1d7 Random Scared Martian Treasures of Vultoom Table For Your Old School Campaigns

 "Beneath the shifting red sands the ancient life stirs once again.The birth of an alien world right in Earth's back yard was both unexpected & horrific! Brand new life forms not seen in a thousand years once again roamed the red sands of ancient Mars! What treasures & horrors were unleashed? A new 'gold rush' has broken upon the fertile sands of Mars but this is no unguarded world. Old horrors & terrors have creeped back into the light of the red bloated sun of Earth! "

"At a time when your ancestors were still the blood-brothers of the ape, I fled from my own world to this intercosmic exile, banished by implacable foes. The Martians say that I fell from heaven like a fiery meteor; and the myth interprets the descent of my ether-ship. I found a matured civilization, immensely inferior, however, to that from which I came.

"The kings and hierarchs of the planet would have driven me away; but I gathered a few adherents, arming them with weapons superior to those of Martian science; and after a great war, I established myself firmly and gained other followers. I did not care to conquer Mars, but withdrew to this cavern-world in which I have dwelt ever since with my adherents. On these, for their faithfulness, I conferred a longevity that is almost equal to my own. To ensure this longevity, I have also given them the gift of a slumber corresponding to mine. They sleep and wake with me.

"We have maintained this order of existence for many ages. Seldom have I meddled in the doings of the surface-dwellers. They, however, have converted me into an evil god or spirit; though evil, to me, is a word without meaning.

"I am the possessor of many senses and faculties unknown to you or to the Martians. My perceptions, at will, can be extended over large areas of space, or even time. Thus I learned your predicament; and I have called you here with the hope of obtaining your consent to a certain plan. To be brief, I have grown weary of Mars, a senile world that draws near to death; and I wish to establish myself in a younger planet. The Earth would serve my purpose well. Even now, my followers are building the new ether-ship in which I propose to make the voyage."

Vulthoom

Clark Ashton Smith

 

The ancient war has started again, Vultoom has awoken and sent his treasures out into the solar system. Those who spread his 'word' scatter 'his' artifacts throughout the dimensions spreading his presence as they go. Scattered Martian priests & clerics have also awoken at the same time treading their way across the 'Old Solar' system warning of his coming armies. Outlaws & adventurers fools that they be pick up, use, spread, and convert to the ways of the ancient alien Martian 'god'. Here are only a sampling of some of the sacred & dangerous wares of the old god.

1d20 Random Scared Martian Treasures of Vultoom

1.  Shaped bark Paste  of the Loops Trees - This strange half fossilized bark can be broken down & ground into a paste of alchemical properties. The bark heals 1d8 points of damage & can restore 1d20 years of youth to a user. Worth 67,000 gold pieces 
2.  Amulet of Vultoom - A lead like metal amulet that glows with the scared life giving energies of the 'Old One' it will cause plants & animals to grow to three or four times their normal size. Worth 70,000 gold pieces. 
3. Seeds of the Ancient Ones - Grows 1d20 lost alien Martian species of plants with weird properties. Often used to mark the bounds of the cult of the Old Ones of Mars. These plants have the property of threading & creating neural networks through the minds of those that inhale their spores. Victims become followers of Vultoom and carry his word & gospel to the masses. These seeds can also yield 1d8 life bearing fruits that will restore 1d7 hit points to their users. 
4. Wrist bracer weapons of Vultoom - A living Martian plant cross bow like weapon system worn on the wrist that does 2d6 points of damage as it projects a ball of plasma within a 30 foot radius of the user. The thing has only five shot a day and anyone wearing them is identified as belonging to the plant god thing. 
5. Dog Seeds - These seeds will sprout 1d6 six legged dog things of Vultoom within sixty minutes. AC 5 Hit Points 7 Damage 1d6 +3 which are under the command of the owner for 1d6 months. These seeds are often found in the desert temples of Vultoom. Worth 60,000 gold pieces for one of these pieces
6.  Vases of Valus The Wise - These vases contain the distilled essence of one of the greatest of Vultooms Martian teachers Valus The Wise. They are sought out by druids & the like for they add 3 points of wisdom to the minds of those who inhale the 'sacred spores' gaining a portion of the alien mind of the ancient wise man in all matters of gardening, herbalism, and botany. 
7. Runner Shelters - These strange alien plant like biomechanical structures are contained in a weird plant like base that sprouts into a temporary shelter with 1d8 pieces of 'food', running water, & the place will protect the owner from adverse conditions, the elements, and provide 1d8 beds. Within 1d8 months after activation the 'Runner shelter' will grow into a fully formed temple of Vultoom. 

