Depravity of Monsters - Drawing From The Darkness of Appendix N & Dungeons

 Monster placement is essential in Dungeons & Dragons adventures but what happens when the monsters bring the dungeon with them?!

Last night I got a chance to sit in on one of my favorite Atomic sci fi films Them from 1954. I was thinking about the film's influence on me when it comes to running adventures. The pacing, investigative aspect of the monster movie, and even the lay out of the lair of the mutant ants. Everything here is really solid for running old school adventures.Them has an expert hand in the form of director  Gordon Douglas.

And the cast fits all of the 50's Atomic era horror stereo types including  Edmund Gwenn, James Whitmore, James Arness, Onslow Stevens, &  Joan Weldon as the lead scientist's daughter. Here's the plot & I want you to pay attention to the layout of the film's plot;

"A nest of gigantic irradiated ants is discovered in the New Mexico desert; they quickly become a national threat when it is discovered that two young queen ants and their consorts have escaped to establish new nests. The national search that follows finally culminates in a battle with Them in the concrete spillways and sewers of Los Angeles."

Everything here centers around the monsters, their habits, & ecology. This is especially true of the monster's lairs or dungeons. The monster's very presence creates the dungeon environment in the film. This is something we see time & again in the pulp era. The monster menace creating the disruption of the dungeon location on the locals.
This sort of plot device is something I've used time & again in a wide variety of original Dungeons & Dragons affairs & it goes all the way to the pulp era. HP Lovecraft used it to great effect in the Dunwich Horror.


The investigative element, the horror on the locals, the rousting of the locals, and finally the reveal of the giant menace in the wilderness setting. The monster breaking through reality is creating the dungeon location unto itself. To certain extent this is also true of the menaces that we find in H.G. Wells War of the Worlds where the Martians bring their own brand of terra forming to bare.

An army of Martian fighting-machines destroying England. (1906)


As I said yesterday the monster is the other & the invasive species on the reality of the campaign. They can easily set the tone of the dungeon from science fantasy all the way to straight up horror. The corruption & chaos of monsters is inherit within their unreality and invasiveness. These are things that straight up foreign to our reality setting out their own reality as the 'norm'.
A modern interpretation of this can be seen in John Carpenter's The Fog. Again the monsters are bringing the menace. Carpenter drank from the same heady cocktail of pulp resources, Atomic monster movie films, & old school fantasy sources that coloured both Arneson & Gygax.



This is the creeping slow corruption of chaos within OSR circles can be seen  in Dark Albion. The monster ecology of Rpg Pundit's frogmen is something he talks about today. 

As for my campaigns I've got a totally different take. The Frogmen brought their own reality & military might with them in the form of their frog demon masters. Their own occult might trumps the will of the Conquering Sun where it can.


When you get into Clark Ashton Smith then we get to the heart of how the corruption of the dungeon is brought by the monsters. His Averoigne stories & Hyperborean tales are key pieces to bring on the dungeon crawling into the 'normal' reality of the campaign. Coming of the White Worm, The (1941) is a perfect set up of the invasive reality of the monster god coming to call with its crawling freezing corruption on the normal world of Hyperborea. And within The Mandrakes, (1933) we get the small side of it in spades where Averoigne's weirdness shows through the cracks. No doubt those cracks will widen into full bloom of dungeon weirdness.  What is the end result of the weirdness of the dungeon? The final washing away of the former reality of law possibly seen with major traces of chaos & corruption being left behind in Robert Howard's Conan story Red Nails.
"It was originally serialized in Weird Tales magazine from July to October 1936. It is set in the pseudohistorical Hyborian Age and concerns Conan encountering a lost city in which the degenerate inhabitants are proactively resigned to their own destruction. Due to its grim themes of decay and death, the story is considered a classic of Conan lore and is often cited by Howard scholars as one of his best tales."


