A is for Astaroth and Astártē

A is for Astaroth and Astártē

Kinda looks like Nicholas Cage

I am going to begin with Astaroth because Astaroth was the beginning. At least for me and my fascination with demons.

Once upon a time there was a Goddess named Astártē.  She is more or less the same Goddess as Ishtar and related thematically to Aphrodite and Isis.
But when Christianity was sweeping the world and literally and figuratively changing all the old Gods and Goddesses into demons poor Astártē not only was demoted to demon, but changed to a male as well.  I always felt bad for Astártē because of this.

I first "met" Astaroth around the age of 13.  I was going to a fish-fry in Union, IL with my family so I brought some books to read.  In one of the those books I read about Astaroth and thought he was an interesting character.  It wasn't till later that learned about eh Astaroth/Astártē connection.
In my games I made him the son of Astártē. A Goddess I named the "Queen of Heaven".  She featured rather predominantly in my games over the years.  In my D&D and WitchCraft games "The Coven of Astártē" were a group of witches that were believed to be in league with demons.  In truth they did summon demons, but it was to figure out how to better combat them.

Here are some 3.0 stats I have been using for years.

And to celebrate my volunteering for Gorgonmilk's Petty Gods project, here is Astaroth in Petty Gods format.

Astaroth

NAME: Astaroth, Duke of Hell
Symbol: See next
Alignment: Chaotic (Evil)
Movement: 150' (240' flight on dragon)
Armor Class: 0
Hit Points (Hit Dice): 166 hp (19 HD)
Attacks: Viper (1d8 + poison), sword (1d10 + flames 1d6), breath (save vs. poison)
Damage: 1d8+poison (save or die), 1d10 + 1d6 fire damage, breath (as per stinking cloud)
Save: F20
MORALE: 12
Hoard Class: See below
XP: 10,000


"Astroth is a great and a strong duke, comming foorth in the shape of a fowle angell, sitting upon an infernall dragon, and carrieng on his right hand a viper: he answereth truelie to matters present, past and to come, and also of all secrets.  He talketh willingelie of the creator of spirits, and of their fall, and how they sinned and fell: he saith he fell not of his owne accord.  He maketh a man woonderfull learned in the liberall sciences, he ruleth fourtie legions.  Let everie exorcist take heed, that he admit him not too neere him, bicause of his stinking breath.  And therefore let the conjuror hold neere to his face a magicall ring, and that shall defend him."
- John Weyer, Pseudomonarchia Daemonum.

Astaroth is usually summoned by a magic user (he has no desire to travel to the human world on his own).  He appears to the summoner naked astride a giant black dragon (stats as a huge, ancient black dragon), though he can appear clothed as royalty if he chooses.  In his right hand he carries a long viper, in his left a flaming sword (like all devils he is left-handed).  He stands over 8 feet tall and has the strength of a Fire Giant.  His face is very attractive and he is physically fit, if  slightly overweight.
Unless the magic-user is in a protective circle Astaroth will strike him down.
His manners are extremely polite. He will converse and even gossip about various demons (save for himself).  The summoner had also better have some equally good, if trivial, knowledge to share at this point.  It is also at this point that the summoner will notice Duke Astaroth's breath.  It is simplly the foulest thing he has ever smelt.  If he reacts to the foul breath Astaroth will also consider this a breach of etiquette and contract and kill the offender.
Once the chatting is over, the summoner may ask Astaroth three questions; one about the past, one about the present and one about the future.  Astaroth will answer the questions honestly.  He will, as most Dukes, follow the letter of the agreement but not always the spirit of it.  If the Astraroth believes he is being tricked or if the questions are asked out of sequences; ie he feels a question about the past is really about the future, he will also consider this a breach of contract.  The wealth gained by the summoner will depend on the questions asked.  Astaroth brings no riches with him.
He is rumored to be the treasurer of Hell because money and riches have no allure for him, he only craves knowledge.  His interests are far and wide and he can pleasantly converse about a number of topics.  His surface demeanor though hides a deep and viscous cruelty.  On  his home layer of the Hells his dungeons are reported to filled with magic-users that have tempted to summon him and failed.  Here they are tortured for his amusement as he records all their reactions in his journals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astaroth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astarte

A to Z Blogging for April and Introduction

Hello and welcome to The Other Side!  My little home on the internet.  I will have a proper post up later today.  I wanted to post an introduction to me, my blog and the various people that are likely to be here.

This blog is the "reincarnation" of my old The Other Side website from the dawn of the Web.  I like to write about role-playing games, particularly old-school ones, D&D and horror games.  I post a lot of character write-ups, I love witches and magic.

