Amazing Adventures Rpg & Edgar Rice Burroughs's Pellucidar as An OSR Campaign Setting

 Edgar Rice Burrough's At The Earth's Core is one of my favorite books because of the setting of the fictional "hollow earth" land of Pellucidar. The prehistoric lost world of Pellucidar is perfectly suited to use with Troll Lord's Amazing Adventures rpg is a great campaign setting. 

"At the Earth's Core is a 1914 fantasy novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first in his series about the fictional "hollow earth" land of Pellucidar." from the wiki entry on the ERB book At The Earth's  Core. 
The Pellucidar setting has a huge number of prehistoric tribal nations from cavemen to fully Neanderthal tribal peoples. There's no real day or night in the world of Pellucidar except from a sort of star that hangs in the sky and has an erratic orbit. .
The biggest problem is the inclusion of magic and it's attendants into an ERB inspired world. Although this did not stop DC Comics back in the Seventies with Mike Grell's Warlord which drew quite a bit of inspiration from the worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Pellucidar also may have baked in psionics. While a controversal in the world's most popular fantasy role playing game's circles. Psionic powers  look to be essential in  Pellucidar especially in ERBzine's article  Telepathy in Pellucidar. But how does a DM incorporate the fantasy element of Castles & Crusades into such a prehistoric setting??! Use another dimension (yes this is one option) but another is too simply make another continent within Pellucidar.

If Seventeenth century pirates can exist along side of prehistoric dinosaurs. Then it's an easy link to add magic and C&C style fantasy into a Lost World campaign. 
Page Eighty seven of Amazing Adventures Players Handbook goes into using C&C character classes in Amazing Adventures campaigns. 
So it's really easy to get into using your own version of Pellucidar.This is exactly what I'm going to be doing. 
Going forward my player's have been on my back to get back into a prehistoric version of an Amazing Adventures campaign. Over the years I've used Lovecraftian rpg elements into ERB style campaign worlds. 

Commentary On The Comic Con 2017 Skull Island Movie Trailer & Second Old School Campaign Leg Set Up

Kong Skull Island's movie trailer dropped at Comic-Con 2017 & has sort of faded into the background of the pop culture landscape. That is for the moment, the cast looks incredible, the effects are interesting, the trailer's editing is very well done & that soundtrack with John Goodman's voice over is great. But we've been fooled by trailers before so this is going to be a wait & see for me. A bit of background on this film, its a remake or set up for King Kong vs Godzilla 2020. This is nothing new at all in fact this movie set up goes all of the way back to 1962's King Kong vs Godzilla;King Kong vs. Godzilla (キングコング対ゴジラ Kingu Kongu Tai Gojira^?) is a 1962 Japanese science fiction Kaiju film featuring King Kong and Godzilla, produced and distributed by Toho. It is the third film in the Godzilla franchise and Showa series and the first of two Japanese-produced films featuring King Kong. It is also the first time both characters appeared on film in color and widescreen.^[2] The film is directed by Ishirō Honda with visual effects by Eiji Tsuburayaand stars Tadao Takashima, Kenji Sahara, and Mie Hama. Produced as part of Toho's 30th anniversary celebration, this film remains the most attended of all the Godzilla films to date"

By the way Godzilla vs King Kong isn't a rip off so much as a Japanese  homage to King Kong; it was supposed to be King Kong vs Frankenstein but things took some very weird turns;"The film had its roots in an earlier concept for a new King Kong feature developed by Willis O'Brien, animator of the original stop-motion Kong. Around 1960, O'Brien came up with a proposed treatment, King Kong meets Frankenstein,^[4] where Kong would fight against a giant version of Frankenstein's monster in San Francisco." Read more on the production here its a very interesting run through of the politics of Hollywood.   We ended up with the 1962 Japanese classic King Kong vs Godzilla.   And now here's where we're going to go south from Skull Island  material.

