Bad Moon Rising - Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea - Actual Play Event

Picking up right where last week's game left off the PC's went down the hidden stair case after almost running into a black pudding sent by one of the vampiric lords of Tegel Manor after last week's game.  That's when they ran into a party of  skull faced Formorian  slavers who were  wrapping up a deal with the servants of the Moon beasts. The Skull Faces are a tribe of intelligent evil cannibals Formorian warriors who use a variety of magical weaponry & armor to compensate for their relatively smaller size among giants. They range from only the eight to ten foot tall range. They also pray on tribes of half caste Hyperborean fishermen who ply the waters around some of the lower quarter islands around Hyperborea.



Meanwhile the PC's ended up going up against seven of the Formorians who put up a good show with radium pistols, +3 hooked knives of returning, and a few radiation grenades to slow things down.The PC's saw the black ships of the moon beasts & a small party of the Lunar ogre servants of the beasts who were there to collect the other half of the slaves. The Aztec style priestess working for Morgana already collected her lot which were taken to 'Old Earth'. These seven were the third half which the PC's realized were due for a mass sacrifice on the Moon of the Old Solar system. I took a lot of ideas for the Skull Faced Formorians from the Frank Frazetta Battle Field Earth cover which as a kid I had hanging on my wall.


Burned into my mind was the illustration for  an admiral's galley from Architectura Navalis, found in The Story of the Barbary Corsairs' by Stanley Lane-Poole, published in 1890 by G.P. Putnam's Sons.


This ship has been my moon beast ship design since I was a kid stocked by Men of Leng and Lunar ogres. The ogres are the intermediate race who capture slaves, act as muscle, and generally act as the muscle for the moon beasts. Who are the moonbeasts? "Moon-beasts are creatures in H. P. Lovecraft's Dream Cycle. They are “great greyish-white slippery things which could expand and contract at will, and whose principal shape — though it often changed — was that of a sort of toad without any eyes, but with a curious vibrating mass of short pink tentacles on the end of its blunt, vague snout” (The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Lovecraft). They live on the dark side of the Dreamlands' moon which, unlike the moon of the waking world, has great forests and oily seas.
The Moon-beasts sail black galleys between the moon and the Dreamlands, trading rubies for both slaves and gold"  
I always associated them with The Moon Maid & Moon Men  by Edgar Rice Burroughs & since it was Edgar Rice  Burroughs birthday I used the enemies from that classic science fiction series to design my lunar ogres.They were almost but not quite taken from Frazetta's cover for the Moon Men. My Moon is a place where the inhabitants, tribes, etc. all go through cycles of birth and death. Tribes of advanced humanoid species have city states within the underworld of the lunar surface. When the stars have come almost right they came back with a vengeance using Selenite technology to terraform the lunar surface of the 'Old Solar system Moon.


The PC's managed to save seven islanders destined for slavery and I've managed to move my Fall campaign ahead at full speed but after this week's sword & weirdness action their going to need more magic, weapons, coin, and time to recharge. The manor is really taxing the hell out of em and their starting to realize that their going to have to find the dimensional control mechanism that moves the manor across the old solar system. For the Fall campaign marks the following is coming up:
1. Return to the 'Islands of Purple Haunted Putrescence' for some of the lost technologies & crystals of the Ancient Ones. 
2. Exploration of the Lunar underworld & its connections with Hyperborea 
3. Dealing with several leads to a mysterious island on Old Earth that appears occasional on Hyperborea as well 
4. Tracking down that dark priestess and her connections to the witch queen Morgana.
5. Finding out the vendetta of the Skull Faced Formorians with the tribes of the PC's. 
6. Dealing with the mysteries of 'Old Venus' and the awakening of the serpent people especially on Mars. 
7. Exploration of several dangerous Hyperborean ruins that the PC's have come across on Old Earth. 
8. What are the connections to the empire of lightless N'kai and the cult of
Tsathoggua which has deep connections to Tegel Manor. 
9. What is the connections between the Rumps and the two statues of
Tulu (Cthulhu) and Yig that are in the possession of the PC's. 
10. Is there a  sleeping star spawn of Cthulhu near the manor?


All Frazetta covers and artwork used without permission, this post is not an attempt to violate the copyrights or trademarks of any of the science fiction stories cited in tonight's blog entry. All opinions are copy righted and trade marked to the author as none of the table top rpgs mentioned in the blog article have any responsibility for the content of this blog.