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Upper Heleng: The Forest Beloved by Time
A forest of wandering nomads and god-guarded borders.
FIVE DAYS, THROUGH FOGGY UPLANDS
The river forks. The sun is out. Men nap on the bank, or dice in shabby cabanas. A young girl waves. “Guide?” she calls. “Need a guide?”
+
The forest of Upper Heleng was Time’s lover; he refuses to flow within her borders, and their children the seasons govern her people as gods.
The people of Upper Heleng live amid wonders. They hunt yam-men, trade with rhinos. Demons fall from heaven as meteors. Honeycombs ooze mystic quicksilver — one taste grants indestructibility.
Do not be too greedy, interloper. The leeches here do not take blood. They take other things. A year of your life. A love you know.
+
Upper Heleng is an adventure setting inspired by forest taboos and Bateq egalitarianism. A rules-less, 40-page forest-crawl with creatures, characters, and detailed black-and-white art. A die-drop map pullout. A die-drop name generator that doubles as a NPC generator. Ethnographic and cosmological hooks.
Part of A Thousand Thousand Islands, an RPG zine series inspired by the material cultures, lived stories, and mythistories of Southeast Asia.
FIVE DAYS, THROUGH FOGGY UPLANDS
The river forks. The sun is out. Men nap on the bank, or dice in shabby cabanas. A young girl waves. “Guide?” she calls. “Need a guide?”
+
The forest of Upper Heleng was Time’s lover; he refuses to flow within her borders, and their children the seasons govern her people as gods.
The people of Upper Heleng live amid wonders. They hunt yam-men, trade with rhinos. Demons fall from heaven as meteors. Honeycombs ooze mystic quicksilver — one taste grants indestructibility.
Do not be too greedy, interloper. The leeches here do not take blood. They take other things. A year of your life. A love you know.
+
Upper Heleng is an adventure setting inspired by forest taboos and Bateq egalitarianism. A rules-less, 40-page forest-crawl with creatures, characters, and detailed black-and-white art. A die-drop map pullout. A die-drop name generator that doubles as a NPC generator. Ethnographic and cosmological hooks.
Part of A Thousand Thousand Islands, an RPG zine series inspired by the material cultures, lived stories, and mythistories of Southeast Asia.
40 pages, Paperback
Published June 1, 2018
3 people want to read
About the author
Zedeck Siew
35 books28 followersZedeck Siew is a writer based in Port Dickson. He has been a journalist, essayist, editor, and game designer. He writes short fiction in English and translates from Malay. Creatures of Near Kingdoms is his first book. zedecksiew.tumblr.com
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February 27, 2023Logistical: Goodreads has entries for zines 1-3, but not 4-8 (and also I don't have #7, because the physical copy is only available in the UK right now and I don't want to pay shipping for that); I have requested they add issue 4 (and will do so for the others in passing), but for now, this will be where I stash the reviews.
#3 Upper Heleng: The Forest Beloved by Time
Funny, when I reviewed the #2 book and wrote "I am hoping that they keep this pattern up for another two or so issues and then throw a curveball, but we'll see", I didn't know that #3 would be the slight curveball -- and also a little hard to parse for me.
That is, issues 1 and 2 featured a land of ruined temples with trapped gods and sentient crocodiles; and a land of animated wooden carvings of cats and cat politics (messy, dangerous, yowling). In both cases I could clearly see holes where the PCs could come in. They opened with maybe a legend or some weirdness about the area, and then described some places and people.
Issue 3 feels, in a way, a little more dreamlike and less open -- or maybe just less traditional. The page-by-page:
1-2: getting there -- the same "X days, doing X activity" line they've been using so far, though this introduces a person and not just a place:
3-4: the young guide and her father (in dog form, thinking of how to return to human form by breaking a dog's oath of loyalty to those he guides)
Now I love that, I love that the text makes no bones about it: this guy is going to betray you, not out of evil, but maybe out of selfishness and for ritualistic purposes. This also introduces the notion that people here may be "in the time of" other animals.
5-6: a full page spread about entering the forest between a living and a dead tree. Flavorful, but not necessarily dynamic.
