Tag: Science Fiction

Exploring the World of Beyond the Black Sea: A Guide to the Game’s Unique Setting

Posted on by beyondtheblacksea_of0m6q
Void Spawn

 

 

Beyond the Black Sea offers a rich and diverse world for players to explore. From the frozen wastes of Hyperborea to the ancient ruins of Atlantis, the game’s setting is filled with adventure and mystery. This blog post will provide a guide to the unique setting of Beyond the Black Sea, helping players immerse themselves in the game’s world.

A World of Adventure

The world of Beyond the Black Sea is a place of high adventure and ancient mysteries. It’s a world where barbarian warriors clash with serpent people, where ancient civilizations hide forgotten secrets, and where brave adventurers can make their mark. Whether you’re exploring ancient ruins, battling monstrous creatures, or navigating the complex politics of the game’s civilizations, there’s always something exciting to do.

Diverse Civilizations

One of the defining features of Beyond the Black Sea is its diverse civilizations. From the Hyperboreans of the frozen north to the Stygians of the desert, each civilization has its own unique culture, history, and way of life. Understanding these civilizations can enrich your gameplay and help you create more complex and interesting characters.

Ancient Mysteries

The world of Beyond the Black Sea is filled with ancient mysteries waiting to be discovered. Ancient ruins hide powerful artifacts, forgotten civilizations hold lost knowledge, and monstrous creatures lurk in the wilds. Uncovering these mysteries can lead to great rewards, but also great dangers.

The Power and Peril of Magic

Magic in Beyond the Black Sea is a potent and perilous force. From the divine miracles of the holy men to the arcane rituals of the sorcerers, magic can shape the course of events and turn the tide in the most desperate of situations. However, the use of magic is not without its risks. The more powerful the magic, the greater the danger to the caster. Powerful spells can strain the mind and body, and repeated use of such magic can lead to physical exhaustion, mental instability, and even a descent into madness. As such, magic users must tread carefully, balancing the potential benefits of their spells against the risks they pose to their own well-being.

Conclusion

The world of Beyond the Black Sea is a rich and diverse setting that offers endless opportunities for adventure. By understanding the game’s world, its civilizations, its mysteries, and the power and peril of its magic, players can fully immerse themselves in the game and create memorable stories and characters. Whether you’re a seasoned adventurer or a newcomer to the world of role-playing games, Beyond the Black Sea offers a unique and exciting setting for your adventures.

 

Serpent People: The Myths, the Fiction and the History

Posted on by beyondtheblacksea_of0m6q
Serpent Folk

Serpent People: The Myths, the Fiction and the History

As soon as I start talking about serpent people, I find that people look at me as though they think I’ve gone crazy. That’s probably David Icke’s fault, but we’ll get to that.

What can I say? I just think that serpent people are cool, and some of my favourite stories of all time have featured serpent people in some form or other. Some of the very best are those that just use the classic myths as a background and then build on them.

Today, I’m going to be telling you everything you need to know about serpent people, from their origins in classical mythology to the science behind them and the place they’ve earned for themselves in popular culture. Let’s slither on in.

The Mythology

Serpent people have been around for years, and we can see signs of them in the tale of Medusa, the woman with snakes for hair who turned people to stone with her gaze, although she’s technically a (wo)man serpent. Snakes have long been associated with evil, presumably because of the very real fear of death due to a snakebite. It makes sense that they’d show up as a personification of evil.

In most tales, serpent men are depicted as human-like figures with scaly skin and the heads of snakes or other reptiles. They’re typically descended from a lineage that goes way back, often essentially evolving in parallel in the same way that homo sapiens descended from apes.

Another common theme with serpent men is that they usually have the ability to disguise themselves as human beings. This is where the idea of “lizards in people suits” comes from, although the older legends usually say that they’re able to do this because they have magical powers or other abilities.

Note that serpent men are different to “man serpents”, which are typically depicted the other way round, having the bodies of giant snakes but the heads of human beings. Medusa is a classic example of this, and indeed many other man serpents have the hypnotic stare and superhuman strength that the snake queen is known for.

Nagas and Lamias

Another mythic type of serpent people are the nagas and lamias, although they’re pretty similar to Medusas and as such are more like man serpents. Usually depicted with a human’s head, arms and torso and a snake’s lower body, they’re basically the reptilian equivalent of centaurs. Female nagas and lamias are usually supernaturally beautiful.

