Medusa are parasitic Snake Kings.

What if I told you a rumour I heard?

Medusii are not, in fact, snake-haired gorgons, but human limbed snake kings.

Hear me out.
Rat Kings are ditch witch abomination comprised of seething hatred, bitter intelligence and potent magic taking the form of half-score or more rats tethered like the star of chaos around the knot of discord, thus bound and ritualised, a King is born, seven minds become one, in agony and confusion sapience, nay sentience is born and through the center binding magic may flow.
Rat King controls rats, Rat King hates those with hands, Rat King can channel magic.

What, WHAT!, does Rat King have to do with Medusa and her progeny?
A different witch in a different gutter, more tropical perhaps, more humid.
Imagine me seven snakes and one knot, a new binding.

But now, as sentience congeals, hear not the squealing bitter fear of the gutter rat, but the reptile-cold acceptance of a patient hunter.
Watch in horror, the confident control of arrogant predator. Biological survivalism that declared evolution obsolete a millennia past.
Reel back in fear, as seven heads dart in turn, and pause to taste new magic in the air.
Before venom reaches the heart, that medusa-core, a new queen, rips stone-form from the strands of the ether and flexes its new instinct.
Fall back in death, shatter, the first victim, the mother of monsters.

Not a medusa you say? Sure. A medusa wig perhaps, you may joke.
Have you ever seen seven snakes attempt to move in tandem? You haven't and you never will. Perhaps after millennia of smooth undulation, it is time for the snake to feel legs, the queen requires a chariot.

The answer! A human corpse easily acquired in this wild land, nerve toxin stills it, neither dead nor stone.
An eye socket slowly invaded, a skull cap wrenched free, a jerk of psychic linkage and muscular testing, some stumbling steps and now! Now, in mocking defiance of its creator we have a walking talking magic flinging queen of snakes and men- stony gaze and snapping hair. A thrall for a body and a knot for a core, all hail the queen snake, Medusa of the sweating jungle.

This is just a rumour, mind. No man nor snake could look a medusa in the eye and live to tell the tale of what he saw there, behind those lids does one see black glistening scales, or the glazed orbs of a human? Truly though, I cannot envisage a  human of any type that could house a head of snakes and not die to their fickle whims within a chickens fart of cock-crow. 

Clearly it is the snakes that hold sway- if you MUST look a Medusa in the eyes, look with pity for the thrall of the snake queen, and look with awe for the reptilian mind of an alien creature gifted human locomotion, and ask yourself.... will I be granite, or will I be marble?

Farewell stranger, but before you go, can I interest you in this fine mirror,  50% gorgon proof, or your sliver back, that's our guarantee!

Why are none of the undead just smug?

Aside from the not-truly-undead Fallout ghouls, none of the undead seem satisfied with being immortal and free.

Previous posts and some podcasts have talked about peaceable skeleton communities or ecosystems but I feel like if I was a zombie I would kick back, relax, read a few dozen RPG books, play my Steam back-catalog and chuckle at the suckers who have to sleep, eat and face the black abyss of death.

Must be the eternal hunger or something, but aren't the living the ones who are truly trapped, having to eat constantly just to function?
 I know many undead are necromantically bound to serve others, but given 300 years to guard a tomb you could really work on your reasoning skills. Cut a deal, work a trade! poetry, man.
Or like... mine some precious ores? Create fine and intricate artworks. you want to be a gift-shop so good they forget the main attraction.

Horrible happy health potions

If health potions existed in a shitty world they would be the brandy of the rich and the heroin of the poor.

If drunk at full health it makes you warm, contented, swaddled in muffled bliss. This is a place you want to be. As much as possible.
It will heal your rat bites and your barked knuckles, it will salve your soul for an hour or two, and yet your belly remains empty, your muscles waste, your eyes become hollow.
You are free from bodily trauma, but trapped in the rapture of false happiness. Instead, a slow gyre of decay traded for fleeting perfection, initially free but increasingly difficult to obtain. Expensive in many ways, adventurer, there are easier sources of gold than goblinoids and dire beasties.

The lairds, the barony and the courtiers enjoy a healthful punch after supper. Peeled berries, champagne, a spritz of hartflower oil and an aged bottle of '84 health draught. It soothes a gentleman from the corns of his feet to the tips of his ears, brings back the warm memories of summers past. It is a pity the, '84 draught is almost deplete, good clerics are hard to come by and rarely last long, finding fatal aversions to indenture and servitude as a general rule.
Truly a balance must be found between the volumes a man can produce given local ingredients, and the amount that must be expended healing the reticent do-good back to productivity after applying judicious motivation.

Indeed, a man begins to wonder, how much of this fine aperitif is  even consumed on the battlefield, for a fighter must first battle the noble and then the gutter for a simple expedient field dressing.

Perhaps, a man considers, he who controls the draught controls muscle, controls the gutter, controls the noble houses.
It is hard to kill a man who controls the only means of rejuvenation, but it is easy to work for him.

