The sun hangs red in the sky - older than the ages, breaking the millionth
dawn since its youth departed, limping into view as it ever wanes towards
perpetual dark. Drawn by the mysteries of wonders past, of people and of magic
beyond the comprehension of modern man but not only dreamed, but built, by
glorious ancestors - wizards, rogues, and scavengers abound: eeking out a
living, dredging for orphaned treasure, or ever questing for deeper forgotten
knowledge buried in the past.
So is framed Jack Vance's unmistakable Dying Earth: required reading for game
masters, old and new school alike.
But didn't you say you were going to use this n-spiration label to talk
about new inspiration material, not stuff you found literally in the back
of the 1e DMG?
Hush, you.
N-Spiration:
The Dying Earth and Rhialto the Marvellous
About The Dying Earth
What we call - in this collection - The Dying Earth is a collection of
half a dozen shared-world short stories published in 1950 by since defunct
Hillman Periodicals. It represents among the earliest of Vance's published
writings - with disagreement in online sources between whether this was their
first appearance at all or whether they had been published independently as
short stories in the 1940s while the author served in the merchant marine. In
either case - however - they represent a blend of science fiction and fantasy,
once common but now almost taboo, and follow the exploits and adventures of a
loosely connected cast, seeking their desires and whims while the sun slowly
dies, hanging idly in a red sky.
The series - in addition to blending scientific and fantasy elements -
likewise blends elements of whimsy and fairy tale with elements of cynical
horror. On the one hand, there exist a race of almost pixie people - the Twk
Men - who are of scale small enough to ride the dragonflies and keep watch on
the wood: from whom information or favors can be bought with simple things
like vials of flower oils or parcels of salt; on the other, there exist the
hideous Deodands - muscular humanoids with lusterless skin and slits for eyes,
described such that I personally pictured a hairless chimpanzee with the
erudition of a connoisseur of literature, who hunt and eat humans caught out
at night. There are places of beauty - olive orchards swaying in the wind
against the backdrop of sunset across a bay - while at the same time, ruins
house horrible sorcerers and apparitions against whom villagers bar their
doors at night as a matter of simple habit: lest the ghouls and vagabonds
enter, steal, and devour.
To even explore the first story - and spoilers may follow, so those sensitive
to them should skip to the next heading - the author immediately displays an
ability to blend human emotion while at the same time separating the magic
user from modern morality. Turjan both observes beauty in the world, finds
love in human companionship, but likewise with zero remorse apart from
disappointment of failure watches a living thing, a mockery of a human, formed
from a vat by his experimentation collapse in death from its own deformities.
His treatment of this scene is akin to a writer who realizes he has misspelled
a word and will have to go back and correct it with white out. Disconnection -
contrasted against connection - inhumanity with humanity.
From a gamist perspective, several things jump out at the viewer as having
been lifted for the original edition of the game - the spell, Excellent
Prismatic Spray, comes to mind - and similarly, a curiosity with the one story
regarding a character not a user of magic: Liane the Wayfarer. Liane is
a traveling adventurer - and seems to embody the modern notion (not OSR) of a
Bard. He is skilled, arrogant, handsome, lecherous, deviant, and self-serving
- he experiments with magic items when he finds them to identify their uses
(an action referenced in B/X examples of play to determine the function and
nature of magic items) - but curiously, he seems to die twice: first, to the
blade of another character, T'sais - a swordswoman: who does not know magic,
but who is protected by it in artifacts - and second, when encountering Chun
the Unavoidable (which is my favorite antagonist, and the first true delve
into horror, of the series).
Did Liane miraculously survive the first, to succumb to the second? Did Liane
have a charm about him, or a trick, that could protect him from death? Or did
Liane's player simply like the concept and re-roll the same character when his
first went down? I was hoping to find out - to see whether he made another
appearance - but to date, it is not to be.
In any case - the six stories in The Dying Earth are, without question,
old school adventures: ones which serve as templates for adventures yet to be
written and played.
About Rhialto the Marvellous
Firstly, spell-check is telling me that I need to spell "Marvelous" with one L
- as demonstrated. However, Vance clearly and intentionally appears to spell
it with two. Perhaps there is significance - perhaps not: however I am aware
of the red squiggles.
Where The Dying Earth represents some of the author's very earliest
works, Rhialto the Marvellous is among his latest - having been
published in 1984 by Brandywyne Books (defunct, subsequently
Baen Books): four decades
after the initial stories in its shared setting were penned. Like its
predecessor, it consists of several shared-universe stories, connected only by
the characters and the setting, some of which had appeared in print
previously, others of which were original for this tome.
