Keep On The Borderlands, Dark Albion, and The Threat Of Chaos As Campaign Construction Continues

Happy Fourth of July everyone, I've been spending time with family and off of the near constant tug of social networking. Instead I've been spending time getting repair work done today and doing some writing with my Warlords of The Outer Worlds campaign setting. Best investment I made was a copy of Dark Albion a week or so back, it brings a whole lot of tools to the table for any OSR system. Now that being said I'm running the guys through Keep On The Borderlands in a post apocalyptic Earth. So there's a good deal of tools that I can use from Dark Albion.

There is a thread that runs through 'The Keep On The Borderland' & that's the idea of a former cult of chaos that had its headquarters near the keep and that's where Dark Albion comes in very handy. Dark Albion's take on chaos is very different from say Warhammer Fantasy. The idea that chaos is subtler & far more dangerous then simply the blood, thunder, and mutation approach of classic Warhammer. That's not a bad thing simply different in its context as it relates to the Dark Albion setting as the PrinceofNothingReview says;" One point of criticism that I will level is the nature of Chaos in this setting. A comparison with Warhammer Fantasy must of course be made; in Warhammer Fantasy Chaos was a serious threat to all of mankind, a force of nature that would lie dormant for some time, gnawing at the roots of civilization and eroding those within, waning and waxing, before it would pour out into the world, slaying thousands before being turned back, leaving ruins in its wake and basically growing stronger every time it rose.
In Dark Albion Chaos is just kind of there, and though France fell to it, most of human civilization seems to have done a decent job resisting it. It killed the Arcadian/Roman Empire of course, but you don’t get the same kind of menace from it at this point in time, with most of Europe, Rus and the Middle East being in solely human Law worshipping hands.
In Dark Albion the historical elements take precedence over the fantastical elements, this might be to your taste or it might not. Again with Frogland, Dark Albion cannot seem to make up its mind whether magic is rare or not, with the Frog Men wielding magic, magic items and whatnot via their sorcerer priests, again this is fine, it only becomes thematically jarring when it is transposed against depictions of Iberia and Savoy, nations that do not differ much or indeed at all from their historical counterparts (I am sure a historian could find some fault with when exactly the Moors retreated from Iberia or what particular faction held Grenada I mean Garnatah but this is trivial)."

Of course all of this bares out some very interesting back points once we get into Dark Albion Cults of Chaos By Dominique Crouzet, RPGPundit which not only allows me to breath life into the cult from Keep on The Borderland but do it with gusto to spare.  


So why I'm going through all of this trouble on a holiday? Well because tomorrow evening I'm adding in another player or possibly two from my Monday night game. The party is desperate need of a thief and another fighter.  These are experienced role players and DM's in their own right and so the extra fire power that Cults of Chaos adds is a welcome addition to my table. There are several monsters and encounters where the mutations, boat load of random tables, and possible threads from the book can add in another wrinkle to the table top environment as we shall see. The threat of chaos is about to come home to roost in Russia thanks to Pundit and my players are not going to be happy at all.


From what I understand Dark Albion Cults of Chaos By Dominique Crouzet, RPGPundit should be out in July sometime. Check with the authors for details

Don't forget to keep those dice rolling! More to come.