Inner Earth Conflict - Lovecraftian Gods, Random Encounters, & Old School Campaign Set Up.

Yesterday I wrote about the Beast of Hollow Mountain & the various Mexican 'lost worlds' belonging to the Serpent People of South American inner world. I'd love to clarify about my Warlord of the Outer Worlds campaign and how all of this relates to the Lovecraftian elements of the campaign setting. Because of the very nature of Pellucidar as adventure and campaign fodder it seems quite easy to connect up the lavish and nicely put together underdark and OSR mega dungeon campaign worlds. All of these connecting up nicely with campaign settings such as the under Hyperborean world  campaign setting of AS&SH, Basic Fantasy, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and even my own Atlantadria Port City Of The Accursed and The Warlords Of The Outer Worlds Campaign Earth. At the center of the affair is actually two Great Old Ones Tsathoggua & Rhan-Tegoth who have been having a cold war for ages using the outer and inner  Earth as the battle field.

Depiction of Tsathoggua by Khannea Sun Tzu


Warfare between the hybrid mutant Serpent People & the Empire of  K'n-yan came when the stars went right once the apocalypse took the Earth. The Voormis & the similar Gnophkehs  have begun their age old warfare using both their own peoples & hybrid mutant tribes out in the wastelands.  Formless Spawn carry out the alien will of their god making sure that temples and relics stray not from their master's sacred places.

The basin ... was filled with a sort of viscous and semi-liquescent substance, quite opaque and of a sooty color.... [T]he center swelled as if with the action of some powerful yeast [and] an uncouth amorphous head with dull and bulging eyes arose gradually on an ever-lengthening neck ... Then two arms—if one could call them arms—likewise arose inch by inch, and we saw that the thing was not ... a creature immersed in the liquid, but that the liquid itself had put forth this hideous neck and head, and [it was now forming arms] that groped toward us with tentacle-like appendages in lieu of claws or hands! ... Then the whole mass of the dark fluid began to rise [and] poured over the rim of the basin like a torrent of black quicksilver, taking as it reached the floor an undulant ophidian form which immediately developed more than a dozen short legs.

—Clark Ashton Smith, "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros"

Sometimes great Martian war machines can be seen in the distances and there are rumors of them under Earth as well.


The Earth has been softened up by the Martian invasions of the 1800's when agents within the various Earth governments paved the way for the invaders to cause untold destruction on Earth. They almost terraformed the Earth to conditions more fitting to the old races. After the invasions of the Martians some of these horrors stayed behind within the inner Earth in some of the strange grottoes and pits.



Cults dedicated to  deities include Shub-Niggurath, Nug and Yeb, Ghatanothoa,^[3] and the Not-to-Be-Named One (a title sometimes used to identify Hastur) have been gaining in popularity within the Earth & outside of it. Many of the outer world colony pirates, marauders, mutants, and renegade spacer warlords all follow these new faiths. Earth is just starting to regain the upper hand once again but it will take time. PC's have heard rumors of the horrors of the Gibbering Tower have been stirring.

1d20 Inner Earth Lovecraftian Random Encounters Table

1. 1d10 2nd level  Voormis warriors on a holy mission for their priest on a mission to find some relics and looking for their enemies. They are aggressive and very dangerous. 
2. A group of mutant serpent men looking for sacrifices &  looking for relics for their clutch. Armed with three laser pistols and a heavy stunner. 
3. 1d6 ghoul warriors on their way to the Dreamlands looking for a bit of that extra juicy meat. 
4. Inner Earth Martian walker looking for a blood donor or three, the thing is armed with a heat ray capable of doing 1d8 points of damage to anything within a forty foot radius. 
5. K'n-yan necromancer and zombie horde moving through the underworld on their way to their inner world base. Capable and vary dangerous depending on how the party approaches her. 
6. A group of 1d10 morlock warriors led by mad scientist armed with energy weapons & looking for specimens. 
7. A lone 6th level yeti warrior searching the dark for his familial tribe of brother warriors. Very capable & armed with an energy pistol. 
8.  1d20 mutant  man eating ape men blind and idiotic searching the dark for prey. 
9. A lone  K'n-yan scientist searching the underworld for specimens riding a ghast like mount. He's armed with energy weapons and wants a humanoid specimen for experimentation. 
10. A underworld Dwarven trader & giant mutant centipede mount with 1d20 minor relics to trade. See appropriate matrix for material. 
11. Lost scientist from a drill machine party who got separated from his fellows. He's being tracked by an inner Earth Lovecraftian horror. He's a doomed man and doesn't even know it. Has several maps and he's twenty five miles from his party.
12. Broken troll being eaten by Lovecraftian inner Earth blobs of protoplasm. They will be 1d8 lone monsters looking to feed. 
13. Lone black wizard searching the under world for the ruins of an alien base. He is guarded by 1d6 unseen demonic warriors. He will hire adventurers quite readily. 
14.  K'n-Yan Empire atomic borrowing machine with a 1d10 war party led by a black wizard of 7th level. These bastards are out for sacrifices & slaves for their horrid under world empire. 
15. A pack of 1d10 serpent men hybrid mutant soldiers is on patrol and looking for an escaped prisoner. They're armed with energy weapons and a bad attitude, they're aggressive have laser like weapons that do 2d8 points of damage but the energy cells are highly unstable. 
16. A grazy ooze is going back to its home cave to reproduce & will try to kill anyone or anything that tries to stop it from getting back to its spawning ground. 
17. A horde of 1d6 Martians is moving through the darkness in war machines AC5, HT 30, with death rays capable of doing 1d10 points of damage with a 60 foot radius. They're on a mission for their brood queen and are aggressively carrying out her will. 
18. A giant mutant cave fisher moves through the darkness capable of taking out vehicle sized targets and prey is casting lines in the caverns and tunnels below. Watch out! 
19. An ape man cleric of the Mahars moves through the darkness with dark vision goggles on his way to another kingdom of the sacred reptiles. He has several key magic scrolls bound in human flesh. He is also armed with several weapons of their design. He will hide or kill anyone who tries to interfere with his holy mission. 
20. A serpent man black wizard of 8th level moves through the darkness with several mutant serpent men body guards. They are on a mission to the shrine of their black gods and will not hesitate to add in a few more offerings to the lot they have on their weird mutated mounts. They are armed with ray guns and are not afraid to use them.
 

Between Realms of Crawling Chaos , Obscene Serpent Religion ,Cults of Chaos for Dark Albion I've got about ninety percent of all of the campaign's Lovecraftian needs met. So that's the set up for this week's upcoming game folks!
. All ideas & opinions are copyrighted & trade marked to the author as well as Dark Corner Productions. This blog post is for entertainment & educational purposes only.