Actual Session Report Part II - A Sword & Sorcery Hundred Years War, Dark Albion, & More Classic X2 Castle Amber By Tom Moldvay ( sort of)

"A desperate sorceress, a land wracked by war, & a very dangerous war open gateways better left closed. 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."


The players in last week's game was a follow up to one of the most dangerous session reports I've dungeon mastered . This is a follow up session report for last week's game session. The  tower of the sorceress Istarelle exists across time  & space leering its shadow into Avalon,  Averoigne during 1940 & 1337 at the start of the Hundred Years War, & even beyond. The PC's have been smuggled in during the occupation of 1940 as consultants & occult trouble shooters to the French resistance.  The players had made their way through the tower after encountered a number of Nazi group #12 soldiers who were running from something? What they encountered was the chaos mutated warriors of  the  Breton Ankou .

"This character is reported by Anatole Le Braz, a 19th-century writer and collector of legends. Here is what he wrote about the Ankou in his best-seller The Legend of Death:

The Ankou is the henchman of Death (oberour ar maro) and he is also known as the grave yard watcher, they said that he protects the graveyard and the souls around it for some unknown reason and he collects the lost souls on his land. The last dead of the year, in each parish, becomes the Ankou of his parish for all of the following year. When there has been, in a year, more deaths than usual, one says about the Ankou:

– War ma fé, heman zo eun Anko drouk. ("On my faith, this one is a nasty Ankou.")

"There are many tales involving Ankou, who appears as a man or skeleton wearing a cloak and wielding a scythe, and in some stories he is described as a shadow, often atop a cart for collecting the dead. He is said to wear a black robe with a large hat which conceals his face.^[1] According to some^[who?], he was the first child of Adam and Eve. Other versions have it that the Ankou is the first dead person of the year (though he is always depicted as adult, and male), charged with collecting the others' souls before he can go to the afterlife.^{[citation needed]} He is said to drive a large, black coach pulled by four black horses; accompanied by two ghostly figures on foot."

The characters dispatched any warriors they came across. The PC's hid as they heard the sound of tiny tinkling bells & the sound of a creaking old wagon wheels. Two strange death like ghostly figures grabbed two of the soldiers & yanked the soldier's souls from their bodies.
The PC's ran from the tower & straight into the woods surrounding the place right into Averoigne  in Albion. Averoigne is a  'region in France, heavily forested — located somewhere between Tours and Moulins; a "main highway" between those two cities goes through it (The End of the Story, Clark Ashton Smith)




The player's PC's got a chance to interview a few of the Nazi soldiers who had seen the  Breton Ankou. The freeing of the  Breton Ankou allows other chaos based horrors to grow bold enough to escape the confines of Fairyland. A band of chaos infected 3rd level human warriors trapped since Roman times is not out of the question. These infected might be the former chaos cult of  the  Breton Ankou. Trapped for all eternity to do the bidding of this demonic monster of death & destruction. Two resources that were key to  this game  are Dark Albion  & Dark Albion Cults of Chaos. The player's PC's sought the lychgates where the  Breton Ankon's tomb was in fairyland. Instead they found themselves facing the Castle Amber (or Château d'Amberville).


The PC's began to comb through the manor & there were some really choices to make. Within about 3 hours the PC's ran smack into an Avalon Inquisition crew & there was an exchange of arrows & some small gun fire.  The PC's are trying to reach the secret occult & laboratory of Stephen  d'Amberville. What will happen to them?! In the meantime here's the complete cycle of Clark Ashton Smith's  Averoigne

• Beast of Averoigne, The (1933)
• Colossus of Ylourgne, The (1933)
• Disinterment of Venus, The (1934)
• Enchantress of Sylaire, The (1941)
• End of the Story, The (1930)
• Holiness of Azédarc, The (1933)
• Maker of Gargoyles, The (1932)
• Mandrakes, The (1933)
• Mother of Toads (1934)
• Rendezvous in Averoigne, A (1931)
• Satyr, The (1931) [Variant Conclusion to "The Satyr"]

Will the player's characters survive?!