With The Ensorcellment of January now underway, I’m taking a brief hiatus from H. P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands tales to share my thoughts on four Clark Ashton Smith stories I consider particularly worthy of attention. The first of these is a story of which I am especially fond, “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros,” which appeared in the November 1931 issue of Weird Tales. Whatever its other virtues – and they are many – it stands as one of the clearest early expressions of sword-and-sorcery literature. More broadly, it encapsulates many of the qualities that define what I think of as pulp fantasy at its most effective: immediacy, moral ambiguity, horror, and a palpable sense that the world is not merely indifferent to human ambition but actively hostile to it.

The tale opens with one of my favorite first sentences ever to appear in a fantasy story:

I, Satampra Zeiros of Uzuldaroum, shall write with my left hand, since I have no longer any other, the tale of everything that befell Tirouv Ompallios and myself in the shrine of the god Tsathoggua, which lies neglected by the worship of man in the jungle-taken suburbs of Commoriom, that long-deserted capital of the Hyperborean rulers.

The story that follows fully earns that opening. It is a first-person account by a professional thief explaining not only how he came to lose his right hand, but how his most recent heist ended in catastrophe. Not a bad beginning! Together with his companion, Tirouv Ompallios, Zeiros ventures into Commoriom, the long-abandoned capital of Hyperborea, a place shunned even by other robbers. Rumored to be cursed and haunted by strange gods, Commoriom nonetheless promises fabulous wealth to anyone bold (or foolish) enough to plunder it. For Zeiros, that promise is irresistible.

The two thieves break into an ancient, seemingly intact temple of the elder god Tsathoggua – the toad-god’s first appearance in Smith’s fiction – where they find no jewels or gold, but instead disturb a foul, viscous substance resting within a vast bronze basin. This substance rises and assumes the form of a monstrous, many-limbed creature that hunts them through the ruins all night long. At dawn, the thieves realize they have come full circle and have returned to the temple itself. Barricading themselves inside proves useless. The creature oozes through a damaged lintel, consuming Ompallios in silence and nearly claiming Zeiros as well. He escapes only by sacrificing his right hand, surviving to record the tale as a warning.

Smith wrote “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” early in his career as a prose writer, when he was still finding his footing in the pages of Weird Tales and the story bears the clear imprint of his literary influences. Poe’s fascination with doom, confession, and inevitable consequence is evident in the framing, while the French Decadents inform the luxuriant prose and preoccupation with corruption, blasphemy, and decay. At the same time, Smith is also clearly engaging with the raw material of adventure fiction – thieves, lost cities, fabulous treasure, and sudden violence. The fusion of these elements gives the story its remarkable staying power. Even decades after first reading it, I can still vividly recall the experience.

A great deal of the story’s success lies in Smith’s choice of protagonist. Zeiros is no hero. He is greedy, cynical, and ultimately self-preserving, surviving only at the expense of his partner in crime. This perspective strips the tale of any romantic gloss and reinforces a central truth of Smith’s Hyperborea, namely, that audacity is not rewarded, only punished. For that reason, “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” is more than merely a foundational sword-and-sorcery text (though it certainly is that). It represents a decisive shift away from quests, kingdoms, and moral uplift toward immediate danger and personal survival. The stakes are not cosmic salvation or political destiny, but simply whether the protagonist lives to see another day. In that respect, it is a near-perfect encapsulation of the pulp fantasy ethos.

Though he never, to my knowledge, confirmed it, I have long suspected that “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” exerted some influence on Fritz Leiber’s conception of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. These roguish protagonists, with their ill-conceived schemes and narrow escapes, feel like natural descendants of Zeiros and Ompallios. Likewise, the relationship between Smith’s two thieves – transactional, greedy, and ultimately fragile – anticipates later depictions of adventuring partnerships defined more by convenience than by trust.

Issue #11 of White Dwarf (February/March 1979) features a very odd cover painting by John Blanche. I'm not quite sure what it's supposed to depict, but, like so many of Blanche's work, it's undeniably compelling. Coincidentally, Ian Livingstone's editorial asks readers their opinions about the cover illustrations of the first ten issue of the magazine. I am very curious to see if a future editorial includes an acknowledgement of the results of this survey.

