Character Workshop & Loose On The Streets Of Olathoe Session Report

So last night I got together with friends to have a character workshop using Adventurer,Conqueror, King & Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea second edition. Character workshops enable me to make sure the players are all on the same page with their PC's.



All of the players are extensively experienced Dungeons & Dragons players who have played a number of editions over their time in the hobby of table top gaming. So the ACKS Player's Companion From  Autarch  & the Guns of War supplement wasn't unfamiliar to them. PC's were set up rather quickly & equipment was bought. The PC's were off to the lands of Lomar amid the dire & dark streets of many-templed Olathoe.



Methought the world was bound with final frost:
The sun, made hueless as with fear and awe,
Illumined still the lands it could not thaw.
Then on my road, with instant evening crost,
Death stood, and in its dusky veils enwound,
Mine eyes forgot the light, until I came
Where poured the inseparate, unshadowed flame
Of phantom suns in self-irradiance drowned.

Death lay revealed in all its haggardness:
Immitigable wastes horizonless;
Profundities that held nor bar nor veil;
All hues wherewith the suns and worlds were dyed
In light invariable nullified;
All darkness rendered shelterless and pale.

White Death  (1912)  by Clark Ashton Smith

Many-templed Olathoe has returned along with the long mystery shrouded glens of the lands of  Lomar under the bloated sun of a far future world of 'Old Earth. The planet has moved on but the stars are not quite right for the Old Ones return. Mankind's city states  has uneasy truce with the Hyperboreans & subterranean empire of the realm of K'n-yan. For they ruled the Earth for a while but human kind proves to be far more resilient to these peoples then they thought. Mankind's works have been cast down but old ways of technology & super science persist in the human city states. Barbarianism is the rule & the sway of the sword along with magick sways the day.


Many-templed Olathoe is a city of 30,000 Hyperboreans at the height of their magical & occult technological progress. Mankind reached for the stars & fumbled whist he has the solar system along with some far flung colonies these are tedious holds at best. The coming of Hyperborea in the night sky & Saturn visible at night looming above the Earth has caused much destruction.


'Old Earth' is on the mend but there is a growing feeling that other more dangerous alien gods are returning as well. The land of Lomar is an agricultural & sea based society with human Viking second class citizens making up 20,000 mercenary troops, fishermen, tradesmen, & more. Olathoe uses fungal based food stuffs, geothermal power, & other high technological tactics to feed its citizens. In the shadow of  the mountains  Noton & Kadiphonek many temples dedicated to Tsathoggua, Nodens, & a host of other gods stand among the marbled streets.

""Lomar was home to the city of Olathoë, described in the story "Polaris"by HP Lovecraft:

Still and somnolent did it lie, on a strange plateau in a hollow between strange peaks. Of ghastly marble were its walls and its towers, its columns, domes, and pavements. In the marble streets were marble pillars, the upper parts of which were carven into the images of grave bearded men.^[9]

Later in the story the plateau is identified as Sarkis, and the mountains as Noton and Kadiphonek."

This is a world where the atomic rocket jockeys of the human city states bring cargo & much needed medicines from the human colonies. But also take the rare & exotic 'Old Earth' wares to the Outer Worlds, these delicate relationships are in peril with the awakening of the powers of far older & alien things then the Earth governments can imagine.


But right now Olathoë is greater danger from the tribes of inhuman raiders perched right outside their doors. The city has survived a raiding attack of incredible destruction as the PC's have just arrived.
The PC's are given a mission to carry a letter in code to the city watch by a mysterious set of travelers. A strange barbarian warrior accompanied them & seemed to guard the adventurers on this strange quest.
They were suddenly attacked by three gargoyles of leer continence & horrid violence. They managed to lay arrows into the monsters & destroy them but their barbarian chaperone was laid low by horrid wounds. The party's bard managed to heal the poor bastard & gained a reward in gold.

What happens next?! Tune in next week folks!