The Lovecraftian Connections Of The Free Issue Of Fantastic Story Quarterly 1951 Winter v02n01 To The 'Old Solar System' Campaign Setting

This was one of the successor reprint pulp magazines to the original runs. There were a number of these magazines after the original pulps houses closed down or evolved into animals on the wilds of the news stands. Many of these issues had a bit of the HP Lovecraft circle of writers in the background of the magazine. Perfect Appendix N fodder. What's this got to do with Dungeons & Dragons? Quite  a bit folks, the science fantasy aspect was hot as many stories were inspired by the various Fantastic Story Quarterly's stable of writers including Gordon R. Dickson's first sale, "Trespass", and stories by Walter M. Miller & Richard Matheson"  




You can read the whole history of Fantastic Story Magazine here. 
What made Fantastic Story different was Ned Pines who was in many ways a visionary behind the scenes comic book & science fiction magazine publisher. If your into public domain comic books & super heroes then the name Ned Pines comes up frequently.
"Fantastic Story Quarterly was a pulp science fiction magazine, published from 1950 to 1955 by Best Books, a subsidiary imprint of Standard Magazines. The name was changed with the Summer 1951 issue to Fantastic Story Magazine. It was launched to reprint stories from the early years of the science fiction pulp magazines, and was initially intended to carry no new fiction, though in the end every issue contained at least one new story. It was sufficiently successful for Standard to launch Wonder Story Annual as a vehicle for more science fiction reprints, but the success did not last. In 1955 it was merged with Standard's Startling Stories. Original fiction in Fantastic Story included Gordon R. Dickson's first sale, "Trespass", and stories by Walter M. Miller and Richard Matheson" 
Ned Pines connection to Fantastic Story magazine is interesting because of the direction he pushed the publication  in;" In 1936, Ned Pines of Beacon Publications bought Wonder Stories from Gernsback.^[3] Pines changed the title to Thrilling Wonder Stories,^[4] and in 1939 and 1940 added two more sf titles: Startling Stories and Captain Future.^[5][6] Pines had acquired reprint rights to the fiction published in Wonder Stories as part of the transaction, and he instituted a "Hall of Fame" department in Startling Stories to carry some of this material. Captain Future also carried reprint material, but neither Startling nor Captain Future had room for some of the longer stories in the backfile. At the end of the 1940s a boom in science fiction magazines encouraged Pines to issue a new magazine, titled Fantastic Story Quarterly, as a vehicle for reprinting this older material. The original plan was for the magazine to carry no new fiction, but this policy was changed shortly before publication, and at least one new story was included in every issue." 

That brings me to our issue for free download

Fantastic Story Quarterly v02n01 (1951 Winter)

 

  This issue is pivotal to my campaign because it contains not one but three of the H.P. Lovecraft circle of writers. Endo Binder has his novel 'The Enslaved Brains' in this issue in the far future of an alternative 1973, this novel smacks of Great Race of Yith technology gone awry. 


Clark Ashton Smith details his "Captain Volmar"novel A Captivity in Serpens (1931, also known as The Amazing Planet) which has some awesome action as Captain Volmar leads a crew of space explorers  on the ether-powered ship Alcyone.  I've already talked about the connections between The Great Race of Yith, Forbidden Planet, and Captain Volmar here.But 'The Museum' by Frank Belknap Long is a whole other matter. This story services a perfect bridge gap between the Mythos and traditional science fantasy adventures. The concept is about a museum which alters its visitors and staff into alien life forms shapes ala polymorph spell technologies.  Perhaps your adventurers might work for the staff on a few expeditions across time & space. Again this sounds very similar to Great Race of Yith technologies. HP Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time contains many of the technologies described in these stories implied or within the background of the novella.  