The origins of these creatures can, of course, be traced back to folklore. In the traditional tales, Lamia was a Libyan queen who ate children, but it’s thought that the popular image of her was subverted by John Keats, who might have combined Lamia with Lilith, Adam’s first wife, who’s associated with the snake in the Garden of Eden.

Nagas, meanwhile, come from India. If you’ve read the Harry Potter series then you’ll remember Nagini, Voldemort’s snake. She takes her name from the term for a female naga, with male nagas usually being called nagin. Nagas show their Hindu roots because they’re often depicted with more than one pair of arms. Sometimes, they even have multiple heads.

Robert E. Howard

The first appearance of true “serpent people” was in Robert E. Howard’s King Kull stories. Howard, as you might remember, is the creator of the Conan series and an icon in sword and sorcery communities. He’s arguably the reason why sword and sorcery is popular in the first place.

Howard called his creation “serpent men”, and they first appeared in a story called The Shadow Kingdom, which itself was published in the iconic Weird Tales magazine at the end of the 1920s. Interestingly, they were given a second life in the 1970s when Marvel released its Kull the Conqueror adaptations, effectively introducing serpent men into the Marvel cinematic universe.

H. P. Lovecraft

Another important thing to note is that in Howard’s work, the serpent men were one of the few examples of creatures from long, long ago, their dominion being measured in terms of the cosmos as opposed to the lifespan of man. This in some ways makes it a precursor to the unique brand of cosmic horror that H. P. Lovecraft helped to pioneer, a subject that I’ve written about at length before.

The interesting thing about Howard’s serpent men is that they were then adopted as a part of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, although most of the legwork was done by Lin Carter and Clark Ashton Smith. Some of Lovcecraft’s own short stories, including The Nameless City and The Haunter of the Dark, mention pre-human races of lizard people.

In fact, this also means that serpent people are directly connected to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, and the two of them officially live in the same universe. That’s pretty cool because they also pop up in Spider-Man, making them also part of the Marvel EU. I love the way that they all relate back to each other, even though some of the links are a little obscure. There’s even a cross between a demon and a serpent man that fought against the Avengers.

According to the mythos, the serpent people lived at roughly the same time as the dinosaurs, although they weren’t wiped out by the fateful meteorite. Instead, they dispersed all over the world, warring with mankind and eventually going underground.

Other names for serpent people include “snake men”, “serpent men”, “serpent folk” and “valusians”. And perhaps unsurprisingly, most named serpent people have names that evoke their flickering tongues and serpent-like features. Just a few of the most well-known serpent people include Ssathasaa, Sss’haa, Ssrhythssaa and Zloigm. Try saying those after you’ve had a few drinks.

Reptoids

In popular culture, when we talk about serpent people, most people’s minds automatically go to reptoids. Also known as reptilians, lizard people, saurians, draconians and reptiloids, reptoids are theoretical reptilian humanoids, and the concept was popularised by conspiracy theorist David Icke.

Icke believes that shape-shifting reptoids control the human race by assuming human forms and taking on important positions in global governments and at the top of society. It’s a bit like the Illuminati, except that the Illuminati isn’t made up of serpent people in lizard suits.

I don’t want to spend too much time dwelling on Icke’s ideas because you can look them up for yourself if you’re interested. I’m not too interested in them myself, but I do think it’s fascinating that they’re almost certainly inspired by (if not based on) the serpent people of Robert E. Howard.

In fact, most historians agree that Icke’s theories draw upon earlier myths and legends, and it’s pretty easy to see the parallels. Loosely speaking, Icke says that the world is being run by blood-drinking, shape-shifting serpent people who are adopting positions of power (including in the British Royal family and the Bush family).

They come from the Alpha Draconis star system and are living in underground bases while plotting to overthrow the human race. And whether you believe Icke or not, it’s hard to ignore the fact that at least some people do. According to one 2013 poll, as many as 4% of registered US voters believe in Icke’s ideas.

As for me, I’d rather read Howard or Lovecraft.

Conclusion

Now that you know a little more about serpent people, it’s over to you so that you can start carrying out a little more research of your own. If you’re a novelist, perhaps you can start to use serpent people as a plot device, while if you’re a keen movie buff then you could check out some of the movies that use serpent people as a plot device.

Of course, if you’re into conspiracy theories then you could also look into David Icke and what he thinks, although I’d caution you to take that with a pinch of salt. Far more interesting to me is the history behind snake people and where the legends come from. Snakes themselves have a lot of symbolic power, and you see them being represented everywhere from stories about Medusa to the parceltongue in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.

