OSR Commentary On Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos By Rpg Pundit For OSR & Old School Campaigns

 "Dark Albion: Cults of Chaos is a gaming supplement for Dark Albion (also available on Createspace / Amazon), as well as most OSR fantasy-horror role-playing games. It will help you generate various Chaos Cults in detail (many tables are provided). It then describes the most common Chaos cults found in Albion (those worshiping demons, and others), gives advice on how running Chaos cults adventures (several tables are provided), and proposes three ready-to-use dungeons (i.e.: maps plus descriptions of contents for three dungeons that would be perfect for cultists lairs). This supplement is usable with any RPG of the OSR movement, such as Fantastic Heroes & Witchery (also available on Createspace / Amazon), Osric, Labyrinth Lord, etc."

Cults of Chaos by Rpg Pundit has been one of the most useful additions to my gaming libary over the years. Theres been plenty of times when this volume has come in very handy. 

All of the Pagan gods depicted within Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos are in some way or another touched by Chaos. A practice that over the years since Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos we've used for numerous OSR & old school campaigns. These cults are dangerous and very much not as much in the same vein as other old school games portray them. Take the Roman cult of Mithra according to Cults of Chaos it aligns with its wiki enty up to a point; "Mithraism, also known as the Mithraic mysteries or the Cult of Mithras, was a Roman mystery religion centered on the god Mithras. Although inspired by Iranian worship of the Zoroastrian divinity (yazata) Mithra, the Roman Mithras is linked to a new and distinctive imagery, with the level of continuity between Persian and Greco-Roman practice debated.^[a] The mysteries were popular among the Imperial Roman army from about the 1st to the 4th-century CE.^[2]

Worshippers of Mithras had a complex system of seven grades of initiation and communal ritual meals. Initiates called themselves syndexioi, those "united by the handshake".^[b] They met in underground temples, now called mithraea (singular mithraeum), which survive in large numbers. The cult appears to have had its center in Rome,^[3] and was popular throughout the western half of the empire, as far south as Roman Africa and Numidia, as far as Roman Dacia, as far north as Roman Britain,^{[4]: 26–27} and to a lesser extent in Roman Syria in the east." 
While it is united by it's symbols, handshakes & signs as a 'mystery cult' or secret society Mithraic mysteries and such are still seen as a cult of chaos by the Sol Invictus. And they are dealt with accordingly. The setting a  of historical fantasy world set in England during the period of the War of the Roses ie. 1453-1485 is a very unforgiving place. 

And even the old Roman gods are looked on deeply with suspition & a side glance towards blatant Chaos worship. And it's these leanings that give Dark Albion's setting both it's unique flavor & the  Lion & Dragon rpg part of it's percision as an OSR game. 

The time of  the pre War of the Roses ie. 1453-1485 was supposed to be a place of new beginnings and happenings. The War of the Roses pushses that back to the background for an almost pseudo horror feel as the edges of the map take on sinister and dangerous connotations. All of the while the threat of Chaos looms in the background waiting to take on anyone stupid enough to fall to the various cults wiles. 

And within these cracks are where adventurers of all stripes ply their trade. The further reaches of exploration both historical & edged have their place with both Dark Albion & Lion & Dragon. 

Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos By Rpg Pundit  For OSR & Old School Campaigns Is Available Right Here. 

Ribbit & Death - OSR Commentary on D2 'The Temple of The Frog' By Guy Ritchie & Dave Arneson

 "Green Death...

That's what old hands call the Great Dismal Swamp. For centuries, this tangled maze of sluggish watercourses, stagnant ponds, and festering marshes has defended Blackmoor's southwestern frontier. Large armies and smaller parties have disappeared altogether inside its vast, dripping, claustrophobic corridors.

Among those who have dropped from sigh in this arboral hell is young Rissa Aleford, one of Blackmoor's most important leaders. Carried off to the sinister City of the Fron, she is now being held by the eccentric Monks of the Swamp. By making the baroness captive, the deranged monks have serioulsy weakened Blackmoor at a time when enemies already threaten it from all sides.