 "Stephen Marlowe (born Milton Lesser, August 7, 1928 in Brooklyn, New York, died February 22, 2008 (aged 79), in Williamsburg, Virginia) was an American author of science fiction, mystery novels, and fictional autobiographies of Christopher Columbus, Miguel de Cervantes, and Edgar Allan Poe. He is best known for his detective character Chester Drum, whom he created in the 1955 novel The Second Longest Night. Lesser also wrote under the pseudonyms Adam Chase, Andrew Frazer, C.H. Thames, Jason Ridgway, Stephen Wilder andEllery Queen.

Lesser attended the College of William & Mary, earning his degree in philosophy, marrying Leigh Lang shortly after graduating. The couple divorced in 1962. He was drafted into the United States Army during the Korean War"  

Stephen Marlowe wrote under his given name of Milton Lesser and is better known today for his detective fiction then his science fiction creations. In this issue his work on 'When Flame Globes Dance' is perfect fodder for an alien menace on one of the asteroid belt in the 'Old Solar System'. Perhaps these were artificial life form creations left behind by Hyperboreans many thousands of years before. Explorers should be very wary of them. Reign of the Reptiles by A.Connell is again exactly the sort of prehistoric weirdness that one could be finding when messing with time travel and alternative time lines. This novella first appeared in Wonder Stories v7 03. So what does all of this mean? Well  Fantastic Story Quarterly v02n01 (1951 Winter) could be used as a back Appendix S for my 'Old Solar' system campaign in which the PC's begin to suspect that there's far more to the background of the Great Race's time travel & alternative time line efforts. We really have no idea who created the time gateway from the classic original Star Trek Episode City On The Edge of Forever.  But the technology seems eerrily similar to the technologies used by Gary Seven including the Beta 5 computer hidden in his office in Apartment 12B at 811 East 68th Street in New York City. 

And some of the dimensional  travel, alien life forms,etc. described in the 'The Museum' by Frank Belknap Long. Are we really looking at the remains and door stops of the Great Race of Yith as it continues to poke and prod the little ape life forms that the Elder Things accidentally created so many centuries ago? Why? What does this all mean? It means that the war 'The Great Race of Yith' started  continues across many branches of alternative time and space.

This means that the Great Race or its agents could appear anywhere. The fact is that the giant machine from Forbidden Planet is only one of a vast array of mechanisms that have been designed for a slow war that has been fought for billions of years. The danger of the Great Race of Yith & its various branches of the Pnakotic brotherhood become evident. In the 'Old Solar system 'campaign setting there are literally thousands of Great Race mega dungeons scattered across the universe waiting for adventurers to find them. Those players who have played through Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea's Taken From Dunwichknow just how dangerous these bastards can be. 

The Errol Otus depiction of the Great Race of Yith from

the original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition

Deities & Demigods remains a personal favorite of mine.

The fact is that there are literally thousands of agents, facilities, & bases belonging to the Great Race scattered across time & space. They continue this horrid 'slow war' across a wide variety of alternative timelines and Earth with little regard for the safety and well being of anyone. 

  They're agents & the cult of the the Pnakotic brotherhood know the truth about the Flying Polyps & why the Mi Go have only the least warriors tending their hives in the Old Solar System. They know what waits in the darkness between the asteroids and its dire horrors only hinted about in this issue of Fantastic Stories. We'll get into that soon kids. Till next time keep those dice rolling!  Stay away from the nippers of the Great Race of Yith!

This post is not an attempt to violate the trade mark or copy right of the film  Forbidden Planet or Star Trek & its attendant properties.  The contents of this post are for entertainment & educational purposes only all writings are the copyright and trade mark of Dark Corner productions

Commentary On The Hyperborean Legacy Of Atlantis On The 'Old Mars' Campaign Setting

"Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars"
Robert Howard's Conan
Upon Hyperborea there are remnants & ruins of Old Earth's Atlantis but these are pale reflections of the glory and power of ancient empire. Scattered across space & time are the echoes of this once mighty nation. Now only the Deep Ones remain to claim the glory & power of this once great legacy or do they?