The monsters have come & gone leaving only their corruption behind in the lone city of decay. The monsters may have gone but their moral corruption is far more reaching in the mental realms of the inhabitants because they've left the stain of inhuman
cultural decadence.  "Robert E. Howard's stories often express the author's belief that civilizations carry the seeds of their own destruction. Howard found in the lost city genre a vehicle for expressing these views."
"The theme of cultural decadence maintained its grip on Howard's imagination. In early 1935, he remarked to Novalyne Price:
"You see, girl, when a civilization begins to decay and die, the only thing men or women think about is the gratification of their body's desires. They become preoccupied with sex. It colors their laws, their religion – every aspect of their lives."
Its not about sex but cultural degeneration &  depravity seen again & again in Sword & Sorcery as societies fall. Not all of the monsters live in the dungeons but many of the worst are those that serve these inhuman fiends.  Monsters often bring the worst of the weirdness with them.

The Depravity of Monsters - Drawing From The Darkness of Appendix N & Dungeons

Monster placement is essential in Dungeons & Dragons adventures but what happens when the monsters bring the dungeon with them?!

Last night I got a chance to sit in on one of my favorite Atomic sci fi films Them from 1954. I was thinking about the film's influence on me when it comes to running adventures. The pacing, investigative aspect of the monster movie, and even the lay out of the lair of the mutant ants. Everything here is really solid for running old school adventures.Them has an expert hand in the form of director  Gordon Douglas.

And the cast fits all of the 50's Atomic era horror stereo types including  Edmund Gwenn, James Whitmore, James Arness, Onslow Stevens, &  Joan Weldon as the lead scientist's daughter. Here's the plot & I want you to pay attention to the layout of the film's plot;

"A nest of gigantic irradiated ants is discovered in the New Mexico desert; they quickly become a national threat when it is discovered that two young queen ants and their consorts have escaped to establish new nests. The national search that follows finally culminates in a battle with Them in the concrete spillways and sewers of Los Angeles."

Everything here centers around the monsters, their habits, & ecology. This is especially true of the monster's lairs or dungeons. The monster's very presence creates the dungeon environment in the film. This is something we see time & again in the pulp era. The monster menace creating the disruption of the dungeon location on the locals.
This sort of plot device is something I've used time & again in a wide variety of original Dungeons & Dragons affairs & it goes all the way to the pulp era. HP Lovecraft used it to great effect in the Dunwich Horror.


The investigative element, the horror on the locals, the rousting of the locals, and finally the reveal of the giant menace in the wilderness setting. The monster breaking through reality is creating the dungeon location unto itself. To certain extent this is also true of the menaces that we find in H.G. Wells War of the Worlds where the Martians bring their own brand of terra forming to bare.

An army of Martian fighting-machines destroying England. (1906)


As I said yesterday the monster is the other & the invasive species on the reality of the campaign. They can easily set the tone of the dungeon from science fantasy all the way to straight up horror. The corruption & chaos of monsters is inherit within their unreality and invasiveness. These are things that straight up foreign to our reality setting out their own reality as the 'norm'.
A modern interpretation of this can be seen in John Carpenter's The Fog. Again the monsters are bringing the menace. Carpenter drank from the same heady cocktail of pulp resources, Atomic monster movie films, & old school fantasy sources that coloured both Arneson & Gygax.



This is the creeping slow corruption of chaos within OSR circles can be seen  in Dark Albion. The monster ecology of Rpg Pundit's frogmen is something he talks about today. 

As for my campaigns I've got a totally different take. The Frogmen brought their own reality & military might with them in the form of their frog demon masters. Their own occult might trumps the will of the Conquering Sun where it can.


When you get into Clark Ashton Smith then we get to the heart of how the corruption of the dungeon is brought by the monsters. His Averoigne stories & Hyperborean tales are key pieces to bring on the dungeon crawling into the 'normal' reality of the campaign. Coming of the White Worm, The (1941) is a perfect set up of the invasive reality of the monster god coming to call with its crawling freezing corruption on the normal world of Hyperborea. And within The Mandrakes, (1933) we get the small side of it in spades where Averoigne's weirdness shows through the cracks. No doubt those cracks will widen into full bloom of dungeon weirdness.  What is the end result of the weirdness of the dungeon? The final washing away of the former reality of law possibly seen with major traces of chaos & corruption being left behind in Robert Howard's Conan story Red Nails.
"It was originally serialized in Weird Tales magazine from July to October 1936. It is set in the pseudohistorical Hyborian Age and concerns Conan encountering a lost city in which the degenerate inhabitants are proactively resigned to their own destruction. Due to its grim themes of decay and death, the story is considered a classic of Conan lore and is often cited by Howard scholars as one of his best tales."


