shards sampler 2019artemisgames.co.uk/sampler issue.pdf · stage further, not only calculating the...

Contents

Editorial......................................................................................2

Hybrid Monsters.........................................................................3

The Box.............................................................................................4

Sample Hybrids...............................................................................7

Golden Feather.......................................................................11

Magic things.................................................................................14

Designing Faster-Than-Light...................................................19

Doing without FTL..........................................................................19

Time and Relative Dimensions in Space?..................................20

A Question of Speed?..................................................................21

Realspace Travel..........................................................................21

Forms of Travel..............................................................................22

Genre Shift.....................................................................................28

Letter Lich.................................................................................29

Magpie Nest............................................................................33

Credits & Thanks......................................................................36

Shards Sampler 2019 Page 1

Editorial

EditorialThis is a sample issue of the zine intended to give you

a feel for it. The articles are taken from previous issues from the first volume, but the real thing will be longer, featuring a third article - the previous volume was 44 pages (48 for the first two issues) due to philanthropic backers increasingthe content for everyone.

The pieces in this sampler have been chosen to provide a feel for the kind of content you can expect, andhas articles by all four of us. Hybrid Monsters is a fantasy piece about how such strange chimera such as the infamous Owlbear came to be, by Loz. Next up is The Golden Feather, a curiosity shop written for urban/modern fantasy worlds by Amy. After that we have a worldbuildingarticle about how you might want to treat faster than light travel in your sci-fi worlds by Ste. The Letter Lich answers a simple question that involves true love and necromancy – this too is written by Ste. Finally we have Captain Magpie stealing a soul from Hell, and this is written by Ali.

So let us know what you think, ask the Letter Lich your questions, and proposition Captain Magpie to steal an idea of interest to you. And don’t forget to back the kickstarter!

You can contact us at [email protected]

Page 2 Shards Sampler 2019

Hybrid Monsters

Hybrid MonstersIt is of note that many animals are boring, dull or

otherwise unable to sustain the interest of the average person. And yet it is said that it is impossible to improve upon the gods’ creations. For these reasons I seek to combine existing animals in new and interesting ways suchthat the children of tomorrow will know wonder once more.

-- The writings of Connor Griffin

What the wizard Connor Griffin sought to do was extraordinary, some might say crazy, but there is no denying people do wonder at his work. His greatest contribution to thaumaturgical research was magic that allowed any animals to be crossbred, as well as an artifactknown simply as The Box.

He started by crossbreeding simple creatures such as arthropods, creating the scorpion-fly1. The first version had the claws and sting of a scorpion, but the lifespan of a mayfly, and never survived outside his laboratory. This was not what he intended, and later iterations were more

1 This exists. I came up with a silly idea for a crossbreed only to discover it’s a real thing. And it’s closer related to the flea than the scorpion or the fly. And what looks like its stinger is actually itspenis. The real world is stranger than any fantasy world we couldever hope to make - just ask Captain Magpie!


Hybrid Monsters

successful, eventually culminating in a small scorpion with wings strong enough to carry it short distances.

He was not happy with this though, and moved on to rodents. Crossbreeding the lop eared rabbit and the star nosed mole resulted in something frankly terrifying – a creature which had tentacles not just on its nose, but also where its ears and eyes should have been. It was also deafand blind. He considered this a failure too.

Feeling frustrated at the time his research was taking, Connor Griffin turned his attention to magical equipment to aid him in the process. He enlisted the aid of an artificer named Linnette Clockwork, and together they created anartifact capable of analysing the make up of any animal, ready for crossbreeding. Later it was expanded to directly allow for splicing.

The BoxAt first I thought Connor Griffin was mad, but as I

worked with him I came to see his brilliance - the magic hewrought was beyond anything that had been dreamt of before. The equipment he sought was not straight forward and would stretch me to the limits of my abilities, but it hadto be done. And I am proud to have been a part of that.

-- An excerpt from ‘The Griffin’s Gryphon’,a tell all book by Linnette Clockwork


Hybrid Monsters

Linnette Clockwork’screation is exemplary, andwithout it there is no doubtthat Connor Griffin’s researchwould have stalled.

The first version was athaumo-genetic analyser -the spells Griffin had createdneeded to be alteredsomewhat for each animalinvolved and this devicesimplified that process. Theprep work now took about aweek and only one or twosubjects, rather than takingabout a month and requiring as many as a dozen.

As the analyser was perfected it reduced the prep work still further, until eventually with no more than one subject to analyse from each subject species, it could produce the needed incantations and reagents inside an hour - or less if the subject was well behaved. It was not possible to use sedated subjects because that made it impossible to properly analyse their mental state and the results were unpredictable.

