The Slavers saga comes to an end with a whimper instead of a bang.

Originally Published March 16th, 2002

This review builds on my reviews of A1: Slave Pits of the Undercity, A2: Secret of the Slavers Stockade, and A3: Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords. It’s probably a good idea to read those reviews, found here, here, and here, respectively, before reading this one.

CONCEPT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for the A-series of modules. Players who may find themselves playing in these adventures should not read beyond this point.

At the end of A3: Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords the PCs fell victim to the Slave Lords: For months now they have been imprisoned in their dungeons — spellcasters tortured and kept from sleep to prevent them memorizing their spells; thieves denied their tools; and fighters denied their weapons. As the adventure begins they are dosed with more sleeping potions and then dumped into the cave system which runs through the nearby volcano.

The PCs must survive essentially by their wits alone in these caverns until, finally, the volcano erupts – destroying the city of Suderham beneath lava and an invasion of magmen. There is also a sligth chance at this point that the PCs might stumble onto the Water Dragon — the ship the Slave Lords are using to escape. If this happens, the PCs have the opportunity to defeat the Slave Lords once and for all. If not… well, who knows? They might bump into them in the next pub they stop at.

WEAKNESSES

There is only one problem with A4: In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords, but it’s a biggie:

It doesn’t make any sense!

And I mean from page one, paragraph one. Keep the adventurers imprisoned for months? Why? Then knock them out again and dump then in volcanic tunnels? Why?

“Why?” is actually a very important question here, because it’s one I kept asking myself throughout the module. As another example: Why are there kobolds, myconids, giant ants, and magmen all living in close proximity to each other down here?

But the most baffling question of all is this: Why, after an epic, four-part adventure, was the decision made to deny the PCs an epic confrontation with the Slave Lords? These memorable villains, although drawn well on the page, are never truly pitted against the PCs as true masterminds and cunning opponents. Instead, the saga of Slavelords is allowed to die with a whimper at best – a complete anti-climax at worst.

STRENGTHS

About the only thing A4 has going for it is the titular concept: In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords. Stripped of their equipment and their most potent magical abilities, the PCs are asked to escape their imprisonment, re-establish a power base, and strike a final, definitive blow against their would-be captors.

That’s a pretty cool idea. But there’s so very little of it to be found on the page here. The dramatic escape is, instead, rendered as absolute, incomprehensible stupidity on the part of the villains. The volcano’s eruption, a potentially brilliant and epic complication for the final act, is instead used as a tool for anti-climax. The final confrontation with the Slave Lords – a battle which should live in the memories of the players forever – is reduced to a whimpering formality, if it happens at all.

CONCLUSION

A4: In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords is not worth your time. Buy A1-3, but skip this one: You’ll be much better off ignoring everything except the high-level concept of A4 (which you can safely glean from this review) and crafting your own ending to this epic.

Style: 2
Substance: 2

Author: Lawrence Schick
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Price: $4.99
ISBN: 0-935696-28-8
Product Code: TSR9042
Pages: 32
Year Published: 1981

Arguably a great concept for a tournament scenario, but a terrible railroad in any other context. And the execution on this one really is quite lackluster. The A-series is well remembered in any case, but I think it would be even more highly placed in the pantheon of D&D adventures if it had managed to even marginally nail the landing.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

It’s pretty well understood that over the last forty years, the sales of comic books in America have shifted inexorably from “floppy” pamphlets to graphic novel collections.

To understand this shift, one must first know that it follows a thirty-year decline of comic book sales at newsstands as the medium became one of the last lingering vestiges of the pulp magazine market that had dominated fiction sales from the mid-19^th century until being wiped out in the mid-20^th century by television and paperback novels. With their distribution system collapsing, comic books only survived the 1970s because of the creation of the direct market.

The direct market not only allowed Marvel and DC to survive with much smaller sales than they’d enjoyed in their heyday, it let small publishers and solo creators effectively distribute their creations. The result was a renaissance in North American comic book storytelling which carried the medium to new creative heights.

The history of the direct market is a saga in its own right, including Marvel failing to monopolize it in the ‘90s and instead blowing up the entire industry through exclusivity deals with fallout which continues to impact not only the comics industry, but neighboring hobby industries, unto this day. (You can draw an almost direct line from there to Paizo’s current financial woes, for example.) But the most important effect of the direct market was to ghettoize comic books: New readers could no longer discover comics in the mainstream stores they were shopping at; they instead needed to seek out specialty shops.

Comic book pamphlets have never really emerged from that ghetto.

