The Deodanth Gamit & The Free Swords & Wizardry Book J. Miskimen's Ruins of Arduin

So last night I was sitting around with DM Steve at the usual watering hole & we were going over my notes for the upcoming Las Vagas Godbound/Cha'alt game. He's thumbing through Cha'alt & comes in with there's too many God damn Elves in this game! And this starts us off on a discussion about original Dungeons & Dragons & Advanced Dungeons's PC Elven race. This gets us involved in our running through Judge's Guild's Portals of Tosh in high school & our party of adventurers had escaped through a teleportation device! We found ourselves on a world of humans & lizardmen with a smattering of humanoid races. There's two towns one lizard man & one human plus the wizard lizard's tower. Just outside of the wizard lizard's tower is where we encounter them!  The most evil race of nasties this side of bloody,bloody, Arduin. We had encountered a Deodanth war party.
 The Deodanths are a race of chaotic evil undead, demonic, Elven/catmen race  created as a biological weapon from the  far future by an unknown power. They have been sent back or escaped back in time to the Arduin campaign setting/multiverse.


Deodanth concept art by Greg Espinosa for the Arduin Monster Cards,1977

We never got to complete Judge's Guild's Portals of Tosh  & instead our party of adventurers  got slaughtered, tortured for days, the Elves in our party were killed to a man, & some of the human's organs were taken for trophies. Now why had this happened?! Well its probably because certain clitches within the players were taking Elven PC's for almost every game cycle.
My uncle at that point had had it with the PC Elves & wanted some variety in his games. Or perhaps he just wanted to wipe out the cocky kids once in awhile using Arduin. Now if I was going to run Arduin then I'd want to run it smooth, simple, & OSR quick. That brings me to  J. Miskimen's Ruins of Arduin. This is a Swords & Wizardry homage to the original Arduin & its free! Completly  compatible with Swords & Wizardry, fast, its free, & its very easy to use!


Now lately I've been getting a lot of flack because supposedly I haven't been supporting Castles & Crusades. This is utter drek & not true at all. For the Castles & Crusades crowd that wants to use a Deodanth hit squad I recommend the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition states over at the Underworld Cleaning Service blog from 2012. 

In my experience Deodanths are truly nasty customers & should never be underestimated in any way,shape, or form. But are they going into my current campaign? Well of course! I've also got an encounter written up for the upcoming game! 


Deodanth with trophy head available from Emperor's Choice Games here. 

Bloody, bloody, Arduin forever!