The Life & Times of Staghind Starlight Aramioc-Blacksword

Lengthy "Tell Me About Your Character" Alert...

Last week's piece about my early RPG characters got me thinking about my most successful and enduring Dungeons & Dragons character: Staghind Starlight Aramioc-Blacksword The First.

By mid-1979, the club side of The Dark Tower had outgrown the rooms above the shop and relocated to a community hall a short distance away in a more suburban area of Tunbridge Wells.

As well as all the normal campaigns being run, one Dungeon Master (I don't recall his name) was running a "competition" dungeon, known as The Crypte Of The Courageous. He told me to create a third level character, so I turned for advice to the best source of reliable information I knew... the counter monkey at The Dark Tower.

His immediate suggestion was a half-elf magic-user/fighter/cleric (I had embraced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons by this time)... and so was born Staghind.

Staghind's first character sheet - from her run through The Crypte Of The Courageous

Not only did she (and her fellow adventurer whose name has faded into obscurity) become the first team to conquer The Crypte Of The Courageous in July 1979, but she would eventually become my longest surviving and, beyond a shadow of a doubt, favourite Dungeons & Dragons character.

Among her other achievements in her illustrious career - before settling down as Queen Of Norll, Jalla and Elfland - she rescued a fellow party member from boiling mud in White Plume Mountain (admittedly she'd knocked him in there first); liberated the Simarils from Morgoth; gained storm giant strength for 10 years from a raid on a giant's lair; and - most impressively - was taught martial arts by a duck master of Quack Fu!

Oh yes, she also met the legendary White Dwarf and her own god, Niffle. Apparently his mission is to seek out those who are worthy enough to worship him (he doesn't actively court worshippers). As it says on her character sheet below she has only ever actually met one other Nifflite - the high-priest of the faith, a gentleman by the name of Thor.

She was married twice; first to Gublin's main character Egghead Aramioc and then to Guy Huckle's Glorfindel Blacksword. She had seven children and adopted one (a duck by the name of Quincy).

Her eldest daughter, Elean, made an appearance in the first few sessions of  the first campaign I ran for the Tuesday Knights as a pirate leader (Staghind herself was masquerading as queen of the Amazonian island of Zenn).

I had always had a very definite idea of what Staghind looked like, but it wasn't until issue 24 of White Dwarf came out that I actually had a visual representation of my vision (see picture above).

However, in recent years I've begun to reimagine her as resembling Sandahl Bergman's Valeria from the 1980's Conan The Barbarian movie.

 

 

The final page of Staghind's "retirement" character sheet (immediately above) details her subterranean 'castle' (the former Halls Of The Elf King; a dungeon she took over), her fleet of ships, her magic horse and her small orc army.

Ahh, those were the days!

There was no set game world when we played, Staghind moved from campaign to campaign, Dungeon Master to Dungeon Master and no one questioned her ever-increasing wealth or powers. This goes a long way towards explaining the bizarre diversity of her travels and treasures - from obvious Tolkienesque material to Howard The Duck-inspired martial arts skills.

I'd like to point out that at some stage I deducted the "bonus experience points" she was gifted to start at 3rd level, so the experience points you see on her sheet were all earned by her own sweat and blood.

I certainly wouldn't be adverse, one day, to bringing her out of retirement, but - on the other hand - I'm quite content to leave her, safe and sound, on her throne, surrounded by all her wonderful acquisitions and memories.

Most likely though is I'll use either the map of her castle or of The Crypte Of The Courageous as a dungeon in a future campaign, with Staghind's numerous magic items and plentiful finances as the treasure.

Afterall, who could resist the chance to own the delightfully-named "vorpal sword of everlasting flame of disintegration"?

Ready or Not: Here I Come For A Sequel

Moments after surviving an all-out attack from the Le Domas family, Grace (Samara Weaving) discovers she’s reached the next level of the nightmarish game — and this time with her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) at her side.

Grace has one chance to survive, keep her sister alive, and claim the High Seat of the Council that controls the world. Four rival families are hunting her for the throne, and whoever wins rules it all.