I am participating in this blogging challenge for the same reasons I am blogging to begin with; to help improve my ability as a writer. Challenges like these help stretch those creative muscles and hopefully get me to write about stuff I might not normally do.

This year I am writing about Demons.  I am going to talk about them from the point of view of a game author and a fan of horror.  I am planning to "stat-up" as many as I can.  By that I mean work out the Role-playing Game stats for the creatures so you can use them in your own games.  I am also going to try and focus on creatures that have not been seen before in any of the games I play.

So with that in mind welcome to the A to Z challenge!

Updates

Hey all!

First off, been out of the loop a bit.  Was on vacation all week. Great time.
Here are some random updates.

1. Dwimmermount. Looks like it is getting published afterall.  This is a good thing and I give Tavis and Autarch kudos for pulling this one out of the abyss.  Looks like James though has shut down shop over on his G+ plage. https://profiles.google.com/jmalisze/about. No idea yet what that might mean for Grognardia.

2. Swords & Wizardry.  Tenkar is hosting a Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day. http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2013/03/the-s-w-appreciation-day-line-up-hits.html
It is set for April 17.  That is also "O" day.

3. A to Z blogfest.  Tomorrow starts the A to Z blogfest.  I am so not ready for it!  I am doing Demons and know what I am going to post each day, just nothing is written yet.

4. Petty Gods is also back from the dead thanks to Greg Gorgonmilk.  He has really taken the ball and ran with this one! http://gorgonmilk.blogspot.com/

5. Witch Awareness Month.  I am going to participate in this one as well.  Just not sure what I am going to do yet. http://witchawarenessmonth.wordpress.com/

6. Majus draft available now. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1895361773/majus-a-magic-noir-pacesetter-game  Doesn't matter that the KS is not done yet or even how much you put into it.  Get your draft now.

You all probably know all of these anyway.

Anyway great to be back.

Damn You Goblinoid Games!!

Dear Goblinnoid Games.

Please stop making games I want to buy.  I am going broke.

Between buying copies of Labyrinth Lord from people I am trying to get into Old School Gaming and you picking up the old Pacesetter games you have gone and done this to me:

Majus Kickstarter

And it is compatible with Rotworld, Time Master and other Pacesetter games **coughChillcough**

My wife is tired of seeing "Kickstarter" on the credit card bill too.

Looks like I am going to have to buy this one anyway! ;)

Speaking of Kickstarters, have you seen the one for Veronica Mars?
I never watched the show when it was on and I feel I missed out on something.  But anyway they want to make a movie sequel to the show and took to Kickstarter to do it.  The results were 100% funding in a few hours and it continues to climb.  Check it out.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/559914737/the-veronica-mars-movie-project

TBBYANR: RPG blogs

A couple of RPG focused blogs today!

Cross Planes
"Or how I learned to stop worrying and love D&D"
http://crossplanes.blogspot.com/
I gotta admit I love the alt-title.  It is something I have said in the past myself in connection with getting out of the Edition War mindset.  Cross Planes/Mark Craddock is also very much a non-participant in the Edition Wars.  He talks about D&D Next (and he was the first place where I found out the new packet was out).  He is also into Dragon Age and I'll admit that reading over his site today has made we want to check out the RPG or computer game again. So much so I did this even:

What Dragon Age: Origins Character Are You?
Hosted By theOtaku.com: Anime

Well was there ever a doubt?

He also did a couple of witch builds for D&D Next a Maiden and Mother.  Don't know if he did a Crone at all. What I like about this blog is Mark covers a lot of topics and games.  Single purpose blogs are great, and if I want to do a deep dive into a system that is what I need.  But I also enjoy the daily reading of the general purpose blog (like this one and my own) to get a variety of topics.  Plus he playing his games with his two daughters, how awesome is that?

Silver Divinity
http://silverdivinityrpg.blogspot.com/
I actually found this one from my Monstrous Monday Blogfest a while back and again on the Blog Blitz.  One of my favorite monsters from the MM Blogfest was his Zombie Cow.
The author of this blog, John, is working on a game project "Silver Divinity" and the blog is his proving ground/sounding board/beta tester.
So far the game itself sounds very cool.  It feels like a Steampunk meets Spelljammer sort of thing if I am reading it all right.  If so then that is cool.  The stats for the races look like d20/OGL so that makes that easier to understand.  The blog is only 7 months old and he is still posting ideas to flesh out.  So I expect to see some more interesting things in the future.
In the meantime stop on by and see what he has done so far.



This week I am running my irregular feature "The Best Blog You Are Not Reading" every day.  If you can instead of replying here, go to the blogs I am featuring and reply there.  I think the owners would like that.