Rhialto the Marvellous continues to blend science and magic - however,
in focusing on a cabal of magicians, far less mechanism, far less forgotten
technology, makes its way into the stories in favor of esoteric and recherché
fictional artifacts.
When reading The Dying Earth, the sense of scale is limited. That is,
one particularly powerful wizard in The Dying Earth - Mazirian the
Magician - is quite inflated with himself that he can commit to memory
five or six spells at a time. In an OSR sense - this places him
at around fifth level. This is an achievement in the Basic line, but
represents only the beginning of a character if compared to the Advanced. The
magicians in Rhialto the Marvellous represent the Advanced half of the
game. They represent the wizard after the wizard has graduated beyond the
dungeon and instead - with a head full of spells and a kit full of magical
artifacts - walks across the stars and the fabric of time, itself, to deal
with entities beyond the comprehension of mortals. As such, in reading
Rhialto, consider that it informs the expected experience - and
arguably expected power level - of an N-teenth level Magic User.
Also - it informs GP for XP: each of the wizards lives in a massive manse and
has troves of treasure accumulated over the years. Suddenly the "literal tons
of gold" argument against GP for XP and the coin-weight encumbrance system
seems to reveal its inspiration.
Similarly, of almost immediate observation in reading Rhialto - the
tone of the stories has changed. Where The Dying Earth was about
exploration, greed, curiosity, adventure: classic pulp - Rhialto reads
almost like a dark comedy. Picaresque, to be certain - in (to make a
contemporary reference) a Martin-esque fashion, the reader may be expected to
enjoy, reading the stories, the practice of divining events to come by trying
to ascertain the most unfavorable motive, the most unfavorable outcome, or the
most dishonest interpretation of a promise that the characters might
reasonably - the character you're "supposed to" like tends to come out on top:
but he does so through a comedy of errors. In The Murthe, for example
(spoilers for the remainder of this paragraph), only two of the magicians'
order seem to notice that they have been ensorcelled and that their biological
sex has been reversed. Similarly, in Fader's Waft and
Morreion both, the main crux of the conflict could have been avoided if
the magicians had simply thought about it. Should we convict Rhialto of crimes
he is not here to defend himself for, even when more than half of us have
knowledge, kept secret, which implies his innocence? Our colleague, we sent on
a recon mission alone - how long should we expect him to be gone before we ask
questions? Or should we simply assume we can pursue our own affairs - despite
the obvious intrinsic value to his task? As a result - characters fall prey to
circumstances that, their lives having been measured in aeons and their
proficiency with magic being unmatched in the known universe, they should not
have: and a reader begins to wonder how they survived as long as they did with
the wits that they display. Thus, the humor of the stories - designed and
successful at producing enjoyment for the reader - likewise somewhat works
against the verisimilitude.
Of further note - regarding science and magic - the nature of spells is
clarified. Magic remains magic, but there is science to it in that magic works
according to established patterns which a magician might learn and observe
with experience. In Mazirian the Magician, of The Dying Earth,
Mazirian speculates that Phandaal - a legendary magician who personally penned
over 100 spells - had demons whispering to him when he wrote. In the foreword
to Rhialto the Marvellous, this is essentially confirmed - where spells
are stated to codes which are heard by living things (some intelligent, some
not) which are able to effect the spell's instructions on the world. A
hierarchy is given - with easy (read: low level) spells being attributed to
frail elementals or sandestins (genie-like spirits compelled to do the will of
the magician) and difficult (read: high level) spells being attributed to
daihak (intelligent, motivated spirit beings akin to demons or deities). The
mysterious nature is not lost - in my opinion - with this revelation: instead,
it provides a basis for spell level in a Vancian magical system. Why is this
spell level 1 while this other spell level 2? Obviously, it's because the
spirit who will carry out your instructions is a different creature - one
whose willpower is greater than that of the former.
Regarding the characters - all of them, almost without fail, are self-serving.
