OSR Commentary - Lands of the Jotunn & G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief By Gary Gygax (1978)

 " Giants have been raiding the lands of men in large bands, with giants of different sorts in these marauding groups. Death and destruction have been laid heavily upon every place these monsters have visited. A party of the bravest and most powerful adventurers has been assembled and given the charge to punish the miscreant giants"

I've been thinking heavily about G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief  By Gary Gygax (1978) & looking into how this style of tourament module could be used in a Pulp style game & before you head off give me a chance. Since these are a part of the classic Against the Giants series of modules by Gary Gygax let's get a little insight;"Against the Giants is an adventure module written by Gary Gygax and published by TSR in 1981 for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game." G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief  By Gary Gygax  takes place within Jotunn in Greyhawk & if that location was rifted into the modern world then events get very horrific & dangerous. Now I was reading through Dungeon of Sighs review of G1-3 Against the Giants from 2017. I was struck by the following; "he Hill Giant steading is a balance between two common stock communities - the barbarian ‘meadhall’ and the cannibal ‘hillbilly’ clan compound.  One can easily push it in either direction, depending on how one sees Hill Giants.  Certainly the Hill Giant of the 5th edition (and perhaps the Monster Manual) is driven by gluttony and seems like something out of “The Hills Have Eyes” more than a Fomorian of Celtic myth.  This second idea, Hill Giants as oversized classical celtic with monstrous table manners is closer to the 1978 G1.  Giants cover everything in furs and love decorative jewelry, living in a hall as an extended clan, the warrior elite lording over their captives and servants.  The little art in G1 straddles these two conceptions as well, with giants clad in furs, or sometimes dressed in 19th century looking prairie dresses and depending on one’s campaign going in either direction could be very fun. " 
Now let's say that lands of the Jotunn plannarly merged with modern day England & that's when the real trouble starts. In Norse mythology this place is literally the land of giants, trolls, and other Dungeons & Dragons humanoids. For some reason H.G. Wells Food of the Gods stuck with me here & the idea that the Hill Giants might be feeding some of the locals on their own food or Eitr. Yeah this is right outta of the Bob Something Godbound/Scion: Titanspawns play book. The hill giants have been turning the locals into cannon fodder, slaves,etc.
Now this isn't the first time I've thought about doing this & for a Godbound/Dungeons & Dragons campaign this isn't a bad way to go. Scientists who are studying the food of the gods or Ambrosia are extremely dangerous circumstances. The food of the gods comes from Greco/Roman mythology; "Ambrosia is very closely related to the gods' other form of sustenance, nectar. The two terms may not have originally been distinguished;^[6] though in Homer's poems nectar is usually the drink and ambrosia the food of the gods; it was with ambrosia Hera "cleansed all defilement from her lovely flesh",^[7] and with ambrosia Athena prepared Penelope in her sleep,^[8] so that when she appeared for the final time before her suitors, the effects of years had been stripped away, and they were inflamed with passion at the sight of her. On the other hand, in Alcman,^[9] nectar is the food, and in Sappho^[10] and Anaxandrides, ambrosia is the drink.^[11] A character in Aristophanes' Knights says, "I dreamed the goddess poured ambrosia over your head—out of a ladle." Both descriptions could be correct, as ambrosia could be a liquid considered a food (such as honey).

The consumption of ambrosia was typically reserved for divine beings. Upon his assumption into immortality on Olympus, Heracles is given ambrosia by Athena, while the hero Tydeus is denied the same thing when the goddess discovers him eating human brains. In one version of the myth of Tantalus, part of Tantalus' crime is that after tasting ambrosia himself, he attempts to steal some away to give to other mortals.^[12] Those who consume ambrosia typically had not blood in their veins, but ichor the blood of immortals.^[13]

Both nectar and ambrosia are fragrant, and may be used as perfume: in the Odyssey Menelaus and his men are disguised as seals in untanned seal skins, "...and the deadly smell of the seal skins vexed us sore; but the goddess saved us; she brought ambrosia and put it under our nostrils."^[14] Homer speaks of ambrosial raiment, ambrosial locks of hair, even the gods' ambrosial sandals."