At this stage, the most successful use was to cross breed dogs (and to crossbreed those crossbreeds) as they were docile and cooperative, creating new dog breeds


The Horse-Fish is not to beconfused with a seahorse.

Hybrid Monsters

such as the corgi-labradoodle2 which would go on to win awards at dog shows. Interestingly, cross-breeding cats in this way resulted in very large cats with very sharp claws. Initially this was put down to the cats climbing into the analysis boxes and immediately falling asleep, whereupon they dreamed they were mighty hunters, but even when they were forcibly kept awake the result was the same. The only possibly conclusion is that cats have a latent thaumaturgical talent which causes magic to treat them as they would wish to be treated.

The final stage of this thaumo-genetic analyser, and the one known simply as The Box, took the process one stage further, not only calculating the spells, but actually performing the crossbreeding spells itself. For this to work it was necessary to imbue the device with a certain degree of sentience. Here Linnette made a major breakthrough in the Clockwork Brain, a device capable of thought yet composed entirely of enchanted mechanical elements. The Clockwork Brain would go on to be used in many of her future creations3, including self-assembling golems, and eventually an entire “smart dungeon” which was to be her tomb. It never became so because later

2 These also exist. They are exactly as cute as you think they are.

3 Other uses could include the mechanical minotaurs and porcupines in last issue’s Grand Labyrinth, or even the development of Warforged in any one of a number of D&D settings.


Hybrid Monsters

experiments involved replacing much of her body with biomechanical parts and living for ever instead.

One side effect of the Clockwork Brain was that it picked up elements of the mentalities of the animals it cross-bred. Nowadays it is quite mad and will crossbreed anything it can. The self-assembling golems Linnette created to ensure it was maintained now seek out interesting new specimens to cross-breed without any other input. Once they are crossed the new creature is released into the world, usually confused and angry.

Sample HybridsThe crossbreeds created by Connor Griffin and

Linette Clockwork were amazing, if sometimes bizarre, yet very few were truly dangerous. The joy and wonder was their primary motivation, and the cross-breeding of the horse and aurochs to create a more effective beast of burden has improved many lives. Yet the ones The Box hascreated on its own are often truly dangerous as the base animals are often untamable or even monstrous and magical in nature. And with each such beast produced the box gets a little more insane.

-- from the introduction to“A Comprehensive Guide To Wildlife

Vol III: Magical and Mysterious Beasts”


Hybrid Monsters

The Box was initially used deliberately to create many fascinating animals. The cheetah-vole was very small, very fast, and an extremely voracious eater. The elephant-toucan had the longest and most dexterous beak of of any avian, but was too heavy to fly. The rabbit-sheep produced soft wool and tasty meat, and it bred extremely fast, making it highly prized by more adventurous farmers.


When automata put three dogs into one side and a babydragon in the other the result was a multi-headed, scaled,

fire breathing puppy.

Hybrid Monsters

The horse-aurochs was generally considered the mostwidely useful, and was one of the first creations of the initialversion of thaumo-genetic analyser. It produced an animal with the size and power of an aurochs4 but the temperament of a tame horse. Initially many were wary of trying to make use of them – but once freight hauliers showed they could travel faster and carry larger loads for longer, others started to take an interest. Soon farms up and down the country were clamouring for a “hourachs” or two, and the money from selling them funded much of the rest of the their research.

Once The Box started to act independently, however,any semblance of safety started to evaporate. The hedgehog-crab had no predators, but also had a tendency of drowning. The frog-elk had such large antlers that it could barely lift its own head and would frequently break its own neck when jumping. The hippo-camel could survive in almost any environment, but was extremely territorial. Many classical chimerae have been rightly or wrongly attributed to The Box, including gryphons, manticores, owlbears and even centaurs.

It was not until The Box got hold of magical creatures that its mind started to break and everything that came out was bad tempered. When sapient beings were

4 A huge prehistoric ox-like creature that cavemen would hunt forfood. These were real too.


Hybrid Monsters

captured and forced into it, The Box became actively malign.

Crossing a fire elemental and a tiger produced a creature made entirely of flickering flames which had teeth and claws made of red hot coals. Despite their fiery composition they were surprisingly at home in a swamp, where the dense terrain made them near-invisible and the scent of decay and mud masked their brimstone odour. They could walk over the surface of the water with nothingmore than slight discomfort, so even those in boats were not safe, and the trees would be wet enough that they could climb them to pounce on prey from above.