Graphic novel collections sold in book form, on the other hand, could and did. Unlike pamphlets, they could be stocked in bookstores alongside other books, where they could be discovered by the general public.

Marvel and DC, however, have not been able to translate their complete domination of the pamphlet market into a similar domination of the book market. Instead, they combine for less than 10% of the market, while Scholastic Books dominates with 40% of the market.

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?

A key turning point in the history of comics came when Scholastic Books licensed Jeff Smith’s Bone (previously self-published through the direct market). Its success caused Scholastic to expand and publish more comics, which leads pretty directly to Raina Telgemeier being the bestselling comics creator in North America.

Now, let’s say that you’ve never heard of Bone before, but your friend recommends it or you see a copy on the shelf at your local bookstore and you think it looks cool. What should you read first?

Well, that’s pretty easy: You read Volume 1. Then Volume 2. Then Volume 3, and so on until you reach the end of the story in Volume 9. This is easy. It’s intuitive. It’s obvious just from looking at the books on the shelf which one you should read next.

The same will be true for virtually any manga series. One Piece might have more than a hundred volumes and countless spin-offs, but there’s no question where you should start: Volume 1.

Let’s compare this to someone hearing about Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern: Blackest Night. They look around and they spot the Blackest Night Saga, collecting Blackest Night #0-8. This must be it!

Except… no. That collection does include the full Blackest Night mini-series, but the story was originally written to weave between multiple titles. So we’ll have to take a step back and consider:

Blackest Night Saga
Blackest Night: Green Lantern
Blackest Night: Black Lantern Corps – Vol. 1
Blackest Night: Black Lantern Corps – Vol. 2
Blackest Night: Green Lantern Corps
Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps

Which of these should we read? Well, that depends on how essential you consider Peter J. Tomasi’s contributions to the story to be, but let’s assume we can ignore those and just pick up the comics written by Geoff Johns, so we grab Blackest Night Saga, Blackest Night: Green Lantern, and Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps.

Now… what order do we read these in? Well… that’s the trick, isn’t it? The original pamphlets included helpful blurbs that said, “The story continues in blah, blah, blah!” and you could just follow those from one issue to the next, but these have been removed from these collections. Your only real solution here is to search online for a reading order, and then skip back and forth between the collections trying to find the matching issues.

Okay, screw that. Can we just bypass this whole morass by grabbing the Blackest Night 10^th Anniversary Omnibus? Sort of. This collection is 1700 pages, costs $150, and includes not only the Blackest Night story, but every single crossover comic.

It turns out that what you probably want to buy is none of these, but actually Green Lantern by Geoff Johns Omnibus – Volume 2. That includes a bunch of other Green Lantern stories by Geoff Johns, but seems to include the complete Blackest Night story. I think. It looks like this might still be missing some stuff, but at this point I’ve spent over an hour researching this in the hopes of getting an authoritative answer, and I don’t care anymore.

And this isn’t an isolated problem. If you make an effort to read Marvel and DC books — and it’s definitely an effort — you’ll repeatedly find yourself forced to look up reading lists, desperately hoping you can avoid spoilers, just to figure out what seemingly random assortment of books and/or issues you need to follow just to read the thing you already want to read.

There are a number of reasons why Marvel and DC struggle with this.

First, they both have a vast library of legacy continuity. While there are many advantages to having this huge back catalog (including many of the most notable stories of the 20^th century), it also means that the answer to, “I like Batman, where should I start reading?” can’t be as simple, “Start with Volume 1!” Not only would it be impossible to publish the stories like that, but you don’t actually want people to have to struggle through decades of mediocre Batman comics before they can read Frank Miller’s Year One or Snyder’s Court of Owls or Grant Morrison’s iconic run.

Second, many of their stories — both old and new — are written to sell pamphlets. Crossover events, as we’ve seen, make sense when your goal is to make a kid bike back to the newsstand and buy another comic, but they can become labyrinthine puzzles that make the story impenetrable. On the flip side, these mega-crossover events also mean you’ll be happily reading a story and then — KABOOM! — it’s blown up by a completely different story that you likely don’t care about.

And it’s not just crossover events: Way back in 1968, for example, Stan Lee, Gene Colan, and Jack Kirby cooked up a story in which Doctor Doom would take control of Daredevil’s body in an attempt to ambush the Fantastic Four. The story started in Daredevil #37, continued through Daredevil #38, and wrapped up in Fantastic Four #73.

