Missing Deities from Cults of the YK

[tarkhan bey]

I have just purchased CotYK from my FLGS. After a good read through it, I have to say that it is another excellent read from Lawrence Whittaker. I was most impressed to find mention of a Lawful deity that seems to have slipped under the radar in all previous incarnations of Eternal Champion games- namely Shalod.
However, I was then disappointed to find that although he is mentioned, his cult is not detailed. I suppose, you could technically say that he should be in a book on Cults of the World of the Fifteen planes but he would have been a welcome addition to the White Lords.
Also, Balo the Jester was not contained within. I suppose that this deity may not have a cult per se, but he does deserve a mention.
Perhaps these two might make a future article for S&P. What do you think Lawrence?

 

[Loz]

Shalod's a really tenuous one to include in a Cults of the YK book, but he'd find a home neatly in Corum.

Balo... well, Balo's a love/hate figure to me. First, he's not a true Chaos Lord. He isn't a duke of the higher planes, and he comes and goes between Law and Chaos as he sees fit. That makes him hard to fit into a book. Second, there's always the temptation to turn Balo into the generic Trickster god, and this happened a lot with the old Stormbringer game. Balo ended-up being behind every twisty plot, and he became something of a cliche. So I chose to leave him out and bring in some different deities that have greater scope and really fit the whole doom-laden atmosphere Elric needs.

So Shalod will get treatment in the Corum book. Balo? I'll leave him to someone else to detail!

 

[havercake lad]

Am in total agree with Loz on Balo. I noticed that in earlier game systems his inclusion tended to wrench campaigns into cartoon slapstick.

 

[smiorgan]

Just to add a footnote what as been said on Balo...

Yes, in the original Stormbringer game Balo was over-emphasized and it was something coherent with the general tone of the game, which was largely due, in my opinion, to Ken St. Andre's - of Tunnels & Trolls memory- view of what his fun in a role playing, and his loose reading of the early Moorcock stories.

St. Andre obviously loved Balo. He wrote a madhouse killer dungeon entitled "Bastions of Balo" which was published in Different Worlds. Run it if want to completely spoil the doom and gloom of your serious Eternal Champion game!

I love the old Stormbringer game. It's enormously fun. But I can understand that Loz aimed to create a slightly diferent feeling, more consistent with later Moorcock stories.

 

[Loz]

Conversely, 'The Mad-Cap Laughs' from White Dwarf was a good way of using Balo to create an authentic Moorcockian feel, though.

By that time, the damage was done. I've seen, and heard about, too many old Stormbringer characters who were agents of Balo withdemons bound into pigs-bladders that inflicted 90D10 damage when tapped lightly against someone's forehead. It all got very stale, very quickly, and I kind of eradicated Balo from my mind completely!

Heath Ledger's turn as The Joker in Dark Knight is my idea of how a Balo worshipper would conduct himself; but that still doesn't make me want to write-up the cult!

 

[tarkhan bey]

I was going to post about "The Madcap Laughs" but you have beaten me to it Loz.
It definately does not have a slapstick feel about it and gives a good idea of the mindset of Balo.(I have actually been thinking about running this again- last time was almost twenty years ago.
I am not averse to a bit of slapstick humour now and again,even in EC games but I do see how it was overdone-as shown in the comedic interpretations of his cult in the Pan Tang and Purple Towns books.
I don't think that it would be too much of a problem for a single aspect of Balo to be in the vein of a generic trickster god. However, I would try to ensure that all the jokes and schemes were sinister and malevolent. Black humour and bitter irony would be this jesters trademark.
I maintain that he probably wouldn't have a cult as such, rather he would have individual champions. Also,what about the possibility that he tricks the champions of other dieties into opposing their own Lord's wishes(for no other reason than the fact that he can)? Hmmm....