So let's say that the hill giants are using the local youth for part of an army of muscle & cult recruitment. Surely there couldn't be someone among them whose got the brains to organize hill giants into such a back handed group of muscle & dominance right? Well enter Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae ("The History of The Kings of Britain", 12th century), & Gogmagog. "He was a giant inhabitant of Albion, thrown off a cliff during a wrestling match with Corineus (a companion of Brutus of Troy). Gogmagog was the last of the Giants found by Brutus and his men inhabiting the land of Albion."




Its no accident that I mentioned that G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief  By Gary Gygax (1978) might be transported to a modern England this goes back to Gogmagog (also Goemagot, Goemagog, Goëmagot and Gogmagoc); "Gogmagog ("Goemagot", "Goemagog") in the legend of the founding of Britain as written by Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae (1136). Gogmagog was a giant of Albion who was slain by Corineus, a member of the invading Trojan colonizers headed by Brutus. Corineus was subsequently granted a piece of land that was named "Cornwall" eponymously after him.

The Historia details the encounter as follows: Gogmagog, accompanied by twenty fellow giants, attacked the Trojan settlement and caused great slaughter. The Trojans rallied back and killed all giants, except for "one detestable monster named Gogmagog, in stature twelve cubits, and of such prodigious strength that at one shake he pulled up an oak as if it had been a hazel wand". He is captured so that Corineus can wrestle with him. The giant breaks three of Corineus's ribs, which so enrages him that he picks up the giant and carries him on his shoulders to the top of a high rock, from which he throws the giant down into the sea. The place where he fell was known as "Gogmagog's Leap" to posterity."

So why would  Gogmagog return with hordes of hill giants & the like to modern England? To track down his modern day descendants & use them in an army of the Apocalypse to destroy modern society; "The Lord Mayor's account of Gogmagog says that the Roman Emperor Diocletian had thirty-three wicked daughters. He found thirty-three husbands for them to curb their wicked ways; they chafed at this, and under the leadership of the eldest sister, Alba, they murdered their husbands. For this crime they were set adrift at sea; they washed ashore on a windswept island, which they named "Albion"—after Alba. Here they coupled with demons and gave birth to a race of giants, whose descendants included Gog and Magog" 

There's always been a mix here of gods & giants going back to Norse mythology
 the primary example here being Loki.
 But there are many others & to take this back to Dark Albion if  G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief  By Gary Gygax (1978) & placed it within Dark  Albion or Lion & Dragon  with our additions the effects could be devestating. Ambroisa being used as a sacrement for a cult of the hill giants on the local populace would have incredibly dangerous effects. The supplicant's strength gains  +4 & perhaps a +2 on dexterity.But their intelligence & wisdom go down by -2 points after two weeks of being on the Ambroisia. The cult's members become creatures of chaos before too long gaining unsightly & unnatural muscles. Originally these monsters were used as shock troops by the Elves in ages past & now these monsters have returned!




Hill giants have always been creatures of chaos within my mind anyway. Dangerous in the exgtreme, prone to violence, quick tempered, & representive of a different order then humanity entirely. 

And this gets into the fact that all of the above could potentially be used with a Troll Lords Mythos dark Europe. Let me explain, while may seem a bit convoluted and far fetched the forces of chaos could in point of fact be returning from Fairy and planning a full scale invasion of Europe! 
And the Mythos line of books from Troll Lord Games supports this! The Fey could easy taint the wells of surrounding  towns and other locations such as the Borderlands. And again here's where I'd pull quite a bit Adventurer, Conqueror, King's take on the forces of Chaos! 

