop was the local inn and tavern, the Green Cauldron, which was owned by a man named Rogan Sheriday. They party ordered beef and stout stew, as well as ale from the convent. Also within the common room of the Green Cauldron was an acne-scarred young scholar, who had rented one of the inn's rooms, and a teenage girl with pointed ears who was busy scrubbing the dining tables with a rag.

The mention of the incorruptible corpses caught the young girl's attention; she seemed to know something. The group booked four rooms for their use in the inn; they also discovered that besides the scholar, a servant had rented two rooms: one for himself and one for his wealthy master who had yet to arrive. 

With lodging acquired, the group explored the town a bit, plying the shrine maiden at the Chapel of St. Vionka, Irena Gravloski (proprietor of the local apothecary shop), and Elusia (the barmaid, who they later found writing poetry in the graveyard). From their various sources, the group managed to put together the following picture:

  • The Convent of Our Lady of the Blood Reborn was an obscure ascetic site and sanitarium, until the arrival of Sister Mary Augustina.
  • Sister Mary Augustina was afflicted with holy visions, possibly madness, and had been thrown out of her previous convent for delving into forbidden tomes in the convent's archives.
  • Irena was able to tell them that one of the tomes kept in the convent archive was the Adeptus Gnostica, a book that contained a ritual known as the Liturgy of the Twelve Radiant Apostles. 
  • The purpose of the Liturgy of the Twelve Radiant Apostles was to infuse twelve incorruptible corpses with holy entities who would then scourge "evil" from the land.
  • Templars had been arriving at the convent over the last few years; the templars were patrolling the woods around the convent.
  • Elusia had seen the templars moving casket-shaped boxes on carts from parts unknown to the convent.

It seemed that Emily's body had been stolen to be used as one of the twelve corpses needed for the Liturgy of the Twelve Radiant Apostles. 

Irena managed to glean Raoul's plans to resurrect Emily; she asked him if he knew of the Mantle of Iron Tears. He did not. She told the group to return to her shop if they managed to rescue Emily's body.

Speaking of rescuing Emily's body, Catarina, Panthalassa, and Serafina hatched a plan to infiltrate the convent and figure out a way to get the doors open to the rest of the group at night. Meanwhile, the remainder of the group returned to the Green Cauldron. However, the mysterious guest had arrived in their absence was busy directing the porters unloading his carriage. The man, a very tall, muscular man of military bearing, caught Daytona's eye. Daytona recognized the man and felt his heart sink within his chest--their mission in Selvik's Hollow just became infinitely more complicated and dangerous.

We'll find out who this newcomer is next time.

Sunday, March 3, 2024

The Tyranny of Faith, Infinity Pool, Malenka, and More

Things that brought me delight in February, 2024:


Richard Swan, The Tyranny of Faith

I read Richard Swan's The Justice of Kings last month and was so enamored with it that I immediately ordered The Tyranny of Faith as soon as I had finished it. The Tyranny of Faith does not disappoint. Told from the perspective of Helena Sedanka, Sir Konrad Vonvalt's clerk and apprentice Justice, we get a view of the unfolding threat to the Empire of the Wolf. And theremany moving parts involved in the intrigue: the Emperor's grandson is kidnapped, someone is arming insurgents with gunpowder, the church has stolen the secrets of ancient magic, and Konrad Vonvalt, the Empire's best hope, has been cursed with a life-ending demonic hex. But beyond all the momentous events converging, The Tyranny of Faith is still a very human tale: despite his acuity, power, and remit, it's Vonvalt's fallibilities that lead to the most tragedy in the novel.


Infinity Pool

I love a speculative movie that is a total feels-bad experience. Infinity Pool takes place in and around an elite resort in the fictional country of Li Tolqa. When a chance accident takes the life of a native, the Western tourists involved learn firsthand the strange legal workings of the nation: to avoid death, the wrongdoer is allowed to pay an exorbitant amount to be cloned so the copy can be executed in their stead. What follows these events is hedonism, commentary on exploitation of the developing world, and a heady cocktail of sex, violence, loss of personal identity, and betrayal.


Malenka

Malenka, aka Fangs of the Living Dead, is a late-60s horror movie that might be have the distinction of being the first Spanish vampire film. And it's a doozy. A beautiful young model, played by Anita Ekberg, discovers that she has inherited a title and a castle...and perhaps the curse of vampirism as well. Or has she? It could all be a hoax...to be honest, it could be anything because the tacked-on ending goes a long way toward contradicting everything else in the film. It hardly matters; you go into Malenka for Gothic nonsense, not a rational film that makes sense, and it provides Gothic nonsense in spades.