Although Fantastic Four #73 has been reprinted in at least six different Fantastic Four collections, the Daredevil issues have never been included. Out of five different Daredevil collections including the first two parts of the story, only one of them included the finale.

Finally, this isn’t just a problem caused by legacy issues. Marvel and DC still actively suck at this.

For example, arguably Marvel’s best superhero comic right now is Ryan North’s Fantastic Four. I simply can’t heap enough praise on the work North is doing — not only do I love it, but these are the comics that got my daughter excited about superheroes. In pamphlet form, this run has been published as:

• Fantastic Four 7 (2022) — #1-33
• One World Under Doom — #1-9
• Fantastic Four 8 (2025) — #1 thru ongoing

Even here, of course, we see the pain point of trying to track continuity across the ceaseless numbering reboots designed to sell pamphlets to collectors. But let’s go ahead and check out the reading order of the paperbacks:

• Fantastic Four – Vol. 1
• Fantastic Four – Vol. 2
• Fantastic Four – Vol. 3
• Fantastic Four – Vol. 4
• Fantastic Four – Vol. 6, pg. 113-136 (Giant-Size #1)
• Fantastic Four – Vol. 5
• One World Under Doom – Chapter 1
• Fantastic Four – Vol. 6, pg. 1-26 (also, there are no printed page numbers)
• One World Under Doom – Chapter 2
• Fantastic Four – Vol. 6, pg. 27-47
• One World Under Doom – Chapter 3
• Fantastic Four – Vol. 6, pg. 48-68
• One World Under Doom – Chapter 4
• Fantastic Four – Vol. 6, pg. 69-89
• One World Under Doom – Chapter 5
• Fantastic Four – Vol. 6, p. 90-112
• Fantastic Four – Vol. 1, p. 1-50
• One World Under Doom – Chapter 6
• One World Under Doom – Chapter 7
• Fantastic Four – Vol. 1, p. 51-72
• One World Under Doom – Chapter 8
• Fantastic Four – Vol. 1, p. 73 thru end of the book
• Fantastic Four – Vol. 2

Now, to be fair, I think one can quibble about whether or not Giant-Size Fantastic Four #1 needs to be read in its original publication order by jumping forward two volumes. But even if we ignore that, this is clearly batshit on multiple levels.

I particularly want to call your attention, though, to the decision to publish Volumes 1-6 of Ryan North’s Fantastic Four and then follow that up with a different Volume 1 of Ryan North’s Fantastic Four.

Didi: Hey, I’ve heard there are some really cool Fantastic Four comics I should read. Where should I start?

Gogo: Fantastic Four — Volume 1. But not Fantastic Four – Volume 1. Or Fantastic Four – Volume 1. Or Fantastic Four – Volume 1. Or Fantastic Four – Volume 1. Or Fantastic Four – Volume 1. Or Fantastic Four – Volume 1. Or Fantastic Four – Volume 1.

Didi: Ah. I see. I want Ultimate Fantastic Four – Volume 1.

Gogo: Don’t be silly. That’s completely different.

Didi: Uh… which Fantastic Four – Volume 1 do I want, then?

Gogo: Fantastic Four – Volume 1 by Ryan North.

Didi: Great!

Gogo: But not Fantastic Four – Volume 1 by Ryan North. You want Fantastic Four – Volume 1 by Ryan North.

Didi: For fuck’s sake.

This confusion doesn’t just affect readers. It also affects the retailers and distributors who are ostensibly trying to keep these products in stock and on the shelves. For example, the current listing for Fantastic Four – Vol. 1 (2023) at Amazon has been updated to show the cover for Fantastic Four – Vol. 1 (2026).

Which means, of course, if you do a search for “Ryan North Fantastic Four Vol 1,” what you’ll see are two listings for Fantastic Four – Volume 1 by Ryan North with, seemingly, the exact same cover. (I also wonder how many stocking errors are being made, resulting in the wrong book being shipped out even if a new reader does order the right one.)

It gets even sillier, though: If you grab Fantastiv Four Vol. 1 (no, not that one, the other one) and open it to the inside front cover, you’ll find This Guide Will Show You Were to Begin to Follow the Adventures of the Fantastic Four!, accompanied by pictures of the graphic novels you need to follow the series! This is incredibly useful! Exactly what…

… hang on. This is actually a completely different set of Fantastic Four graphic novels (including a different Fantastic Four Vol. 1) that has nothing to do with the reading order of the Fantastic Four graphic novel you’re currently holding in your hands.