Throughout Hyperborea there are pockets & fully integrated populations of Deep Ones. They walk among mankind unnoticed and unchallenged. But there are rumors of older races of fish like men and aquatic peoples with gills who do not have the taint of the Deep Ones running through their veins nor hear the song of Tulu. Atlantis faced destruction & its colonies on 'Old Venus' & 'Old Mars' were their only hope of survival. Clark Aston Smith wrote about this in the Poseidonis cycle of stories. Poseidonis is the last remaining island of doomed Atlantis and there are hints in those stories that perhaps the Atlanteans adapted themselves to their watery environment.

• 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)

Throughout Lovecraft's Mythos stories there are hints about the Cthulhu cult & its world spanning organization that goes all the way back to the days of Atlantis perhaps even before. The Deep One's influence was felt all the way back to before the fall of Atlantis destroyed the mighty empire totally. The technologically advanced empire had pockets of mystery cults operating within various temples & woven into fabric of the worship of Dagon & Mother Hydra The Great Old Ones. Throughout the Atlantean empire there were renegade temples, mystery cults, proto-cults operating within the shadows of the technological achievements of the once mighty empire then turned decedent. Echoes of these can be seen within the Church of Starry Wisdom  & many of its later pre-mutations 

The thread of the Clthuhu cult continues well into the twentieth century & beyond if we except that Hyprborea is the far future of Earth. Dagon, Mother Hydra & the Great Old Ones continue their corruption well beyond the foundations laid down in Lovecraft's writing;
"men—at least, a certain sort of men; though the creatures were shown disporting like fishes in the waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic shrine which appeared to be under the waves as well... [T]hey were damnably human in general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to have been chiseled badly out of proportion with their scenic background; for one of the creatures was shown in the act of killing a whale represented as but little larger than himself"
Dagon"  by H. P. Lovecraft,  July 1910

But what about the Atlanteans themselves there were pockets of other Old Ones & Outer Gods worshiped throughout the empire and there is evidence that lots these entities preserved their little corners of Atlantis on the sea bottom.

"It is well that the reader accept nothing which follows as objective truth, for since the events transcend natural law, they are necessarily the subjective and unreal creations of my overtaxed mind. When I attained the conning tower I found the sea in general far less luminous than I had expected. There was no animal or vegetable phosphorescence about, and the city that sloped down to the river was invisible in blackness. What I did see was not spectacular, not grotesque or terrifying, yet it removed my last vestige of trust in my consciousness. For the door and windows of the undersea temple hewn from the rocky hill were vividly aglow with a flickering radiance, as from a mighty altar-flame far within."
The Temple HP Lovecraft 1920


Lovecraft wasn't the only writer who chronicled the survival of Atlanteans, in 1929 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote The Marcot Deep but you might know it by its Nineteen Seven Eight title Warlords of Atlantis.

In The Marcot Deep we have all of the classic elements of Warlords of Atlantis & more;

"The novel begins with preparations for the dive, off the coast of Africa. Prof. Maracot claims to have located the deepest trench in the Atlantic and is vehement that he shall go down in the specially prepared submersible actually a bathysphere along with Headley and Scanlan. On reaching the edge of the trench, a description of the undersea world is presented. The team comes face to face with a giant crustacean who cuts off their line and hurls them down into the trench. Down in the trench, the team is rescued by the Atlanteans who are the last survivors of the land that was Atlantis.

Although the description of Atlantis may not sound quite futuristic and may seem fantastic, the fact that the novel was written in 1929 should be taken into account. One device in particular is often made use of. This is a thought projector which visualizes the thoughts of a person for others to see. This helps the team and the Atlanteans to communicate.

Descriptions of work habits, culture and various sea creatures are provided. The Atlanteans forage for their food from the sea bed and their slaves, Greeks who are the descendants of the original slaves of the kingdom of Atlantis work in undersea mines. This is made possible thanks to an exceptionally strong and light transparent material which is fashioned into helmets to enable people to work underwater.

The team eventually uses the levity of these spheres to escape to the surface. Headley elopes with the daughter of Manda, leader of the Atlanteans.

In the later part of the novel, Headley describes the encounter with the Lord of the Dark Face, a supernatural being who led the Atlanteans to their doom and was the cause of untold miseries to humanity ever since. This being is likened to the Phoenician god Baal who was demonized by later religions and cultures.