Stephen King, The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands

While waiting for the third book in Richard Swan's dark fantasy trilogy to make its way to me, I decided to pick up the third volume of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series to make a little headway in my very lackadaisical re-read of the saga. This is the one with the very fun encounter with the giant cyborg bear and the riddle-loving insane AI train. I read this six-hundred page beast over three days, which more than anything illustrates that when King is on his game he is extremely readable and fun.


Shudder #1, 2, 3, 12, 15 and Vampiress Carmilla #5, 6, 17, 18, 19

Anyone who listens to Bad Books for Bad People will already know of my affection for the Shudder and Vampiress Carmilla comics. I delved into the back issues as well as catching the latest issues on the rack. Issue #15 of Shudder is a great standalone illustration of why I love these titles and a fantastic place to start if you want to hop on this train. This issue has all the good stuff. In just one issue you get witches, vampires, grave robbers, seaside tales, cowboys, a Poe homage, and the Devil's own nightclub. And that cover! Look at that cover! If that doesn't speak to you, I don't want to know you.


Hellbender

Hellbender is less a straightforward horror flick and more of a bildungsroman with horror elements. A mother and daughter live in seclusion on their forested mountain, happily making metal music (???) and going on hikes, until the daughter encounters another teenager and begins to pine for the life she's been sequestered away from. What follows is a discovery of her familiar connection to witchcraft and a strange generational contest between mother and daughter that is part and parcel of her growth into maturity. What's really fascinating about this film is that it was a family project (it was directed and stars a married couple and their children) made during the pandemic lookdown in their Catskills home. It's low-budget for sure, but the rough-and-ready nature of it adds to its truly unique charm.


Mike Mignola, Angela Slatter, Valeria Burzo, Michelle Madsen, Castle Full of Blackbirds

I'm going to have to be completely honest here: you can probably skip Castle Full of Blackbirds if you aren't already immersed in the Hellboy-verse. I wasn't aware that this comic slotted into Mignola's wider world when I bought it, but the story of a young runaway possessing strange powers ending up in a fiendish school for witches is pretty easy to parse even if all the connections don't necessarily mean anything to you. To be even more honest, the art here didn't thrill me, but I suspect that this is more of an issue with the colors than the inkwork. That said, the covers from the individual issues (here used as chapter breaks in the collection) by Wylie Beckert are phenomenal. 


Kaori Yuki, Fairy Cube Vols. 1-3

I have to admit, even as a big fan of Kaori Yuki's manga I didn't think Fairy Cube was going to be a series for me. The cover makes this manga seem like it's very much Not My Thing. As it turns out, however, this is actually a pretty sinister series! A kid with the ability to see fairies ("Cottingley fairies" style) gets mixed up in a fey plot to overthrow humanity when his "evil double" possesses his father and has his dad knife him to death. When he comes back, his spirit now inhabiting the corpse of a young boy, he finds that his double has taken over his body and is now courting the girl he loves. Although this doesn't rank up there with my favorite Kaori Yuki manga, Fairy Cube has some really interesting and provocative ideas to it that I wasn't expecting. 


Dr. Frankenstein's House of 3-D

I found this 3-D comic from the early 90s in one of our trips to the antique market. The interiors are the blue-and-red line art you'd expect, and the 3-D glasses are still unpunched! The content basically takes one of two forms: pin-up art of Frankenstein's monster (much of it by cover artist and monster aficionado XNO) or an origin story comic for the creature by Dick Briefer. Both ends of the spectrum are done up in underground comix-style art. Although I bought this as something of a novelty, it's actually really well done with some great art I hadn't seen before. I'm calling this one a win for the "random treasure acquired for a few dollars" pile.


Chelsea Wolfe, She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She

It's probably reductive to think of She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She as Chelsea Wolfe's "Bjork" album, but I can't shake that feeling. Of course, Wolfe's cold industrial backdrop is more menacing than most Bjork tracks, but the delicacy, effortlessness, and bravura vocal work are what render the similarities here for me. This is a record that easily slips into a kind of conjured soundscape, but it's worth clearing your head of the haze to take in all the particulars. 