Ok its a hamfisted heroin economy, whatever. Just give me a glass of HP punch and let me on my way. In most games health potions are middling, not too expensive but hard to get, but i assume that is on an adventurer budget which is higher than the average peasant. I do wonder who makes them and how. What if its made of people?

Bad Movie #5 Johnny Mnemonic.

Bad Movie #5  Johnny Mnemonic.

I am a massive William Gibson fan and fuck-you I will watch ANYTHING for a 3 min scene starring an insane, ageing, military dropout cyber-dolphin hacker in a dirty cyber-warehouse. Also Dolph Lundgren (patron saint of shit movies), Ice T and Keanu acting up.

The title card on the fade from black is "internet 2021" which only makes me wonder... where do I see myself in 5 years?
The answer is "The flaming husk of a heavily augmented dead masochist Media-Cult leader in Neo-Jersey, Postcode: Internet.'

Keanu is a cybered up Data Courier, or an emotionless talking USB dongle in a suit if you don't speak cyberpunk.
His head holds almost 160GB (no joke, 160gb of hot throbbing data... imagine that.), This of course is after the illegal and dangerous wetware upgrade.
Keanu is truly deeply terrible at acting, probably because he ran out of internal storage after Bill & Ted or something.
His best hacking gear includes the EyePhone (wtf Steve Jobs) and a Sinologic 16 which.. well, China logic I guess.
Ice T fucking rocks as usual in the role of a primativist ganger with a heart of gold, and by god my next camping trip will certainly involve making arrowheads out of smashed CD's.

If you dare mention the Virtual Reality scene or compare it to Lawnmower man I will throw my director's cut DVD of Lawnmower man at your head and then force you to watch it with me. Let it be known my tolerance for terrible sci-fi is off the chart.
This scene involves Keanu HACKING HIS OWN BRAIN WITH THE HELP OF A CYBER-DOLPHIN THAT RIDES DATASPACE ON A FIELD OF PINK SPARKLES.

There is actually some pretty ok subplot stuff about a mind-upload AI construct CEO being rooted out of its own corporation by the living shareholders due to her pesky morals. She combats this by using skype and social engineering to mess with a grieving Cyber-Yakuza boss. Its almost as if its all based on a brilliant plot by an amazing author.

Less interesting is the robot priest of the Church of Media who likes to dress up like jesus and gut people with his cruciform dagger.

100% Watch this trailer, if only for the Cyber Fingerguns at 00:54

Bad Movie #4 Liquid Sky (1982)

Bad Movie #4 Liquid Sky (1982) 

Something something a tiny alien UFO releases an alien made out of a crumpled sheet of aluminium foil which stalks wild tribes of Proto-Gaga through the fashion clubs of New York in order to drain their sexual energy. 

Heroin. Heroin. Heroin. Orgasms are space heroin. Plot pending. 

The lead actor plays two roles and in a pathetically easy and extremely confusing feat of double casting becomes a nominally female looking androgynous bisexual face-painted cocaine-chique fashionista AND a nominally male looking androgynous bisexual face-painted cocaine-chique fashionista. 

Best use of aluminium foil in a feature film, best use of Lady Gaga clones from the future in a feature film. Contains the best synth classical music you will ever find. Graces my alarm clock regularly. 

A playlist for your trouble, if you read this far.

Bad movie #2

Bad movie #2 
Stingray Sam (2009) https://youtu.be/k4uwrghMdSo 
American Astronaut (2001) https://youtu.be/vzVi_acjD-s 

Double feature! Because I lost one case and now they share a box. 
I managed to see Cory McAbee speak some time ago and he is a rotating ball of charisma. 
I cant plug this dude enough. 
He makes no-budget musical western operas with his small children and his novelty country (?) band. His commitment to stark black and white and dead-pan delivery adds some gravitas to the absurd and undeniably silly universe he inhabits. 
He uses Gilliam style animated interstitials to great effect.

Almost every situation culminates in some kind of dance battle in the country and western style which is an obvious plus. Probably lasers and mad science too.

Low budget sets and silly space props are pretty well done considering. My favourite example is a series of laser shootings where cowering sillouhettes are flashbulb projected from offstage and someone just throws a bucket of wet sand into the scene as the vapourised corpse-dust stand-in. It makes a nice wet thud. Some of the more demented characters are quite memorable.

They were releasing their HD films free in episodic form on YouTube a bit before it was cool which is nice. He has since started the Captin Ahab's Motorcycle Club whose motto is "participation equals membership" if you want some cool patches.
I own a few Billie Nayer Show albums because I want to give them more of my money, they are ok.

Warning! If you aren't laughing by minute two of linked clip we can't be friends anymore. I'll be watching.