It was only a matter of time before the self assemblinggolems shoved one of their own into The Box, and when they did they also put in an angel. The result was a being made of clockwork and light with wing-feathers like razors. It cannot self-replicate, but it is able to repair itself from anydamage at an alarming rate, especially if it has access to light or metal. This being acts as a protector for The Box, and the golems will do whatever it asks.

The creation of the Angel-Golem soon resulted in a small cult forming which revere The Box as a kind of deity of creation and creativity, and they will aid in capturing creatures and interesting people to put into it. Thus in a somewhat unexpected way, Connor Griffin’s goal of bringing back wonder has succeeded.


Golden Feather

Golden FeatherA curiosity shop with a large selection of traditional

and mystical remedies. If you ask the owner what he sells he may ask you what you need, but more often than not he will be able to tell you, even when you don’t know the answer yourself - Alan just tends to have a feeling for this kind of thing. Because of this, and the atmosphere in his shop, he has been called a witch in the past - but this is very far from the truth, as he is secretly an angel5.

Alan Gold looks out of place anywhere except his shop. He has a salt and pepper mullet; a tight, neat goatee that follows the squarish shape of his face; and his pale blue shirt and baggy gray trousers - he is an odd mix of the neat and messy all at once. This gives the overall impression that he is a neat freak trying to seem messy.

The shop itself is a treasure trove of trinkets from the displays in the windows to the nooks and crannies at the back of the shop. There are fresh flowers in colourful pots on the front of the windows with wind chimes and dream-catchers above them. At thetop, above a pair of crossedfeathers, is the shop’s name“The Golden Feather” writtenin gold lettering.

5 He would admit to magic or witchcraft if they are an everyday thing in the setting, but not that he is an angel.


Golden Feather

Once you walk through the shiny pine door you are hit with a warm array of blues and golds, alongside polished wood. It’s bigger on the inside than the storefront would suggest with three rooms in all - one to the back and one to the left of the main room.

The shop smells of warm sweet frankincense and the fresh, earthy green tea that sits on a wall unit at the back of the shop. Next to this sits something sweet, like home-made cake or biscuits.

To the left of the entrance, is a table full of little athames, crystals, long white candles, some dried flowers and other mundane items that might be used in witchcraft.

Along the left hand wall are shelves of books on a wide variety of topics: white magic; religions, both ancient and current; improving your body, mind and soul; and history, from both academic and esoteric perspectives. These shelves lead up to the pine counter where the till sits.Around the counter are little trinkets from all over the world, usually one-off pieces.

Behind this area is a second large room, containing a round table with a purple tablecloth and comfy chairs. Thisis where a tired customer can rest for a few minutes after along day, and where the diviner, Diothaen Epheraemedes,offers readings on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, and one Saturday a month.


Golden Feather

The third room, to the right of the main room, has several three-tier round, glass and pine displays.

One display holds scented candles. The bottom tier has a mix of decorative tealights and candles in small bowls. The next tier of candles are peculiar ones: different shapes, multiple colours of wax, some with a scale down their side for tracking time. The top tier only has a few candles in old jam jars with chunks of the fruit or plant they smell of throughout the wax and a little keyring or something like it in the middle, revealed when the candle has seen significant use - these are hand made by the local “crafting for mental health” group.

Another display table has big clear glass jars of herbalteas, such as Ginseng, Valerian and Rose-hip. The slightly smaller next layer up has the same kind of jars full of flower petals, leaves and roots of plants like Rose, Lavender, and Passionfruit - these can be used for teas, in food, or in bodycare and perfumes. There are two small boxes stuck to the shelf, the larger of the two has small cloth bags which hold about 200 grams, while the smaller holds individual cloth tea bags, so that you can mix your own teas. If you want your own jar to fill up they can be found under the table, hidden behind the tablecloth: re-use of these containers is rewarded with a discount. On the top layer there are threeslightly bigger jars filled with some ready-made bags of themost popular mixes, green tea with lemon, white tea and jasmine, and a third one that changes every week.


Golden Feather

The next table has the same style of jars filled with fresh and dried herbs like basil, thyme, dill and rue. The next level is full of jars of fresh and dried spices like paprika,anise, sesame and poppy seeds. The top level has just four jars on it, black pepper, white pepper, sea salt and Pink Himalayan salt. There are small pots with measuring spoonsthroughout the display, some of the cloth bags and tea bags in little boxes on the side of the second layer and jars under the table.

