Stormbringer rpg Session Report Three - Guests of The Dark Empire of Granbretan! The Appearance of Kane.

  Our party was herded into two cages drawn by mutant horses and our weapons were taken away. Devices were also searched for and then it was a long trip to the capital of Londra. All of the while it was a miserable trip with animal headed guards watching our every move and our party was in mostly silence. This session picks right up where we left off here on the blog. 

We were briefly paraded through the streets on our way to the capital buildings & then it was our time to brought before King Huon. King Huon, also called Huon the Immortal and the  King-Emperor, The freak of a king emperor floated in a strange 25 foot bubble of biogenetic liquid who awaited us. 

'A strange melodious voice said, 'Adventurers, mercenaries, and villains a man of royal linage awaits you. Mr. Kane wants a word with you and then we'll have our way with you ourselves' 

Waiting for us was a warrior whose face was cragged over with tons of wrinkles and two very icy blue eyes surrounded by a wreath of red hair. 'Warriors, I have need of your skills and it's a deadly quest we've got line up for you!' 

'The staff of the demon stone is an artifact of Chaos that lies outside of the purview of Runestaff. We want it! ' the voice was horse and dire of purpose. 
'The Mantis sorcerers of the  Empire of Granbretan have opened a doorway deep into the Million spheres as a part of the holdings of a powerful wizard of the empire. We want you to grab this bauble for the emperor'  

'We will richly reward you warriors' , the voice was smooth as velvet but artificially weird in it's echoes & held an icy undercurrent of menace to it. 'Gold, slaves, lands, and titles could be yours if you bring us the artifact' the speaker barked in response. 
Given our current condition within the walled cage of steel and wood we were in position to refuse. We held out a bit and asked to discuss it among ourselves! And we did. We asked for further warrior retainers of mutant stock & two wizards who were on the execution rolls of the Great Empire. Actually two other players we'd added too our motley crew of scum! 
'Granted!' What else!?' 

So what's going on here is that we're sorta of connecting this Stormbringer campaign with my uncle's old campaign from the early 90's. The retainers and prisoners are actually PC's who'd been locked up by the dark empire back in the 90's.  And one of our players had the old sheets! So we connected the two campaigns through the PC's. One of which is Abe Sentient a mutant and psionic PC whose been locked up since the end of the old campaign. 

Stormbringer rpg Session Report Two - Guests of The Dark Empire of Granbretan!

  Still not sure what we're doing in the  Dark Empire of Granbretan but we're still sneaking around from the animal headed knights that we saw from the side of the road we're on. From behind us we saw a new warrior who had no idea who we were and why he was with us.  Seems Radic the Great was a prisoner of Pan Tang one moment on board one of their slaver ships and next with us. This session picks right up from here. 

We were able to quiet him as soon as he saw the animal headed knights of 

the Dark Empire of Granbretan. We explained that we'd heard rumors of the inhabitants of the Dark Empire of Granbretan; "The inhabitants of Granbretan are renowned for their cruelty, and for their practice of wearing masks at all times." We hid in the remains of a cottage and were able to find some fruit baring trees from which we got breakfast. "The Granbretanian aristocracy, and the soldiers they lead, belong to the equivalent of  chivalric orders, characterised by a totemic animal. The orders have their own secret languages and their animal-masks make their members resemble bipedal beasts." according to one of our number Count Orlock the Damned. Apparently Orlock had spent time within the dungeons of Londra.  We had no wish to spend any time in the tender care of the Dark Empire of Granbretan.

While we discussing our next move, we heard the ground being churned up and immediately went on the defensive. From under the ground some weird mutant tentacled  horror turned up! And we went to work and got into combat with the thing! Ripping and tearing the ground and around us it took the ground out from under us. Count Orklock got in a couple of solid hits with his demon sword & dagger. Turk The Violent got his battle axe deeply embedded in the thing's tentacled head and that gave Theusu the opening he needed. 
And that's when a bunch of crossbow bolts from  the wolf headed knights finished the thing off. We were surrounded by the very forces we were trying to avoid! 'Welcome my friends you are now guests of the empire of Granbretan! Please put down your arms! " 
We ended here for the moment 

Stormbringer rpg Session Report One - Through The Flesh Gate Of The Young Kingdom

 "Well. I can tell you now that Stormbringer's 'real' being is related to other supernatural forces on another plane. I know how to summon them, but these relations are also creatures of Chaos and therefore, as far as you're concerned, somewhat hard to control. They could well get out of hand in some way” perhaps even turn against you. Stormbringer, as you have discovered in the past, is bound to you by ties even stronger than those which bind it to its brothers, but its brothers outnumber it and Stormbringer might not be able to protect you against them."

-Sepiriz, Stormbringer p. 87-88

This session report picks right up from here on the blog. There is an unspoken rule within the Stormbringer rpg & that's never mess with the soul stealing sword! Let alone mess with other incarnations of Stormbringer. And tonight our crew of marauders went to work for a wizard who stumbled upon a strange time doorway in the center of the Young Kingdom. Dar'varn was a strange Melniboné wizard who hired us to investigate the gateway. 

The gateway was made out of a strange flesh like material & crossing over the threshold of the gate found ourselves within a strange realm surrounded by millions of Black Swords hanging in space. According to the Moorcock's  Multiverse wiki entry on the Black Sword entry; "The Black Sword has been called by many names in its different manifestations across the Multiverse, including Stormbringer, Mournblade/Ravenbrand, Kanajana, the Cold Sword, the Dragon Sword, and Murakamo-No-Tsurugi (Japanese for Sword of the Gathering Clouds). The blade may not always manifest in the color black either, such as Corum Jhaelen Irsei's moon colored sword Traitor."