Yet, even as the Froggies gloat, the king of Blackmoor dispatches a small band of bold adventures to the rescue. Deep into the Great Dismal Swamp they must go - far from sunlight and sanity - there to seek and save the swamp, there to find the Temple of the Frog."

Today was one of those days where I grabbed DA2 Temple of the Frog by Guy Richie & Dave Arneson right off the shelf today.  Its been a very much a roller coaster of a day from ups of the repair business taking off to the lows of having the wind knocked outta of my sails today because of Covid. More on that another time, but let's get back to The Froggies cult for a moment. If there's one NPC who appears behind the scenes again & again its "Stephen the Rock". 

'Stephen The Rock' looks exactly like a wild eyed version of Brainic Five from The Legion of Super Heroes comic book. Why?! Because Havard wayback in 2010 on his blog got the lowdown on the villain from one half of the team that created the villain in this case  Stephen Rocheford.  So Havard uses a piece of Legion of Super Heroes comic artwork & from then on he was an evil version of Brainic five in my campaigns. 



So my version of Stephen The Rock has been tweaked quite a bit especially after becoming a pawn for the god Tsathoggua. Why?! Because it amused the Great Old One & Stephen The Rock was another in a long line of pawns across the planes of existence. The Great Old One's favor allowed Stephen to gaze along the lines of pararell & alternative worlds for other versions of the FTS. Beagle that mirror his own vessel's demise. Stephen wanted that sweet,sweet, Beagle technology that has allowed him to build up his cult of Froggies across the planes. This is sort of in keeping with  "Patterns of Force" (1968), an episode of the original Star Trek (1966-1969). It also feeds the growing paranoia & mental delusions of Captain Bork Riesling

“Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.” ― Frank Herbert & with this Frank Herbert qoute we find that Stephen The Rock wasn't alone. Commander Stephen Rocklin (DA2)  Commander and Chief of Security had a good portion of the U.S.S. Beagle's crew following his flute of corruption according to Havard's blog again! When Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D minor,starts to play from the Dismal Swamp its time to run! 
The temple & its attendantly dangerous genetically modified giant frogs played a huge part in a recent 2019 Lion & Dragon rpg mini campaign. Stephen 'The Rock' or Saint Stephen was at it again! 

 Antidullivan Miniatures's Labyrinthodont set. are excellent stand ins for the giant frogs of the Dismal Swamp. 

This time Saint Stephen was in league with Dark Albion's French demonic frog rulers except this time it was a part of the Lion & Dragon Rpg 

So how does DA2 'The Temple of The Frog' apply to Adventurer,Conqueror, King rpg. Well there are two distinct possibilities. One is the fact that 'The Temple of the Frog' & its attendent city are domains unto themselves seeded with USS Beagle technology & personel;"Stephen together with Brand Kirk, Dygar Mendel, Lynn Raupp, Willis Strom and the cyborg Norn fled into the nearby swamps. There, Rocklin reorganized the Order of the Frog, a local cult where he now became known as Saint Stephen. Using Beagle technology, they created a race called Frog Men using DNA from the local swamp fauna."  This also applies to the ancient past of Greyhawk as well;"Although the main focus of this website is the connection between Mystara and Blackmoor, I have decided to include other possibilities for Blackmoor aswell. Blackmoor was created by Dave Arneson, but was in the early days transplanted into Gygax’s Greyhawk milieu. The Duchy of Ten(h) and the Great Kingdom were all products of the Castle & Crusade Society, in turn a creation of Gary Gygax. In the early days, it was unclear where Greyhawk ended and Blackmoor began. However, in their later incarnations, the Greyhawk and Blackmoor settings grew apart. As David Ross wrote in his Blackmoor Gazetteer:

"As for the Blackmoor within Greyhawk, no-one has ever insisted that we reconcile the two. Greyhawk’s Blackmoor may be a source of creative material but should by no means be considered part of Blackmoor Canon."