Essie Fox, The Fascination

Essie's Fox's The Fascination starts off with two narrative strands. In the first, a young man is booted from his grandfather's estate when the old tyrant suddenly marries and produces an heir of his own. Meanwhile, a pair of twin sisters (one who develops normally and one who is stuck at a child-like size) are forced to accompany their shyster father as he shucks a snake oil remedy at fairs. The narrative paths cross at a chance meeting, then diverge: the young man comes to work at a London museum of oddities, while the sisters find themselves "adopted" to a house of "freaks." The threads converge again when a pleasure cult of depraved aristocrats abducts the diminutive sister for their own sinister purposes. I was looking forward to reading The Fascination for quite some time (I had to wait for a US release of this one, which was pure torture) and let me tell you: it was completely worth the wait. The Fascination is Dickensian Gothic grotesque at its finest.


Men

Now that I've watched it, I regret not seeing Men in the theater. There are so many things I love about it that I didn't realize were present at the time: I didn't know Jessie Buckley, who I loved in Taboo, stars in it; I didn't know that Rory Kinnear, who of course was great in Penny Dreadful, plays multiple characters in it; I had no idea it was one of the better modern folk horror movies out there. 

The premise is simple: a woman decides to spend time on her own in a rented cottage as she deals with the trauma and guilt of her estranged husband's possible suicide. But from there, her encounters with various men of the village take increasingly ominous turns until the whole thing climaxes in...you know what, you need to see it to believe it.


Richard Swan, The Trials of Empire

Now that I've finished The Trials of Empire, the last book in Richard Swan's The Empire of the Wolf trilogy, I can heartily recommend the series to anyone with the stomach to make it through a dark fantasy trilogy of somewhat chunky books. (The second and third books weigh in at over five-hundred pages apiece, for fair warning.) If you do possess that kind of stamina, I think you'll find a lot to love in the entire series, from the first to the last. As an endpoint, The Trials of Empire avoids a lot of cliches, even some hinted at in previous books, and it's the rare series that culminates in a legal trial after the dust has settled from the big, horrible, gritty battle scenes, and manages to actually make the trial pretty entertaining.


Norman Partridge, Dark Harvest

Part of me wishes I had saved Norman Partridge's Dark Harvest for the Halloween season, as it would be a perfect read for October. (You may want to buy a copy now and tuck it away in anticipation.) Dark Harvest concerns a small town with a strange contest held every Halloween: boys aged sixteen to nineteen are forced out of their homes to hunt, and BE HUNTED BY, the October Boy--a pumpkin-headed scarecrow that's out for blood. Dark Harvest is a fun, and surprising, short novel that really captures the madness of Halloween, the small-town experience, and a particularly American flavor of folk horror.


D. Alexander Ward and Gina Scapellato (eds.), Strange Echoes

Strange Echoes is an anthology of short fiction, and like most anthologies it is a mixed bag. The oddest thing about Strange Echoes is that the stories within it don't really feel united by style, theme, or fictional mode; it was a little difficult to see why these particular tales live under the same roof. That said, while none of the stories are poor quality, to my mind there are three standouts. Things start strong with Pamela Durgin's "Canyon Country," which is more of a mood piece about a particular hell-blasted landscape and they very broken young woman moving through it; the mood is pretty rancid, which I mean in a positive way. I also thought Kristin Peterson's story about conjoined twins and the uncanny life they share was excellent. Now, I may be biased as Mattie is a friend who plays in my game group, but I think Matilda Lewis's "Honey, Blood, and Hellfire" is the real stand-out in the collection. This one's a treat, like Hawthorne unencumbered by his era and allowed to be horny on main.


Marrowbone

Admittedly, my expectations were pretty low going into it, but Marrowbone was a pleasant surprise. This Gothic drama is about a British family who has fled their monstrous, abusive, serial killer father for their mother's childhood home in Maine. As they attempt to start over under a new name, they grow insular--only allowing a farmgirl living nearby into their inner circle. Of course, they've been pursued by their father--or are haunted by his ghost--but the truth of things is far more wicked. Marrowbone has a bit of a VC Andrews feel to it, which is an uncommon flavor that works nicely with this kind of film. Even though I saw the gimmick coming a mile away, Marrowbone really gave me the kind of Gothic nonsense I like.

Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay, Somna: A Bedtime Story, Books One and Two

You can tell that I was excited for Somna, a new erotic horror comic from Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay, because I broke down and started buying the single issues--something I rarely do. My expectations were quite high for this book and against all odds it met if not exceeded my hopes for it. Somna is the story of a woman married to her town's bailiff, a position that is changing into that of a witchfinder. But as he is hunting the darkness, her dreams are plagued with sinful, demonic erotic reveries that push against the repression she faces in public and at home. Add to this that her best friend is involved in an illicit affair with a handsome young man (and widower of an executed witch), and that her friend's husband is mysterious found murdered, and things are heating up on all fronts. I can't believe I have to wait until the end of March to see how Somna concludes. Sometimes life is cruel.


