Further OSR Commentary On Dungeons & Dragons Module X2: Castle Amber (Chateau d' Amberville) By Tom Moldvay

Trapped in the mysterious Castle Amber, you find yourselves cut off form the world you know. The castle is fraught with peril. Members of the strange Amber family, some insane, some merely deadly, lurk around every corner. Somewhere in the castle is the key to your escape, but can you survive long enough to find it?

I've been dipping my foot into the pond of Clark Ashton Smith with Tom Moldvay's love letter adventure X2: Castle Amber (Chateau d' Amberville) and Wiki has a bit of background history;
"Castle Amber is a Dungeons & Dragons adventure module designed by Tom Moldvay. This was the second module designed for use with the Expert D&D set. The module is in part an adaptation of Clark Ashton Smith's Averoigne stories, and set in the fictional medieval French province of that name.Castle Amber is a Dungeons & Dragons adventure module designed by Tom Moldvay. "




"This was the second module designed for use with the Expert D&D set. The module is in part an adaptation of Clark Ashton Smith's Averoigne stories, and set in the fictional medieval French province of that name." I've been thinking about connecting  X2: Castle Amber (Chateau d' Amberville) into the background of my 'Old Earth' campaign world setting. The mist shrouded countryside estate crosses its dimensional borders into the  far future only to draw in adventurers within its confine due to the wizard-noble Stephen Amber (Etienne d'Amberville) on his relatives for murdering him. The adventure has plenty of connections to other Poe and Smith stories allowing the Chateau d' Amberville to become a multi dimensional location within my own home games. Story elements from the
'The Garden of Adompha' by  Clark Ashton Smith can become interwoven into the adventure back drop of X2.Thus giving the Etienne d'Amberville a standing along with other Clark Ashton Smith wizards in a tradition of the Dying Earth series by Jack Vance.


Chateau d' Amberville could be used as an adventure way point allowing adventurers from multiple retroclone game settings to crossover into the grounds & adventure plot of the module. Thus adventurers from Dark Albion might be rubbing elbows or blows with adventurers from Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea especially within the second edition of that game. Make no mistake this is a nasty little module & easily modified to handle the sheer Smithian weirdness that players bring to the table. The resources of the Chateau d' Amberville easily make it too tempting of a target in the French countryside for any adventurer. The magick of the place could easily turn the tide of battle in the upcoming Rose War of  Albion. Could there be some strange connection down in the DYI Adventure module  Dungeon of the Unknown to the Chateau d' Amberville?
Really only time will tell folks!


I can also see Chateau d' Amberville being a thorn in the side of any players as it connects itself across space and time to the Isle of the Unknown by Geoffrey McKinney . The astrological connections alone are already worked into the adventure itself on several levels. Each time the players visit the Chateau d' Amberville it resets itself as its curse continues its eternal cycles. It might be only a matter of time before the Chateau d' Amberville appears on the horizon of one of my campaigns once again.