'The Fermi Paradox',Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea's The Mystery At Port Greely By Jeffrey Talanian & D1-2: "Descent into the Depths of the Earth" (1981) by Gary Gygax.

"Until about three years ago, the peculiar town of Port Greely was renowned as a prolific exporter of crustaceans. Then the Greely lobstermen severed all ties with outside partners. Subsequent attempts at renegotiation were shunned.

More recently, a small group of Fishmongers’ Guild representatives from the City-State of Khromarium has gone missing in Port Greely, and answers have been less than forthcoming. At present, the Guild seeks answers. It wants to know what became of its representatives, and it wishes to re-establish its lucrative partnership with the Port Greely lobstermen. Your party have been contracted to help resolve The Mystery at Port Greely."



Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea The Mystery At Port Greely By Jeffrey Talanian  is one of my favorite AS&SH adventures. The adventure ends on a very Weird Tales note. It was based on H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow over Innsmouth.  If you haven't read it I highly suggest that you do before running this adventure. I don't suggest that you read this H.P. Lovecraft story if your gonna play this adventure.


Although rejected by the magazine during Lovecraft's lifetime,
The Shadow over Innsmouth was reprinted in Weird Tales in 1942

It doesn't take much to start me back down the road of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea The Mystery At Port Greely. It got me thinking about Clark Ashton Smith, 'The Fermi paradox', & D1-2: "Descent into the Depths of the Earth" (1981) by Gary Gygax.

"The Fermi paradox, named after Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi, is the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy and high estimates of their probability, such as those that result from optimistic choices of parameters in the Drake equation"

The Atlanteans in AS&SH suffered a fate I fear that was outlined in the Fermi paradox. Many of the techno occult artifacts in AS&SH were produced by the Atlanteans. AS&SH Deep Ones could well be the thieves of their knowledge,power, occult supremacy, etc. My thinking is given the Green Death plague wiping out almost all of the empire of  Atlantis & its holdings this has given the Deep Ones a very large toe hold on Hyperborea.
The material in "Shrine of the Kuo-Toa," the second adventure in this collection D1-2: "Descent into the Depths of the Earth" (1981) by Gary Gygax reminds me in many ways of Clark Ashton Smith's Poseidonis cycle. According to the D1-2: "Descent into the Depths of the Earth" Drivethrurpg entry; 
"D1-2: "Descent into the Depths of the Earth" (1981), by Gary Gygax, is a collection of two previous adventures. The collection appeared in 1981 after the final copies of the original adventures had gone out of print. The intent was to upgrade the older modules to match the new trade dress of Q1: "Queen of the Demonweb Pits" (1980)."
This loose adventure convention style collection by Mr.Gygax is perfect to mold into your home campaign setting. Its one of the things I love about  D1-2: "Descent into the Depths of the Earth".


Smith's Poseidonis is "the last isle of foundering Atlantis" part of the cycle of the 'Great Old Ones' seasons of destruction. But the end is not a quiet one at all. CAS makes this last sinking outpost Atlantis a rather dangerous set of locations were nothing is as it seems. Here's the complete Poseidonis  Cycle: 

• Atlantis (1912)
• Death of Malygris, The (1933)
• Double Shadow, The (1933)
• Last Incantation, The (1930)
• Muse of Atlantis, The (1922)
• Tolometh (1958)
• Vintage from Atlantis, A (1933)
• Voyage to Sfanomoe, A (1931)

There's a definitive menace that hangs over the whole of both Smith's Poseidonis & D1-2: "Descent into the Depths of the Earth".  The empire & adventure locations depicted in D1-2 could be used as a stand in for the Deep One's glorious holdings. That brings up the dangerous carbmen of AS&SH. We're gonna get a lot of detail when later this year Chainsaw's adventure The Lost Treasure of Atlantis hits the stands in January of this coming year.
The crabmen & their cults  adventure present one of the threats to the technologies & military of the Deep Ones! The crabmen are alien & absolutely ruthless to humanity as well.


AS&SH art by Mick Fernette

How will this pane out?Well either way you slice it humanity is screwed unless there are forces on AS&SH that neither of these alien races knows anything about! 

WarmongerMiniatures Fishman 3
The Foundry Here 

Anyway your slicing this all of these resources add up to one Hell of a solid base for old school & OSR campaign.

Above its domes the gulfs accumulate.
Far up, the sea-gales blare their bitter screed:
But here the buried waters take no heed—
Deaf, and with welded lips pressed down by weight
Of the upper ocean. Dim, interminate,
In cities over-webbed with somber weed,
Where galleons crumble and the krakens breed,
The slow tide coils through sunken court and gate.

From out the ocean's phosphor-starry dome,
A ghostly light is dubitably shed
On altars of a goddess garlanded
With blossoms of some weird and hueless vine;
And, wingéd, fleet, through skies beneath the foam,
Like silent birds the sea-things dart and shine.
Clark Ashton Smith Atlantis 1912