This means that the central figure of Greyhawk's Blackmoor has some very dangerous & unexpected meet points.  Greyhawk's Archbarony of Blackmoor has some very interesting things to say about this very unexpected Greyhawk & Blackmoor connetions. This also means that Greyhawk is open as a domain for ACK's. 


 Its here where the party can exploit the far reaching implications of the Galactic Fediation with regards to how & why their appearance mirrors the degratation of such Federation officers. We see this with the increased power of the White Star Galaxy rpg within my own mini campaign. But was this comes with the power of the federation when they warn about the Blackmoor system. 



The bottom line is that the Froggies are a force & faction unto themselves. Their very nature  demands this! Power craves power for itself! 

Myth Beyond The Monster Manual - The Erinyes Devils of Violence & Justice For Your Old School Sword & Sorcery Campaigns

I've  been quietly cracking open my first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual & looking into the devils section last night. I looked into the Erinyes entry  for a bit of Sword & Sorcery inspiration.The Monster Manual & even the original Dungeons & Dragons monster stats profile has been lacking. Greco Roman mythology is so much richer on these goddesses & children of Chronos's blood.

Its through Dante's Divine Comedy  that we get these female chthonic deities of vengeance 
that we get these deities & their devil kin offspring in Hell. The wiki entry on the Furies goes into their parentage & mythological background; 
"In Greek mythology the Erinyes (/ɪˈrɪniˌiːz/; sing. Erinys /ɪˈrɪnɪs/;^[1] Greek: Ἐρῑνύες [ῠ], pl. of Ἐρῑνύς [ῡ], Erinys),^[2] also known as the Furies, were female chthonic deities of vengeance; they were sometimes referred to as "infernal goddesses" (χθόνιαι θεαί). A formulaic oath in the Iliad invokes them as "the Erinyes, that under earth take vengeance on men, whosoever hath sworn a false oath".^[3] Walter Burkert suggests they are "an embodiment of the act of self-cursing contained in the oath".^[4] They correspond to the Dirae in Roman mythology.^[5] The Roman writer Maurus Servius Honoratus wrote that they are called "Eumenides" in hell, "Furiae" on earth, and "Dirae" in heaven.^[6][7]
According to Hesiod's Theogony, when the Titan Cronus castrated his father, Uranus, and threw his genitalia into the sea, the Erinyes (along with the Giants and the Meliae) emerged from the drops of blood which fell on the earth (Gaia), while Aphrodite was born from the crests of sea foam.^[8] According to variant accounts,^[9] they emerged from an even more primordial level—from Nyx ("Night"), or from a union between air and mother earth.^[10] Their number is usually left indeterminate. Virgil, probably working from an Alexandrian source, recognized three: Alecto or Alekto ("endless"), Megaera ("jealous rage"), and Tisiphone or Tilphousia ("vengeful destruction"), all of whom appear in the Aeneid. Dante Alighieri followed Virgil in depicting the same three-character triptych of Erinyes; in Canto IX of the Inferno they confront the poets at the gates of the city of Dis. Whilst the Erinyes were usually described as three maiden goddesses, the Erinys Telphousia was usually a by-name for the wrathful goddess Demeter, who was worshipped under the title of Erinys in the Arkadian town of Thelpousa."

When I was younger back in the Eighties, the Satanic Panic was in full swing I used to have to sneak readings & such of Dante's Divine Comedy.During the school season. I developed a monster ecology centered around the Furies & their kin. Hell wasn't simply nine levels of planes but a large sprawling series of planes, subplanes, & nether Hells. These all connected together by the river Styx & its many backwaters. I was influenced by the Dragon Magazine articles the 'Politics of Hell' & the many articles on devils & demons through the years.