Another three-tier table has face and hair masks (kept cool in an iced bowl) and face cream and washes of different types like vitamin E or anti-wrinkle creams on the bottom layer. The next layer is full of sweet smelling body lotions and butters like coconut, strawberry and shea, and little tubs of hand cream or lotions. The top tier has things for your feet like pumice stones, foot scrapers and lotions.

In the window in this room there are big jars of dried fruit. Hanging above them upside down are bundles of flowers drying.

Magic thingsSome items are unique, or otherwise special enough

to be kept behind the counter. Alan will offer these to those people he thinks would benefit the most from them.


Golden Feather

Birthday candles, enchanted such that any small but selfless wish made when blowing them out comes true.

Dream-catchers made with real angel’s feathers, to help with nightmares and soothe the dreamer - Alan is particularly careful who he sells these to as they could provide a ritual link to him.

A whitish gem-stone resembling a septagonal quartz crystal, but with veins of light blue and pale yellow. If you hold it up to the light in the right way you get a quick glimpse of Heaven.

Jigsaws that help to stop people feeling lonely, by encouraging people to join in. They become more interesting and intricate the more people that are working together on them.

Tarot cards where the images on the cards change to feature those people and places in your life that are closest to the card’s meaning.

Some items are connected with the Seven Holy Virtues, and can help people who are struggling to upholdthem (whether they recognise that or not).

A gold embroidered wallet brings the wearer to Charity. It encourages them to be freer with their money, tip more generously, spend a little bit more on something for a friend, and always pay a fair price.


Golden Feather

The lucky clover he sells to those who are struggling with Charity. It causes you to find useful items - but they’re always more useful for someone else than for you. Most often they are for those close to you, but you may find items for strangers too.

Magical wedding rings help protect the Chastity of married couples. They focus your memories on your happiest moments whenever you touch the ring.

A perfume that makes you consider people as friendsbefore potential sexual partners is for those who struggle with Chastity. Alan will recommend it to those who ask for something to help them “pull”.

Temperance Tea that helps you feel sated, and makes you more aware of the effects on your mind when using alcohol or drugs. It’s as though there’s always a part of you that’s sober which can judge the way you act in order to allow use while preventing abuse.

Drawing pencils that stay sharp throughout a drawing, and encourage you to complete your work before resting are useful for those striving for Diligence.

Candles that help you stay awake, but only if you’re working also encourage Diligence.

A lavender and chamomile stress ball, that calms both you and those around you when squeezed. It encourages Patience in all those affected.


Golden Feather

A fidget toy that lets you focus on and better understand the work others are doing, for those who need more personal Patience.

Little animal shapes made out of black, blue or veined marble aid with Kindness and Compassion. Theyare meant to be given as a gift to the person you want to understand. They allow you to feel what the target feels, especially in response toyour actions - although Alan doesn't always make it clear that you aren’t just aware of their emotions, you experience them.

Anti-aging eye-masks that help you see past the wrinkles of the elderly to their true beauty. These Alan recommends for those who could benefit from a little moreCompassion to allay their fears of getting old.

A crystal vase that releases a healing aura each time that flowers are put in it. The vase appears to catch sunlight showing a spray of colour, even in a room that hasno natural light. This is to stimulate Faith and increase Hope- Alan often suggests that it is put by a sick person’s bed to help them. It can’t always cure but it soothes, and it may give someone those last few minutes they need to say goodbye to their loved ones.


Unicorns are popularforms for figurines.

Golden Feather

A leather cord necklace encourages Patience. It has chewable beads on that give you a few extra minutes to relax if you bite on them 3 times. Alan gives them to people that chew on things when they’re trying to work something out. These are also great for teething babies, pets or people trying to quit smoking who need to do something with their mouth - but he usually gives the non-magical version for that.

An incense burner allows those who inhale its smoke to reach a reflective state, encouraging Patience and Compassion. It could even soothe those driven into a rageby curses, or by lycanthropy.

The Scales of Breath are a brass balance which comes with a deck of cards displaying common objects. The user chooses a card to represent each of two sides of a debate, and places the cards on either side of the balance. Breathing on the fulcrum will cause the scales to tip towards the more Just or Righteous side. This can also be used with a Tarot deck, or even common file cards, provided the cards on either side are the same weight.

A pair of glasses enable Charity, by allowing the wearer to look at a person and intuitively know what they are most in need of. Sometimes a kind word or a hug is more valued than any amount of money.


Designing Faster-Than-Light

Designing Faster-Than-Light Faster-Than-Light (FTL) travel is a key trope of science-

fiction settings - without it interstellar adventures are almostimpossible - but it strains against the laws of physics as theyare currently understood.