So what does this have to do with classic old school games? Well as long as I've been playing Metamorphosis Alpha 1st edition & Gamma World there have been giant radioactive monsters & mutated dinosaurs being thrown into the mix. But where are all of these mutated monsters coming from on all of these lost islands across the globe? Well for years the thought among Edgar Rice Burrough fans is that the dinosaurs & lost world horrors are following ancient migration tracks to the upper surface. For years there has been speculation among ERB fans that Pellucidar has been supplying Skull Island with its dinosaurs according to author Rick Johnson's Island Of The Skull  And then the ball is picked up further by Den Valdron again in King Kong The Lost Civilazations of Skull Island  & King Kong II: How did that Monkey get so Big?  This is all reference back upon itself in more of Rick Johnson's articles Doorways to Pellucidar:  Zanthodon  And Doorways to Pellucidar: Zealandia

A bit of thought about the Mahars, the dinosaurs  all of the tribes from 'At The Earth's Core' .  I've recently reread all of these novels & it seems to me that the empire of the Mahars was seemed tired. A society that had undergone some ancient conflict with another empire. What if David Innes & Perry had encountered the remains of a post apocalyptic society. It always seemed as if the Mahar's empire didn't put up or have much fight in them. Could that possibly be because they've had competition over the centuries with other lost world or inner Earth alien civilizations? Why was it that each & every human in the Inner Earth had a psionic homing sense & a mild telepathic psionic ability? Because they were designed that way. Mankind is the byproduct of some ancient and dangerous experiments.

GRAB THAT RIGHT HERE

In my estimation the inner world has all kinds of conflict between various mythos races because in Lovecraft's writings it was the paradise & refuge to Elder Things, the serpent men, & other alien races not to mention the dinosaurs. Saurians, reptilians, snake cults, mutant cavemen, etc. Mankind is basically the hamburger of Pullicidar. Basically I've used the Inner Earth as one big sort of  catch all sand box for campaigns and an  area where the back wash of millions of years of warfare  has caused all kinds of merry havoc with the locals via magickal contamination and horror. Lovecraftian Demons and god things are attracted to the wastelands because of warfare and destruction that had taken place there eons ago with the Great Old Ones and the god's creations.

Technically the Mahars & their 'empire' were nothing more then a glorified post apocalyptic community knocked over by another adventurer & his partner. Monsters, mutants, madmen. & even possibly aliens are all biological & invasive weapon systems left behind on an alien wasteland of Pellucidar. The cavemen & various human tribes are survivors and experimental stock left behind by not so extinct masters. Each & every radioactive dinosaur &
mutated  Slurpasaur might have come from the inner world biological weapon systems that have become self sustaining species in their own rights.
Growing up in the 1970's & 80's we were bombarded by UFO & flying saucer movies,comic books, etc. many of which made mention of inner Earth UFO bases. So its no wonder that I've a number of alien races carving out their own niches in hidden cities and bases.


HP Lovecraft wrote about subsurface survivors in the Mound; " "The Mound" is a horror and sci-fi novella H. P. Lovecraft wrote as a ghostwriter from December 1929 to January 1930 after he was hired by Zealia Bishop to create a story about an Indian mound which is haunted by a headless ghost. Lovecraft expanded the story into a tale about a mound that conceals a gateway to a subterranean civilization, the realm of K'n-yan. The story was not published during Lovecraft's lifetime. A heavily abridged version was published in the November 1940 issue of Weird Tales, and the full text was finally published in 1989." This is only one of three alien worlds that described by Lovecraft in rich and lurid detail. The Shadow Out of Time & At The Mountains of Madness being the others. The necrotic & highly technically advanced race of  K'n-yan will be playing a very important role in this upcoming campaign. Members of the 'kingdoms of the K'n-yan empire' have been making appearances in my games over the last couple of years with various NPC's being encountered here and there.

They've popped up in my Warlords of The Outer World campaign & Accursed Atlantis. The various aliens, Lovecraftian horrors, races, etc. have all exploded from inside the inner Earth because they were waiting & preparing for mankind to do itself in. They've then moved across the wasteland to take over once again & prepare the way for the Old Ones. This has happened with my forrays into Crawling Under A Broken Moon & DCC as well as my hybrid OSR home campaign. My own home campaign uses Goblinoid Game's Mutant Future as well as Dark Albion plus a range of OSR materials.



Now over the next couple of months my crew is going to taking another journey into the heart of the inner world & plunging head first into the heart of a dark Lovecraftian horror & prehistoric weirdness!

