Beyond The Barrier of Time - King Arthur, Venger Satanis's Cha'alt, & The Chaos & Blood of The Hundred Years War

In the desire of welded lips,
Of heart on prone tumultuous heart,
Abides no stronger thing than this
Dread love that keeps our lips apart.

Between us lies an ancient fear;
Before me, in thy troubled eyes,
A shadow flees as flees the nymph,
Tremulous with the faun's surprise.

Hard silence like a stifling hand
Withholds the word we fain would say;
Over us lies the dreamt caress
Transfixèd with a dear dismay.

When shall the passion of the faun
Resistless in my heart arise,
And take the warm and trembling nymph
That flees within thy startled eyes ?

The Barrier  (1923) 

by Clark Ashton Smith

There sometimes seems to be an rpg market place momentum for certain corners of the OSR gaming scene. I've been doing a lot of tossing around some very OSR & O5R ideas over the last couple of days. Having been out on the road with sewing machine repair work I've had little time to check in on a few events going around the OSR & Kickstarter. Venger Satanis's Cha'alt kickstarter has been on going for sometime now. Its a post apocalyptic cum fantasy table top adventure campaign setting book.  & yes I do think you should check it out & support it. Now while this is a gonzo setting how do you incorporate such a setting into a traditional Dungeons & Dragons game or a another OSR game such as Rpg Pundit Lion & Dragon 
Well, while Lion & Dragon takes place within the Dark Albion universe & during the Rose War. I've really plumped the depths of that conflict & over the years I've linked several universal events that tie back into the Rose War. One of these is the fact that the Hundred Years War proceeded it. You can think of the Hundred Years War as the prequel setting for the Rose War.



The Hundred Years War is one of the most dynamic periods of warfare in human history & one of the times when a very solid percentage of the Earth's population died, Since Albion happens in real time this same sequence happened here ; 

The Hundred Years' War was a series of conflicts waged from 1337 to 1453 by the House of Plantagenet, rulers of the Kingdom of England, against the French House of Valois, over the right to rule the Kingdom of France. Each side drew many allies into the war. It was one of the most notable conflicts of the Middle Ages, in which five generations of kings from two rival dynasties fought for the throne of the largest kingdom in Western Europe. The war marked both the height of chivalry and its subsequent decline, and the development of strong national identities in both countries.

Tensions between the crowns of France and England can be traced back to the origins of the English royal family itself, which was French (Norman, and later, Angevin) in origin. For this reason, English monarchs had historically held not only the English Crown, but also titles and lands within France, the possession of which made them vassals to the kings of France. The status of the English King's French fiefs was a major source of conflict between the two monarchies throughout the Middle Ages. French monarchs systematically sought to check the growth of English power, stripping away lands as the opportunity arose, particularly whenever England was at war with Scotland, an ally of France. Over the centuries, English holdings in France had varied in size, at some points dwarfing even the French royal domain; by 1337, however, only Gascony was left to the English.

In 1316, a principle was established denying women succession to the French throne (later retroactively attributed to the ancient Salic law). In 1328, Charles IV of France died without sons or brothers. His closest male relative was his nephew Edward III of England, whose mother, Isabella of France, was sister of the deceased King. Isabella claimed the throne of France for her son, but the French rejected it, maintaining that Isabella could not transmit a right she did not possess. Furthermore, political sentiment favoured a Frenchman for the crown rather than a foreign prince. The throne passed instead to Philip, Count of Valois, a patrilineal cousin of Charles IV, who would become Philip VI of France, the first king of the House of Valois. The English had not expected their claim to meet with success, and did not press the matter when it was denied. However, disagreements between Philip and Edward induced the former to confiscate the latter's lands in France, and in turn prompted Edward III to reassert his claim to the French throne.

Several overwhelming English victories in the war—especially at Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt—raised the prospects of an ultimate English triumph, and convinced the English to continue pouring money and manpower into the war over many decades. However, the greater resources of the French monarchy prevented the English kings from ever completing the conquest of France. Starting in 1429, decisive French victories at Orléans, Patay, Formigny, and Castillon concluded the war in favour of the House of Valois, with England permanently losing most of its possessions on the continent." During the Rose War there were war, famine, drought, earthquakes, plagues, floods,&  tempests along with strange occult events that flowed across Europe like the hand of the Devil. The 1300 AD event  is a bit of climate event evidence that ties in with this. What if the weaponized occult weather related  1300 AD events were the last push of the forces of Chaotic Elves & Fairy gods trying to take back their world?

In Albion they did just that, the events of King Arthur's history were real & there were various powerful families of the Fey witches in Avalon. These families sought to bring the ancient Pagan gods back to dominance but all of the while played a bloody game of occult chess among themselves. The Le Feys, The Morgauses, etc were the names for a variety of powerful families that existed up through the Rose War. They wielded powerful magicks & occult forces in games of dominance, blood, & dust in the back corners of history. 


War, plague, & famine are the perfect cover for adventurers & mercenaries to cross from one world to another. There have always been weak points & doorways in the fabric of space time especially in certain sacred  areas of Mystara & Greyhawk. 



So what does this have to do with  Venger Satanis's Cha'alt kickstarter ? Everything as certain alien gods & dire forces of the setting take full advantage of the chaos of the Hundred Years War to snatch certain key individuals from Albion Greyhawk & even Mystara. The fog of war offers the dungeon master the perfect opportunity to put together. 

her a mixed party of old school & OSR adventurers by taking full advantage of the situation. Clark Ashton Smith's  Averoigne stories are based in a relatively mundane (for Smith) province in medieval France & so offer the perfect venue to put down such mercen erm adventurers into the middle of the events of history. We already know that there's been a clear cut connection between Greyhawk & the mythological legends of King Arthur. But the points of actual cross over are murky at best & possibly outright legend in some places. Is there a possible blood connection between Arthur's blood line & some of the gods of Greyhawk?
Some of the knightly orders of Greyhawk reveal some worldly parallels between Greyhawk & the Earth of Arthur's time.

 

So during the lead up of the Hundred Years war there were literally thousands of mercenary companies raiding & pillaging across Europe. This is the perfect opportunity to loot & pillage the countryside. But player's PC's could find themselves in far more dangerous realities then they were expecting with adventure right around the corner. The players are not going to be expecting the nasty surprises coming straight out of the annals of history! We've got more coming up explaining the deeper connections in Europe during the Hundred Years War including more on the Holy Grail & its deep connections to the misconceptions about its roll during the war!