Fantasy Heartbreaker, by Russell Bailey

When Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition came out, there was a great deal of argument over its “dungeonpunk” aesthetic and, particularly, the way wizards didn’t look like they were “supposed” to. The pointy-hatted old men familiar from Dragon magazine covers or Will McLean cartoons had been replaced by a confusingly-dressed elf lady and a bare-chested man in leather, buckles, and an underbust corset.¹

All well and good, I suppose, but what do wizards really look like? The Gandalf by way of Merlin types we’d gotten used to didn’t seem quite right to my imagination, though they’ve graced some excellent vans in their time. What do the sources have to say about them?

Well, Fritz Leiber is always definitive, so let’s lead off with a few of his lesser wizards. The Gray Mouser begins:

“Hey, I think our creditors and other haters have hired a third S besides swords and staves against us.”

“Sorcery?”

The small man drew a coil of thin yellow wire from his pouch. He said,

“Well, if those two graybeards in the second story windows aren’t wizards, they shouldn’t scowl so ferociously. Besides, I can make out astrological symbols on the one’s robe and the glint on the other’s wand.²

A robe is not an uncommon piece of costume in Lankhmar, though the better-but-not-best class of people prefer the black toga. The astrological symbols, though, are a distinctly occult touch. More telling, however, are the ferocious scowls, as the Mouser flippantly points out. Presumably, one quick to anger is also quick to grump.

Well, that’s Leiber, but where would we be without that other chronicler of scoundrel heroes, Jack Vance? What of that mighty magician Pandelume, of Embelyon, the Land Who None Knows Where?

“Halt, Turjan,” spoke the voice. “None may gaze upon Pandelume. It is the law.”³

…oh. Well, then. I suppose Iucounu the Laughing Magician will have to do.

Fianosther pointed across the way to a man wearing garments of black. This man was small, yellow of skin, bald as a stone. His eyes resembled knots in a plank; his mouth was wide and curved in a grin of chronic mirth.⁴

These, however, are all wizards of a lesser sort. Surely, those who fling death-spells at Leiber’s twain are only just this side of charlatans like Cugel the Clever or the Mouser himself. And Iucounu seems somewhat over-reliant on and under-cautious of the charms he keeps in his mansion.

Perhaps for a wizard of a wiser sort, we might look to Lloyd Alexander’s Dallben:

Dallben, master of Caer Dallben, was three hundred and seventy-nine years old. His beard covered so much of his face that he seemed always to be staring over a gray cloud. On the little farm, while Taran and Coll saw to the plowing, sowing, weeding, reaping, and all the other tasks of husbandry, Dallben undertook the meditating, an occupation so exhausting he could only accomplish it by laying down and closing his eyes.⁵

Ah, a graybeard again. That seems to be a developing theme. And meditation! While Alexander may have treated the subject lightly, we Dungeons & Dragons players know all too well how critical it is! Let the fighters mock the wizard’s fifteen minute workday. Little do they know how mighty are his mental preparations.

Dallben is that rare sort, a humble wizard. Generally, they’re anything but. Consider Pelias, encountered by Conan beneath the archetypal dungeon of the Scarlet Citadel:

Conan stared, spellbound; then a sound brought him round, sword lifted. The freed man was on his feet, surveying him. Conan gaped in wonder. No longer were the eyes in the worn face expressionless. Dark and meditative, they were alive with intelligence, and the expression of imbecility had dropped from the face like a mask. The head was narrow and well-formed, with a high splendid forehead. The whole build of the man was aristocratic, evident no less in his tall slender frame than in his small trim feet and hands.

This man is intelligent, aware, and physically small while projecting no air of weakness. ⁶ Yet, he is still a man, and the greatest of wizards are more than that. What of Gandalf the Grey?

All that the unsuspecting Bilbo saw that morning was an old man with a staff. He had a tall pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, a silver scarf over which his long white beard hung down below his waist, and immense black boots.⁷

Gandalf was quite scrupulous in his man-seeming, to the point that his human admirers in innumerable D&D illustrations seem to have considered a fit example of dress, even if they tend to leave off practical concerns like the scarf and boots.

But what of those wizards, no longer human and perhaps pre-human,⁸ who sponsored Leiber’s heroes? We must not forget them, lest we incite their anger, or that of their favored heroes.

Blue lightning glared, revealing with great clarity a hooded figure crouched inside the low doorway. Each fold and twist of the figure’s draperies stood out as precisely as in an iron engraving closely viewed.

But the lightning showed nothing whatsoever inside the hood, only inky blackness.⁹

Sheelba of the Eyeless Face needs no other, inevitably lesser, introduction.