7-8: a legend about the three sisters that became the air (and its demons), the river (and its contemplative followers), and the forest, beloved by and so out of time
9-10: random encounters in the forest, including giant mosquitos and leech spirits
Now, I like random encounters, but right about now, I'm wondering why PCs would go here or where they would be trying to go.
11-12: As if in answer to my question above, we get a pair of NPC visitors to the forest: a prince looking to rescue a princess's face that was taken by a leech god; a swordfish who wants to see the world. Those are fun, but only one is a model for what a PC might be doing here. I mean, look, there's a chance that every night spent in the forest you'll age d12 years, so you gotta be here for a pretty good reason.
13-16: random nomadic camp description -- and finally, a place. Now, I like about all the random possibilities here, from malformed skulls in a fire pit to "jewelpox outbreak" to traps set for a former community member who is now "in the time of the tiger." And yet, I guess I don't feel like I have a grasp on this place and its people. Issues 1 and 2 were fascinating to me because of how quickly they outlined a place that I understood, but Upper Heleng sort of resists being encapsulated. In some areas, I might think this an interesting challenge to the reader, but in minimalist zine form, I begin to feel it as a lack.
17-22: four local people, two of whom are locked in a feud, which is a natural story, but also a limited one: if you have four NPCs, but two are in a story together, then effectively you have 3 possible stories
23-25: goods and products of the forest: antlers from ghost deer, vines from ghost trees, glowing fruit
26: "The Gods and Time" is the text, discussing how the (creature) gods are the spirits that dictate the time for people. Fine and good, but the big illo is a man and dog walking across a fallen tree over a river, which is a nice image, but feels more disconnected from the text than other illustrations.
27-28: the leech god
29: leechspawn -- chimera made up of different parts stolen from people by the leech god and its children
30-31: the bee god and "quick honey"
32-33: the moth god, god of dead spirits
34: a way out of the forest
This issue is a little shorter, but includes a pullout with more NPC names and locations.
But yeah, overall, maybe I just have a phobia of time passing, but I get less of a grasp on how this location should work in a game; and slightly less idea of what it is. I mean, "place where humans and sentient crocodiles live in the ruins of trapped gods" is real easy to imagine, for whatever reason. Place where people follow different animal spirits is easy to imagine; place where animal spirits are gods that you can interact with, ditto; place where all this is true but also time is occasionally weird -- well, that doesn't feel like it fits as well or gives me a focus.
***
Issue #4 Andjang: The Queen on Dog Mountain
And just like that, we're back with an incredibly focused issue.
So what is Andjang's focus? As with books 1 and 2, it builds a bit over time, but just to get it out there -- well, no, wait, let's do page-by-page so you might feel the creep:
page 1-3: "Three days up a switch-backing trail," this forest mountain seems to be breathing. A slight change as we get two illustrations for this: the typical big picture of the mountain (as all the issues had), and an image of the gate that seems to be breathing.
4: rumors from Andjang, including "they have a lot of gold for farmers" and "they're all vampires!" and "confused stares as the person pretends not to understand you."
5-7: outside NPCs: the cattle trader who makes this very profitable trade; the cursed king who is coming to get his cursed weapon removed; the exiled princess who wants to get in league with these magicians
8: a typical village -- no animals, people helped by animated rattan puppet-people. Also I love that this is marked as "a typical village," because it lets you know that this is the model for other villages and that there are other villages here.
9-12: a house and people in the village, with lots of random tables: their job (rice seller, bloodletter, midwife), their quirk (tattooed, sniffling, fingerless), and what's up with them (secret bandit, beloved by a creepy royal, a leech spy)
OK, when I said that this creep factor inches up, I was perhaps overselling it: sure, the breathing gate is a little creepy, sure, but it all comes together quickly: the rumors of vampires, the cattle trader + the typical village that has no animals + the bloodletter job and all the weirdness going on with the people (and all the blood stuff in general). By this time, the reader knows we have something vampiric or parasitic going on, and with the people described as pale and thin, despite the richness of the land, all signs point to this ruling class being vampires.
