Skinwalker

Not to be confused with the movie Skinwalkers. That was a fairly shitty movie about werewolf like vampires or something like that. But, like I implied, that’s totally not the point of this post.

A skinwalker in Native American folklore (this is me speaking without referring to Google, so I could be wrong) is a sort of shaman or holy man that has the ability, through a ritual, to assume the shape of a wild animal and move about as that animal. I’m not sure on any of the particulars. I don’t know if it’s a metaphorical transformation that takes place during a spirit quest with lots of peyote dumped on the fire. I don’t know if it talks about a literal transformation, as it would be in the case of werewolves. I don’t know if it’s a spiritual transformation where the skinwalkers spirit takes the form of an animal and walks across the astral plane for one reason or another.

I don’t know.

I could Google it, but I’m almost positive I’d find evidence relating to all three of the examples, and each one would be as valid as the last. (Depending on the sources of course.)

So, I’m going to take a step away from the folklore and look at something I do know a pretty good deal about; Dungeons and Dragons.

Skinwalkers bring to mind two core classes that relate directly to the skinwalkers ability to shape shift. First is the druid, which as far as I know is the official “skinwalker” class. Why? The druid has the ability to take on what’s called a wild shape, meaning it can transform into an animal of its choosing and use that animal’s body however it sees fit.

The other class that comes to mind is the shaman. Like the druid the shaman is able to assume the form of its guiding spirit, which is generally an animal but not always.

I personally feel that the shaman is the more likely of the two classes to become a skinwalker.

And, I totally lost where I was going with this post as it was supposed to have been written three or four days ago. I don’t know. So, I suppose what I’m going to do now is move on to the end of the post.

Guess what happens there.

Ryan

4-3-14—4-6-14

Mermaids

Ah, mermaids, a topic I’m less than interested in. Lol. And, one that always makes me think of Disney’s The Little Mermaid. It’s a tale as old as time… wait… that’s Beauty and the Beast. Anyway, The Little Mermaid is about a girl falling in love upon her first glance of a gorgeous guy (requisite eye roll), and how she goes head over fin to change herself to make previously mentioned gorgeous guy to fall in love with her.

Gag.

Yeah, part of me is kidding about all of that, and part of me is being straight up honest. Which part do you think it is?

And, on the topic of mermaids, this little gem seems to have been floating around the internet. How many of you are excited to see it?!?

Well, I’m bursting your bubble. It’s bunk. This is the work of a photoshop artist named Thomas Kurinawan, and he’s gone about transforming many celebrities into Disney princesses. Some of these photoshop works are well done, some of them aren’t, and I’m not much of a judge because I don’t know a lot about photoshop. But, I also know what I think looks good, and about half of that looks… I’ll not throw stones. Lol.

And, now I suppose I should try and find a way to work mermaids into my game, but I’m not really sure I want to. Lol.

Mermaids would be easy to fit into the game though. The current setting, a pirate port in the Underhaven by the name of Netheretia, is situated on the coast of an underground sea that meets with the actual ocean through a number of naturally occurring portals. So, I could easily see to it that there’s a colony of merfold settled in Netheretia’s bay or just outside of one of the natural portals.

I might even be able to work that into the overall campaign. The main beastie (the same one I talked about in my Dreams post) comes from the depths of the ocean, much deeper than any merfolk could possibly go, but his forces could attack a merfolk colony and the PCs could be coerced into investigating the situation. And, by coerced I mean their lives will be snuffed out if they refuse… Did I say that out loud? Shit.

Anywho, I believe it’s time for me to shut up before I give away anymore game secrets. Lol.

Ryan

2-27-14

Steel

I’ve had a real strange desire today, ever since I got finished with The Goal That Shall Not Be Named. I’ve wanted to watch the movie Steel, and I can’t figure out why. It’s a terrible movie, an absolutely terrible movie that should have never left the first draft of the screenplay, but it did, and I’m now completely allowed to make fun of it.

Steel is a superhero move (the worst one in my opinion, though Spider-Man 3 comes pretty close) based on the character John Henry Irons from the DC comics of the same name, well, I think the comic was called Man of Steel, I don’t know. Irons became a hero in much the same way Tony Stark did. His technology was turned around and used against him, and continently enough this is right around the time Superman was killed by the monster Doomsday. Irons felt it was his responsibility as a genius inventor to step in and take Supes place. He made himself a suit of armor (similar to Iron Man’s) put Superman’s S-shield on it, grabbed a cape and went skyward with his mission.

I became a fan of John Henry Irons, not after watching Steel in the late nineties, but while I was in high school and when I first encountered the novelized form of The Death of Superman, the book’s title, if anybody’s curious, is The Death and Life of Superman (look it up, it’s a good read), and in the latter half of that book (during the Reign of the Supermen arc) is where I was exposed to Irons.

And, that’s where my brain stopped. I was trying to think about the good qualities of John Henry Irons, the qualities that make him a relatable character, but then I get stuck on Shaq who played Irons like he was a teddy bear and all around boy scout. You know, a character that would be very similar to Clark/Superman and yeah, that works for Supes, that’s his character and it always has been (if you ignore Man of Steel, and I try too). But, that doesn’t mean it works for every superhero. I mean look at Spiderman, his life is shit 99% of the time and that makes him a relatable character. Bruce Wayne is relatable, not because we’re all billionaires who run around at night in tight black spandex, but because he’s a tragic figure. His parents were murdered in front of him when he was a child, and we can relate to that because it makes us ask the question what would happen if my parents died; what would I do. And, if you answer is to dress up in black spandex and run around at night then you probably need to see a therapist.

But, there’s nothing to relate to John Henry Irons, no so far as I can remember. He’s a boy scout who sees somebody using his mistake and immediately jumps to the I need to be a superhero thing to stop this. There doesn’t seem to be any catalyst to it. Nothing to give him that tragic relatable edge. I dunno.

I do think they should make another Steel movie, with today’s CGI it would be epic, and if they got the right writer (kind of pointing at myself here) then the movie would be just as successful as its Marvel counterpart, Iron Man. Of course… there might also be some legal trouble there. Not sure.

Anywho, I’m off into the wild blue yonder.

Ryan