[Fanzine Focus XXVI] Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

Echoes From Fomalhaut is a fanzine of a different stripe. Published and edited by Gabor Lux, it is a Hungarian fanzine which focuses on ‘Advanced’ fantasy roleplaying games, such as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Labyrinth. The inaugural issue, Echoes From Fomalhaut #01: Beware the Beekeeper!, published in March, 2018, presented a solid mix of dungeons, adventures, and various articles designed to present ‘good vanilla’, that is, standard fantasy, but with a heart. Published in August, 2018, the second issue, Echoes From Fomalhaut #02: Gont, Nest of Spies continued this trend with content mostly drawn from the publisher’s own campaign, but as decent as its content was, really needed more of a hook to pull reader and potential Dungeon Master into the issue and the players and their characters into the content. Echoes From Fomalhaut #03: Blood, Death, and Tourism was published in September, 2018 and in reducing the number of articles it gave the fanzine more of a focus and allowed more of the feel of the publisher’s ‘City of Vultures’ campaign to shine through, whilst Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs drew from multiple to somewhat lesser effect. Lastly, Echoes From Fomalhaut #05: The Enchantment of Vashundara focused primarily on smuggling town of Tirwas and the caves underneath it through which the contraband is taken.

Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs continues the stronger focus of the previous issue. The issue opens with ‘The Wandering Glade’, a wilderness module for Player Characters of Fourth to Sixth Levels. It details a nomadic labyrinth of an ancient forest; its ancient trees moss laden and its caves and clearings home to long forgotten secrets known to the high druids of the past. There are few ways in—the route walked by the Pilgrims of the Lunar Oath is one, others are known to certain groups, and then the glade itself may wander into the path of travellers and swallow them up. It has an almost spiral layout, one that will pull the Player Characters further in, and perhaps under, as they seek a way out, encountering creatures and beings out of myth and folklore—the old ways, as some might call it—as well as the fae and other creatures of the forest, not to forget the bandits who reave its paths (and between them) in search of victims for their sacrificial ceremonies to the thorns and the oak to ensure harmony between man and nature. This is a bucolic and baroque forest dungeon, full of detail and flavour, and perhaps mysteries, which will appeal to any Druid or Ranger in the party—the former in particular.

The main article in the issue presents at the oft mentioned campaign location, ‘The City of Vultures’. Much in the mode of Imrryr of Moorcock’s Melniboné or Professor M.A.R. Barker’s Jakálla: The City Half As Old As Time—especially the latter as the author acknowledges, the City of Vultures is an ancient crumbling metropolis, rot bound and hidebound, its high-born and low-born ill-cast and ill-disposed, yet given to the worship of evil demigods and given to cruel and unyielding customs, once a great power, now friendless and warred upon from all sides. Although various locations are described, in the main, this is a city described faction by faction. These include its cruel leader, Mirvander Khan and  the many gods and demi-gods, like The Worshippers of the Columns, ascetics who whirl about the colossal columns seen about the city, often battering themselves senseless when not screaming out prophecies that drive mobs to do terrible things and Kwárü Khan, a former ruler who degenerated into a black, worm-like horror who stalks the streets at night in search of victims which it whispers horrid secrets, often incomprehensible or allegorical, into their ears. The city’s societies include Deston, a secret society dedicated to weird harmonies using oddly shaped tuning forks that are harmful and organised into cells which each only know limited number of harmonies; The Followers of Dókh, a parish caste whose duty it is to collect the dead—and the legally dead—and chain them atop the city’s roofless towers to be picked clean by the many vultures which circle the city; and the Warriors of the Tiger, a military brotherhood loyal to Mirvander Khan whose members paint their scars or wear iron masks which scare the peoples of the city and regularly walk the city with their trained tigers, free to kill whomever they want. In turn, customs and places are given similar treatment and level of detail, adding flavour and feel to the setting of the City of Vultures. The article details some of the dungeons and levels below the city, but in the main, they are left for future expansion and presentation in Echoes From Fomalhaut #06. It also goes beyond the walls of the City of Vultures to provide an overview of the northern coast of Thasan and the Sea of Kroitos upon which the city stands.