There are a lot of different ways to implement it, and the method you choose decides a huge amount about how your universe will function.

Doing without FTLWithout FTL there is no ability for interstellar nations

beyond a few light years, as anywhere that takes years to reply to a message is quite simply impossible to control, and communication over 30 light years while possible would be very limited by the fact that the sender of the message would not receive a reply for 60 years - long enough that without life extension they’re sure to have been replaced in their post.

However it is entirely possible for a person to travel huge distances within their lifespan, given sufficiently powerful propulsion, due to the time-dilation effects in special relativity. while from the point of view of a static observer at either their start or end point they would take alittle over a century to travel 100 light years, from the traveller’s point of view it could take as little as a single



year. If your story needs are satisfied by such an isolating journey then you can happily do without the physics-warping of FTL travel.

Time and Relative Dimensions in Space?The first and most key question: Is FTL time travel?

According to The Theory of Relativity it is. What we see as movement through space is, to people moving at near the speed of light, movement through time - and the key principle of relativity is that both viewpoints are equallycorrect.

But most stories work better when travelling back in time is significantly harder than traveling between distant star systems - so most worldbuilders seek to avoid the real-world answer.

The most common answer is to create a preferred reference frame - a single correct speed at which to observe the speed of motion - most often fixed relative to the galaxy as a whole, effectively the same as being fixed relative to Earth as Earth orbits the galaxy at a mere 230km/s, 0.1% of the speed of light. Even the distinction in speed between that and the speed at which a star orbiting Andromeda is moving is still under 0.2%, hardly worth worrying about.

Going beyond the local group into the local supercluster (about a dozen significant galaxies) it starts to



become more of a problem, with variances of up to 10% the speed of light, but even that is insufficient to make timetravel trivial.

A Question of Speed?FTL is fast - but how long does it take to get to the

nearest inhabited star system? It could be anything from an instant teleportation to a grueling year-long trek.

While this question might seem to depend on the distance between habitable planets, that’s only true if you start by determining the speed and work from there.

Instead I recommend determining how long the journey takes, based on the needs of your story and from there calculating what the speed is.

Realspace TravelNot all FTL can get you directly to your destination -

indeed, most can’t. Instead it gets you to a certain distance away, and you can make your way normally from there. Depending on the type of FTL there are different potential reasons - for wormholes and jump-gatesthis is purely dependent on their location - which can be either convenient or inconvenient depending on the individual system, while for Hyperspace and Jump Drives the most common reasons are: inability to arrive/depart in atmosphere; inability to arrive/depart within a certain



depth of gravity well; and/or imprecision in the point of arrival.

There’s also the possibility of FTL blockers that simply disallow travellers from arriving within their radius, as a defence against teleporting assassinations or warp-speed nuclear weapons. These might prevent the travellers pushing through into the location guarded, or they might instead function by disintegrating them on arrival leaving only an evaporating cloud of dust.

If FTL can directly reach the destination, and can’t beblocked, expect any form of warfare to be a cold war crossed with terrorist attacks - no city can ever be considered safe when an antimatter bomb can simply appear in its midst.

Forms of TravelFTL comes in many different varieties, each with their

own advantages and disadvantages for storytelling. Oftenstories combine multiple types together - with different types being used for different purposes.

When I started this article I intended to do a deep description of the options for each, but while writing I’ve realised that there’s just too much to say for that, so I’m justgoing to summarise - if you want to see the deep-dive on one of these FTL types let us know, as I would happily write an article exploring any one of them.



Wormholes

Probably the most realistic form of FTL travel, especially when excluding those that allow time-travel, wormholes are sections of space where two otherwise distant places are linked.

The most basicaspect of wormholesis that they serve aschoke points, any shiptravelling from A to Bwill use the A->Bwormhole, and thusresult in a form ofspace-warfare thatconcentrates onpitched battles farmore than mightotherwise beexpected.Wormholes can also give your galaxy (or even universe) a very different effective shape, depending on how they are arrayed - they might be random, form a tightweb, or even serve a hub-and-spoke structure.

One-way Wormholes

A nice twist on the concept of wormholes is to have ones where, due to some exotic force, it is only possible to travel in one direction. Depending on the structure of your


Space is effectively bent such thatthere is a shorter route between two

points


wormhole network this may result in situations where colonies exist that can be reached by immigrants from thehomeworld, but can never send anything back (apart, perhaps, from data transmissions).

Jump-Gates

Closely related to wormholes are jump-gates, an artificial system of linkage points - such as stargates.