13-14: trade goods (rich rice that grows in the red soil, the red soil itself -- oh yeah, did I mention the soil and sometimes the water here is the color of blood)
15-16: magic weapons of Andjang, a particular trade good the country is known for
17-19: the three laws: pay the blood tide, protect the border, obey the royalty, who are above all laws.
So, maybe it's just the last few years of Republican descent into outright monarchism and fascism, but of course, this description of the land is giving me the itch to kill vampires. Right about now, I wouldn't hold it against you if you thought issue #4 was _too_ focused, but this focus works for me: it's giving me Delta Green RPG vibes, I know why my PCs would go in here (to get some magic weapons from the queen), I know what will trip them up (royal internecine fighting), and I know the secret goal here (kill vampires, escape alive).
20-23: royalty, including random powers and illustrations that makes it clear: these are tick-spirit people.
24: the palace town (again, full of unearned finery and backstabbing)
25-30: the palace, including a room-by-room breakdown.
This is pretty rare for these zines, for them to focus so much time on a single building/complex and break that down into sub-locations, each with its own story/contribution to the larger story. But each location here pushes the theme. It almost reminds me of the OSE adventure, The Halls of the Blood-King, where every little decoration was tied to blood and vampires. So here, the kitchen is close to the gaol, from whence some of its cooking materials come from; sentient weapons are held prisoner in the treasure room; the king does his own cleaning, mostly to hide his system of tunnels and peekaboo holes; all the servants have a tattoo of a closed eye; the faucet in the guest room is for blood; underneath the palace is grotto of blood. After all, I didn't say that the theming was subtle, just consistent: vampires, internecine politicking, creeps.
31-32: random palace encounters
33-36: the court -- scheming minister, pervert king, loyal but waiting crown princess
37: the queen, the tick/vampire who loves her country and cares for the people: "Wouldn't you, for the animals you own?"
A strong finish that also explains all the mysteries that I care about that were introduced earlier: the eye tattoos, the king's tunnels, the queen's feeling for the people.
Like I said, I would understand if someone read this particular issue and thought it was (a) too focused or (b) too tightly connected thematically or (c) too explanatory. But for me, after my confusion with Upper Heleng (how would I use thiS?), it is a relief of sorts to read this and feel it oozing with adventure possibilities.
Also this issue also includes a pullout section (a map of the palace), and I don't love the pullouts as a form factor: feels like it might be easy to lose or too far from the related text in the book.
****
Finally, in 2023, getting around to reading 5-8 (and I broke down and bought 7 in pdf).
#5 Stray Virassa: The Lost and Fourteenth Hell
What? One island in the Virassa archipelago: home to magicians and the drowned ghosts of the land of Mu. A chunk of this book is given over to describing the town of Kara Lara, which is also, if you look at it right, the ghost city.
Yeah, so? Another fine zine, full of characters that might spark stories -- and yet, for some reason I had to start this twice, bouncing off it the first time and not feeling particularly excited by the weirdness here. Is it that everything in these zines feels more like a fairytale than like a fantasy? Or is it because the characters feel more self-contained. Like we get a generator for "person coming to the island to get a curse lifted" and a generator for "weird magician," and I'm not entirely sure why the PCs need to get involved here between those two.
#6 Korvu: Drowned or Dry, Vassal of the Sea
What? Boat people most of the time, the folks of Korvu trade and raid, until the dry season, when the sea gives up their fabled land and they become farmers -- until the sea takes it back.
The court is split between those who want peace and those who want war (who tend to be the knights who are wedded to the war-barges and replace their heads with oars/prows -- but this faction also includes the royal war-barge, because in this area, boats are also ensouled). There's also a parasitic jellyfish race, coral folk, and a sea-ray ambassador who pilots the body of a drowned woman and wonders why people are weird when she's trying so hard to meet them halfway.
Yeah, so? What I really enjoyed about this is how messy the world is, and how much weirdness is implied beyond the borders with all the different folk. Also: people who decapitate themselves and fit themselves with new oar heads are disturbing to look at.