The being is defeated by Prof. Maracot who becomes possessed by the spirit of Warda, the man who managed to convince a handful of Atlanteans to prepare for the worst and thus built an Ark which saved them from the cataclysm which destroyed their land."
You Can Download The Maracot Deep By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Here

We know that some of the Atlanteans escaped their doomed world and fled into the solar system some even settled on 'Old Mars'. They brought with them some of  their guardian animals, prehistoric monsters, & other life forms.  This was chronicled in Aelita, or The Decline of Mars is a 1923 science fiction novel by Russian author Aleksey Tolstoy. It was later filmed as a classic silent film in 1924. It is one of the first science fiction films from Russia but what does it have to do with Atlantis? There's a fantastic article by Den Valdron that places our  Russian Princess on Burroughs Mars. Originally Aelita's Martian colony is a survival of Atlantis.

We know that the Atlanteans & the Deep Ones were competing for the same natural resources, materials, & land areas  this made competition & infiltration inevitable.  This collision course would once again rear itself when on 'Old Earth' when in  3994 a group of Deep One tainted river pirates under the control of Captain Kordon, Queen of the River Pirates attempted to steal the treasure of the Moks the fire lances of the ancients. This happened near Norfolk Virginia in the Treasure of the Moks episode of Thundarr The Barbarian. Later near Mount Rushmore, South Dakota Thundarr & co. would tackle a group of  Atlanteans Amazons who had used Great Race time travel technology to cast their minds ahead in time. Their queen had her rule taken over by Stryia, a Deep One tainted evil witch. These forces appeared in the
Attack of the Amazon Women of Thundarr The excellent The World of Thundarr The Barbarian Sourcebook -- Final Version For Mutant Future contains a great version of Stryia and her underwater Amazons.
Both C.L. Moore & Leigh Brackett would use similar artifacts to connect their work with both Edgar Rice Burroughs & Robert Howard's King Kull of Atlantis. When in The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune King Kull's consciousness is almost drawn away into an alternative world someplace in the time stream.

"Then came a day when Kull seemed to catch glimpses of strange lands; there flitted across his consciousness dim thoughts and recognitions. Day by day he had seemed to lose touch with the world; all things had seemed each succeeding day more ghostly and unreal; only the man in the mirror seemed like reality. Now Kull seemed to be close to the doors of some mightier worlds; giant vistas gleamed fleetingly; the fogs of unreality thinned; “form is shadow, substance is illusion; they are but shadows” sounded as if from some far country of his consciousness. He remembered the wizard’s words and it seemed to him that now he almost understood — form and substance, could not he change himself at will, if he knew the master key that opened this door? What worlds within what worlds awaited the bold explorer?
The man in the mirror seemed smiling at him closer, closer — a fog enwrapped all and the reflection dimmed suddenly — Kull knew a sensation of fading, of change, of merging...
“Kull!” the yell split the silence into a million vibratory fragments!
Mountains crashed and worlds tottered as Kull, hurled back by the frantic shout, made a superhuman effort, how or why he did not know.

A crash, and Kull stood in the room of Tuzun Thune before a shattered mirror, mazed and half blind with bewilderment. There before him lay the body of Tuzun Thune, whose time had come at last, and above him stood Brule the Spear-slayer, sword dripping red and eyes wide with a kind of horror."

Does this mean that in fact the Barsoomians of 'Old Mars' are actually Atlanteans? Could the Deep Ones of Venus from ERB's Escape on Venus & numerous other 'Old Venus' science fantasy stories hint at a symbolic relationship between the humans & near humanoid races of the old solar system? I think so.


Leigh Brackett & C.L. Moore map out the relationship between the god like alien races that have their roots in HP Lovecraft & the Lovecraft circle's Mythos based mythology. Otis Albert Kline's Venus follows the same type of vein & there are Atlantean roots & ruins within his Planet Of Peril series.



The legacy of Atlantis can be seen throughout the Old Solar System & the influence of Atlantis echoes through out tradition of weird fiction and old school science fantasy gaming.