These goddesses & their spawn are lawful evil  conforming  to the violent letter of the law including the breaking of sacred oaths. But they are far older then the Greco Roman pantheon & have strong connections to the titan especially Uranus.
"The three classic Furies sprang forth from the spilled blood of Uranus when he was castrated by his son Cronus. The sisters are:

• Alecto – Punisher of moral crimes (anger, etc.)
• Megaera – Punisher of infidelity, oath breakers, and theft
• Tisiphone – Punisher of murderers"

"The Roman writer Maurus Servius Honoratus wrote that they are called "Eumenides" in hell, "Furiae" on earth, and "Dirae" in heaven." So they have dominion in all of these planes under special circumstances.


But in a Sword & Sorcery game such as Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea set millions of years in the future under a dying Earth what possible role can the "Eumenides" & their spawn have?! Actually plenty considering that in my own campaigns Ragnarok & the Apocalypse has happened. In a post Ragnarok world they'd be responsible for the souls of dead royals, princes, bishops,etc. who broke their sacred oaths. Assassin's guilds sacred to them would be carrying out their divine agendas based on sacred dreams & visions.

The Amazons have whole cloth cults & state run religions centered around the Furies. During times of war the drums of the Amazon armies can be heard for miles around. A major summoning often accompanies these events especially before war or major battles.

Then there are the druidic groves dedicated to them scattered through the wilderness. Groves dedicated to Orestes  which are visited by bards who wish to gain the sacred madness of his mystery. Oedipus also has his own mysterious groves scattered throughout the weird wildernesses but scholars are unsure of if both Orestes & Oedipus are two different ancient princes. Or the same one who  attracted their 'tender affections'

"In Sophocles's play, Oedipus at Colonus, it is significant that he comes to his final resting place in the grove dedicated to the Erinyes. It shows that he has paid his penance for his blood crime, as well as come to integrate the balancing powers to his early over-reliance upon Apollo, the god of the individual, the sun, and reason. He is asked to make an offering to the Erinyes and complies, having made his peace"
 Pity the poor necrcomancer whose black heart summons these devils & wastes their time. His soul will be ravaged in some nameless back water Hell or in some corner temple of Underborea for eternity.



Make no mistake these devils while lawful are purely evil. Their visitations often leave behind the tell tale scent & trail of Chaos itself wherever they go.  The cults dedicated to whatever facet of the Furies often have the markings of mutation about them. There many be 1d6 mutations about these cultists.
These beings will not harm a worshiper or cult member of the cult of Cronus. That is unless they have broken the scared oaths & laws of the Furies or their spawn. Cults of witches & druidic circles dedicated to the Furies are always opposed to the toad god & its spawn's agenda. They will not hesitate to destroy any member of these groups that comes within their talons. Once per new moon one of the spawn of the Furies may be summoned from the underground back water of  the underworld or Hell.



The Grand Summoning happens once in the dead of Winter under the full Moon with one of the dread sisters appearing accompanied by 1d6 devil spawn from the deepest of Hells. A murderer or adulterer is often the sacrifice at such a summoning. Cults will seek divine guidance during these rites & major events. These events often happen at remotely located temples located on high mountains or in the wilderness ruins of some once major city state.

There are in the wastelands entire witch cults dedicated to the Furies who carry out ancient sacred rites under the watchful & wrathful eye of a devil. She will often inhabit or possess the head priestess & pass judgement on any brought before her. Sacrifices are made of oathbreakers & adulterers on the small moon nights while murderers & worse's blood graces the alters on full moon. These cults often ply the wastelands trading potions, healing powders, & wares while spying for more criminals to kidnap for the alters. There is never enough blood & some towns turn over or sell their criminals for the rough 'justice' of the cults.


This alternative ecology of the Furies & their spawn was made by  Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea rpg adventure  using the alternative  historical Dark Albion & Dark Albion Cults of Chaos setting rules. Bits & pieces were taken from Lion & Dragon. 