#7 Ngelalangka: the Road of Hoofless Horses
What? People here make rattan puppets of animals with souls; and when they pay obeisance to the puppets, gain those animals' strength, stamina, etc. The new queen of this valley has pushed her people into focusing on pack-animals, so these humans with animal souls -- the hoofless horses -- do a lot of business porting goods from one side of the mountain range to the other. (I think -- geography here is more gestural than firm.)
Yeah, so? So there's a lot here about NPC traders and market day, which is all potentially fruitful, though I'm more interested in the notion of feral puppets and bribe-hungry officials whose magical belts make them talk in the queen's voice.
#8 Hundred Red Scales: The Goddess, Bleeding
What? Another myth origin (like Korvu above): a beautiful monitor lizard was killed by her jealous man husband, and her dead body became the islands and the mangroves. Now monitor-folk and humans live together, trying to perfect the dead goddess's arts of weaving and dyeing, specializing in the red-hues that come from mangrove bark.
Meanwhile, a sinister -- maybe -- cabal of witches and an indigo god plot against the islands and to free the textile spirits that are caught in the temple.
Yeah, so? There's so much weirdness and openness in this one, how could I not love it? The idea that one of the temple keepers is a human pretending to be a monitor, or that one of the monitor teachers in the temple holds the heretical belief that black and blue should be acceptable dye colors -- there's a real mix of the grand and the sort of mundane that seems so fruitful for adventure and mystery and weirdness.
#3 Upper Heleng: The Forest Beloved by Time
Funny, when I reviewed the #2 book and wrote "I am hoping that they keep this pattern up for another two or so issues and then throw a curveball, but we'll see", I didn't know that #3 would be the slight curveball -- and also a little hard to parse for me.
That is, issues 1 and 2 featured a land of ruined temples with trapped gods and sentient crocodiles; and a land of animated wooden carvings of cats and cat politics (messy, dangerous, yowling). In both cases I could clearly see holes where the PCs could come in. They opened with maybe a legend or some weirdness about the area, and then described some places and people.
Issue 3 feels, in a way, a little more dreamlike and less open -- or maybe just less traditional. The page-by-page:
1-2: getting there -- the same "X days, doing X activity" line they've been using so far, though this introduces a person and not just a place:
The river forks. The sun is out. Men nap on the bank, or dice in shabby cabanas. A young girl waves. “Guide?” she calls. “Need a guide?”
3-4: the young guide and her father (in dog form, thinking of how to return to human form by breaking a dog's oath of loyalty to those he guides)
Now I love that, I love that the text makes no bones about it: this guy is going to betray you, not out of evil, but maybe out of selfishness and for ritualistic purposes. This also introduces the notion that people here may be "in the time of" other animals.
5-6: a full page spread about entering the forest between a living and a dead tree. Flavorful, but not necessarily dynamic.
7-8: a legend about the three sisters that became the air (and its demons), the river (and its contemplative followers), and the forest, beloved by and so out of time
9-10: random encounters in the forest, including giant mosquitos and leech spirits
Now, I like random encounters, but right about now, I'm wondering why PCs would go here or where they would be trying to go.
11-12: As if in answer to my question above, we get a pair of NPC visitors to the forest: a prince looking to rescue a princess's face that was taken by a leech god; a swordfish who wants to see the world. Those are fun, but only one is a model for what a PC might be doing here. I mean, look, there's a chance that every night spent in the forest you'll age d12 years, so you gotta be here for a pretty good reason.
13-16: random nomadic camp description -- and finally, a place. Now, I like about all the random possibilities here, from malformed skulls in a fire pit to "jewelpox outbreak" to traps set for a former community member who is now "in the time of the tiger." And yet, I guess I don't feel like I have a grasp on this place and its people. Issues 1 and 2 were fascinating to me because of how quickly they outlined a place that I understood, but Upper Heleng sort of resists being encapsulated. In some areas, I might think this an interesting challenge to the reader, but in minimalist zine form, I begin to feel it as a lack.