The Carnel Appetites of The Followers of Death God - - Lamentations of the Flame Princess & White Box : Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game by Seattle Hill Games - More OSR Ghoulish Campaign Commentary

 "Mordiggian...was a benign deity in the eyes of the inhabitants of Zul-Bha-Sair. A colossal shadow appeared that was not wrought by anything in the room. It filled the portals from side to side, it towered above the lintel – and then, swiftly, it became more than a shadow: it was a bulk of darkness, black and opaque, that somehow blinded the eyes with a strange dazzlement. It seemed to suck the flame from the red urns and fill the chamber with a chill of utter death and voidness. Its form was that of a worm-shapen column, huge as a dragon, its further coils still issuing from the gloom of the corridor; but it changed from moment to moment, swirling and spinning as if alive with the vortical energies of dark aeons. Briefly it took the semblance of some demoniac giant with eyeless head and limbless body; and then, leaping and spreading like smoky fire, it swept into the chamber."
The Carnel God Clark Ashton Smith 

So let's pick it right up from where we last left off here.  The silver masks of  Mordiggiel, are found in the far flung areas of Medieval Europe. The silvery masks of the the Clergy of Mordiggiel have been changed by their association of the Lovecraftian god of death. And where pray tell is all of this information coming from?! Black Box Books -- Tome Three: Cannibals and Confusion By Kirt A. Dankmyer

And these silvery masked bastards are taking on any & all comers down to their realms. And where are these realms besides the four corners of the globe?! They happen to be below the streets of Paris in the Catacombs.  And according to the wiki entry these date back to the time of the Romans but for our purposes they date way further into the past possibly even pre Biblical Flood; "Paris' earliest burial grounds were to the southern outskirts of the Roman-era Left Bank city. In ruins after the Western Roman Empire's 5th-century end and the ensuing Frankish invasions, Parisians eventually abandoned this settlement for the marshy Right Bank: from the 4th century, the first known settlement there was on higher ground around a Saint-Etienne church and burial ground (behind the present Hôtel de Ville), and urban expansion on the Right Bank began in earnest after other ecclesiastical landowners filled in the marshlands from the late 10th century. Thus, instead of burying its dead away from inhabited areas as usual, the Paris Right Bank settlement began with cemeteries near its centre." 

And this ties right into White Box : Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game because of the style of ghouls that it presents; "Armor Class: 6 [13] Hit Dice: 2 Attacks: Claw Special: See below Move: 9 HDE/XP: 3/60 Ghouls are pack-hunting undead, corpse eaters. They are immune, like most undead, to charms and sleep spells. The most dangerous feature of these horrid, cunning creatures is their paralyzing touch: any hit from a ghoul requires a saving throw or the victim becomes paralyzed for 3d6 turns." 
These are the classic Lovecraftian ghouls who have never left Europe, lost faith in Mordiggiel nor stopped breeding with the locals all around Europe. Where did they first come from?! What if they've always been beside us to begin with?! 

According to the Wiki entry on Ghouls; "In Arabic folklore, the ghul is said to dwell in cemeteries and other uninhabited places. A male ghoul is referred to as ghul while the female is called ghulah.^[6] A source^[who?] identified the Arabic ghoul as a female creature who is sometimes called Mother Ghoul (ʾUmm Ghulah) or a relational term such as Aunt Ghoul.^[7] She is portrayed in many tales luring hapless characters, who are usually men, into her home where she can eat them.^[7]" 

Some state^[who?] that a ghoul is a desert-dwelling, shapeshifting demon that can assume the guise of an animal, especially a hyena. It lures unwary people into the desert wastes or abandoned places to slay and devour them. The creature also preys on young children, drinks blood, steals coins, and eats the dead,^[8] then taking the form of the person most recently eaten. One of the narratives identified a ghoul named Ghul-e Biyaban, a particularly monstrous character believed to be inhabiting the wilderness of Afghanistan and Iran." 