I really liked the original, but was not expecting a sequel. That said, it's written and directed by the same people as the first, so I'm not going to turn my nose up at Ready or Not: Here I Come.

The trailer makes it look like more of the same gonzo violence and black humour - delivered by an all-star cast: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Néstor Carbonell, David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood, Kevin Durand, and, of course, Samara Weaving.

For those who need a reminder, here's a link to my review of 2019's Ready or Not.

Meet The Cast of The War Between The Land and The Sea

This Sunday, the first two episodes of Doctor Who spin-off The War Between The Land and The Sea arrive on BBC One (and iPlayer) from 8.30pm.

This follows the prequelish screening of a condensed reworking of the classic Third Doctor story, The Sea Devils, on BBC Four at 7pm.

I'm excited for The War Between The Land and The Sea, but also slightly apprehensive (as I am with all new Who shows these days). I hope we get a decent explanation of why these "sea devils" look nothing like the classic ones of, even those seen in the 13th Doctor's Legend of The Sea Devils.

To be honest, I'm still not 100 per cent convinced they are Sea Devils!

Lost In Space With The Archie Gang

Main cover art by Dan Parent

Another forthcoming out-of-the-ordinary Archie title that caught my fancy is a one-shot of science-fiction yarns featuring our favourite eternal teenagers from Riverdale.

Written and drawn by Dan Parent, Archie & Friends: Space Adventures (One-Shot) is a 32-page intergalactic issue pitching our heroes into the depths of outer space.

When Archie and the gang gets ready to head into space on a rocket Dilton built, everything goes smoothly, until the spacecraft enters a realm where it becomes lost. With the teens lost in space, it’s going to take someone out of this world to save them — someone like Cosmo The Mighty Martian!

Archie & Friends: Space Adventures (One-Shot) is due to land in stores on February 25.

Variant cover art by Andrew Pepoy and Jason Millet

Variant cover art by Samm Schwartz

PULP PICTURE OF THE MONTH: Tarzan And The Leopard Woman (1946)

Growing up in the '70s, Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan reruns were a fixture on television's three channels. My favourite was Tarzan And The Leopard Woman.

Sadly, these days, despite the millions of channels we now have on offer, you rarely - if ever - see the old Tarzan movies, so I had to turn to eBay to pick up a bargain DVD box set of half-a-dozen Tarzan tales, including Tarzan And The Leopard Woman.

I hadn't seen this film for decades and had forgotten what it was that had so appealed to me as a youngster. Turns out it was cosplay.

Within moments I was transported back to my childhood; with my parents' old leopard-print car rug thrown over my shoulders and a handful of cutlery I became a leopard god-worshipping cultist again!

The Leopard Men, wearing their parents' old car rugs...

Tarzan And The Leopard Woman is a very simple, but smart, 75-minute tale, about a tribe of leopard god worshippers, who mask their attacks as the work of real leopards, trying to prevent British colonists from forcing 'civilization' on their home land.

The cultists are aided by Ameer Lazar (Edgar Barrier), a Western-educated native doctor who resents the West's domination of the area, but they foolishly think they're smarter than Tarzan.

Tarzan is joined by stalwart companions Jane (Brenda Joyce), Boy (Johnny Sheffield) and Cheeta the chimpanzee.

But trouble starts brewing on the home-front with the arrival of Kimba (Tommy Cook), who claims to be have gotten lost in the jungle, but is actually the younger brother of the Leopard Men's priestess Queen Lea (Acquanetta).

Young Kimba is torn between his boyish crush on Jane and his desire to prove himself as a warrior and return to the Leopard Men with her heart... literally.

Having tricked the colonials into thinking the attacks on caravans were simply the work of hungry leopards, and that they had now wiped them out, the Leopard Men then launch an attack on a caravan bearing four young women from Zambezi, destined to become teachers in the new British colony.

The women, along with Tarzan, Jane and Boy, are kidnapped - to be sacrificed to the Leopard God.