Books matter - OSR Campaign Setting Flip - World War I Godzilla - Prelude To War of the Worlds

"And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling, and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that generation after generation creeps upon them.

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing subtlety—their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of ours—and to have carried out their preparations with a well-nigh perfect unanimity. Had our instruments permitted it, we might have seen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century. Men like Schiaparelli watched the red planet—it is odd, by-the-by, that for countless centuries Mars has been the star of war—but failed to interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they mapped so well. All that time the Martians must have been getting ready.

During the opposition of 1894 a great light was seen on the illuminated part of the disk, first at the Lick Observatory, then by Perrotin of Nice, and then by other observers. English readers heard of it first in the issue of Nature dated August 2d. I am inclined to think that the appearance may have been the casting of the huge gun, the vast pit sunk into their planet, from which their shots were fired at us. Peculiar markings, as yet unexplained, were seen near the site of that outbreak during the next two oppositions.

The storm burst upon us six years ago now. As Mars approached opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the planet. It had occurred towards midnight of the 12th, and the spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity towards this earth. This jet of fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal puff of flame, suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, "as flaming gas rushes out of a gun."" 

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

Chapter 1. The Eve of the War

So my latest blog posts about H.G. Well's War of the Worlds & Godzilla over the last couple of days has been getting me quite a bit of flack in my local antiquarian OSR circles. 

The War of the Worlds Godzilla 1898! - A Troll Lord Games Victorious rpg Campaign Set Up, War of the Worlds Godzilla 1914 - The Opening Salvo A Troll Lord Games Victorious rpg Campaign, & War of the Worlds Godzilla 1914 - Years Zero 1912 -1913 A Troll Lord Games OSR/ Victorious rpg Campaign blog posts.  The reason appears to be because I used the Siege Engine from Troll Lord Games as the basis for this OSR campaign set up. Gotta say I'm in a bit of a state of shock about this development but I can show you how to do this same campaign set up with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons resources & OSR systems easily.  So let's assume here for the sake of campaign setting easy that Europe has had during its existence many of the tropes & clitches that we take for granted in Dungeons & Dragons. Dragons, dungeons, wizards, Elves, Dwarves, etc. And lets assume that the occult, supernatural, mythology, etc. is real & true to history for the campaign's setting. 

So assuming all of the above let's quickly review the video that inspired this campaign above. Now without missing a beat, we've got the crown heads of Europe starring at each other & ready to go toe to toe with each other over a series of interlocking alliances & conflicts. Everything boiled over in World War one from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. But its seeds go back to the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the post-1848 rise of Prussia under Otto von Bismarck. And here's where the seeds of this campaign really start with the moves of Stephen d' Amberville against Otto Von Bismark. Stephen d' Amberville is an  undead arch lich & not taking it lying down! He's been going move for move against Otto Von Bismark. X2: "Castle Amber (Chateau d' Amberville)" (1981), by Tom Moldvay, takes center stage as the arch lich established by Tom Moldvay isn't resting peacefully. He plays human chess with real royals & the crown princes of Europe. 

But where's Godzilla?! Well if we assume that ancient dragons & tarrasques are real then it stands to reason that maybe that 'King of the Monsters' title isn't for show. He & his species has been been battling these bastards of the Earth for eons. Here's where you grab that copy of the Monster Manual II for stats kids on the tarrasques! 


All that weird radiation, strange magical energies, & incredible raw power that's been released into the Earth since the time of the dinosaurs? How ever will we as dungeon masters be able to play this?! Well there's Goblinoid Games Labyrinth Lord & the Advanced Labyrinth Lord Companion. But what about the 'modern' weaponry of WWI & the kaiju mutations?! Well Goblinoid also has Mutant Future to take care of all of that. 