Lisa Frankenstein

Lisa Frankenstein doesn't seem to be getting much in the way of positive reviews, but I had a great time watching it! It really does do a good job of capturing the tone of an 80s teen comedy, and I have to admit that I laughed out loud quite a bit seeing this in the theater. Also, I always love a story about outsiders being outsiders and remaining outsiders even at the end of things--no Breakfast Club style makeover here in Lisa Frankenstein and none of the reconciling with the status quo either. Oddly, this teen movie probably won't mean much to modern teens; this one is probably aimed at people who can actually remember the 80s.


The Long Hair of Death

The Long Hair of Death has become something of a comfort movie for me, and I genuinely consider it to be a classic of the black and white European Gothic genre. It's got witches back from the dead, rapacious noblemen, scheming seductresses, and a creaky old castle complete with hidden passages and eerie tombs. If that wasn't enough, you get the incomparably beautiful Barbara Steele and a truly horrific looking corpse crawling with worms. The comeuppance in the ending scene of The Long Hair of Death feels sadistically satisfying to boot. If you ever want to do a double-feature of great Euro Gothics, considering pairing The Long Hair of Death with Black Sunday for a Barbara Steele-fueled one-two punch.


Alexis Henderson, House of Hunger

In Alexis Henderson's House of Hunger, a young worker from an industrial slum leaves her life of poverty behind to become the "bloodmaid" of a "night lord" named...Liveta Bathory. Although the novel never uses the v-word, Bathory and her fellow night lords employ young women to provide them with the blood that keeps them healthy. House of Hunger attaches many themes to its central idea; it touches on labor exploitation, classism, and above all the pain and turmoil of obsessive love. I enjoyed Henderson's previous novel, The Year of the Witching, but House of Hunger fires on all cylinders. More than anything, I appreciated that House of Hunger confounded my expectations and wasn't afraid to get a bit grimy. 


T. Kingfisher, What Feasts at Night

I gave T. Kingfisher another shot after being distinctly underwhelmed with A House With Good Bones, which is decent read but far too light for my particular tastes, and picked up What Feasts at Night in February. What Feasts at Night is the sequel to What Moves the Dead, Kingfisher's riff on Poe's "Th Fall of the House of Usher," so it's interesting to see what she does without an allusion to another author's work to fall back on. This one has a slow start, but once it gets off its ass and starts moving in the final third, it work pretty well. There's some surprisingly horrific imagery--especially since I thought she soft-peddled the horrors in A House With Good Bones--though I still wouldn't necessarily call the work "horror" as a whole.


Peter Milligan, Piotr Kowalski, Brad Simpson, Simon Bowland, God of Tremors

God of Tremors is a one-shot comic I can heartily recommend to fans of both Victorian horror and folk horror. The comic has the same form factor as the recent books I've been enjoying from DSTLRY, such as Somna, which is quickly becoming my format of choice for these deluxe-feeling single issues. God of Tremors is the story of a young man stricken with epilepsy, though his zealous and hypocritical vicar father interprets the ailment as demonic possession. His father's attempts to purge the demons through brutal beatings and exorcisms have no effect, of course. And then the boy finds a strange stone idol in the woods that could offer him freedom from his father's tyranny...


Justin D. Hill, Pilgrims of Fire

Sometimes I just need my 40k novel fix, so I turned to Justin D. Hill's Pilgrims of Fire. There is a lot of nuance to the battle between heretics and Sisters of Battle trying to protect the relics of a saint in the early bits of this surprisingly complicated novel. There's a conflict between duty and a bloodthirstiness that covers itself under religious zeal, a willingness to sacrifice common people to protect what are essentially just symbols of the faith, and also something clever going on with the use of conscripted prisoners as soldiers. One of my favorite bits: the Imperium tries to send a war ship into the warp and it immediately comes back; it's clearly fucked up, no signs of life, and then they realize that a huge alien life form is wearing it like a fucking hermit crab. I wish I had thought of that.


Hung, Drawn and Executed and Nightmare on One Sheet

I picked up two art books showcasing the horror art of Graham Humphreys in February. Both feature a great selection of his work, from movie posters, commissioned art, book covers, etc. If you keep an eye out for deluxe Blu Ray reissues of classic horror flicks, then you've definitely seen his work. It's awesome having so much of it in bound form. An embarrassment of riches, really.