So basically the race of ghouls are a type of genii that has evolved next to us this whole time.But what if that's not entirely the whole story?! What if the fact that Elves are immune to the paralizying touch of a ghoul offers a lot more insight into their origins?! 
If we go back in time to the mythology of Elves  then there's the point of contact; "The word elf is found throughout the Germanic languages and seems originally to have meant 'white being'. However, reconstructing the early concept of an elf depends largely on texts written by Christians, in Old and Middle English, medieval German, and Old Norse. These associate elves variously with the gods of Norse mythology, with causing illness, with magic, and with beauty and seduction.

After the medieval period, the word elf tended to become less common throughout the Germanic languages, losing out to alternative native terms like Zwerg ('dwarf') in German and huldra ('hidden being') in North Germanic languages, and to loan-words like fairy (borrowed from French into most of the Germanic languages). Still, beliefs in elves persisted in the early modern period, particularly in Scotland and Scandinavia, where elves were thought of as magically powerful people living, usually invisibly, alongside everyday human communities. They continued to be associated with causing illnesses and with sexual threats. For example, several early modern ballads in the British Isles and Scandinavia, originating in the medieval period, describe elves attempting to seduce or abduct human characters." 

And it's this point where things get very interesting because a lot of the same characteristics of Elves & Ghouls intersect. In Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg the Elven race is literally ' the other'. And what does this have to do with the Clergy of Mordiggiel?! Everything because literally Elves were split off from the projenitor race in PreBiblical  Flood times. And Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos goes deeply into this. 

The Elves of Dark Albion or mythology created the OGL Elves to serve as chattle for their appetites and to serve them. Below them were mankind or at least it was for awhile until the Biblical Floods wiped them both back to beyond the pale of the material plane. 
The Ghoul tribes were another matter entirely. They fled to the corners of the dreamlands & dark underworld Fey realms. These served as way points created by their god  Mordiggiel,or so it told them. In point of fact it was the essence of the god  Mordiggiel, that was used to further corrupt the Elven race. 

So while their better at well everything then you. The Elven race is also full of that rich life energy that the true Elves crave.  Mordiggiel cult still flourishes because mankind carves it's into the ghouls image. 

Dark Magick & High Crimes - HP Lovecraft's Dream Cycle, Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos , & Lamentations of the Flame Princess

 So recently I was going over my campaign notes on an old Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg campaign which used quite a bit of H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands as campaign fodder. Now at the time the  Dark Albion rpg setting hit the wild. The crossovers that we used between the two OSR products  were extensive. The connection was a variant of the usual Summon spell but in this case it was a dreamlands variant. 



And this spell was one that dipped into the deepest parts of nightmare & this meant that anything is utterly things of Chaos. But not simply any chaos but deeply rooted into Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos. Why because of the Greco Roman connections  to a a fantasy medieval setting which heavily influenced a black powder aesthetic of Europe of my LoFP campaign. 
Cults of Chaos, perfectly suits the Chaos influence that the Dreamlands presents upon the waking world especially if there are dream cults that spring up around this campaign lead in & why? Well let's look into Cults of Chaos's intro for a moment; 


"There are two main sections in the supplement: the first presents rules on generating a chaos-worshiping cult, usable to create a wide variety of possible secret sects and conspiracies in the service of Chaos through multiple groups and social classes. The emphasis of these sects is on having a degree of ‘medieval authenticity’, presenting the cults with fantasy elements but with direct inspiration from real-world medieval ideas on witch-craft, heresies, priestly corruption, aristocratic hedonism, etc., many derived directly from either real history or medieval folk-beliefs. T he second section presents rules on Chaos mutations: transformations to a character’s mind, body or spirit which come about as a result of some form of exposure to the warping power of raw Chaos. There have been many excellent rules in other products (both OSR and other fantasy games) on corruption or mutation for fantasy games, to say nothing of post-apocalyptic games; but these mutation rules are somewhat distinct on account of their being based, again, on real medieval ideas and folklore about witches, monsters and curses."




 "This includes witch-marks, madness-inducing spirits, and rules on familiars which change familiars back from the RPG standard of ‘friendly magic animal companion’ into a powerful but corrupting demon-spawned animal link to the infernal." 