More To Come

This post is not an attempt to violate the copyrights or trademarks of any 
of the films nor properties named in this post. All ideas are for a 
private table top rpg campaign. None of the ideas or opinions expressed 
in this post are meant to violate the trademarks nor copy rights of any 
of the table top rpgs discussed nor are they in away responsible for the
 thoughts or opinions of the author. The writing, ideas, and opinions 
are copyrighted and trade marked to the author and Dark Corner 
productions. This post is for entertainment & educational purposes 
only. 

1d7 Random Dire Encounters With The Undead Table For Your Old School Campaigns

"In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental vision to weigh with patience and intelligence those isolated phenomena, seen and felt only by a psychologically sensitive few, which lie outside its common experience. Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal; that all things appear as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we are made conscious of them; but the prosaic materialism of the majority condemns as madness the flashes of super-sight which penetrate the common veil of obvious empiricism."
HP Lovecraft "The Tomb" - Written Jun 1917; first published in The Vagrant, No. 14 (March 1922)

There are those whose adventures cross the boundaries between realms of life & death. Those who are half way become a menace to all life. These beings are more monster in spirit then thought or deed. This makes them all the more dangerous. For theirs is a hunger that no mortal flesh can satisfy instead they hunger for the souls of human kind. That spark of life & youth is what they long for and they will do anything to satisfy that hunger which can never be. Adventurers, outlaws, & fools who cross the boundaries of life & death often encounter those who have crossed into this strange place of existence.

"There now ensued a series of incidents which transported me to the opposite extremes of ecstasy and horror; incidents which I tremble to recall and dare not seek to interpret."
HP Lovecraft


These are spirits caught between life & the cold dead Hells of the Outer Darkness. These spirits are dangerous in the extreme and should be viewed with extreme caution. There are often treasures or artifacts that these spirits might be bound to worth at least several thousand gold pieces. Many of these undead scum are level drainers or worse. These beings are often former adventurers who have become trapped in the reality rending horrors of the Outer Darkness.
1d7 Random Dire Encounters With The Undead Table 

1. A former Hyperborean traveler has run afoul of the most dire of liches. This being is a now a dangerous wight and consciously hunts those who cross into its demi plane domain. It often collects the valuables of its victims having about 6000 gold pieces within its lair. 
2. An Amazonin princess has subcombed to a round of ghoul plague and now hunts her former students. She loves to silently kill and eat her victims. She has a price of 20000 gold pieces on her head in two different realities. 
3. This being is a former cavern explorer who was caught in a strange pan dimensional gate accident. Now she hunts the caves and caverns of mankind. When she catches a victim she skins the fool. She uses ancient black magick to shape shift into her victims & then take on their lives. 
4. A black pool of goo is actually a level draining monster. She chooses  her victims due to acts of kindness and tries to murder them. She is only partially a part of this reality and is actually a ghost of very dangerous aspect. 
5. Shadow demon whose former soul was freed in a raid by a group of adventurers. She now stalks specific adventurers in order to them down for her dark masters. She has all of the terrible wraith of her demonic patrons & she hasn't left single coin or the treasure behind . 
6. A pit demon consumed the face of a former Hyperborean noblemen and now is the terrible tyrant of the myths & legends of the former royals She has stashed over 60,000 gold pieces in loot and treasure.
7. This former Hyperborean prince is now a lich of dangerous aspect and loves to kill those that cross his path. He loves to hunt those who use magick and cunning to evade the tricks and traps of the old monsters. This being loves the hunt more then anything plus he can use super science technology and relics to even the odds with his prey.

New OSR Lovecraftian Adventure Campaign Location - Olathoë The Eternal

When the stars started coming right & old Earth  began to grow weird & hoary in its ways. The skies were filled with the terrible light from the star Polaris & Aldebaran shone in the East was there a strange rending as the whole cloth of reality split open once again. The seas boiled & the land buckled as Olathoe in the land of Lomar came back into the world of man with a vengeance! The long lobed & inhuman Hyperboreans step back into the world of men as the words of ancient prophecy were once again on the lips of men.

“Slumber, watcher, till the spheres
Six and twenty thousand years
Have revolv’d, and I return
To the spot where now I burn.
Other stars anon shall rise
To the axis of the skies;
Stars that soothe and stars that bless
With a sweet forgetfulness:
Only when my round is o’er
Shall the past disturb thy door.”