These problems, of course, don’t just afflict bookstores. Digital comics are of rising importance, currently making up a fifth of all comic book revenue in North America, but navigating this morass through Marvel’s and DC’s digital platforms is arguably even more complicated.

A SOLUTION

Ultimately, to solve this problem, Marvel and DC will have to stop creating content primarily for pamphlets. This doesn’t mean they should stop publishing the pamphlets, but it does mean understanding that their primary goal is producing the books that — instead of being sold for a single month — can be potentially sold for years or decades to come.

The first and most important thing will be creating unique arc titles. Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One would not be as well-known today if it had been instead sold as Batman – Volume 1 among a slurry of a dozen other Batman – Volume 1’s. Yes, it can be difficult to title a serialized work before you’ve written it, but Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas, and Rumiko Takahashi were able to pull it off, so I’m sure you can figure it out.

Optionally, I would recommend embracing this title on the pamphlets, too. So when someone launches Fantastic Four: Family Matters, it’ll be Fantastic Four: Family Matters #1 on the cover. Create a legacy numbering badge and use it consistently to get the best of both worlds.

When collecting crossovers, you need to include the full story in every collection that includes part of the crossover. For mega-event crossovers, this won’t be possible, but you need to figure out (a) a consistent way of collecting them (most likely a core narrative collection and a every-single-crossover omnibus) that (b) includes come clear method for referencing the individual parts, so that you can (c) clearly tell people reading other collections where to go if they want to follow the event.

Importantly, you should retroactively create titles for your backlog. Collections like Fantastic Four by John Byrne, Green Lantern by Geoff Johns, and Batman by Scott Snyder & Greg Capullo have been a step in the right direction, but can be difficult to apply broadly across a medium where creative teams have often shifted rapidly. They also sound pretty dry and academic.

Collaborate with original creators to find these titles where appropriate, but I’m absolutely saying that it would be better for the earliest issues of Amazing Spider-Man (whether that’s thirty-eight issues, ninety-nine issues, or one hundred and twenty-two issues) to be published as Spider-Man: Origins than as anonymous volumes lost in the midst of generic archive collections labeled masterworks or showcases or epics.

You can absolutely keep an archival line for completionists, but that’s exactly what it should be: Archival.

For the general public, you want them to be able to clearly and uniquely identify and recommend different stories. This will never be as clear as One Piece or Spy x Family or Bone, where there’s a single story guided by a single creative vision that you can read from beginning to end. And that’s okay. The fact that there are so many different Spider-Man stories about so many different versions of Spider-Man or Batman or Superman can be a huge advantage… but only if you stop doing the equivalent of wrapping them in brown paper and randomly shuffling them around.

At the moment, for example, DC Comics is enjoying a huge amount of success with their Absolute titles. There are a lot of reasons for this — including, importantly, the high quality of the comics themselves — but I think a significant part of it is that, if I hear about how great Absolute Superman is, I know exactly what I need to do: I pick up Absolute Superman Vol. 1, read it, and then continue onto Absolute Superman Vol. 2.

By contrast, I picked up Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1 — not to be confused, of course, with Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1, Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1, Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1, Ultimate Comics Spider-Man Vol. 1, or Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1 — and started reading from one volume to the next… only discover that for the story to make sense there’s a point where I just have to arbitrarily know that I need to stop reading Ultimate Spider-Man collections, go read something else, and then come back to Ultimate Spider-Man.

This is, fundamentally, a bad user experience. And it doesn’t have to be this way.

Blood gushes fresh in the mouth. Blood beats in the vein. Blood pours from the wound.  Blood roars through the brain. Blood flares in the scent. Blood thickens in death. Blood fills the throat. Blood cleanses the hunger.

Blood burns.

He is the personification of Rage. He is the Beast lurking in the heart of all men. He is the powerful, pulsing lust for domination and conquest which is coupled to every defiant breath of life. His howls are the primeval song of discord that belies all tongues.

He is Ravvan.

THE ROAR OF THE BEAST: “Though he is caged by the Sleep of the Faithful, the Beast’s rage beats upon the formless walls of that eternal prison just as the hot blood of passion beats through his veins. In spurts of rage, his will becomes manifest; whispers of the Beast that pulse through the red veils of the primal, holy fury.”

THE BLOOD OF RAVVAN: “Let his Blood be joined to your own. Let the Beast pulse through your veins. In Ravvan there is strength. In Ravvan there is life. In Ravvan there is truth. Take of his strength. Lust of his life. Heed his truth.”