"Fire-Arms: 3000 A.D." by Brian Asbury is a catalog of ten new weapons for use with GDW's Traveller RPG. Unsurprisingly, the weapons include a blaster pistol and a plasma blade, two commonly referenced "omissions" in the game's equipment lists. The "Fiend Factory" presents eight more monsters for use with Dungeons & Dragons. Eight seems to be the default number of new monsters in each issues. I wonder if there's any significance to it beyond, say, the space allocated to the column. 

Lewis Pulsipher's "A Bar-Room Brawl – D&D Style" is a mini-game of sorts, based on an event at UK Games Day III event that Pulsipher than used as inspiration for his own event at Dragonmeet 1. The premise is, as its title suggests, a brawl in your typical fantasy inn, filled with a variety of characters and monsters (23 of them, in fact). Complementing the article is a hex map and cut-out counters to adjudicate location of combatants and objects in the barroom. Also accompanying the article are Pulsipher's recollections of having run this scenario at the convention. I appreciate details like this and wish more articles included them.

"Humanoid Variations for Starships & Spacemen" by Charles Elsden is a very short article describing a few new aliens for use with FGU's Starships & Spacemen. These descriptions are completely devoid of any game statistics, though, which surprises me. "Open Box" reviews three games. Four – Dimension Six and SPI's Middle Earth – are given fairly mediocre reviews (5 out of 10). The third, of Chaosium's RuneQuest, is given a score of 9 and much praise. I find the review fascinating, because, by the time I started reading White Dwarf, the magazine had a reputation for being a source of much quality RQ material. The final review, of AD&D modules D1, D2, and D3, is even more glowing. Reviewer Don Turnbull gives the modules a score of perfect 10. I like those modules a great deal myself, but perfect? 

"Treasure Chest" presents three more monsters (which were originally submitted to "Fiend Factory," according to the column's introduction), a magic item, and a humorous class called the Weakling. Here's its advancement table:

In running my Dwimmermount campaign, I've tried very hard to impart a swords-and-sorcery feel to the whole thing. One of the subtler ways I've done that relates to the presentation of morality and alignment. As I've explained previously, the campaign setting postulates a primordial war between Law and Chaos, with "Law" being equated with the forces of mortal civilization and "Chaos" being equated with forces of otherworldly destruction. Thus, while Chaos might be called "insane" or at least "irrational," Law encompasses both good and evil components, as anyone who prefers the orderliness of civilization over the howling instability of Chaos would throw their lot in with this alignment.

A good case in point is the religion of Typhon. Typhon is one of the main deities of the City-State of Adamas. He is a god of law, order, judgment, discipline, and trade; he is also quite evil by most understandings of the term. However, because his faith inspires rulers, judges, soldiers, and merchants to channel their self-interest in defense of civilization, he is generally seen as one of humanity's main patrons among the gods. Typhonian clerics are among the foremost exorcists and demon hunters and undertake missions of extreme danger in the war against Chaos. Nevertheless, Typhon is not a "nice" deity and his church's teachings are cruel and unforgiving. As the players will discover, there's a powerful disconnect between Typhon's ethical philosophy -- which might be simplistically described as "Nietzschean" -- and his followers' role in protecting humanity and its allies from the depredations of Chaos.

In a similar fashion, the City-State of Yethlyreom is ruled by necromancers and whose armies, constabulary, and workers consist in large part of mindless undead -- but Yethlyreom is every bit as much on the side of Law as is Typhon. The ruling necromancers have effectively made a deal with the Devil, employing Chaos-tainted magic in order to "fight fire with fire." This practice began out of desperation in the past but has evolved into an orderly, almost scientific approach to death, dying, and the afterlife that has served the city-state well, even if it sometimes results in one or more necromancers succumbing to seduction by Chaos. But, by and large, Yethlyreom is a peaceful, justly-run city whose inhabitants know that their rulers do what they do to keep them safe from worse horrors. It's not pretty much of the time, but who said fighting Chaos would be?