The world was now a very different place as the long lobed Hyperboreans from came from Zobna, a land even further to the north borne by the Boreas winds to Earth. Humanity was not ready for these sorcerers, mystics, & wizards as a monstrous bloated Saturn hangs in the sky. The city of  Olathoe sits on Sarkis, between  the mountains of Noton and Kadiphonek. Adventurers will find them welcomed in the streets & markets of Olathoe. Most of the equipment & weapons of many of the retroclone systems are available the marble buildings of  Olathoe.

"Still and somnolent did it lie, on a strange plateau in a hollow between strange peaks. Of ghastly marble were its walls and its towers, its columns, domes, and pavements. In the marble streets were marble pillars, the upper parts of which were carven into the images of grave bearded men."

Polaris  (1918)  by Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Modern men of old Earth were not ready for the power of the men of Lomar & the bloodshed was fierce & the violence very heavy on both sides. Weapons, plagues, warfare, & worse remade the Earth many times as the seas boiled around the old world. People from the underground realm of K'n-yan unleashed many horrors upon the cities of men. Today it is a very different world as the silver sky birds of K'n-yan land in the fields outside the city proper. Men of Lomar rule over the humans who know their place & of the relics of super science protect them from the others who also returned with the Hyperboreans.
The hairy cannibal Gnophkehs came back to plague the people of Lomar. But the people from the underground realm of K'n-yan brought an image of the deity Tsathoggua to Lomar, where it was worshiped & granted protection from the terrible cannibals & far worse monsters in the aurora haunted nights.


There are whispered & terrible rumors of the Gnophkehs having truck with 'The Maux' through the wild cult of  Rhan-Tegoth & Ithaqua. The monsters travel & hunt in terrible packs able to rip a man to shreds in mere moments. The abominable things things that they do with the corpses can not be spoken about. They dwell near the ruins of the three black pyramids of Lu which none discuss. Only the pyramid of Bui has been retaken by the men & 
Hyperborean warriors. The cost was terrible & the temple of Nodens cult was able to take care of the survivors of the massacre. Only the Pnakotic Brotherhood has all of the answers but they have been strangely silent on some matters and very talkative on others leading to suspensions that they're hiding some forbidden pieces of information.
Travelers outside of Olathoe should beware the strange other planar and dimensional vortexes that plague the area. Men & adventurers are sometimes whisked to other worlds
These are said to rip men's souls from their bodies leaving drooling and idiotic living corpses. Those that survive the experience & are still thinking men do not speak of their experiences. Many do not survive the Gnophkehs who eat any and all they come across in rites too terrible to write about. Only the Voormis oppose them in hate & pure violence, it is a terrible & instinctive hate of old which happens in the Summer seasons. Humans are advised to seek not the mountain Noton for many have disappeared in these wars of the two races. No remains are ever found. 


 The hairy, long-armed, cannibal Gnophkehs



Frequency: Common 
No Appearing 2-10 (usually hunting in packs) 
Size: Large 
Alignment: Chaotic Evil 
Armor Class: 4
Movement:50
Dexterity:16
No Attacks: 1 (weapon or bite) 
Damage: 3d6+1 or per weapon
Hit Dice:9+1-2 
Saving Throw:15

Morale:9

Experience Points: 530

Treasure: S,T
Special: Capable of hurling boulders for 2-16 points of damage. 

These hairy cannibals love to bite large chunks of flesh from their prey. They are able to open their jaws twice the size of their faces get the maximum bite width from prey.

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1d7 Random Dangerous Alien & Weird Damned Souls Table For Your Old School Campaigns

There are echoes of ancient lost souls & civilizations that exist on the fringes of the world, places that no man can or should visit but adventurers & outlaws frequently trespass. These are alien places left over from from things & beings who have passed beyond the turn of the wheel. These beings have lost themselves to the darkness of time. Those who dally with such sites risk the anger of ancient gods & alien soul guardians 

"Now as the twilight's doubtful interval
Closes with night's accomplished certainty,
A wizard wind goes crying eerily,
And on the wold misshapen shadows crawl,
Miming the trees, whose voices climb and fall,
Imploring, in Sabbatic ecstacy,
The sky where vapor-mounted phantoms flee
From the scythed moon impendent over all.
Twin veils of covering cloud and silence, thrown
Across the movement and the sound of things,
Make blank the night, till in the broken west
The moon's ensanguined blade awhile is shown....
The night grows whole again....The shadows rest,
Gathered beneath a greater shadow's wings."