In a world with other forms of FTL they serve as convenient shortcuts, less energy-intensive travel or, if the FTL is limited by a lack of accuracy, as beacons that allow reliable travel.

In a world without other FTL the delivery of jump-gatesto a new location is the job of decades or even centuries - meaning that new star systems only open up to explorers occasionally, but when empires meet they can grant eachother full access to their territory by sharing the details of their jump-gate network - although in cases of war such access is easily revoked, making this a poor form of FTL for intergalactic warfare, but a great one for Cold War-esque intrigue.

Linked Gates

It’s common for jump-gates to all be able to dial one another, but it’s also reasonable to have jump-gates that are linked in pairs or small groups, such that a journey may



require traveling through multiple systems to reach the desired destination.

A further variant is to have the jump-gates actually serve as anchors to carry wormholes into position, making it essentially impossible to close down the network once it’screated.

Jump Drives

Any form of FTL where you simply disappear from wherever you are and nigh-instantaneously arrive in another falls under this heading - but despite being the simplest form of FTL in some ways there’s still room for variation.

The biggest questions unique to jump drives is whether or not the jumps have a limited range, and how long it takes to activate a jump drive; for instance, whetheror not the drive can be activated in combat.

The activation time and the range may be directly correlated - the further the travel is to be, the greater the drain on the ship’s capacitors, or the longer the calculation of travel time.

Psychic Navigation

Psychic powers are often involved in use of jump drives; for instance Dune’s spacefolds, Andromeda’s



slipstream, and teleportation in Anne McCaffrey’s Talents series all rely on psychic powers to function.

Hyperspace

Hyperspace travel is the most common form of FTL in popular fiction - it’s in Star Trek, Stargate, Star Wars and many others.

The key feature of hyperspace travel is that ships dropout of real-space into a parallel realm.

In general the layout of hyperspace roughly corresponds to that of real-space; if two things are close in real-space, they’re close in hyperspace, and visa versa, with the main difference being faster travel, due to differences in physical laws.

Exactly what the differences are has a huge impact on what kind of stories your world encourages in terms of space exploration and combat - for instance a hyperspace that can only be traversed by large ships, in a world without FTL comms, results in a communication network reliant on couriers.

Hyperspace can not only provide quick transit to adventures, but it can provide adventures in itself - Warhammer 40k’s Warp is full of potential for monstrous encounters.



A Smaller Space

Space-based Sci-Fihas a significantproblem, especiallywhen dealing in visualmediums: Realisticspace battles aren’tparticularly interesting.

All those daringmaneuvers by fightersjust don’t work withinthe physics of space,where the ships movepast each other at astonishing speeds and turning around without slowing down takes a planetary slingshot or severalhours.

Hyperspace generally worsens that problem, by making everything even faster moving. But it doesn’t have to: consider a version of hyperspace where rather than ships being able to move faster, they simply have a shorter distance to travel. Everything is closer together within this hyperspace; and if you like you can even add a fluid element to the space that allows for banked turns and thrilling space combat - with the potential for a space marine to jump from one ship to another.


The world you step through whenteleporting may be strange and

disconcerting.


Alcubierre Drive

Some harder science-fiction stories use this model developed by Miguel Alcubierre, wherein space is warpedaround a vessel – stretching the space behind it and compressing the space ahead. This could work like a form of free travel – akin to hyperspace – but most models suggest a catcher would need to be set up in advance, tostop the ship – limiting the drive to pre-set routes similarly toa jump-gate or wormhole network.

Genre ShiftAny or all of these ideas can be modified for a

fantasy game - rather than FTL travel they apply to long-distance travel - portals are akin to wormholes, portal circles that must be activated ritually are like jump gates, while teleportation traditionally functions as a jump drive.

Twisting teleportation spells so that they function morelike hyperspace, involving travel through a different realm such as Dresden Files’ Nevernever, can allow for stories of wilderness encounters to carry on into even the highest levels of a roleplaying campaign. It also allows anti-teleportation wards to be represented more viscerally - rather than teleportation simply failing the wards could be akin to a many-layered fortress within this alternate realm; one where the outer layers may be pushed through by heroic action.


Letter Lich

Letter Lich Dear Letter Lich,

My beloved has been slain by the “rightful” prince. How do I get her back?

--Alex Wolfe

You are in a most fortunate situation - you have the opportunity to grant your love immortality in an impressively strengthened body.

While it is simple to reanimate a corpse, bringing the soul back once it has already fed the body is usually extremely diffcult - and given the prejudice many divinities have against the undead might require returning her in a merely mortal form.