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

"Uncle Sam Sends His Regards"

Here's what happened in the third session of Mike Royal's Pulp Cthulhu game:

Our next stop in the South Seas was the decaying colonial isle of St. Peters. Our captain, H. H. Humphreys, sent us on an unusual errand: we were to go to shore with a cardboard box and deliver it to a man named Mr. Lao. We were explicitly told not to look at the item in the box.

Of course, we looked in the box.

Inside was a stone idol that we all found quite disturbing. (Read: immediate Sanity loss.) However, our attempt to offload the idol on Mr. Lao was unsuccessful; we were informed that Mr. Lao "fell down the Stairs," meaning that he took a self-directed tumble down an infamous part of the island behind the French tower. We also learned from a salty dog of a sailor that the idol was connected to a maritime cult of ancient origins. Furthermore, we heard rumors of a mysterious location known as the Isle de Cranios.

We wanted to take a look at the tower under control of the French authorities for ourselves. When we spoke to the French soldiers outside, they were friendly and cordial. Our meeting with Captain Rochelle, the island's governor, went a bit more strangely. When we showed him the idol, he immediately commandeered it and declared that it had been stolen from a French museum and needed to be returned. Instead of fighting to keep ahold of our property--especially since French soldiers were filing into the room--we decided to hide out in the nearby cemetery to watch and see where Captain Rochelle took the idol.

Most of us hid behind some tombstones while we kept watch on the tower, but a few of our group decided to explore the church presiding over the burial grounds. They found the priest bleeding from empty eye sockets, gibbering something to the effect that it was "too late to stop what was coming."

When Captain Rochelle and his men exited the tower, they did so in ritualistic garb. They had the idol with them, along with a number of zombie-like men whose eyes glowed green. We followed them to where they had a number of motor boats moored. They took off into the swamps, and we took the two boats they left behind and gave chase.

Two of our party stopped to examine a strange green lantern and were assaulted by what were either the walking dead or men in trances. They had to beat a hasty retreat.

The rest of us kept pace as we shadowed the boats...until it was clear that they planned to jump ship for a larger vessel and take the idol to some unwholesome location. We rammed Captain Rochelle's boat with out own, bellowing "Uncle Sam sends his regards." A gunfight broke out, but we sent Rochelle and his men down to Davy Jones's locker. We recovered the idol and...well, that's where we ended the session.

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Escape From the Isle of White Apes

What follows is my fragmentary recollection of what went down in the second session of Mike Royal's Pulp Cthulhu game.

When we last left our heroes, they were descending into the stygian abyss beneath a mysterious ruined temple on an island that seemed curiously out-of-time. We dodged a number of white ape servitors and determined that the area below the temple was some kind of arcane scientific facility.

We chanced upon a fiendish reptile man who appeared to be some sort of doctor--well, he was performing vivisection on a white ape at any rate. Our attempts to parlay with the reptile man proved ineffective, which ultimately resulted in a brutal melee in which we executed said reptile man and performed a mercy killing on the white ape. Negotiations breaking down and setting the stage for carnage would largely be the running theme of our attempt to get to the bottom of things on the island.

We found glass-like pipes filled with magma that seemed to be powering the eldritch machinery within the facility. We attempted to destroy the power source and necessary machinery with some well-placed explosives, but unfortunately the pipes proved impervious to our incendiaries. However, the explosion did cause chaos within the facility; white apes were running to and fro attempting to put out fires and clear the mess.

When we found plinths that held a massive army of reptile men, each frozen out of phase in a temporal shift, we knew that we couldn't leave without foiling the alien threat. The machines at work were bringing the army into the present--we had to stop the plot before earth was overrun by an implacable, scaly menace.

Our resolve led to a desperate assault on a control center housed within an underearth watch tower. Several of us were injured in the firefight, but we managed to kill the white ape soldiers guarding the control panel. We caused more destruction to foil the machinery, piled the corpses of white apes in front of the door to slow anyone who tried to correct the damage, and fled for our lives. We had another tense fight on the way out as we tried to gain control of an elevator to the surface, but no white apes could stop us. 

The volcano was poised to erupt and the island was shaking as we made our way back to our exploratory vessel. Once we boarded we discovered something uncanny: although our ordeal had lasted hours, the crew reported that we were only gone about twenty minutes.