Skull Island, King Kong, King Kong Vs Godzilla are copyrighted to their various copyright & mark holders. This blog post is not an attempt to violate the trademarks or copyrights of those properties. Crawling Under A Broken Moon is a trademark and copy right of Shield of Faith Studios. Dark Albion, Mutant Future, Goblinoid Games are trade marked & copyrighted to their holders. All else is copyrighted and trade marked to Dark Corner Productions 2016. Erol Otus art work is copyrighted & trademarked  to Wizards of the Coast & is not used with permission. This blog post is for entertainment & educational purposes only

Pellucidar, Lost Worlds & Waste Lands As Dimensional Anomalies For Your Old School Campaigns Part III

Now I'm no expert when it comes to the Pellucidar stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs but there are certain aspects of the author's works that pretty much grabbed me by my throat and still won't let go. I've seen Pellicudar described as Burrough's Middle Earth with dinosaurs,cavemen, and lots of weird bits. But its more then simply that, Pellicudar has its tendrils creeping through every single other creation of ERB. And its all connected in a weird Burroughs meta literature, shared world kinda way. Here are some of the lesser known Pellucidar connections: 

1. The Gridley Wave according to the Barsoom Wiki: A method of communication, discovered by Earth inventor Jason Gridley, allowing for two-way communications between Earth and the worlds of Pellucidar and Barsoom. Used to transmit some of the later stories to Earth. On Mars, Ulysses Paxton transmitted a story to Earth via the Gridley Wave. It allows almost instant FTL communication between Barsoom, Pellucidar, and Earth. Yup that's right Tarzan, Paxton, John Carter, David Innes, and all of ERB's creations all exist within the same universe. And they interact over and over again with minor characters becoming the heroes in the next book in the series spurring on the action. A fact that a DM should remember is that there is no minor PC's their all. The hook is always baited to follow a thread in a campaign players will always provide the fodder!

Another thing is the way that the meta underground world of Pellucidar hooks up with Skull Island, Caspak, The Lost Continent, The Island of The Unknown, etc. all through the routes and migration routes of the ancient dinosaurs. More information in the Door Ways To Pellucidar article .

2.The Reincarnation Cycle of ERB - Long before the Eternal Champion by Michael Moorcock, there was reincarnation related through Edgar Rice Burroughs works. Different characters echo throughout various novels and dovetail into and out of the ERB. This same style appears within the circle of writers who were friends and associates of ERB and Albert Otis Kline was one of these folks. The idea of reincarnation as motivator into adventure comes across in spades in The Moon Maiden and The Red Hawk books which has minor characters showing up in a post alien invasion Earth after the seeds of the Gridley wave give fruit to a bitter crop of moonmen and all because of the advances that Barsoom exchanges with Earth. Kline uses this same idea of dove tailing his characters in Jerry Morgan, Robert Gradon , & Jan of the Jungle . You can find a ton more about Albert Otis Kline right over HERE 

3. Time as we know it and experience is not the same in Pellucidar, this makes for some very weird effects and psychics. According to The Time and Pellicudar article by Den Waldron the inner world may be not within our own world but part a net work of weird time warps and space effects. The article explains the rate of time in Pellucidar quite nicely: "Burroughs repeatedly writes that time seems to stand still in Pellucidar, that it seems to be subjective.

Thus, a person might step away from his village and wind up having all sorts of crazy adventures.   But when, after all those adventures, he finally returns to his village, he discovers that no one has missed him because he hasn't been gone all that long.   The subjective time experienced by the village is very different from the subjective time experienced by the adventurer.

It's an important enough feature of life in Pellucidar that Burroughs refers to it over and over, in practically every book.   He attributes it to the fact the sun never sets, thus, the cycle of days and nights which allows for circadian rhythms simply doesn't happen.

I think that there's an element of real life to it.   In our subjective existence, our perception of time seems to speed up or slow down in different circumstances.  Burroughs simply magnifies this phenomenon."