So could there be far more lurking in the dreamlands than we think?! Perhaps the alien elven gods of ancient mankind?! I think perhaps that the dreamlands as we know them may be one of the refuges of the ancient elven gods of mankind. And their cults simply wait to take back what's theirs in the waking world; 

"I shall never sleep calmly again when I think of the horrors that lurk ceaselessly behind life in time and in space, and of those unhallowed blasphemies from elder stars which dream beneath the sea, known and favoured by a nightmare cult ready and eager to loose them upon the world whenever another earthquake shall heave their monstrous stone city again to the sun and air" 
HP Lovecraft. 

There are out in the wild place of Europe & even in North America cells of dream cults working to undermine the very fabric of reality. And these are not simply scary tentacled horrors but other deities masquerading as 'gods' within the Dream cycle of  Lovecraft; 
That cycle includes the following: 

• "Polaris" (1918)
• "The White Ship" (1919)
• "The Doom That Came to Sarnath" (1919)
• "The Cats of Ulthar" (1920)
• "Celephaïs" (1920)
• "Ex Oblivione" (1920)
• "Nyarlathotep" (1920)
• "The Quest of Iranon" (1921)
• "The Nameless City" (reference only) (1921)
• "The Other Gods" (1921)
• "Azathoth" (1922)
• "The Hound" (reference only) (1922)
• "Hypnos" (1922)
• "What the Moon Brings" (1922)
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926)
• "The Outsider" (1926)
• "The Silver Key" (1926)
• "The Strange High House in the Mist" (1926)
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (reference only) (1927)
• "The Thing in the Moonlight" (Based on a letter written to Donald Wandrei. Written by J. Chapman Miske) (1927. Published 1941)
• At the Mountains of Madness (reference only) (1931)
• "The Dreams in the Witch House" (roughly connected) (1932)
• "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" (with E. Hoffmann Price) (1932)

We're not talking simply witch covens here but full blown cells of cults bound & determined to bring reality as we know it to allow conquerors of old to retake the Earth. 

B10 Night's Dark Terror By Jim Bambra, Graeme Morris, Phil Gallagher For Your Old School Pulp Adventure Campaign

 "Barely one day's march from Kelven, the uncharted tracts of the Dymrak forest conceal horrors enough to freeze the blood of civilized folk. Those who have ventured there tell how death comes quick to the unwary - for the woods at night are far worse than any dungeon. But you are adventurers, veterans of many battles, and the call of the will is strong. Will you answer the call, or are you afraid of the dark terrors of the night?

Way back in the early Eighties I read a lot of X men comic books & I noticed that the group did a ton of wilderness based adventures. In fact if you begin looking into super hero comic books & graphic novels there's tons of lost world & such settings thrown into the mix. B10 Night's Dark Terror.  B10: Night’s Dark Terror (1986) was made  the TSR UK brain trust of Jim Bambra, Graeme Morris, and Phil Gallagher. 


B10: Night’s Dark Terror (1986) is an old school adventure that I've used time & again with a wide variety of old school & OSR retroclones. Dungeon mastering B10: Night’s Dark Terror (1986) includes OSR systems like  Dark Albion & Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea 2nd edition recently.

But I can already hear the groans from the reading audience, what the hell does one module have to do with two OSR game systems  & does this tie into the Thirty Year War? Wherever Chaos touches or washes against reality we've got mutation, supernatural issues, and the old Elven hills & pagan groves in some places are still opening upon Fairyland."The characters encounter a town under siege by goblins, a ruined city, and a lost valley" The Elves are doubling down on taking over a wide variety of realities & Fairyland is basically using old fairy rings & ruins across the planes. How does this work?
Fairyland is a rolling planar demi realm accessed as a higher parasitic dimension that touch on other realities.