So now you’ve heard a few of my thoughts, I want to hear from you. Be sure to let me know your thoughts on serpent people and the legends that they feature in by leaving a comment, or by reaching out to me on your favourite social networking site. Until next time!

The Role of Science Fiction in Sword and Sorcery

Posted on by beyondtheblacksea_of0m6q
Serpent Priest

Sword & Sorcery the link to Science Fiction

Science fiction and fantasy go hand-in-hand, to the point at which we often use the term SFF to refer to anything that has elements of either sci-fi or fantasy. In fact, before we go any further, we should probably take a quick look at what the two terms mean:

Science fiction is a type of exploratory fiction in which the emphasis is on exploring ideas that are made possible through the advancement of science. It often includes futuristic technologies or highly evolved versions of our own existing tech. Many people credit Mary Shelley with creating the science fiction genre by penning Frankenstein, and they have a point. At the very least, it’s a major influence.

Fantasy focusses more on magic, fantastic creatures, chosen ones and dark lords. If Frankenstein is the first sci-fi story, the first fantasy stories were the old legends that Greeks and Romans told around fireplaces. One of the easiest ways to tell whether a story is science fiction or fantasy is to look at what’s powering the world. If it’s magic, it’s fantasy, and if it’s technology, it’s science fiction. If it’s somewhere in between, it’s probably steampunk.

Steampunk is a type of hard science fiction which often taps into elements of Victorian England and the steam revolution. As opposed to traditional science fiction, steampunk is more grounded in older technology evolving down different paths, usually incorporating a certain level of historical fiction. It’s science fiction, but with a twist.

Perhaps the father of steampunk is Jules Verne, and indeed his forward-thinking science fiction novels are unlike anything else that was produced at the time. It’s possible that the reason that steampunk is so closely associated with Victorian society and steam power is that Verne was the pioneer and those were the times he was living in. It’s also fascinating to see that his work predated the arrival of more easily available global travel and submarines, amongst other things.

And then there’s sword and sorcery, which is a subset of fantasy which typically involves a rough-and-ready hero who’s skilled with a sword and who has some sort of personal journey to go on. In contrast to epic fantasy like Lord of the Rings, where the fate of the whole realm hangs in the balance, sword and sorcery heroes are often pursuing personal vengeance or some other vendetta.

And so at first, it might seem as though there isn’t much that sci-fi and sword and sorcery have in common. But bear with me! As you’ll come to see from the rest of this article, the two genres have a surprising number of similarities, and while they’ve evolved separately, they’ve followed a surprisingly similar path.

For example, steampunk and sword and sorcery are unlikely cousins of a sort. Both have evolved as offshoots of their primary genres, and both tend to be more character and world-driven then epic in scope with big questions about life and existence.

Epic fantasy tends to focus on the battle between good and evil. Steampunk is more likely to be a though experiment, a big “what if?” that shows us what could have been. A sword and sorcery novel will probably follow a buff guy with a sword who’s out for revenge.

 

Getting Gritty With It

One thing that much science fiction and sword and sorcery have in common is that they display a similar level of grittiness. They’re very much grounded in realism, even when it seems as though they’re taking place somewhere alien to our own world.

For example, science fiction places a heavy emphasis on our own scientific progress. Even the most futuristic spaceships need to adhere to what we know about gravity and physics, unless the author can think of a decent workaround. In fact, what makes science fiction great is its plausibility, and this comes from the attention to detail and the integration of known scientific concepts.

Sword and sorcery doesn’t really have to worry about physics too much, but because of its inherent grittiness, there are other factors to consider. For example, fictional monsters need to be grounded in reality if they’re to seem believable, and if you’re describing a centaur as it runs and you haven’t done your research, you can bet that a keen horseman somewhere will spot it.

The same holds true during combat. The author needs to get every single thrust and parry just right, but they also need to have a working knowledge of tactics and first aid. If a hero’s wound becomes infected, we need to see the consequences as they struggle to deal with it. It might not always be pleasant to write or to read about, but it’s real.  

 

Space Operas and Fantasy

Let’s take a moment here to talk about space operas, the subcategory of science fiction that deals with more complex political themes and the relationships between characters just as much as it deals with science fiction itself.