17-22: four local people, two of whom are locked in a feud, which is a natural story, but also a limited one: if you have four NPCs, but two are in a story together, then effectively you have 3 possible stories
23-25: goods and products of the forest: antlers from ghost deer, vines from ghost trees, glowing fruit
26: "The Gods and Time" is the text, discussing how the (creature) gods are the spirits that dictate the time for people. Fine and good, but the big illo is a man and dog walking across a fallen tree over a river, which is a nice image, but feels more disconnected from the text than other illustrations.
27-28: the leech god
29: leechspawn -- chimera made up of different parts stolen from people by the leech god and its children
30-31: the bee god and "quick honey"
32-33: the moth god, god of dead spirits
34: a way out of the forest
This issue is a little shorter, but includes a pullout with more NPC names and locations.
But yeah, overall, maybe I just have a phobia of time passing, but I get less of a grasp on how this location should work in a game; and slightly less idea of what it is. I mean, "place where humans and sentient crocodiles live in the ruins of trapped gods" is real easy to imagine, for whatever reason. Place where people follow different animal spirits is easy to imagine; place where animal spirits are gods that you can interact with, ditto; place where all this is true but also time is occasionally weird -- well, that doesn't feel like it fits as well or gives me a focus.
***
Issue #4 Andjang: The Queen on Dog Mountain
And just like that, we're back with an incredibly focused issue.
So what is Andjang's focus? As with books 1 and 2, it builds a bit over time, but just to get it out there -- well, no, wait, let's do page-by-page so you might feel the creep:
page 1-3: "Three days up a switch-backing trail," this forest mountain seems to be breathing. A slight change as we get two illustrations for this: the typical big picture of the mountain (as all the issues had), and an image of the gate that seems to be breathing.
4: rumors from Andjang, including "they have a lot of gold for farmers" and "they're all vampires!" and "confused stares as the person pretends not to understand you."
5-7: outside NPCs: the cattle trader who makes this very profitable trade; the cursed king who is coming to get his cursed weapon removed; the exiled princess who wants to get in league with these magicians
8: a typical village -- no animals, people helped by animated rattan puppet-people. Also I love that this is marked as "a typical village," because it lets you know that this is the model for other villages and that there are other villages here.
9-12: a house and people in the village, with lots of random tables: their job (rice seller, bloodletter, midwife), their quirk (tattooed, sniffling, fingerless), and what's up with them (secret bandit, beloved by a creepy royal, a leech spy)
OK, when I said that this creep factor inches up, I was perhaps overselling it: sure, the breathing gate is a little creepy, sure, but it all comes together quickly: the rumors of vampires, the cattle trader + the typical village that has no animals + the bloodletter job and all the weirdness going on with the people (and all the blood stuff in general). By this time, the reader knows we have something vampiric or parasitic going on, and with the people described as pale and thin, despite the richness of the land, all signs point to this ruling class being vampires.
13-14: trade goods (rich rice that grows in the red soil, the red soil itself -- oh yeah, did I mention the soil and sometimes the water here is the color of blood)
15-16: magic weapons of Andjang, a particular trade good the country is known for
17-19: the three laws: pay the blood tide, protect the border, obey the royalty, who are above all laws.
So, maybe it's just the last few years of Republican descent into outright monarchism and fascism, but of course, this description of the land is giving me the itch to kill vampires. Right about now, I wouldn't hold it against you if you thought issue #4 was _too_ focused, but this focus works for me: it's giving me Delta Green RPG vibes, I know why my PCs would go in here (to get some magic weapons from the queen), I know what will trip them up (royal internecine fighting), and I know the secret goal here (kill vampires, escape alive).
20-23: royalty, including random powers and illustrations that makes it clear: these are tick-spirit people.
24: the palace town (again, full of unearned finery and backstabbing)
25-30: the palace, including a room-by-room breakdown.
This is pretty rare for these zines, for them to focus so much time on a single building/complex and break that down into sub-locations, each with its own story/contribution to the larger story. But each location here pushes the theme. It almost reminds me of the OSE adventure, The Halls of the Blood-King, where every little decoration was tied to blood and vampires. So here, the kitchen is close to the gaol, from whence some of its cooking materials come from; sentient weapons are held prisoner in the treasure room; the king does his own cleaning, mostly to hide his system of tunnels and peekaboo holes; all the servants have a tattoo of a closed eye; the faucet in the guest room is for blood; underneath the palace is grotto of blood. After all, I didn't say that the theming was subtle, just consistent: vampires, internecine politicking, creeps.