Blogging Contract

Blogging is not writing. Not really.  Sure there are a lot of similarities but there are plenty of subtle differences.

When writing an RPG book I have an audience in mind. That is a nebulous audience that I may or may not interact with.  I don't know who bought every copy of The Witch or Ghosts of Albion or Buffy.

I do have the chance to get to know each and every reader here via the comments section.  I post, you comment, I reply.  There is a social contact at work here.. You are not expected to reply, but I write my posts hoping that people will.

Implicit in that is one of control.  I try to keep my posts interesting to my known audience.  This is one of the reasons I have different blogs.   I control what I post.  You control what you reply with, but ...I also control your reply. See I can delete any reply I don't like.  But I don't.  There are few good reasons for that.

I don't because it is dishonest. Having people disagree with me is a great way for me to learn something new.  I have lost track of all the things I have looked into because some one said "no. you are wrong."

I don't because it violates the social contract we have.  You put yourself out there, those were your thoughts.  I may not agree with it, but that doesn't give me the right to shut it down.

I also don't, and lets be honest here, controversy and conflict means more hits, more audience and hopefully more people reading my stuff.  Not fake controversy, people can see that a mile away, but real and honest.

A natural extension of that is I will also not delete old posts.  I don't see the point. You may want to go back a read something I posted in 2010. Great!  I will leave it there.  Even if it something I don't agree with, like or otherwise grok anymore.

I have been seeing too many cases of people taking down posts, editing posts to put themselves in better light. Sorry folks, between Archive.org and Google cache people can find anything that was posted given time, so don't try to change history.

I'll remove a post of your own if you ask me to. I'll delete multiple posts if looks like you were fixing a typo or something. I'll delete spam.

That's my contract with you.
Your contract with me is not post anything to make be doubt this choice! ;)

White Dwarf Wednesday #58

White Dwarf #58 takes us to October 1984.  Right away we notice the Chris Achilleos cover.  I have always associated his work with White Dwarf and visa versa.  It's funny that some of his best work happened later than I remember.  This horde of evil is a theme he comes back too and I think he does well.  I seem to recall he has a few more coming up.

Ian Livingstone talks about how RuneQuest once again beat out AD&D for Best RPG at Games Day.  Under the new deal with Avon Hill RuneQuest will now cost £40 up from £30! Which is today's money is about $15 extra ($45 to $60), no idea what the value of that was in 1984 England, but I am sure it was a lot.

A couple of pages on traps.  After a DM with a couple of volumes of Grimtooth's traps I got used to checking for traps as I walked more or less. So today traps don't interest me much.

Open Box has some interesting games.  Lands of Adventure is first. I have never heard of it and Richard Clyne only gives it a 5/10.  Though up next is the classic Middle Earth Roleplaying from ICE.  They were such attractive books and I really lament not getting the game when it was new.  MERP gets 9/10 and Bree and the Barrow Downs (which I wanted FOREVER) gets a 7/10 from Jon Sutherland.  One day I need to spend some quality time with MERP.  The Q Manual for James Bond gets a 9/10.  Also an old favorite is the FASA Star Trek. Russel Clark loves it and gives it a 9/10.

Part 3 of the Ninja article is next. It deals with martial arts and the quasi-mystical ninja powers.  I have seen better treatments but I have seen worse too.

Graeme Davis is next with an article I remember well when I got a copy of this back in college. Beyond the Final Frontier deals with death in the games and how it might not be the last go.  The death myths of different cultures are presented it is a cool read.

Some significant typing is needed for the next article if you want to use the BASIC program to Grow Your Own Planets. This is the first time I have seen program designed specifically for the IBM PC using MS Basic (as opposed to Z80 Basic) in WD.

Some ads.  We come up next to a supers adventure for Golden Heroes and Champions.  Looks fun and simple enough.  I bet it would work fine for Icons, BASH! or M&M.
Not to be forgotten we have an AD&D mini adventure too with a couple of new monsters to boot.

Credit is detailed in Traveller.
"Colour" is the theme in Tabletop Heroes for mini painting.

RuneRites has a couple of really short scenarios. should work with about any game.
Treasure Chest details some old spells and gives them new twists.

Letters concerns itself with questions on what purpose does Tabletop Heroes serve.  Oh just you wait!
News details the new games coming up and licenses seem to rule the day; Indiana Jones, Star Trek, 2010, Conan, Star Fleet Battles and so on.

At this point White Dwarf is up to 56 pages and still 85p.  Most of the new space is used by ads though.
Serviceable issue, made better by the use of the fine cover art.