But luckily Cheeta is on hand to save the day!

The truth is, watched with 21st Century eyes, we have to have a certain amount of sympathy for the "bad guys", but - as is often the case - they simply go too far.

Tarzan And The Leopard Woman is a glorious slice of black-and-white pulp adventure, with the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden doubling nicely as the African jungle.

Queen Lea of The Leopard Men (Acquanetta).

Rolling Into Christmas

A tradition has developed in our house of multiple advent calendars, but Rachel has outdone herself this year with a dice calendar (I believe purchased from the TikTok Shop).

We began today with a shiny d12 and by Christmas Eve I'm going to have 24 new polyhedral dice to add to my collection. Gamers can never have too many dice, right?

Alice has a meaty treats advent calendar and has already nommed the packet of three strips that was behind door number one.

I know as a geek I'm supposed to love Halloween (which I do, even though we don't embrace it like our trans-Atlantic cousins), but Christmas is still my favourite holiday time of the year.

The first wave of festive decorations went up at the weekend, namely the big tree in our dining area and the small tree in the lounge.

With the bulk of my present shopping done, appropriate tunes on the radio and seasonal films on television, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Our glorious tree with another advent calendar (of mini Santa sacks) across the door

This year's new decoration: Snoopy on his house

MUSICAL MONDAY: Alatau (OTYKEN)

A surprisingly popular feature on previous blogs of mine has been the Musical Monday slot, where I post videos - old and new - of interesting musical acts from around the globe.

We begin this new era with a recent track from Siberian folk-pop act OTYKEN.

Biblical Epics

Every now and again in my non-stop viewing calendar I like to take a moment to return to the big screen epics of my youth, the grandiose Bible stories that were a staple of vintage cinema.

In those benighted, pre-VHS days, when there were only three TV channels available in the UK, I would get my large-scale fantasy fix from 1950's movies like The Ten Commandments (which I'm watching at the moment), Ben-Hur, The Robe, Quo Vadis etc which were played, it seemed, pretty much on rotation at the weekends.

I have an embarrassing childhood memory of a very young me (possibly five or six) standing in the garden with a large stick - doubling as a staff - pretending to be Moses at the top of my lungs!

Never once did I think these were anything more than pseudohistorical, sword-and-sandal, fantasy stories but there was something there that piqued my young imagination.

In parallel with my unwavering love of Ray Harryhausen films and coupled with Kirk Douglas in The Vikings and, of course, Spartacus, these movies were already shaping my "swords-and-???" tastes even before I was introduced to the works of JRR Tolkien and then Dungeons & Dragons. 

Dungeons & Dragons provided me with a way to quantify ("stat up") the things I was seeing in these movies and hearing at school during our compulsory "religious education" (which meant trying to force Christianity onto us, rather than teaching us about all the religions of the world).

At prep school, I recall excitedly going through the hymn book we were given, hunting for potential magic items: "Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire!"

In recent times, harkening back to this mini-obsession of my tween and pre-tween years, I even sought out (I think from Noble Knight Games in the  States eventually, when it didn't cost an arm and a leg to ship something across The Atlantic), the Green Ronin d20 supplement Testament, for running games in the Old Testament era.

No, it doesn't have stats for God (unlike the Fantasy Wargaming book, by the late Bruce Galloway, published in the early 1980s, which has stats for both God and the Virgin Mary) but it does go into a lot of historical detail about life and beliefs in that ancient era.

The most recent "Biblical Epic" of the peplum variety that I've seen was 2018's Samson, a pretty decent retelling of one of the few Bible stories that ever held my interest.

Although they seem to be few and far between these days, I always keep half-an-eye out for any competent "Biblical Epics" that skirt the edges of my geeky radar.

A Celebration of "Underrated" British Science Fiction Cinema

British sci-fi has always felt different: quieter, stranger, and often more human.In this video, we’re looking at some of the most fascinating and underrated British science fiction films from different decades — movies that deserve far more attention and, in many ways, outshine Hollywood’s biggest productions.