 

This sort of effect almost seems to arrest the cultures and cavemen that are found within Pellucidar something that is also reflected in the another Inner Earth Realm but this one is by TSR. The much beloved Hollow World shares not only the characteristics of prehistoric life and cavemen but another ideal. The author goes on to explain that perhaps all of these 'lost world realms' are pocket universes : 

   "On the other hand, this alternate ‘pocket universe’ theory still explains the proliferation of lost worlds that Explorers were discovering.   These lost worlds are all aspect or outliers of Pellucidar.  The only difference is that instead of being extrusions of the interior world onto the surface, they're points where the pocket universe has interfaced with our universe, creating perhaps a temporary gateway, a ‘micro-universe’ or left an ‘island’ in our world.    Professor Challenger's lost world, or Caprona, are little bits of Pellucidar that have extruded into our world and become sort of sealed off.   In turn, bits of our world keep extruding into Pellucidar, which is how it accumulates all those terrestrial species" 

Further there is a connection with other so called lost worlds in the article: 

"Any evidence for this?   Well, we can assume that extrusions into the normal world may have strange properties.  Compasses probably don't work well, navigation by stars or sun, becomes unreliable due to distortions in the electromagnetic spectrum.   In short, you'd see a lot of the weird phenomena that make places like Skull Island and Caprona so hard to find.

The extrusions or interfaces may not be completely in our world, so they may only be accessible by certain routes or from certain directions.   There may only be a few ways into Pal-Ul-Don or Professor Challenger's Lost World.   You might not be able to fly in by helicopter, or even see it by satellite photograph.   It would only be perceptible to our regular world by certain ‘windows.’   Again, this explains why so many of them seem so hard to find, or to escape.   Many Lost Worlds, particularly those in later works, including television and movies, don't seem to quite be in our world.   This includes the children's show Land of the Lost, or Acclaim Comics lost world out of time." 

One clue that this might be going on is that in some cases there are signs of time proceeding in these lost worlds differently.   The best example is Zanthodon by Lin Carter, where the perceptions of time's being subjective are very similar to those in Pellucidar.   In Eric Carstairs of Zanthodon, we encounter a group of displaced German soldiers from Rommel's Afrika campaign for whom far less time seems to have passed than has passed in the outside world.

   There are recurring hints in some stories of a ‘Rip Van Winkle’ effect for staying in these places too long.   Most visits to places like Skull Island or Professor Challengers Lost World tend to be short, so we wouldn't expect time distortions to be pronounced.  But every now and then we find a castaway who has spent a lot of time there, and quite often, there's something a little bit odd.

Of course there are problems.   For instance, why are the Lost Worlds invariably surrounded by physical distortions....  Mountains, plateaus, swamps, etc., and why are they often accessible by apparently physical connections... twisting caverns.   This makes it seem that the Lost Worlds are geological in nature, rather than interfaces with another continuum.  And for that matter, what exactly is Pellucidar's sun?   Our sun shining down into Pellucidar's continuum?  It's own star?  Something else?   Still, if we worked hard enough, these questions could probably be answered." 

  And for the record there is some very strong fandom evidence that there is a more then passing connection between Lin Carter's Zanthodon  and Pellucidar. In CALLISTO'S PELLUCIDAR  by Den Valdron there's a strong case made that either Zanthodon is a part of or other worldly echo or dimensional plane of Pellucidar. Well I'm going to go with the setting idea these lost worlds are all a part of some branched planar network of prehistoric lost worlds. Perhaps fitting together like russian dolls or as a net work of planes that intrude into the pulp or comic book realms as needed by DM's. 

But there's one novel that actually uses the reincarnation elements further and is outside the mainstay of the ERB Pellucidar novels The Eternal Lover  summery can be found right over HERE
 Basically according to wiki :A cliff-dwelling warrior of 100,000 years ago, Nu, is magically transported to the present, falls in love with Victoria Custer of Beatrice, Nebraska, the reincarnation of his lost lover Nat-ul, and the two are transported back to the Stone Age. The story is set in Africa, and the present-day sequences guest star Victoria's brother Barney Custer, protagonist of Burroughs's Ruritanian novel The Mad King, as well as his iconic hero Tarzan from his Tarzan novels.