THE IDOL OF RAVVAN: “And in the days of broken wisdom, we gathered the whispers of Ravvan and listened to his pulse in the many corners of the world. And we wrought of them an idol to give focus to his words that his pulse might deafen the world.”

Here the text describes – in loving, rapturous terms – a squat statue of obsidian depicting a demonic beast with slavering fangs; folded, bat-like wings; serrated horns; and long, vicious claws. “And through his eyes of ruby blood, the voice of the Beast rang true.”

THE SONG OF DISCORD: The “song of discord” appears to refer to both the “whispers of Ravvan” which can be heard “echoing through the chambers of the blood” and also to a prayer-chant:

The blood, the hunt
The dance, the fire
Return, return, return.

DESIGN NOTES

In the original Ptolus sourcebook, Ravvan appears as a beast god. I decided to slide him over into the ranks of the Galchutt because (a) it seems like a pretty good fit and (b) the Idol of Ravvan appeared in one of the adventures I was using in Act I of my campaign. I knew that the chaos cults would be featured heavily in Act II, and the connection would let me foreshadow what was coming. After the fact, the players could (and did!) look back and realize they’d been hearing whispers of the Galchutt for months before truly learning of their existence.

The song of discord is actually a secret deep cut. When I started running my first long-term D&D 3rd Edition campaign, I kicked things off with John Tyne’s Three Days to Kill. That adventure also features cultists, who put in appearance at the Festival of Plenty and sing a song:

The wine, the song
The dance, the fire
Return, return, return.

When I ran the adventure, I rewrote the lyrics. At the time, this had nothing to do with Ravvan, but as I was writing up Ravvan’s lore I felt a resonance with those older lyrics and so I incorporated them here.

I enjoy doing this sort of thing just for my own pleasure (and deep worldbuilding can turn up all sorts of interesting interconnections), but In the Shadow of the Spire also originally featured one of the players from that earlier campaign. This would have been a cool easter egg for them. Unfortunately, the player left before the group ever encountered this lorebook or heard the song’s encore.

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The saga of the slavers continues, but the quality begins to drop.

Originally Published March 16th, 2002

This review builds on my reviews of A1: Slave Pits of the Undercity and A2: Secret of the Slavers Stockade. It’s probably a good idea to read those reviews, found here and here, respectively, before reading this one.

CONCEPT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for the A-series of modules. Players who may find themselves playing in these adventures should not read beyond this point.

A3: Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords, designed by Allen Hammack, sets the PCs on a more proactive path in their mission to destroy the sinister slavers. The story here is basically broken into three sections.

The Caves of Drachensgrab: Following leads picked up in A2: Secret of the Slavers Stockade, the PCs have (off-screen) penetrated deep into the Pomarj – a wasteland infested with humanoid tribes. Here, standing on the “rocky slope of a steep hill,” they hope to find the hidden entrance to the slaver’s stronghold.

This section of the adventure is essentially advanced spelunking with as many illogical twists as Allen Hammack could dream up: Gnolls, salt slides, bizarre and improbable traps, piercers, a storoper (a roper which looks like a stalagmite instead of a tree), an illusionary throne room, and more.

The Hidden City of Suderham: If the PCs find their way through the caves, they’ll enter the hidden city of Suderham – an entire city hidden away in the heart of the mountains and serving the Slave Lords’ every whim. Here the PCs need to keep a low profile, while trying to find a way into the Slave Lords’ stronghold.

The Catacombs: The way in lies through the sewers and catacombs beneath the cities. Here Hammack is able to find a bit more logic on which to hang his improbabilities (because here, at least, there should be no regular, legitimate traffic – so the Slave Lords can place whatever traps and defenses they want).

Eventually, however, the PCs find their way to the Council Chamber of the Slave Lords. At this point, the tournament background of these adventures rises up: The DM has the choice of either railroading a loss here (thus prompting A4: In the Dungeon of the Slave Lords), or letting the PCs mop up the Slave Lords. (In reality, there are several ways that a DM could restructure this final encounter so that the players aren’t run over by a train – but the module isn’t going to provide you with any guidance here.)

STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES

A3: Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords has significant flaws.

First off, as I alluded above, the encounters here trigger all of my Absurdity Meters. The constant barrage of illogical contrivance in A3 renders the module essentially unplayable as written for me.

Second, as I mentioned above, there’s the railroad at the end of the adventure.

Finally, the Slave Lords simply don’t affect the course of the module at all. I have no sense of an “assault” on anything, because the entire module comes across as nothing more than a mediocre dungeon crawl. The title promises so much, and the adventure delivers so little!