31-32: random palace encounters
33-36: the court -- scheming minister, pervert king, loyal but waiting crown princess
37: the queen, the tick/vampire who loves her country and cares for the people: "Wouldn't you, for the animals you own?"
A strong finish that also explains all the mysteries that I care about that were introduced earlier: the eye tattoos, the king's tunnels, the queen's feeling for the people.
Like I said, I would understand if someone read this particular issue and thought it was (a) too focused or (b) too tightly connected thematically or (c) too explanatory. But for me, after my confusion with Upper Heleng (how would I use thiS?), it is a relief of sorts to read this and feel it oozing with adventure possibilities.
Also this issue also includes a pullout section (a map of the palace), and I don't love the pullouts as a form factor: feels like it might be easy to lose or too far from the related text in the book.
****
Finally, in 2023, getting around to reading 5-8 (and I broke down and bought 7 in pdf).
#5 Stray Virassa: The Lost and Fourteenth Hell
What? One island in the Virassa archipelago: home to magicians and the drowned ghosts of the land of Mu. A chunk of this book is given over to describing the town of Kara Lara, which is also, if you look at it right, the ghost city.
Yeah, so? Another fine zine, full of characters that might spark stories -- and yet, for some reason I had to start this twice, bouncing off it the first time and not feeling particularly excited by the weirdness here. Is it that everything in these zines feels more like a fairytale than like a fantasy? Or is it because the characters feel more self-contained. Like we get a generator for "person coming to the island to get a curse lifted" and a generator for "weird magician," and I'm not entirely sure why the PCs need to get involved here between those two.
#6 Korvu: Drowned or Dry, Vassal of the Sea
What? Boat people most of the time, the folks of Korvu trade and raid, until the dry season, when the sea gives up their fabled land and they become farmers -- until the sea takes it back.
The court is split between those who want peace and those who want war (who tend to be the knights who are wedded to the war-barges and replace their heads with oars/prows -- but this faction also includes the royal war-barge, because in this area, boats are also ensouled). There's also a parasitic jellyfish race, coral folk, and a sea-ray ambassador who pilots the body of a drowned woman and wonders why people are weird when she's trying so hard to meet them halfway.
Yeah, so? What I really enjoyed about this is how messy the world is, and how much weirdness is implied beyond the borders with all the different folk. Also: people who decapitate themselves and fit themselves with new oar heads are disturbing to look at.
#7 Ngelalangka: the Road of Hoofless Horses
What? People here make rattan puppets of animals with souls; and when they pay obeisance to the puppets, gain those animals' strength, stamina, etc. The new queen of this valley has pushed her people into focusing on pack-animals, so these humans with animal souls -- the hoofless horses -- do a lot of business porting goods from one side of the mountain range to the other. (I think -- geography here is more gestural than firm.)
Yeah, so? So there's a lot here about NPC traders and market day, which is all potentially fruitful, though I'm more interested in the notion of feral puppets and bribe-hungry officials whose magical belts make them talk in the queen's voice.
#8 Hundred Red Scales: The Goddess, Bleeding
What? Another myth origin (like Korvu above): a beautiful monitor lizard was killed by her jealous man husband, and her dead body became the islands and the mangroves. Now monitor-folk and humans live together, trying to perfect the dead goddess's arts of weaving and dyeing, specializing in the red-hues that come from mangrove bark.
Meanwhile, a sinister -- maybe -- cabal of witches and an indigo god plot against the islands and to free the textile spirits that are caught in the temple.
Yeah, so? There's so much weirdness and openness in this one, how could I not love it? The idea that one of the temple keepers is a human pretending to be a monitor, or that one of the monitor teachers in the temple holds the heretical belief that black and blue should be acceptable dye colors -- there's a real mix of the grand and the sort of mundane that seems so fruitful for adventure and mystery and weirdness.
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