The monsters have come & gone leaving only their corruption behind in the lone city of decay. The monsters may have gone but their moral corruption is far more reaching in the mental realms of the inhabitants because they've left the stain of inhuman
cultural decadence.  "Robert E. Howard's stories often express the author's belief that civilizations carry the seeds of their own destruction. Howard found in the lost city genre a vehicle for expressing these views."
"The theme of cultural decadence maintained its grip on Howard's imagination. In early 1935, he remarked to Novalyne Price:
"You see, girl, when a civilization begins to decay and die, the only thing men or women think about is the gratification of their body's desires. They become preoccupied with sex. It colors their laws, their religion – every aspect of their lives."
Its not about sex but cultural degeneration &  depravity seen again & again in Sword & Sorcery as societies fall. Not all of the monsters live in the dungeons but many of the worst are those that serve these inhuman fiends.  Monsters often bring the worst of the weirdness with them.

No Escape From The Dungeon - John Carpenter & Old School Urban Advenure Location

Movies, mayhem, & a bit of that old Seventies & Eighties cosmicism to the tune of original Dungeons & Dragons. Yesterday I covered part I & today we're climbing into the urban jungle. 

So last night once again I cracked my copies of original Dungeons & Dragons & began thumbing through volume one of Men & Magic. Playing in the background was I like to refer to John Carpenter's 'Death of the American Dream Saga'. The Saga consists the film of Escape From New York, They Live, & Escape From L.A.. So what does this have to do with cosmicism of H.P. Lovecraft & the Lovecraft circle of writers? Plenty. In Eighty One the future of Ninety Seven seemed really cool but Eighty One was the same year I discovered H.P. Lovecraft's The Horror At Red Hook.

I know all about the racists attitudes & connections of the story because my grandfathers were  Italian immigrants on both my mother & father's sides. This doesn't take away from the punch of the story nor its other gaming connections. These same urban elements in Escape From New York & taken to absurd levels in Escape From L.A. had their roots in the pulps of the Twenties & Thirties.

"Lovecraft referred to the area's immigrant population by referring to Red Hook as "a maze of hybrid squalor".^[3] He spelled out his inspiration for "The Horror at Red Hook" in a letter written to fellow writer Clark Ashton Smith:

The idea that black magic exists in secret today, or that hellish antique rites still exist in obscurity, is one that I have used and shall use again. When you see my new tale "The Horror at Red Hook", you will see what use I make of the idea in connexion with the gangs of young loafers & herds of evil-looking foreigners that one sees everywhere in New York.^[4]

Lovecraft had moved to New York to marry Sonia Greene a year earlier, in 1924; his initial infatuation with New York soon soured (an experience fictionalized in his short story "He"), in large part due to Lovecraft's xenophobic attitudes. "Whenever we found ourselves in the racially mixed crowds which characterize New York, Howard would become livid with rage," Greene later wrote. "He seemed almost to lose his mind."^[5]

Much of the magical background to the story was lifted from the articles on "Magic" and "Demonology" in the 9th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, written by anthropologist E. B. Tylor.^[6] Daniel Harms and John Wisdom Gonce note the spell Lovecraft quotes and describes as a "demon evocation", was actually an incantation used for treasure hunting.^[6] The use of the Yezidi as devil-worshipping villains seems to have been inspired by E. Hoffmann Price's "The Stranger from Kurdistan""