The big cat that is talked about in the novel is referred to as a Ta - ho a Pellucidar term. According to World at the Earth's Center by Sean Philips : 

"The Eternal Savage, Burroughs incorrectly describes a cave lioness as being “maned like her lord”. One inner earth tribe has learned to domesticate the ta-ho as companions and hunting animal, as two other tribes have done with the jalok and the tarag, respectfully.

 This is the mighty cave-lion of Pellucidar. Scientist believe that the cave lion of the ice age to be the largest cat that ever lived, bigger even than Smilodon Fatalis. From cave –renderings of the animals discovered in Europe, it is almost certain that adult male cave-lions lacked 

manes.

 This sort of thing happens over and over again in the various Pellucidar novels which are as follows: 

1. At the Earth's Core (1914)
2. Pellucidar (1915)
3. Tanar of Pellucidar (1929)
4. Tarzan at the Earth's Core (1929)
5. Back to the Stone Age (1937)
6. Land of Terror (1944)
7. Savage Pellucidar (1963)
   
   
   
   
   So what does this have to do with the Hallow World? Well, just about everything.
   

   

    Mystrara's Hollow World differs from Pellucidar in many ways. Hollow World features pulp gameplay in a world with limited magic where almost everything is observed by the gods that are concerned with preservation of cultural identities. The world features several classic cultures (pseudo-Romans, pseudo-Greeks, etc.) and vast jungle landscapes. Also very well described are the species and cultures, each with its own section on names, customs, and gameplay information.  This boxset brings a lot of toys to the table with its Bronze age setting. And it has a passionate and active fanbase. You can find the Facebook page right over HERE and a very active forum right HERE . 
   The biggest difference between Pellicudar & The Hollow World campaign setting is the interference of the gods in the lives of the setting. Pellicudar has religion and telepathy but this is strictly a hands off affair there. The 'spell of preservation' keeps the societies & races of the Hollow World locked in the past of  Mystara, AKA The Known World.
    Pellucidar has pockets of technology and weird races as well but the adventurers in the form of David Innes bring innovation and technology to the inner world of Pellicudar. Something that would never happen. But for the sake of this blog post if we look at the adventures for the Hollow World we begin to see a very interesting pattern. Nightwail HWA1, Night Rage HWA2, And Night Storm HWA3 respectively all dove tail into one another in a very similar manner to the Pelliucdar novels. Minor NPC characters shift in importance, the events center around several locations, and the settings of these adventures is pretty damn epic involving not only the fate of the Hollow World but its 'gods' as well. This pretty much comes to a head in The Milenian Scepter (HWQ1)
   

   

   
     This is the last adventure in the series and ripples from the cataclysmic events of the Wrath of the Immortals series of top side adventures on Mystara. And here's what I'm thinking about all of this. When that space craft smashed into pre cataclysmic Blackmoor it caused planar ripples and the Immortals of Mystara found one of those echoes of Pellucidar and took full advantage of that lost world's planar dimensional location. The Immortals  changed all of the reality constants as needed and altered reality as they saw fit, and what they saw fit to do was preserve the peoples, lands, fauna and flora of ancient Mystara. And that's exactly what the Hallow World campaign is. A museum for the Immortals of Mystara. I think that Mystara, is a dimensional echo or alternative version of Pellucidar. And the people I think that this comes across best with is the Merry Pirates. A sort of humorous and fun sort of nation of pirates in the Hallow World.  Not so in Pellucidar at all. The Kosars are generational survivors of some ancient lost Spanish fleet of sailors, fighters, and outlaws who ended up in Pellucidar and settled down with the locals.They end up  forging a nation some five million strong descendants. And their blood thirsty warriors capable of slitting the throats of anyone who gets in their way. This group of cut throats is ruled by a 'Cid' and are hardy adventurers in their own right. More information is available from Pellucidarian Cogitations by Cristian Sildan
        This all hooks back upon itself when we take a look at a group of Spainish survivors from a certain favorite film of mine.
                                  