For my purposes of 'The Otheworld' is another aspect of the realm of Fairyland that reflects the weirdness & the dangerous occult chaos of the other dimensional realm of the Elves. Each & every time these higher parasitic dimensions touch a reality they bring the subtle energies of chaos with them. So essentially each time a cult accesses an aspect of Fairyland it brings these places back into the world along with the chaotic ecological system. Dungeons are not simply created their borne of the chaos of the realm of Fairy.


D&D Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes (1976), by Rob Kuntz & James Ward, is the fourth of four supplements for the OD&D game. It was published in July 1976 & has a solid roster of Celtic gods & heroes who have fought the powers of Fairyland to a stand still.  The 'Otherworld' is also an origin source of kings, heroes, & the destiny place  of warriors, knights, & wizards.

"The Otherworld was also seen as a source of authority. In the tale Baile in Scáil ("the phantom's ecstatic vision"), Conn of the Hundred Battles visits an Otherworld hall, where the god Lugh legitimizes his kingship and that of his successors.^{[1]"These various rolling dimensional aspects of  'the Otherworld' empower both the adventurers & heroes as well as fuel the whole of Fairyland. The original purpose of the place has been perverted.}
B10: Night’s Dark Terror (1986) is a perfect pulp adventure to use because  this is a transition module and takes PC's into the big leagues! That's right set B10: Night’s Dark Terror (1986) in some back part of Europe in middle of the Pulp Age or  the Golden Age of Superheroes and they're going to get noticed big time! 

Modern weapons are not going to be a huge deciding factor if your adventurer or pulp hero is looking down the business end of an owl bear! Way back in the Eighties many of the independent comic book companies had their own super hero & pulp teams encountering & recruiting wizards, clerics, thieves, etc. from Dungeons & Dragons style worlds into their ranks.

No one batted an eye & the number of Arthurian heroes that Marvel & D.C. used is numerous. The fact is that dungeon masters back in the Seventies & Eighties used whatever mythical or  fictional characters they needed as NPC's.

B10: Night’s Dark Terror (1986) is a stepping stone module & even with modern pulp style adventurers is going to be a challenge. 
So let's update this a bit with some more background. Dark Albion action with the Elves of Fairyland going full invasion with OZ & Wonderland playing a huge part in DM Steve's game last night & it took place in an alternative Earth 19th century. A campaign that I wrote by the way. But already DM Steve has been modifying & messing with it. 



So what does this have to do with B10: Night’s Dark Terror (1986)?! Everything as our PC's found themselves in the Otherworld & even playing a werewolf I had B10 wilderness messing with me because it was a part of Fairyland. Imagine it like this, the whole of Earth has been pushing agaisnt the wilderness with the second Industrial Revolution in full swing due to the Martian Invasion round one. The Elves, Fey,etc. are taking a very dim view of this & have been exploding Wilderness from their world into ours! The chaos & weirdness of their world has been converting lots of folks on the fringes into Elven cults straight outta of Dark Albion: Cults of Chaos



Now all of this ties back into Brian Young's Castles & Crusades Codex Celtarum 2nd Edition. Which outlines the Castles & Crusades take on the Celtic Fey & their cycles. Some of the factions of the Fey have been helping the PC's And some have been actively hindering them in very nasty ways. 




Much of what's in Brian Young's Castles & Crusades Codex Celtarum 2nd Edition easily ties into the works of Welsh author Arthur Machen. More on this all later. 

OSR Commentary Castles, Crusaders, & Deeper Clark Ashton Smith Zothique Dreams With X2 Castle Amber By Tom Moldvay

Last night I sat down with a group of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons players & it was an interesting walk through about their game campaigns. Their dungeon master is going on vacation & asked me to step in. Whoa.. I took a very large step back from this. I'm already engaged with an on going OSR  campaign which has been running for a very long while. So I'm putting the breaks on stepping in & taking on another commitment. Why?? Because I don't think that I can give my full attention to stepping into another friend's campaign.
In the meantime I've been rereading & going over my copies of Castles & Crusades books & materials for my on going weekly game. I already talked about doubling down on the OSR resources the other day. 