But your beloved was killed in an act of betrayal by a powerful individual; and that means that her spirit is likely to still be sticking around.


Letter Lich

So you’ve got the perfect recipe for making her a revenant -a spirit of vengeance that can eternally restore their body, and ifsaid body is destroyed can simply possess another, as long as their vengeance remains incomplete.

Calling upon the aid of a god who concerns themself with either justice or vengeance, you should be able to have her soul pushed fully back into the world6.

Once that is done, all you need to do is ensure her desire for vengeance is never sated - help her to see that all mortal rulers are corrupt and in need of destruction - and she will never die.

--------

That’s certainly one option, but if she was a kind soul you might be pleased to hear that there are other options that don’t require her to be consumed by hatred for the rest of her existence.

Firstly, you should check whether the world you’re in allows for purchasable rituals of resurrection; as in the standard Dungeons and Dragons universes where it just costs a large amount of wealth (in the form of diamonds) to recover a deceased individual. If so, you may wish to enforce the concept of “wergild” - payment for the life of the slain - against the prince or his parents. A fair payment would, of course, be sufficient wealth to return her life.

6 Nemesis is an especially appropriate god for this, the most vengeful of the ever-vengeful Greek pantheon,


Letter Lich

If they refuse, you may be able to force the issue, or you may be forced to seek wealth through other means - itcertainly provides a reasonable drive to become a treasure-hunting adventurer7.

If such a wealth-based solution isn’t possible in your world, or is otherwise infeasible, the next likely path is that of blood-sacrifice. The sacrifice of a deceased individual’s killer is particularly potent, but under normal circumstanceseven that will not suffice alone; a life for a life is a fair trade, and those who trade in souls rarely go for such things.

However, as the killeris also a prince they havethe additional value ofroyal blood (and a royalsoul) - so it is likely thatwith the right rituals andcontacts you will be ableto trade his life for hers.

Be careful whendoing such however - thesort of beings that acceptsuch sacrifices tend not tobe above putting a fewcatches into the deal,

7 Whether the diamonds are a mystical conduit or simply a bribe for the gods is hard to say. But in either case the practical result is the same. And if you don’t have access to priestly magic you’ll certainly require some level of bribery to get a cleric to cast it for you.


Hades is a very reasonable god- for an Olympian.

Letter Lich

whether that be forcing her to engage in cannibalism to survive or inserting false memories within her soul.

A third option is to seek direct divine intervention without payment, by seeking a deity capable of resurrection who is susceptible to tales of love. Hades might make a good example, although attempts to reach him are fraught and the tales tend not to end happily.

In any of these cases you’ll likely need to be quick - spending too long in the afterlife can change a person; although in some worlds the afterlife doesn’t exist until the mortal world ends, at which point she’ll simply be in suspended animation.

Beyond these standard forms of resurrection there areother, more unusual, means. It would be impossible to list them all, but here are some of my favourites:

• Using time travel, such as through The Labyrinth of History, to prevent her death - possibly resulting in a paradox, and certainly requiring a significant quest.

• Using “Memory Magic” to rebuild her from other people’s memories of her - potentially requiring that those memories be sacrificed in order to do so, leaving her returned to life surrounded by people she remembers who don’t remember her.

• Fighting your way into the underworld and then back out again - likely pissing off guardians of the dead in the process.

– ed


Magpie Nest

Magpie NestCaptain Magpie and crew

here - concept thief for hire. Myloyal pirates - ahem - entrepreneurs have demandedthat I introduce them, and so this month I am aided by my First Mate, Aisha, who is a mermaid. She’s the reason we

can navigate the multiverse - somehow there’s always a sea to sail us where we need to go.

And this month we need her skills more than ever. One of our readers wants me to hunt down a soul. We know that the owner wasn’t a good person, but we’re not sure to which Underworld he’s been taken. So off we sail totry to get him back. Good job Lincoln has paid us well!

What did our malefactor do to lead his path down to Hell? To some cultures, a life dedicated to war leads to theblessed hall of Valhalla or to the Happy Hunting Ground of the Lakota; to others such a life would lead to damnation. We’re going to have to assume general sinfulness - although the philosopher David Hensel claims the only sin isknowing what is sinful - because that would imply we knewthe mind of God.


Magpie Nest

The Winchester brothers claim that only angels can freely enter Hell, and Buffy requires grand rituals involving statue’s mouths or Spanish caves or some such. I disagree -going to Hell is easy, it’s coming back that’s tricky…Without Virgil to guide me, as Dante did. I’m going to haveto rely on Aisha to sail us home. Fortunately, almost every hell has a river - the Styx, river of hate, is only the best known. We prefer to sail by the Cocytus - the river of lamentation.