Bad Movies #1

Bad movie #1 The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

Some heterosexual clones of The Village People fight off surprisingly cool aliens and almost nothing happens in the best way possible.
I just discovered this movie has Jeff Goldblum in it and thought this might have added some credibility. Shortly thereafter I discovered that he plays the cartoonish cowboy-surgeon-rockstar in red chaps.
Soooo…. Moving on.

This movie is 99% style and no substance, everything is bizarre and an utterly ridiculous type of cool. Soundtrack, Spaceship-design and Posturing all get a solid A, I couldn't outline the plot to save my life but I would happily describe this movie in an excited and nebulous fashion to anyone who will listen.

This movie was whole-heartedly banking on spawning a media empire. They threw in a bunch of conspicuous references to not-yet-existing comic books and sequels they planned to build out the universe with. It flopped and now there are just 30 unexplained plot hooks and lines of reference hanging off this movie like a cenobite slumber party (eeeeh!).
The evil "World Crime League" exists for instance, led by "Hanoi Shan". This is never mentioned again.

The catchphrase is "No matter where you go, there you are."

Kevin Smith wanted to reboot the series recently and got sued for no particular reason.

IMDB also sucks at explaining this movie

“Adventurer/surgeon/rock musician Buckaroo Banzai and his band of men, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, take on evil alien invaders from the eighth dimension.”

Fun Fact: The credits music to this movie is infuckingcredible and I use it for my morning alarm regularly. If that theme doesn't make you want to strut down a flood-way dressed as a cowboy you are dead inside.

Dali made some seriously lovecraftian Jewelery. Also Red Coral!

Playing mostly online, I like to image dump in d&d so I can quickly communicate an idea or a vibe without neccicarly *preparing* or *doing any work*, and magic items can be hard because they are typically "an amulet", rings, whatever. Not very evocative and hard to find nonstandard images.

Anyway I visited Dali's castle in Figueres Spain a long time ago, and while I truly love his attitude, artworks, architecture and home decor I mostly remember the side gallery featuring his little publicized jewelry creations.

Primarily made of Precious Coral, or Red Coral they are horrifying and opulent and dark and organic.
Also featuring exotic flowers, pomegranates, angels and demons, severed fingers, bees, all of my favourite things.

More on red coral later!

These are certainly things I would show to elaborate on the strangeness of finding an exquisite and delicate golden flower in the midden heap of an ogre cavern.

A blasphemous vivisected relic made of blood red wood (?) atop a lustorous blue sphere in the deacons secret study.

A gemstone pomegranate heart locket tangled in the ribcage of a long dead blonde warrior. The seeds nestle in soft golden honeycomb

Pearls, lustrous and large, but melted like wax, a beautiful horror. Extracted from fleshy dungeon pool clams, they come out like pulled teeth.

Red coral, forking like mangled fingers of a ghastly red hand. Rumoured to be the severed members (on of uncountable frills) of a shoggoth.

A severed finger in jade, real bone juts from the cut end. The nail (golden) needs trimming every few days and is pure gold.

Bad Obscure Movie Reviews of Bad Movies.

In a shocking development I have stumbled upon a new years resolution more achievable than my standing "Try to be less baleful" (trickled through my mind when I scared a passing tweenager by absentmindedly glowering at him) and slightly more productive that making up a barefaced lie about exercise or travel to make people stop asking.

I'm going to post a terrible movie every week until I run out, complete with uninformative and smug 'reviews'.

Smuggling fantastic D movies into parties and projecting them on the roof just isn't disappointing people at the rate I need if I'm ever going to summon a mutant rat Zodiac killer before London sinks beneath the sea.

I have a long and sordid history of making my friends sit through bad bad bad movies and oftentimes they don't necessarily share my exquisite taste in film.
As we become more embroiled in real-life this became harder as we discovered "better" things to do and had to sacrifice large portions of prime movie time to "productive members of society".
Drinking til two and mainlining a mix of subtitled art films and 90s action garbage fell to The Office reruns until 9 and only occasionally throwing popcorn at the screen.

From there I started carrying an old and noisy projector with a MediaPlayer loaded rasperryPi microcomputer to parties and LAN events and pointing it at the roof so people could look up for ambient glimpses of trashy 60s scifi and fellini classics on the way to the toilet.
I boner-killed goss gatecrashers making out in our living room by projecting Ren and Stimpy, and chased them out entirely with Mondo Trasho's opening five mins of chicken decapitations. Harsh but fair, and they were theater folk too so there's some vague enmity there too..

That projector now has so many dead pixels it looks like that windows 98 starfield screensaver, so I carry a USB on my keyring loaded with a revolving cast three or four terrible movies so I don't have to watch Friends again, ever.
I push them on people if they open a laptop in front of me, I cant help it.

Finally, and most depressing of all, I discovered IMDB's watchlist caps out at 394 and wont let me add more (fuck you!)

Basically, I need to get this out of my system for my own gratification, and the safety of the general public.

Welcome to 2017 suckas. I hope you like Rutger Hauer. (Patron Saint of Awesome Shit Movies)