Both Typhon and Yethlyreom serve to highlight the campaign setting's difference from less nuanced styles of fantasy, where good and evil form the basis for the cosmic conflict. Good and evil aren't absent from Dwimmermount by any means; people still think and act according to such notions. What's different is that, because the cosmic conflict is between civilization and those who would tear it down, good and evil are often arrayed on the same side. Chaos is utterly alien and inhuman and against it both good and evil sometimes must lock arms and stand side by side. For myself, I think this introduces a level of moral complexity that leads to good roleplaying and that feels true to swords-and-sorcery literature.

I realize I'm a few days behind with this news, but Elf Lair Games now has a blog. In case you're not aware of it, the company publishes the awesome Spellcraft & Swordplay, an old school fantasy game that cleaves more closely to OD&D's Chainmail roots than do most retro-clones. I wrote a review of the game last Fall and will probably write another of the revised edition over the next week or so. I'm very impressed with the approach that Jason Vey took with the game and look forward to seeing how the game grows and develops.

In the mail today I received my long-awaited three-volume collector's edition of Jason Vey's awesome Chainmail-inspired old school game, Spellcraft & Swordplay. As you can see from the photograph to the right, the collector's edition came as a boxed set that mimics the appearance of the OD&D white box, although it includes a couple of extras, such as dice and pre-printed character sheets, that were never included with its illustrious predecessor. As I've said innumerable times on this blog, I'm actually rather negative about aping the look and feel of stuff from the 1970s. My feeling remains that, as nostalgic as I am about the old stuff I grew up with, I think it's a mistake to use those products of yore as esthetic models for contemporary old school products. I'm not talking about the art so much as the graphic design and layout, which I generally think has been improved with the passing of the years. Ultimately, I think it'll prove a costly mistake for the old school movement if it ties itself too closely to a narrow set of presentation choices that ossified around 1981.

So I was a bit perplexed as to why the S&S collector's edition didn't set off the same alarm bells in my head that other old school products do. Part of it is that I got a kick out of finally acquiring a brand new White Box, one I didn't get second-hand. It was almost as if my nearly-40 year-old self was magically transported back to 1974 and I got to be one of the early adopters of this crazy new game from the Midwest. I can't really call it nostalgia, since I was five years old when OD&D was released, but, whatever one terms it, I felt an emotional rush of opening the crisp new box and pulling out its three little brown books and reading them. I should add that, having had the chance to look over this edition (whose text is identical to the revised edition), nearly all the quibbles I had about the original release, which I reviewed last Fall, were swept away. If I weren't already playing Swords & Wizardry, I might well consider adopting S&S as my game of choice instead. Even so, there's a lot here I may adopt anyway, since one of the joys of old school gaming is the easy compatibility of all these variants.

The other part -- the bigger part, I think -- of why I so fell in love with this package is that it came in nice, compact, little box. Everything I need to play the game is right in there and, while there are some expansions to S&S available, I don't need them. More to the point, the game contained within the box is straightforward and to the point, just how I prefer my games to be. Boxed sets have more or less disappeared from the RPG scene, with a few notable exceptions, and with that disappearance so too has succinctness. A box sets a physical limit on just how much verbiage a designer can churn out for a game and I think the loss of boxed sets has had a generally negative impact on game design, creating an environment in which completeness is largely a myth or, at best, a temporary state of affairs until the next hardcover volume is released in a month.

You know why AD&D was released as a series of hardcover books? To accommodate the desires of Random House, who wanted to distribute Dungeons & Dragons in the US and Canada, but which balked at trying to sell tiny boxed games to retailers. Thus was born a format that made it easier to sit on a retailer's shelf and the door was opened, however slightly, to where we are today. I miss those boxed sets of old. I'd love to see them come back, but I know why they won't, both in practical and economic terms. I think it's a pity, as the joy I experienced this morning showed. Plus, I think a lot of good would come of putting RPGs back in boxes; it might help to remind people that these are games. Crazy, I know.