Now personally I'd be using Adventurer, Conqueror, King rpg system for doing pre WWI Dark Europe. And as for the stats for Godzilla himself? Well I'd be using Chris Van Deelen's City Killer Mark I for the stats needed for Godzilla.  I'd also thrown in a healthy dose of Realms of Crawling Chaos for any Lovecraftian bits as well and for some really nasty fringe cults & relics.


Now if you really wanna add a bit of that old school D&D weirdness have many of the smaller houses competing against each other ala Frank Herbert's Dune but add in a  Ruritanian romance element to this campaign; "Ruritanian romance is a genre of literature, film and theatre comprising novels, stories, plays and films set in a fictional country, usually in Central or Eastern Europe, such as the "Ruritania" that gave the genre its name.^[1]

Such stories are typically swashbuckling adventure novels, tales of high romance and intrigue, centered on the ruling classes, almost always aristocracy and royalty,^[1] although (for instance) Winston Churchill's novel Savrola, in every other way a typical example of the genre, concerns a revolution to restore rightful parliamentary government in the republican country of Laurania. The themes of honor, loyalty and love predominate, and the works frequently feature the restoration of legitimate government after a period of usurpation or dictatorship" 

Fictional countries are established only to obliterated in the shadow of the on coming war & the invasion coming up. PC's could be working hard to avert the on coming horrors by globe trotting & trying to get a handle on both the espionage, saving heads of Europe, dealing with hidden witch covens, & trying to survive against the monstrous spawn of Kaiju. This is the perfect time to add the Lion & Dragon rpg, Dark Albion, & Cults of Chaos to the mix.

In fact much of the history of the  Lion & Dragon rpg could be used as leverage for ancient rivalries between modern national powers. There could be a modern witch hunting campaign in the works.
The ACK's Heroic Handbook is the perfect companion to this campaign with the ancient dragons being incredibly dangerous adversaries & opponents on the world stage.



The Martian invaders are not absent during this time frame at all they have H.G. Wells  Crystal Eggs scattered across the Earth. These eggs have made their way into occult societies, shadowy terrorist organizations, & the hands of dangerous Fey across Europe. Details on the Crystal Egg were written up by The Old School Heretic Blog back in 2012.
In fact many of the dark & sinster cults detailed in ACK's  Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu could be operating on the fringes of Earth during this time frame.


Next time the Fey, the Fairies, & the Fated! 

War of the Worlds Godzilla 1914 - Years Zero 1912 -1913 A Troll Lord Games OSR/ Victorious rpg Campaign

"At any rate, in all the bodies of the Martians that were examined after the war, no bacteria except those already known as terrestrial species were found. That they did not bury any of their dead, and the reckless slaughter they perpetrated, point also to an entire ignorance of the putrefactive process. But probable as this seems, it is by no means a proven conclusion.

Neither is the composition of the Black Smoke known, which the Martians used with such deadly effect, and the generator of the Heat- Rays remains a puzzle. The terrible disasters at the Ealing and South Kensington laboratories have disinclined analysts for further investigations upon the latter. Spectrum analysis of the black powder points unmistakably to the presence of an unknown element with a brilliant group of three lines in the green, and it is possible that it combines with argon to form a compound which acts at once with deadly effect upon some constituent in the blood. But such unproven speculations will scarcely be of interest to the general reader, to whom this story is addressed. None of the brown scum that drifted down the Thames after the destruction of Shepperton was examined at the time, and now none is forthcoming.

The results of an anatomical examination of the Martians, so far as the prowling dogs had left such an examination possible, I have already given. But everyone is familiar with the magnificent and almost complete specimen in spirits at the Natural History Museum, and the countless drawings that have been made from it; and beyond that the interest of their physiology and structure is purely scientific."
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
Chapter 10: The Epilogue

So War of the Worlds Godzilla 1914 got a bit of traction yesterday or today depending upon your side of the Atlantic or sea.  But I heard that there wasn't any room for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons characters or Castles & Crusades characters. In fact I'm gonna be doing this with the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide! The Europe of 1912-13 of War of the Worlds Godzilla 1914 is rotten with ruins. The Random Dungeon Generator in the Advanced Dungeon Master's Guide is perfect for creating them. 