Included with Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs is a quite lovely, double-sided mini-poster map, on which side is a players’ map of the City of Vultures whilst on the other is a hex-map of Thasan. However, as rich in detail and flavour as ‘The City of Vultures’ is, it is missing two things. The author describes it as being built on three pillars—a system of city encounters for street-level adventures, descriptions of the conspiracies rampant within the city, and write-ups of the city’s Underworlds and adventure locations. The third and last of these pillars is begun to be addressed in the very issue itself and will continue to be addressed in further issues, as will the second pillar. However, the first pillar requires another supplement, The Nocturnal Table. Of course, this is annoying, but there is nothing to stop the Dungeon Master using table she already has or indeed, creating her. However, they might not have the flavour of The Nocturnal Table.

The second adventure in Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs is the eponymous ‘The Gallery of Rising Tombs’. Again designed Player Characters of Fourth to Sixth Levels, this is part of the Underworld below the City of Vultures, said to be the resting place of five nobles from when the city was founded who are said to be held aloft twist heaven and earth, so of great interest to historians. However, ‘The Gallery of Rising Tombs’ is only partly about those tombs, but getting to them. They are concealed beneath the Temple of Sürü Miklári, the god of rats whose priests know and will sometimes sell some of the city’s lesser and greater secrets that its packs have overheard. However, there is only one known entrance to the Temple of Sürü Miklári, and that is quite literally barred. Fortunately, it is rumoured that there are side entrances which bypass the barred entrance and provide access to the temple, both of which, are of course, detailed. One is in the home of a seedy caravanserai, the other in a filthy underground theatre, either of which the Player Characters will have to either fight, bribe, or sneak their way through in order to find the entrance. There are another five levels below the entrances, consisting of temple and tomb complexes, plus the court belonging to a god.

‘The Gallery of Rising Tombs’ is rich in detail and flavour, presenting level after level of baroque, sweaty and forgotten complexes of rooms and warrens. If it is missing anything, it is perhaps a hook or two to pull the Player Characters into wanting to delve deep into the Underworld under the City of Vultures, and whilst the Dungeon Master is free to develop these herself, the process is not eased by the lack of NPCs in the earlier ‘The City of Vultures’ who might be interested and also, whilst the tombs of the nobles and their inhabitants are detailed, what is not, is the sort of information which would motivate a scholar to want to delve that deep into the Underworld. As written, ‘The Gallery of Rising Tombs’ just is, leaving the Dungeon Master to do all of the set-up.

Rounding out the issue is ‘The Armoury’. This is quite possibly the richest two pages of magical items committed to paper, presenting almost thirty items, one paragraph after another. Again, there is a lot of flavour, mostly mechanical to these entries, but it gives them a pleasing individuality. For example, The Sword of the Basilisks is a longsword +1 which petrifies victims on a natural roll of nineteen or twenty, but where a victim gets a save, the wielder never does against petrification of any kind. Or The Sword of Vilet Kanebe, which is a damned blade, a longsword -2, which actually transfers the curse to the victim of a first successful hit in combat and thereafter becomes a longsword +1, only to revert at the end of the battle. In both cases, as well as many others in the article, a little mechanical complexity adds some flavour.

Physically, Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs is decently presented. It is perhaps a bit cramped in places, whilst the maps are often rough, they work and they are not without their charm. The artwork selected is also good.

It is great to finally see an introduction to the City of Vultures in the pages of Echoes From Fomalhaut, and ‘The City of Vultures’ in Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs certainly serves as an excellent primer to the mouldering city. Hopefully future issues will explore the city further and perhaps also provide the Dungeon Master with some hooks and some NPCs which can help her run the type of city adventures that the publisher professes to be fond of. The two scenarios in the issue are also good, the forest adventure actually easier to use than the dungeon adventure, which for all of its detail is disappointing. Nevertheless, the continued focus on fewer, longer articles in Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs continue provide interesting gaming content.

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An unboxing of Echoes From Fomalhaut #06: The Gallery of Rising Tombs can be found here.