This departs from the blend of personality that was present in
The Dying Earth, where both good and evil - altruism and egotism -
might exist in the same individual, producing a deeper personality. This is
sacrificed in Rhialto in part to serve the humor, but also - from the
perspective of an OSR game - illustrate the departure that a magician might
have, the separation between the high level hero and the low level servant or
peon, that would be necessary to play the game as a wargame. Your lieutenants
may have names - but they may not; your foot soldiers most certainly don't:
or, at least, your character is unlikely to care what those names are. When
walking the planes or conquering kingdoms - these things become less relevant,
less pertinent to the goals of the player and the player character. Also like
a player, the characters are overt about it - in Morreion (spoiler),
the party states - officially - that their mission to the end of the universe
is to rescue their long lost comrade, however consistently and constantly, the
wizards - especially Gilgad - ask and inquire and persist about IOUN stones:
articles of power which have been, to this point, highly coveted: but the
utility of which - why are they valuable apart from their scarcity - is not
disclosed. The blatant effect of this, we - the readers - and the magicians,
without admitting it - know that the reason they are going is to discover the
secret of the IOUN stone: not to rescue a colleague lost to them thousands of
years in the past.
Last spoiler of the review - side note - this is where D&D gets IOUN
stones.
Though the capitalization, if I remember right, does not follow Vance's
pattern (which I use here) - their function is revealed slowly through
Morreion as the stones orbiting the title character, Morreion, are
expended, exerting their influence - artfully, having piqued the reader's
interest and then fed it to said reader slowly thereafter to allow piecing
together of the picture - something which a veteran of D&D will know
already. Similarly, the mechanism of their creation? RAW AWESOME. I
will not spoil it here. Read Morreion.
Would you pick Dying Earth over Rhialto? In terms of pure enjoyment,
yes - however in terms of importance to the hobby and to the genre, no. The
two collections and the dozen or so stories serve different purposes, inspire
different facets, of the Magic User experience: both of which are enjoyable to
read - don't get me wrong - and both of which inform the curious referee or
the aspiring player.
Why either? (Or both?)
Mentioned above, villagers bar their doors at night and travelers dare not
sleep on the road. Of the implied setting of the original D&D game,
commentators on the OSR style have long referenced that the world, itself,
should be seen as a series of points of light embedded and scattered amongst
chaos, which reigns in the wilderness.
Reading these books will change how you look at "Points of Light."
Likewise mentioned above, large cities of grand persons and exquisite
architecture thrive in decadence among neighborhoods of larger, fallen cities
built by grander people and greater architects in ages past and epochs lost.
Stepping outside the boundaries of these neighborhoods as pass for cities, the
ruin is immediately evident: the treasures of the past are available to be
uncovered by the daring. This aspect of the stories illustrates two things:
-
First, reading these stories will change how you understand the "starting
dungeon."
-
Second, reading these stories will change how you consider the
implementation of treasure tables.
Wealth exists beyond measure, built and earned by forgotten ancestors and
waiting to be squandered by their sticky-fingered successors: and what of
their lost trinkets and articles? How many of these things were common before,
perhaps magical - perhaps mechanical: the secret lost with time? The "dungeon"
is a window into the past - and is available freely to start, as civilization
clings to it as its only connection to its history. What stands between you
and all this? Understanding? Courage?
Lastly, there comes a point where wealth loses meaning. By high levels,
wizards live into the eons, and they have had time to acquire all that there
is to have - eventually having to adventure far and wide, across the Earth,
through time, and around the stars to further sate their desires. This
illustrates that a Magic User will supplement the spell allowances of level
and class with items, magic items, which - in OSR editions - do not convey
experience. Their utility is in their collection and their deployment - and
it's OK to Christmas Tree characters (this is not intrinsically a new school
idea), however its also not to be necessarily expected of them. No two high
level characters are going to be the same - their wanderings and their
expeditions will have uncovered different miraculous items, their spell
research and their forging of artifacts, different tools. This explains why
OSR editions don't give XP for magic items, nor do they assume them of the
characters - instead, OSR editions assume magic items will be simply tools, no
different than ammunition or rations, to be used inventively and to be
discarded when their utility is spent. Worried about too many magic items in
the game? Don't - their abundance (and maybe reading these stories) will
encourage the players to expend them. Easy come, easy go.
Do these points mean that you have to change your game to match? Of
course not. However, to expose yourself to them is to immerse yourself into
the universe from which the original authors of the game derived their concept
of a magician - and through the lens of which the original designers for the
game envisioned the world in which the game would be played. A dozen lessons
and more - inspiration and sudden understanding - spring to mind: all of
which, or some, or none (at your discretion): free to inspire your game, and
your appreciation for the game, for the better.