   
   All of these pieces of lost worlds are reflections or alternative versions of Pellucidar in one way or another and lead back to Verne and Conan Doyle's The Lost World. And there's even an ERB version of this lost world in the form of  Pal-ul-don, which means "Land of Men.". This is a fully fleshed out world and according to Wiki: In this novel two months have gone by and Tarzan is continuing to search for Jane. He has tracked her to a hidden valley called Pal-ul-don, which means "Land of Men." In Pal-ul-don Tarzan finds a real Jurassic Park filled withdinosaurs, notably the savage Triceratops-like Gryfs, which unlike their prehistoric counterparts are predatory. The lost valley is also home to two different races of tailed human-looking creatures, the Ho-don (hairless and white skinned) and the Waz-don (hairy and black-skinned). Tarzan befriends Ta-den, a Ho-don warrior, and Om-at, the Waz-don chief of the tribe of Kor-ul-ja. In this new world he becomes a captive but so impresses his captors with his accomplishments and skills that they name him Tarzan-Jad-Guru (Tarzan the Terrible), which is the name of the novel. Find out more right over HERE  None of these world setting's make any ecological sense at all. They've got to be artificial in nature so who built them? I don't have any easy answers but my personal theory is that some ancient alien god race built them and maintained them as the Immortals of Mystara do. As living hot house experimental labs and museums across the multiverse. And I think that these advanced beings are absentee land lords. Folks who set up these experiments and then have left them in action. All of these lost worlds connect into each other through various meta small settings ala The Isle of Dread. 
   

   
   Grab  This On For Free
   HERE

   Which brings us to the new Lamentations of the Flame adventure coming out. World of the Lost is probably both a setting book and adventure following in the foot steps of the line's previous adventures. And most likely has its own take on the 'lost world' flare of adventure retroclone gaming. I've seen various pieces of art that the author and Mr. Raggi have been posting for months on Facebook,G+,etc. I'm almost 80% sure that a DM can easily link this right into the back end of a campaign of an adventuring party. We'll just have to wait and see when this comes out. 

   

   Now believe it or not there are several adventure encounters from '&' magazine's Book of Low Level Lairs Volume I that make excellent introductions for a party to a Pellucidar or Lost World campaign. The book is free and can easily be adapted for a wide variety of retroclone adventures. Next time adventuring on the fringes of Pecullidar's fringes, Tarazan, Shield, and Lovecraft. Coming up in part four! 

Pellucidar, Lost Worlds & Waste Lands As Dimensional Anomalies For Your Old School Campaigns Part II -

Grab It Right
HERE

If you've been following this thought exercise or campaign set up of mine then your possibly wondering what sort of bad things I'm I going to do with Edgar Rice Burroughs Pellucidar? Quite a bit actually.

When we begin looking into Pellucidar, we're looking at one of the greatest of ERB's literary worlds. This is a mind mindbogglingly huge world of dinosaurs, prehistoric life, and lots of room for expansion."We know that the crust of the globe is 500 miles in thickness; then the inside diameter of Pellucidar must be 7,000 miles, and the superficial area 165,480,000 square miles. Three-fourths of this is land. Think of it! A land area of 124,110,000 square miles! Our own world contains but 53,000,000 square miles of land, the balance of its surface being covered by water."

This is the entire area covered by the novel At The Earth's Core and there's plenty of room for expansion. 

You could fit any of the lost world adventures that have come out add in adventure elements as needed and still have room for a complete alien civilization or ten. And Pellucidar is weird,I mean really strange in both in your face and subtle ways.  David Innes the protagonist from the first book goes off has adventures after escaping the Mahars (psionic reptilian masters of the area of Pellucidar) and leaving  Abner Perry on his own for what seems like days. At least to David, actually Abner doesn't even notice that David is gone! Why because time is subjective in Pellucidar. This all comes down to the inner Earth's sun and dead world because there's no night in world except in the Land of Awful Shadow. Because of the inner Earth's moon. As for peoples of Pellucidar there are a couple of major races in the first two novels. According to Public Domain Super Heroes : 

Mahars: A race of intelligent flying reptiles, about 6-8 feet in length, who appear to be one of the dominant lifeforms of Pellucidar. They live in subterranean cities and have telepathic powers. In addition to winged flight, they have webbed feet and are excellent swimmers.

Sagoths: Semi-intelligent ape-like men who faithfully serve the Mahars. They have sleek black skin, large white teeth, short legs, long arms and thin prehensile tails capable of supporting their weight. They live in huts built in the trees, 50 feet above the ground. They have no weapons and wear no clothes or garments. They are very strong and agile and tend to grin and chatter.