The Eldritch Dark  (1912)  by Clark Ashton Smith

Those who dare to cross in to the bounds of such places risk not only life & limb but their very existence & souls. Things from across space & time feel on the foolish, the unwary, and the stupid. Those adventurers who die in places caught between life, death, & the Outer Darkness become worse monsters. Beings whose very existence is one of damnation & unending horror. 
Anyone coming into contact with undead monsters such as these risk a curse of highly dangerous circumstance. Often this curse can take the form of an unending looping hell of repeating time in which the victim repeats their own actions that lead to their demise. The undead spirits and demonic entities that create such circumstances place their victims in these weird looping limbos to feed off of the very soul stuffs of their victims. Some victims can escape with a save vs death to realize the cold hell they find themselves in. 

These cold dead Hells are near the Outer Darkness where thousands of souls are trapped within 'weird time', this strange time exists outside of the normal flow of time crossing into the boundries of the 'real' at certain key points. Undead and alien ghosts often make their homes here feeding off the strange occult energies that such places produce. There are often strange & wily treasures in such places worth from 30,000 to 60,000 gold pieces to the right collectors of such occult & esoteric wares. But beware for many of these items are cursed and very dangerous.


Where mandrakes, crying from the moonless fen,
Told how a witch, with eyes of owl or bat,
Found, and each root maleficently fat
Pulled for her waiting cauldron, on my ken
Upstole, escaping to the world of men,
A vapor as of some infernal vat;
Across the stars it clomb, and caught thereat
As if their bright regard to veil again.

Despite the web, methought they knew, appalled,
The stealthier weft in which all sound was still. . . .
Then sprang, as if the night found breath anew
A wind whereby the stars were disenthralled. . . .
Far off, I heard the cry of frustrate ill,
A witch that wailed above her curdled brew.

Averted Malefice  (1912)  by Clark Ashton Smith

Here then are seven damned souls of horrid and dangerously cursed aspect caught in the cold limbos and weird circumstances outside of the normal & the weird. These spirits are often level drainers who feed on the souls of those who blunder into such fringe areas.

1d7 Random Dangerous Alien & Weird Damned Souls Table 

1. An ancient Amazon adventress that once crossed the bounds between her god's temple & Hell. She was caught in the wrath of her goddess for loving one of the temple priests. Now 10,000 years later she is a phantom that haunts the ancient temple grounds seeking revenge on the living. 
2. An ancient wizard of high power was turned into a wraith of incredible power by his Lovecraftian god for murdering the god's son. The wraith is called 'Old Red Eyes' and sits outside of time hunting the souls of those who die by its power that has cursed the area. It has a treasure worth 70,000 gold pieces. 
3. An ancient mariner from a lost world was wrecked upon the grounds of this place thousands of years ago. Now he's back as a time lost ghost able to level drain the youth and vitality of anyone who blunders into its turf. The monster has a treasure of sizable wealth and incredible aspect worth 80,000 gold pieces. 
4. This ancient horror that was a man has forgotten its original purpose and identity. The thing is now nothing but an ancient damned soul that takes the form of ancient ghost that will eat the souls of the young. The thing has a diamond worth 50,000 gold pieces to lure in the living. 
5. An ancient astral parasite that has taken on aspects of ancient Amazon princess that lived a thousand years ago. The thing sucks the will to live from the living. 
6. This ancient power seeks the key part of itself lost for over seven thousand years. It was once a powerful lich but now its a mere shadow of itself. Its power is restored when it drains the soul of one pure of heart. This horror often seeks heroes and mad men as victims, its treasure is worth 50,000 gold pieces. 
7. An ancient echo of a former god now fallen down to the lowest point as demonic ghost that drains souls of all vital energies. This thing now has the form of an ancient warrior princess & her memories but the thing is so alien that it often shape shifts after feeding or performing powerful black magick ceremonies.