Either of those get you to Tartarus, which is the Greek Hell. People there tend to get poetic punishment - like the guy who denied his guests food and drink, who is perpetually thirsty surrounded by water that becomes sand when he tries to drink. The pregnant Popes kept in their enclosure in Old Harry’s Game are from this same veinof punishment fitting the crime8. Lethe, the river of forgetfulness leads from Tartarus to one of the other Greek underworlds - the Mourning Fields where unrequited lovers go. Not a place of punishment, but a pretty awful place nonetheless.

Interestingly, most hells aren’t lakes of fire, as Milton’s illustrators would have you believe. Dante’s Inferno is cold, as is Helheim where the naughty Norse go - I’m not gonna call them Vikings, that’s a profession. However, the one

8 Note I didn’t say being Pope is a crime or being pregnant a punishment. I just report on what I see, you have to make the moral judgements here.


Magpie Nest

map we have showing Helheim is so unreliable we can’t realistically sail there. Snorri, the chap who drew it, was writing some time after the gates closed - after the Norsemen became Christians. If our errant soul is there, there he will have to stay. We can, however, search Jotunheim - more the home of evil creatures than souls, but we look anyway.

The Chinese describe many Hells, with new ones created for each new sin. Without a better idea of what the target soul did to mark him as Evil, it’d be hard to explore all of these - one text specifies that there are eighty four thousand Diyu. We search only the biggest andbest known - meeting mostly Chinese demons that are dark souls who have come to terms with their new form. Drinkers of blood and wielders of fire, or eaters of flesh with control over water - neither is conducive to keeping my crew intact. We very politely bow to the Japanese oni whose brains are on show - honour demands he bow back, at which point his brains fall out, and he is unable to pursue us. Most Oriental demons are better seen as wickedspirits - many nature spirits can be helpful or obnoxious - and are often capricious.

We sail the planes as easily as the seas, with Aisha as navigator. My helmsman is a dryad, a yew who has grown to be part of the ship. We search at last the Lower Planes around Sigil. The reason we left these until last is that they are riven by war. Not the Great War of good versus evil -


Magpie Nest

here evil turns on itself, and devils fight demons. Apparently, devils are Lawful - they will always keep the letter of their word, whereas demons are capricious enough that they might even help you voluntarily, if it serves their own ends...

To me, they’re all of a type with oni, with jotun, with almost all those the Sumerians call gods, with the Asuras one finds battling the Hindi gods. The separation of gods and demons is a matter of debate - the Babylonian Goddess of Death is a demon to the Christians, and the trickster Coyote is neither god nor demon.

Where am I going, when I die? Not to Hell, I’m sure. My Underworld is Annwn, the resting place between lifetimes. No judgement for me, good and evil walk side byside here. Which is quite a good thing, seeing as I had to steal the soul back from the dead with the aid of a necromancer. Long enough to say farewell, anyway. Almost everyone holds undeath as evil.

Credits and Plagiarism: Supernatural, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Mythology.com, Wikipedia, Old Harry’s Game, David Hensel.

We hope you have enjoyed this sample issue of Shards

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Credits & Thanks

Credits & ThanksLayout, editing, proofreading by Alison Piearcey, Ste Coffey, Amy Coffey, Loz Hensel

Additional proofreading by Stephen Borgars-Smith, Garion Hamilton and Atlictoatl

Cover by Ste Coffey, based on work by

Editorial by Loz Hensel

Hybrid Monsters by Loz HenselArt by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Golden Feather by Amy CoffeyArt by Amy Coffey, Parker_West

Designing Faster-Than-Light by Ste CoffeyArt by Panzi (CC BY-SA 3.0), Fan.D & Dav.C Photgraphy (CC BY 2.0)

Letter Lich by Ste Coffey, with a question from Alex WolfeArt by Artyom Semenov Design, August Gaber

Magpie’s Nest by Alison Piearcey, answering a question from Lincoln RobinsonArt by Ste Coffey

Thanks to all our supporters

Shards Sampler 2019 is copyright Artemis Games andeverything within remains the copyright of the respective

authors and artists.

If you like what you see, please visithttp://ArtemisGames.co.uk/Shards or the Shards Vol. 2

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ShardsWorldbuilding Zine

Month 2019

In this issue:

Three fragments to drop into your worlds

Advice on building your own worlds

And our Agony Aunt answers your questions

From Artemis Gameshttp://artemisgames.co.uk/shards

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