Okay, this post is stupid long thanks to tumblr’s new 30 image limit on individual posts, so if you want to avoid it please blacklist the tag #long lotad or #long post. If you choose to ignore this warning, forge ahead, and end up regretting it, just know that i did warn you up front. Now, without further ado…
So, this is Champions of Mystara: Heroes of the Princess Ark (1993), and it is all Bruce Heard’s fault. Heard basically developed the Known World for a decade, guiding the creation of the beloved Gazetteer series and penning a 35-part serial storyline in Dragon Magazine about the adventures of the crew of a flying airship traveling to all corners of Mystara. This box set is essentially the culmination (and end) of the Known World that Heard shepherded and it marked the end of the Challenger line (with the exception of the second Poor Wizard’s Almanac). Which is a bummer, because this box was intended to be a relaunch of a sort. It reprints all the previous Princess Ark stories, but lays the ground work for a new series of explorations of the Known World, by air ship! Sort of a Spelljammer-lite. I love it dearly, but it doesn’t really surprise me that it was a kind of death knell — TSR habitually killed the stuff I loved.
I have always been puzzled by the popularity of the Gazetteers and the Princess Ark articles. People really LOVE this world and Heard’s work on it. So do I! But there is something about it that always felt like a well kept secret. Surely no one else loved this thing I love! And much as I enjoy the 2E Mystara, a series of new, airship-centric gazetteers feels like a massive missed opportunity. God, a flying Viking longship pulled by white dragons? COME ON, TSR! You’re gonna cancel that world?
s1 nandermo is so so interesting to me. guillermo has been with nandor for 10 years. he looks at nandor with aw, he knows he’s a bit silly and a little annoying but he’s still Nandor the Relentless; the big strong vampire that he met as a 19 year old boy working at panera, and will some day turn him. nandor has had guillermo for 10 years but yet it feels like it’s been 2 years, he’s gotten so used to guillermo and his smiles and words of encouragement. he’s guillermo. they’re Nandor the Relentless and guillermo. that’s how it always is and nothing has to changed, but guillermo is slowly realizing that maybe nandor isn’t Nandor the Relentless, the vampire who will turn him and he starts standing up for himself and nandor see this so he starts to pull away a bit because that’s what he thinks he needs to do but there’s still moments where he shows he cares just a bit too much [see: the trial episode] and that’s what keeps guillermo where he is because he sees the little things and i think in s2 that’s a bit more exported because at that point it’s not about being a vampire anymore, it’s about protecting his master and his idiot roommates