The Martian Invaders  weren't through with Earth after the 1898 invasion & in fact the overgrown ruins scattered across Europe became the dungeons of the coming years. Rubble & ruins breed all kinds of conspiracies in the dark. And it also breeds occult  secret societies & much worse such as the terrorists organizations. Add to this the fact that just like the previous invasions the Martian invaders used psychic probes in the form of the Crystal Eggs. These were scattered across Europe and so fell into the hands of all kinds of organizations & secret occult societies. Now details on the Crystal Egg were written up by The Old School Heretic Blog back in 2012.  Throughout Europe Victorious rpg operatives & agents are engaged in a shadow war.

Not every nation had been so forth coming with their discoveries & break down of the Martian invaders technologies. Wilhelm The Second's scientists & departments had quite successfully developed an atomic bomb from the Martian Invaders power sources. The Germans were actually quite horrified by some of their black technologies. The biggest problem came with the testing of the Martian planar gate & special warp technologies. Men & soldiers were cut in half, many were burnt up in elemental fires, and some were swapped with other worldly counterparts. 



This planar gate  experimentation is one of the things that triggered the awakening of the Martian invaders for the second round. But many of the monsters that were triggered prior to the 1914 invasion were from both many world wide lost worlds & from elsewhere. These monsters are easily drawn from Castles & Crusades Monster & Treasure books with extra powers &  Kaiju abilities drawn from the Siege Engine Book of Powers. 


Make no mistake that this is a world where the crown heads of Europe are not only a reality but a historical fact. The traditional royal families are in full effect here giving the DM ample opportunity to add in magic or even D&D style classes into the mix as royal retainers. Here's the perfect spot to add in Lion & Dragon rpg  or even Dark Albion's setting or Cults of Chaos books. The Cult of the Star Gazer for example might be the perfect way of adding in a very dangerous alien or outsider element to the mix whist giving the party even more of a scare.  The Martian Invaders technologies & power sources are perfectly suited to be Chaotic by their very nature causing mutation, insanity or worse.


This is the perfect time to use a Ruritanian romance element to this campaign; "Ruritanian romance is a genre of literature, film and theatre comprising novels, stories, plays and films set in a fictional country, usually in Central or Eastern Europe, such as the "Ruritania" that gave the genre its name.^[1]

Such stories are typically swashbuckling adventure novels, tales of high romance and intrigue, centered on the ruling classes, almost always aristocracy and royalty,^[1] although (for instance) Winston Churchill's novel Savrola, in every other way a typical example of the genre, concerns a revolution to restore rightful parliamentary government in the republican country of Laurania. The themes of honor, loyalty and love predominate, and the works frequently feature the restoration of legitimate government after a period of usurpation or dictatorship" 

Fictional countries are established only to obliterated in the shadow of the on coming war & the invasion coming up. PC's could be working hard to avert the on coming horrors by globe trotting & trying to get a handle on both the espionage, saving heads of Europe, dealing with hidden witch covens, & trying to survive against the monstrous spawn of Kaiju. Add to the mix on very dangerous arch wizard in the form of the d' Amberville family & things get extremely weird.  Yeah that's right X2: "Castle Amber (Chateau d' Amberville)" (1981), by Tom Moldvay, is the perfect pre war kick in the teeth for a Pulp campaign such as this. Stephen d' Amberville is undead & not taking it lying down! He's got his fingers in the coming invasion & he's quite pissed about it. 

Stephen d' Amberville has been playing chess with the rest of pre WWI Europe & especially against his dedicated partner/opponent Otto von Bismarck. With his successor coming up & now this invasion business his game will be interrupted, again. This may never do. He's going to summon the party to his home & employ them for a series of missions!


But Castle Amber is only the half of it.