Primitive Humans: There are humans who live in Pellucidar, surviving with primitive tools and weapons in the dangerous jungles. They wear animal skins and metal jewelry.

The lands are also inhabited by a wide variety of dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures, including saber-toothed tigers (tarags to the natives), cave lions (felis spelaea), cave bears (ursus spelaeus), giant sloths (megatherium), hyaenodons, mastodons, and raging bos (thags to the natives). The skies are dominated by fierce pterodactyls (thipdars to the natives). The waters are inhabited by all manner of prehistoric monsters and serpents including labyrinthodons, ichthyosaurs (azdyryths to the natives) and plesiosaurs (tandorazes to the natives).

Now another weird thing about the natives is even with massive land masses, prehistoric horrors lurking around every corner, etc. The natives never get lost, ever. They have a weird built in homing instinct. Drop one ANYWHERE in Pellucidar and eventually they'll find their way home. Pellucidarian homing instinct is in my mind one part psionic talent, two parts magnetic gland ala a pigeon, and something akin to the instincts of sea turtles.  There's a vast discussion of this over at the ERB magazine right over HERE
Basically Glick PC's can't get lost or separated from the place that they were born in.  With a simple Wisdom roll the PC will know the direction, foot time, and distance to travel from their current position in Pellucidar. They do lose this ability if they travel outside the bounds of the inner world. 

Grab It For Free Right Over
HERE

Everything that a DM needs is mostly contained within the first two novels, At The Earth's Core and Pellucidar. But for decades fans have been mixing in and matching elements from other 'lost world' novels into the mix. This includes both official nods such as Dr. Eric John Holmes novels Mahars of Pellucidar which is in a class all by itself.



  To the more recent mockbusters like the Ayslum's Journey to the Center of the Earth. There has been speculation that the inner Sun and moon of Pellucidar are responsible for dimensional anomalies, gravitational phenomena, and dimensional gates going back before the Innes expedition. 

There is speculation that the inner Sun of Pellucidar is in fact a black hole and at least partially responsible for some of the incredible effects of time, space, and energy within Pellucidar. The Star of Pellucidar article by Den Waldron touches on exactly what and how such a star as black hole might operate. Mr. Valdron takes the speculation a step further to talk about the connection floating islands, gravitational gates, and survival of prehistoric species in Next Stop Pellucidar.
For years there has been speculation among ERB fans that Pellucidar has been supplying Skull Island with its dinosaurs according to author Rick Johnson's Island Of The Skull  And then the ball is picked up further by Den Valdron again in King Kong The Lost Civilazations of Skull Island  & King Kong II: How did that Monkey get so Big?  This is all reference back upon itself in more of Rick Johnson's articles Doorways to Pellucidar:  Zanthodon  And Doorways to Pellucidar: Zealandia

So to take it a step further into speculation, the ecological and entire structure of Pellucidar doesn't make any sense unless it's an artificial creation and I personally think it is. In fact, I think that its the creation of a race higher dimensional entities that watch over the place. To take it even further I think that the micro campaign settings that have been all of the rage lately in the White Star Rpg system.  But this approach isn't new at all. There have been underground kingdoms, lost worlds, etc. going back before the release of Pellucidar.  Personally, in my humble opinion to rip off an idea from comic books every dungeon underworld is a reflection of others across the planes. Cross from one and you might find yourself in another. These transitions can be bone ripping trips from the underground world of Journey to the Center of the Earth to gradual transitions on boats, planes, etc. to other worldly seas ala The Lost Continent movie .  All of these places of Terra Obscura are all connected in one way or another with Pellucidar.
In fact for game play with free adventures like the Stone Alignments of Kor Nak  there are several places in the underworld that can lead straight into micro adventure campaign places like Pellucidar. There by providing the party & DM a perfect venue to use ERB's creation as as a nice Appendix N variety.



This leads back to the speculation that perhaps all of these lost worlds and forgotten kingdoms lead back into Pellucidar via dimensional gates, keys, and other tunnels but why? And what does this have to do with an upcoming title for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg? More coming up in part Three.