So what does this module have going for it?

First off, the basic adventure structure is a good one: Find the hidden route through the caves of Drachensgrab, sneak through the Hidden City, and lay siege to the Aerie of the Slave Lords. As an outline, that sounds fantastic! (But, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details.)

Second, although both the caves and the catacombs are poorly done, the Hidden City portion of the adventure is very well done: There is a complete encounter key for the entire city (detailing every building), and the premise itself here is strong – even awe-inspiring. In playing the module, whenever a group of PCs emerges from the caves to see the Hidden City sprawled out beneath them, a moment of silence invariably settles over the group.

(The Hidden City also benefits from the inclusion of a Player’s Map.)

CONCLUSION

A1: Slave Pits of the Undercity and A2: Secret of the Slavers Stockade are both very strong modules, in need of little more than a minor clean-up job. A3: Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords, on the other hand, presents little more than a few good ideas – particularly when it comes to the first and third sections of the adventure.

That being said: The structure presented here is a good one. And the Hidden City material probably makes this a worthwhile purchase. You’re going to have to put in a lot of work to make this serviceable for your game table, but there’s enough raw material here that it’s going to make your job easier than working from scratch. For $5, that’s probably good enough to justify the purchase.

Style: 2
Substance: 3

Author: Allen Hammack
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Line: AD&D (ESD)
Price: $4.99 (ESD)
ISBN: 0-935696-27-X
Product Code: TSR9041
Pages: 30
Year Published: 1981

A3: Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords was one of the very first D&D modules I ever purchased, plucked out of the Used bin at Pinnacle Games in Rochester, MN. I pored over its pages and ran the dungeon section of the adventure many times, despite not having access to the rest of the A-series until several years later. (As a neophyte GM I could not wrap my head around how the underground city was supposed to work, although I sort of stumbled through it once.)

Next: A4 In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

In the days when the Masters had passed and the Long Quiet had fallen upon all the Caverns of the Galchutt, still within the deepest clefts of the earth there labored the truest of their servitors. Within the depths of Eurl-kallat Dath – the Cavern of Dripping Darkness – the Shepherd of Malignancy tended the vile works which had been left to his care.

This slim volume – bound in a white volume sheened with a silver-grey which is slick and greasy to the touch – tells the legend of the “youngest of the Galchutt”, a shambling creature given the name of Merihim.

THE CAVERN OF EURL-KALLAT DATH: “Within the Caverns of the Galchutt there was a place where pestilence hung thick in the air. In that place of kallat dath, the Galchutt set the crafty mind of Merihim to work. There cancerous mutations were given motile form and demonic phages waged wars of fecund prosperity.”

THE WORKS OF MERIHIM: From the incubation vats and wild proving fields of Eurl-kallat Dath, Merihim perfected all manner of diseases and mutations. He “wrought the arts of Jessuk to fungal life” and “exercised the corruption of nature’s order with its own hand”.

THE CORRUPTION OF MERIHIM: Merihim was also said to bear the “touch of Abhoth”. His right arm was shriveled with palsy, for his “very essence had become unbalanced in the equations of life” – and so his left arm had grown to immense, twisted proportions.

His hunched back is described as “miasmic fecundity” and from it sprouted six prehensile, fleshy stems that ended in toothy maws. Each of these stems was a direct conduit to fetid and corrupted organs which served as the breeding ground for foul diseases. From these “maws of cancerous life”, Merihim could expel the smotherfume – a cloud of noxious, polluted disease.

THE ASCENSION OF MERIHIM: “In the time when the Princes were drawn into their web and the Masters in their chains were taken into their slumber, Merihim still labored within his cavern. And for long years thereafter, he labored still. And the Princes, though caught still in their web, looked out upon the world and saw this mighty service. And they reached out to the Shepherd of Malignancy. And in that time Merihim answered their call and fulfilled the rites of fealty unto their name.

“So he became the one who willingly entered the Slumber, pledging the vows of the Natharl’nacna even in the Time of Loss and binding himself to a servitude of oblivion. But when the Time of Dissolution comes, the truth of his service shall be remembered.

“Let all who would serve the will of Chaos think of the Shepherd. Reflect upon the Faith of Anarchy and covet only that deepest of all communions in which the will of Gods shall be forsaken as tyranny and the will of Demons hold resplendent liberty.”

DESIGN NOTES

Merihim is from The Book of Fiends. I’ve spoken many times before about how fantastic this bestiary is. This is another example of how much use I’ve gotten out of it over the years.

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