So all of the occult & demological imagery used in the Lovecraft story would inspire E. Hoffmann Price but also inspire Clark Ashton Smith & Robert Howard as well. It would also inspire the modern Sword & Sorcery tales of Fritz Leiber. There has always been an element of urban horror in the background of Sword & Sorcery especially the tales of Robert Howard's Conan. To take it a step further the misanthrope,outsider, & throw backs to another age adventurers  against the truly alien. What if the foreigners really are foreign to our reality. The urban becomes the breeding ground for the truly alien because we are completely blinded by our own preconceptions & prejudices of civilization. 
The alien humanoids of Dungeons & Dragons are perfect examples of the urban
cosmicism echoing through the game.  The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Goblin races are a perfect example of this. Forgot the Orc and its brood. The Goblins have no origin point except in mythology & legend of Europe. 

The goblin races originally have an infernal origin point;

"English goblin is first recorded in the 14th century and is probably from unattested Anglo-Norman *gobelin,^[1] similar to Old French gobelin, already attested around 1195 in Ambroise of Normandy's Guerre sainte, and to Medieval Latin gobelinus in Orderic Vitalis before 1141,^[2][3] which was the name of a devil or daemon haunting the country around Évreux, Normandy.
It may be related both to German kobold and to Medieval Latin cabalus, or *gobalus, itself from Greek κόβαλος (kobalos), "rogue", "knave", "imp", "goblin".^[2][4] Alternatively, it may be a diminutive or other derivative of the French proper name Gobel, more often Gobeau,"

Every other humanoid race springs from the origin point of the Goblin race in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition especially the numerous humanoids of The Fiend Folio. And this is no accident because no matter how you slice it these humanoid races are bringers of chaos & servants of evil. T.E.D. Klein's Children of the Kingdom goes into the matter quite nicely.


For the origin of the chaos that creates & grows these things I turn back to American author Fritz Leiber's Our Lady of Darkness (1977)' fictional occult science  "Megapolisomancy". Here the black magick of the cities is literally the power engine of the dungeon.Monsters spawning these things from the universal  generator of  mankind.. That is with a bit of help from The Outer Darkness. This might also help explain some of the weirder & more dangerous artifacts & treasures found in various dungeons.

Cities are unto themselves the dungeons that create these horrors but the black abyss awaits within. John Carpenter's 'They Live' shows some of the owners of the urban ruins & dungeons.  Fritz Leiber 's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories also get into various alien outsiders who try to invade his world. Many of these stories carry the same message as 'They Live'.

The urban environment is always on the edge of becoming the dungeon or ruin adventure location and this was something that doled out nicely in the three original Dungeons & Dragons books.



The force of suns had waned beyond recall.
Chaos was re-established over all,
Where lifeless atoms through forgetful deeps
Fled unrelated, cold, immusical.

Above the tumult heaven alone endured;
Long since the bursting walls of hell had poured
Demon and damned to peace erstwhile denied,
Within the Abyss God's might had not immured.

(He could but thwart it with creative mace. . . .)
And now it rose about the heavenly Base,
Mordant at pillars rotten through and through
Of Matter's last, most firm abiding-place.

Bastion and minaret began to nod,
Till all the pile, unmindful of His rod,
Dissolved in thunder, and the void Abyss
Caught like a quicksand at the feet of God !

The Abyss Triumphant  (1912)
by Clark Ashton Smith

Cosmicism, Appendix N, And The Rot From Within The Dungeon In Old School Campaigns

So over the long Easter weekend I got a chance to get my cosmicism on with original Dungeons & Dragons & the apocalypse trilogy of John Carpenter. John Carpenter gave birth to three films that link into what he has calls  his "Apocalypse Trilogy:" The Thing (1982), Prince of Darkness (1987), and In the Mouth of Madness (1995). All of these films draw from the older tradition of classic pulp stories of the 20's thru 50's  & the atomic sci fi & horror films of the Fifties. This is the same heady mix that Gary Gygax & Dave Arneson drank from. Delving into Appendix  N from the Advanced Dungeons & Dragon's Dungeon Master's Guide I'd have to echo through with the heroic tradition of Robert E Howard's horror & Cthulhu mythos stories which adheres closer to Carpenter's They Live film. The adventure location of the dungeon is rife with opportunities to deal in both principles of heroism & cosmicism. But let's define the philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft;