Ningauble of the Seven Eyes, however, would insist upon it. The great gossiper of the gods dwells in his caves of endless, twisting passages¹⁰, and Leiber was perhaps too modest in giving this description:

A little later, having wasted no time in reconnoitering, they stood before the Great Gate, whose iron-studded upper reaches disdained the illumination of the tiny fire. It was not the gate, however, that interested them, but its keeper, a monstrously paunched creature sitting on the floor beside a vast heap of pot-sherds, and whose only movement was a rubbing of what seemed to be his hands. He kept them under the shabby but voluminous cloak which also completely hooded his head. A third of the way down the cloak, two large bats clung. Fafhrd cleared his throat. The movement ceased under the cloak.

Then out of the top of it sinuously writhed something that seemed to be a serpent, only in place of a head it bore an opalescent jewel with a dark central speck. Nevertheless, one might finally have judged it to be a serpent, were it not that it also resembled a thick-stalked exotic bloom. It restlessly turned this way and that until it pointed at the two strangers. Then it went rigid, and the bulbous extremity seemed to glow more brightly. There came a low purring, and five similar stalks twisted rapidly from under the hood and aligned themselves with their companion. Then the six black pupils dilated. ¹¹

A portentious sight, to be sure, even if one can’t help thinking, as do the twain, that there’s more than a little Oz to this wizard. But I’m not sure I’d like to find out what’s behind the curtain.

These are the images conjured to mind when I think of wizards. I acknowledge some gaps, here: I haven’t treated the truly evil wizards, nor did I have a description of Elric at hand. Nonetheless, these are my wizards.

Who and what are yours?

_____

My previous post on dangerous archaeology explored environmental narrative in the context of the dungeon, but only detailed one area: the recent past. Today, I’d like to build on that, and discuss how multiple layers of time interact in the dungeon. Layers of time are key both to archaeological aspect of dungeon delving, and to the creation of a living and lived-in dungeon environment.

Layers

Let’s consider the layers of a hypothetical dungeon room. Once again, we’re exploring an ancient tomb complex that’s been taken over by brigands.

1. Bodies and blood from a recent battle
2. Traces of brigands drinking and gambling
3. The coffins of long-dead royalty

Each of these layers represent a different period in the history of this room. The closest layer is the battle, while the deepest is the tomb’s original function as a place of rest. In a certain sense, we have three places: a battleground, a barracks, and a burial chamber.

Yet, these three places share a single space. So the layers aren’t sitting next to each other, or one on top of the other. Instead they’re colliding, mixing, and it’s up to the players’ exploration and intuition to separate them and reconstruct their separate stories, as well as the longer story they all tell together. So the bottles from the drinking will be strewn and shattered. One or two of the coffins will be overturned and splintered.

Environmental narrative in the dungeon, then, is driven by friction and collision between layers of the past and present. These layers aren’t static, either, as they often are in video games. Character action and exploration can uncover new layers as they continue to excavate the dungeon. Characters will damage the environment, causing new collisions and leaving environmental narratives of their own.

Levels

A classic dungeon doesn’t just have layers of time, it has levels of depth. The classic mechanical assumption is that as you delve deeper, the monsters become more powerful. The narrative assumption is usually that the deeper levels are older (consistent, again, with our archaeological metaphor).

So the characters are pushing forwards towards a goal while pushing backwards in the dungeon’s history. Again, this generates valuable narrative friction. At the top of the dungeon, we’re in the present, but only at the beginning of our characters’ story. At the bottom, we’re in the ancient past, but quite possibly at the climax of our characters’ story.

At the same time, those increasing monster hit dice imply that the resistance is getting more dangerous, and that the dungeon itself is more deeply permeated with supernatural corruption. The party delves deeper, and with every step they descend further into the otherworld.

For example, as the party penetrates the tomb complex, the brigands’ lair gives way to the abode of the vizier’s undead servants, and then to the royal burial chamber. Is the First King still noble in death, or has he been tormented by his descendants’ betrayal and become wrathful at any who seek his counsel or his treasure?

One of my favorite examples of a descent like this in literature is in Lloyd Alexander’s The Book of Three. The heroes: Taran, Eilonwy, and Fflewdur meet in the holding cells in Spiral Castle, then escape to the passages within its walls. As they weave downwards, their relationships develop, leading up to a moment of shared fear and treasure-finding in the crypt of King Rhitta.

The disparate characters become companions as they descend downwards in time from the modern era to the cursed past.

As is often the case in roleplaying, the environmental narrative of dungeons is about disparate elements and contradictions, and the atmosphere and drama created by the friction between them.