One of the books that I really like is the Castles & Crusades Arms & Armors book, this is a solid resource with some great weapons of the ancients in it. I started thinking about Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique. So I started looking into expanding the free D20 Zothique booklet into a fully functioning campaign world. This was a process that I started about six or so months ago. There are a few isolated towns & villages that have had some contact with other  worlders. Various legends within the Zothique Pulp setting that hint at this. And in fact when Clark Ashton Smith describes his world setting its interesting from the Wiki entry; "Clark Ashton Smith himself described the Zothique cycle in a letter to L. Sprague de Camp, dated November 3, 1953:

Zothique, vaguely suggested by Theosophic theories about past and future continents, is the last inhabited continent of earth. The continents of our present cycle have sunken, perhaps several times. Some have remained submerged; others have re-risen, partially, and re-arranged themselves. Zothique, as I conceive it, comprises Asia Minor, Arabia, Persia, India, parts of northern and eastern Africa, and much of the Indonesian archipelago. A new Australia exists somewhere to the south. To the west, there are only a few known islands, such as Naat, in which the black cannibals survive. To the north, are immense unexplored deserts; to the east, an immense unvoyaged sea. The peoples are mainly of Aryan or Semitic descent; but there is a negro kingdom (Ilcar) in the north-west; and scattered blacks are found throughout the other countries, mainly in palace-harems. In the southern islands survive vestiges of Indonesian or Malayan races. The science and machinery of our present civilization have long been forgotten, together with our present religions. But many gods are worshipped; and sorcery and demonism prevail again as in ancient days. Oars and sails alone are used by mariners. There are no fire-arms—only the bows, arrows, swords, javelins, etc. of antiquity. The chief language spoken (of which I have provided examples in an unpublished drama) is based on Indo-European roots and is highly inflected, like Sanskrit, Greek and Latin.

Darrell Schweitzer suggests the idea of writing about a far future land may have come from William Hope Hodgson's novel The Night Land, noting that Smith was an admirer of Hodgson's work.^[2] However, this theory was conclusively disproven by Scott Conner’s "Dust and Atoms: The Influence of William Hope Hodgson on Clark Ashton Smith" in Sargasso#2 (2016), the scholarly journal devoted to Hodgson."

Zothique is not Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea rpg' Hyperborea  but a separate time space continuum millions of years in a plane Prime's alternative future. This means that there are millions cultures that have come & gone to this Earth's dust. Basically this means that I can take the Castles & Crusades Mythos Bundle & use it too fill out the settings gaps as needed.
Take a look at this map of Zothique by Miihkali  its his own work, based on a map by Crates it gives an idea of the scale & just how far into Earth's future we're talking.

Map of Zothique by Miihkali  its his own work, based on a map by Crates 

Now Africa, all of Eurasia, have come to form the backbone of this world. Its old, fickle, demonic, & very dangerous. The type of place that will devour adventurers & its just the sort of a place that one might find explorers of the Unconquered Sun's Albion  trying to stake a claim to the deserts of Zothique. 

When the start of the Rose War begins it throws empire of Albion into full chaos. This is going to leave any explorers isolated & perhaps vulnerable. I've already written about the wizard-noble Stephen Amber (Etienne d'Amberville)'s interests on Zothique. But things get much more harry then that X2 Castle Amber  places several Mystara resources at the feet of the Amber family. Their roots run very deep indeed into the sands of Zothique as they do on Mystara.

The Castles & Crusades Keeper's Guide has several magical options built into it. Allowing the dungeon master to potray on the whole spectrum of wild & woolly Zothique magicks. This is especially true if the DM marries it with the Dungeon Crawl Classics rpg.



But why would the wizard-noble Stephen Amber (Etienne d'Amberville) be so interested in Zothique? Two things immortality & possibly averting his on coming death curse that he can't seem to escape. He's angry, desperate, but not stupid or reckless. But where does all of this lead? We'll get into that next time. 

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.