Wednesday, January 8, 2020

Lovecraftian Serpentmen & Canyons - Cha'alt & Adventurer, Conqueror, King Rpg Adventure Encounter With OSR & Old School Systems


With literal hours remaining in the Cha'alt: Fuchsia Malaise kickstarter. I wanted to turn my cold remedy soaked brain to Grand Canyon National Park . This works very well with my Cha'alt/Godbound campaign. 

 Not the real one but the 1903 serpent  men lost colony & city that exists within the Grand Canyon. The colony is the last place where a crop of 'white Zoth' exists. White Zoth allows the posessor to create double & triple the crop of the  
drug, xanthium-183, is known to many on Cha'alt as fuchsia malaise. This white Malaise is worth 200,000 gold pieces bag & highly coveted by wizards because it allows the wizard to artificially raise their level for 1d200 days while the occult power courses through their veins. 

With the coming of the Cha'alt wave & warp, the lords of Elysium have taken to haunting their old Earth locations. The ancient & beloved home of the alien overlords is deep within the Grand Canyon of Earth. 

Right now there's an on going war within the Grand Canyon between several alien factions for control of the former serpent men city. Flying saucers buzz the Canyon & alien wizards have been crushed under the heels of a native American god of death.
All of this activity has unleashed the purple fog of power that once emminated from the sacred Canyon.


Reaper snakeman champion is available here.
 The inspiration for my campaign version of a serpent man.

Only recently have the lich kings of Yig begun to rise from the mummfied niches of their ancient ancestral home. The occult power has awakened them & they don't like the alien tresspassers within their city. What the invaders don't realize is the fact that there are other cities scattered throughout the Canyon.
Yig itself stirs in the bowels of the inner Earth!
"
It seems that Yig, the snake-god of the central plains tribes—presumably the primal source of the more southerly Quetzalcoatl or Kukulcan—was an odd, half-anthropomorphic devil of highly arbitrary and capricious nature. He was not wholly evil, and was usually quite well-disposed toward those who gave proper respect to him and his children, the serpents; but in the autumn he became abnormally ravenous, and had to be driven away by means of suitable rites. That was why the tom-toms in the Pawnee, Wichita, and Caddo country pounded ceaselessly week in and week out in August, September, and October; and why the medicine-men made strange noises with rattles and whistles curiously like those of the Aztecs and Mayas.

Yig's chief trait was a relentless devotion to his children—a devotion so great that the redskins almost feared to protect themselves from the venomous rattlesnakes which thronged the region. Frightful clandestine tales hinted of his vengeance upon mortals who flouted him or wreaked harm upon his wriggling progeny; his chosen method being to turn his victim, after suitable tortures, to a spotted snake.
In the old days of the Indian Territory, the doctor went on, there was not quite so much secrecy about Yig. The plains tribes, less cautious than the desert nomads and Pueblos, talked quite freely of their legends and autumn ceremonies with the first Indian agents, and let considerable of the lore spread out through the neighbouring regions of white settlement. The great fear came in the land-rush days of '89, when some extraordinary incidents had been rumoured, and the rumours sustained, by what seemed to be hideously tangible proofs. Indians said that the new white men did not know how to get on with Yig, and afterward the settlers came to take that theory at face value. Now no old-timer in middle Oklahoma, white or red, could be induced to breathe a word about the snake-god except in vague hints. Yet after all, the doctor added with almost needless emphasis, the only truly authenticated horror had been a thing of pitiful tragedy rather than of bewitchment. It was all very material and cruel—even that last phase which had caused so much dispute." 

Written 1928, published November 1929 in Weird Tales,
Volume 14, Number 5, Pages 625-36.



The children of Yig have begun to awaken hoards of undead warriors & skeletons whose remains dot the canyon. These have been attacked any adventurers who have been foolish to wander into certain forbidden areas of the canyon. There are rumors among the Cha'alt rabble, Nevv'ada rebel forces, & the scavengers who have sided with the Canyoners that there is another force in the form of the 'Master'. 

Skeleton warriors Reaper Miniatures 

There are two very different source of external Dungeons & Dragons & OSR goodness that I'd use for this adventure encounter. One is 
X4: "Master of the Desert Nomads" (1983), by David "Zeb" Cook, which is very easy to convert. This module has several NPC forces that can be converted to be used as one of the other worldly factions after the 'White Zoth'. 


The army of nomads is threatening to overrun the Canyon & its surrounding environs! They have come from off world through the Cha'alt rift. The setting offers some unique opportunities for the nomads to engage in raids & possibly resettle the Canyon for themselves. Because of the very diverse & dangerous nature of the Grand Canyon the other book I'd use is Adventurer, Conqueror, King's Lairs & Encounters. 


This is the perfect book to help fill in many of the other worldly locations & other areas that your player's PC's are likely to run into middle of a sandbox or location point crawl in the middle of such a setting. The fact that mant of the monsters are stand out encounters that count as adventures unto themselves is a bonus! The battles for the Grand Canyon are likely to be some of the most dangerous of the Cha'alt wave conflict.




You can support
 
the Cha'alt: Fuchsia Malaise
kickstarter here! 

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