Be Aware
When I am reading - be it a story or novel - I like to come to stopping
points. Either I need a break in the text - a horizontal rule, a chapter
heading, a breaking space: something to let me know that the current train of
thought has ended and another is about to begin - or I need to finish the
story: otherwise, my brain rebels and will on occasion need to re-read or
binge in until it finds the closure it desires. This closure can be absent in
some of these stories. The short stories are longer than many I have read, and
most of them - especially the early ones - do not have breaks. This isn't
necessarily a bad thing if you have the time to devote to it - or if you are a
faster reader than I am - but be advised: once you sit down with one of these
stories, you're in it for the haul.
Similarly - as with many Appendix N titles - Vance's works were written in
another time for another audience. Some of the themes can be rough, some
of the expectations derived from another zeitgeist than a modern reader will
have been raised in. Personally - I have no problems with this. Most readers,
I think, will have no problems with this. The concepts in the game match the
concepts in the books - and thus offer counter-illumination - and the writing
is fluid, engaging, and intriguing. But from time to time - and this applies
to Cugel (see, my forthcoming "part 2" review) more frequently than to the two
Magic User collections - subjects broached and actions taken may shock or
offend, part of the world-building for a decadent and dying world.
Lastly - and in my opinion - most worth noting: Vance is the source of classic
D&D's High Gygaxian prose. People describe Gary as well-read and of
extensive vocabulary - true, and his style of communication being on occasion
dense or a challenge to divine: this is, I argue, in homage to Vance. Vance
was widely read and has a penchant for using one word, a precise word, where a
dozen or so would be necessary in "common English" - for that reason, the
reader may find himself reaching for a dictionary during the experience. I
personally found myself looking words up fairly frequently near the end of the
stories - not to laud nor denigrate my own vocabulary - in half for obscure or
antique terms, words which have meaning but that Merriam Webster says "Sorry,
I don't have this in my online format because no one ever asks for this any
more!" and in half for terms that Vance made up. Part of the world building is
to invent these places, these things, these concepts - but because of the
presentation: be advised - I recommend internet-searching the word and seeing
if it comes up in a "Words Vance Made Up" blog post before thumbing through
your lexicon.
Further Reading
During his life, Vance was highly prolific - and a list of those highly
prolific publications is fairly easy to find:
He was more prolific in the realm of Science Fiction than he was in the realm
of Fantasy - so, if you enjoy Science Fiction and enjoy the style Vance
writes, you're in luck. Or, might be.
Regardless of genre - some of the pieces, especially the collections, are
still in print: others are not and may require a trip to
eBay
or a well-stocked used book store. This is likely the result of their niche
market - Vance is not a household name as, say, Frank Herbert might be (whom I
use as an example as Herbert and Vance were friends in life) and the books
were written a long time ago. The collection that I read -
Tales of the Dying Earth - is in print and available on
Amazon: so, at a minimum, the content of this review can be found freely.
Conclusions?
Jack Vance, as an author, and The Dying Earth specifically, are called
out by Gygax in Appendix N as being inspirational to the game. Surely,
Rhialto the Marvellous would have been called out as well - but
the 1st edition Dungeon Master's Guide came out in 1979 - five years prior to
Rhialto's publication! With that in mind, it's obligatory - an
obligation, mind you, with which I heartily agree - to rate
The Dying Earth and Rhialto the Marvellous - half of the
Tales of the Dying Earth compilation - as 1: Very OSR.
The Dying Earth is a matchless influence on the evolution of the D&D game - and a priceless inspiration as to how an adventure can both run and make sense. Rhialto the Marvellous is likewise indispensable - serving to elucidate how higher level games might play out and how the influence of power changes a character, isolates them from the mortal section of humankind. I highly recommend both.
Delve on, readers.
Tales of the Dying Earth, The Dying Earth, and
Rhialto the Marvellous are copyrighted Jack Vance and to the
affiliated publishers of their respective distributions. Cover art for
Tales of the Dying Earth by John Berkey. Cover art pieces for
The Dying Earth by George Barr and by the Hildebrandt brothers. Cover
art pieces for Rhialto the Marvellous by Stephen E Fabian and by Geoff Taylor. The Wizard's Shotgun, retrieved from
GunShowComic.com,
is copyright K. C. Green. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeons & Dragons, and
D&D and all imagery thereto related are property of Wizards of the Coast.
Clerics Wear Ringmail makes no claim of ownership of any sort to any of the
aforementioned media, texts, or images and includes references to them for
review purposes under Fair Use: US Code Title 17, Chapter 107.
The slide-in of Gary... I got from a meme.