Perhaps the most famous example of the space opera is Frank Herbert’s Dune, a novel which is still growing in influence all these years later. I actually have a tattoo that reads “Fear is the mind-killer”, a quote from the Fear litany. Dune has been a major inspiration on everything from Star Wars to George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, and that alone is a great indication of the genre’s crossover appeal.

Sword and sorcery rarely has the same high politics, but it does still have the same focus on interpersonal relationships. In fact, our heroes can rarely go it alone, and they’ll typically have to rely on an ever-evolving cast of supporting characters, as well as their wits and diplomacy skills. The best sword and sorcery heroes often rely on their swords as a backup plan instead of immediately reaching for a blade as the solution to every situation.

If space operas are the science fiction equivalent of epic fantasy, steampunk is the science fiction equivalent or sword and sorcery. And there’s a good reason why the two of them evolved hand-in-hand: pulp.

 

Pulp

Pulp magazines were a phenomenon of the early 20th century that were the time period’s equivalent to blogs and fanzines. Typically printed in cheap paper (hence the name), pulp books and magazines were designed to be as widely available as possible, cutting down on production costs to pass those savings on to the reader.

Arguably the largest and most iconic pulp brand was the long-running magazine Weird Tales, which was the first to publish H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu stories. Lovecraft himself was occasionally known to blur the boundaries between fantasy and science fiction, although he can hardly be credited as a traditional sword and sorcery writer. The first issue of Weird Tales was published in early 1922 and the magazine has been published on and off ever since, depending upon various licensing agreements.

Our very own Robert E. Howard was also a regular contributor, and his Conan and Kull stories have been true icons within the genre. It’s almost impossible to overstate the importance that Weird Tales has had within the development of both sword and sorcery and science fiction. It’s quite a remarkable achievement, considering that it’s believed that the magazine never exceeded a circulation of 50,000 copies.

For the purposes of this article, though, we’re interested in the way that Weird Tales and other publications of its ilk were able to act as a melting pot of influences. Where else would fantasy writers be exposed to important scientific concepts, and where else would science fiction be introduced to legends and mythology?

The popularity of pulp, which was more of an unconscious movement driven by necessity than anything else, is arguably the single biggest thing that cemented science fiction and fantasy together in the public consciousness. And if you think of literary genres as organisms which constantly evolve over time, the pulp publications were their habitats.

You could argue that without the convergence of sword and sorcery and science fiction, we wouldn’t have Star Wars. After all, Jedi knights are basically sword-wielding magicians with a little religion thrown in, and the alien life forms aren’t too dissimilar to fantasy creatures. True, most people would categorise it as a space opera as opposed to a sword and sorcery movie, but as we’ve seen, there’s often a lot of crossover.

 

Sci-Fi and Sword and Sorcery in the 21st Century

As for what’s next for both science fiction and sword and sorcery, it’s really anyone’s game. Arguably the biggest sci-fi success of the last few years has been The Martian, a novel by Andy Weir that was also turned into a successful Hollywood movie. As for sword and sorcery, it’s mostly gone underground, although elements of it have been repurposed and popularised by the more modern genre of grimdark fantasy.

This type of fantasy is characterised by darker, more brutally realistic writing, elements of which are most obvious in works like George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series and the TV show that was based upon it. The interesting thing about grimdark fantasy is that despite having many of the elements of sword and sorcery, it also borrows from epic fantasy and other genres. And that includes science fiction, which is a clear influence on many of the “hard” magic systems that grimdark fantasy taps into.

So both sword and sorcery and science fiction have bright futures ahead of them, although not necessarily in the way that we might think. It’s fascinating to look at where sword and sorcery came from and where it is today, but that gives us no guarantees of what we can expect tomorrow.

 

Conclusion

As you’ve seen from this article, science fiction and sword and sorcery have a lot in common, but they also have their differences. That’s a good thing, because it means that while both genres are evolving independently, they’re also evolving in parallel. One genre can learn from another, and it’s us – the readers – who benefit.

So if you’re a die-hard science fiction reader who’s always steered clear of sword and sorcery, or even if you’re a sword and sorcery fan who’s never tried sci-fi, perhaps it’s time to give it a shot. As you can see, there’s a lot of crossover between the two, but there are also a bunch of new and exciting stories because what works for one genre won’t necessarily work for the other.

Are you a sword and sorcery and/or science fiction fan? What do you think about the crossover between the two genres? Be sure to leave us a comment to let us know what you think!

Article Written by Dane Cobain for Epiphany Entertainment

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