"The philosophy of cosmicism states that there is no recognizable divine presence, such as a god, in the universe, and that humans are particularly insignificant in the larger scheme of intergalactic existence, and perhaps are just a small species projecting their own mental idolatries onto the vast cosmos.^{[citation needed]} This also suggests that the majority of undiscerning humanity are creatures with the relative significance of insects and plants, when compared to the universe.^{[citation needed]}

The most prominent theme in cosmicism is the insignificance of humanity.^{[citation needed]} Lovecraft postulated, "The human race will disappear. Other races will appear and disappear in turn. The sky will become icy and void, pierced by the feeble light of half-dead stars. Which will also disappear. Everything will disappear. And what human beings do is just as free of sense as the free motion of elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, feelings? Pure 'Victorian fictions'. Only egotism exists.""

Where does the cosmicism of Dungeons & Dragons live? In the darkest recesses of its monsters & the unknown of the furthest reaches of its dungeon locations. A good example of this feeling is conveyed quite nicely in this advertisement for the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual.

I mentioned John Carpenter's They Live & his nameless drifter has the same spirit as Robert E. Howard's  Esau Cairn from the novella Almuric described as  "a complete misfit in modern America who "belongs in a simpler age". Exploited by a corrupt political boss which he finally kills with his bare hands". The heroic misfit is also the adventurer helping keep the dungeon from spreading.

Conan clears the board of any & all threats of the occult & dangerous supernatural so that mankind's next generation can continue.The dungeon is a cancer spreading across the campaign world reducing everything around it to alien chaos & rot. These same otherworldly elements at play that we see in the apocalypse trilogy of John Carpenter & H.P Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness. The adventure or dungeon location as social vector for ruin. Perhaps the gateway to adventure is more then it seems.


American author Fritz Leiber.'s Our Lady of Darkness novel plugs into this very same notion & uses many of the same conventions of other Appendix N authors including Ambrose Bierce,  Clark Ashton Smith,  M. R. James ,& H.P. Lovecraft.
This novel is not for the faint of heart & covers much of the same ideals & territories that Lamentations of the Flame Princess exercises within their adventures. Adventurers can't over the dungeon location but perhaps exploit it for their own downfalls or personal gain.

Cover of the first edition, published by Berkley Books.
Cover art by Richard M. Powers.


The treasures & artifacts of the dungeon or adventure location often seem to have their own minor spiritual elements to them. Legacies of the rot of ages that travel with them & I've often wondered about the gold & trinket's that Conan spread across the face of Hyboria. Could he have hasted his own world's age's ending by spreading the rot of ages past?
These themes are the bread & butter of Clark Ashton Smith especially in his Hyperborea cycle with Tale of Satampra Zeiros, The (1931). His entire Zothique cycle is rife with this sort of alien rot of the ages & the burden of cosmicism. 

• Coming of the White Worm, The (1941)
• Door to Saturn, The (1932)
• House of Haon-Dor, The (1989)
• Ice-Demon, The (1933)
• Lament for Vixeela (1953)
• Muse of Hyperborea, The (1929)
• Seven Geases, The (1934)
• Tale of Satampra Zeiros, The (1931)
• Testament of Athammaus, The (1932)
• Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles, The (1958)
• Ubbo-Sathla (1933)
• Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan, The (1932)
• White Sybil, The (1932)
  
  CAS's entire Zothique cycle exploits this notion of inner cosmicism & cranks it up to eleven. 

In the OSR I find the alien rot of  cosmicism lurking at the edges of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea's second edition's latest kickstarter. The dungeon can not hold the menace & its only a matter of time.
AS&SH art by Val Semeiks

Or are the situations held in check by the heroic gestures of the adventurers like McCready in John Carpenter's The Thing? I have to say that after having dungeon mastered my fair share of original Dungeons & Dragons & many OSR games I think that its a bit of both.
We'll get into more of the origins of the rot tomorrow! Don't get infected in the dungeon!