"Though the Black Sword is a being of Chaos, it seems to be an instrument of the Balance, akin to the  Runestaff  and the Horn of Fate. This is likely because in some cryptic way, the Black Sword and the Eternal Champion are one."

Tur The Terrible is a mercenary from Pan Tang who decided to claim one of the blades as his own. Big mistake! Several of the blades closed in on Tur and impaled him and sucked his soul into several different blades! 
While this was happening our party backed up and back out through the gateway! We made it only to find ourselves in another universe surrounded by the giant runes of the Black Swords. Everything was surrounded by these giant eldritch charged glyphs! Our party backed up and exited once again through the gate only to find ourselves in a strange huge battlefield surrounded by millions of bodies that were once people. These corpses kept changing and mutating with flesh coloured slop & gore that came towards our party. 

The party backed towards the gate as fast as we could and went through only to find ourselves in a strange countryside! We heard hoof beats approaching and we hid behind a wood pile and the ruins of a cottage. We saw the animal masked knights of

 the Dark Empire of Granbretan. We need to find out what era of this world we find ourselves in!  And that's when we heard someone cough from behind our party! 

Betweeen Kane & The Granbretan Empire - The Stormbringer rpg, Karl Edward Wagner's Kane & Michael Moorcock's Hawkmoon

  "The Eternal Champion is a mystical hero who lives upon all planes of existence, in all ages and times. Whenever the greatest need arises, the Eternal Champion awakens to ensure mankind's survival. His names are many: Elric, Corum, Erekose, Urlik, Hawkmoon, and a multitude of others. Into the thick of the fray he strides, heroic companions at his side."

This is going to pick right up from yesterday's blog here. Today is one of those days that I seriously need to recharge the batteries. For the moment I've handed off both my Castles & Crusade campaign & my Wretchedverse campaign. Russ Nicholson's passing has effected me more then I thought. However I wanted to take a few moments to discuss the Hawkmoon box set by Chaosium. This is especially true after reading through Wayne's Books article on the Hawkmoon box set available here.

One element of Hawkmoon's era that stood out to us as players were the Mantis scientist/priest/ magus who were Emperor Huron's personal bodyguards. These guys were whom we were captured by and tortured. It took a renegade Mantis priest to get us out of the dungeon and onto  ship. Then we had a cabal of six Mantis on our party's asses.
And let me tell you these guys were a pain in the ass. The Mantis priests are highly formidable, highly motivated, and filled with forbidden occult knowledge. We managed to make it out of Londra and out into the Atlantic. This was after getting acid filled globes hurdled at our PCs, dodging Wolf patrols, killing a bunch of animal masked assassins, and then digging out the surgical tracker/controller implants that had been implanted by the Mantis.

Did I mention that we did recover the 'Super Science' artifact?! And this is what kicked off this manhunt in the first place. And one of our number killed one of the Mantis priests to get it. And this indebted the Mantis priest/scientist absolutely wanted revenge against our party with the orders of Emperor's Houn. Even through 5 editions the Mantis continued hunting our party! This has been a major plot point to our games. Families have been generationally targeted by the Mantis through the super science of the burgeoning Tragic Millennium time travel projects. We did get paid for our efforts and almost double crossed by Kane. We got tired of the double crosses and what not so we simply told him that we wanted get paid. This earned a bit of respect from Kane.

Kane's got a great video overview right here.

Here's the thing our party of scoundrels and rogues were not good guys. We were really in a mercenary  band mold. We did five jobs in the world of Hawkmoon and eventually had several mutants among our ranks. Curiously we haven't heard from the Mantis in a very long time. This doesn't mean that there not out there. Note that this is a repeated blog entry because we're starting up a new round of our Stormbringer campaign soon.

OSR Commentary On Demon Magic: The Second Stormbringer Companion By Larry DiTillio (Author) For The Stormbringer rpg

 "DEMON MAGIC is the second companion for Stormbringer, the roleplaying game of action and adventure in the Young Kingdoms. Authorized by fantasy author Michael Moorcock, DEMON MAGIC includes all necessary statistics, maps, and plans, and contains many original illustrations. Among its contents are: * The Velvet Circle: a scenario in seven chapters, which takes many sessions of play to conclude. The adventure includes a complete red-light district, with business notes and a plan of the Circle. * Sorcerer's Isle: a shorter, more intense scenario to fill one or two evenings. * Runes of Rathdor: analyzes and describes the properties of six magical runes discovered during the reign of the 42nd Emperor of Melnibone. * Sanity for Stormbringer: introduces the optional characteristic of SAN into Young Kingdoms play. * Six new creatures, six nationalities, seven new Demon abilities, and five new magic items."

Demon Magic: The Second Stormbringer Companion By Larry DiTillio  is in my humble  one of the better supplements for the first edition Stormbringer rpg. Why?! Well according to the 2018 Amazon review by Erik Brickman; "I have since discovered, through endless hours of reading and re-reading it (plus other books made for this RPG) and also playing it with my friends, is that it has a wildly unbalanced and over-the-top ritual magic system, but in spite of it (or because of it) - it works!" ""Why?" you ask? Well, that is a little hard to describe. But I believe it has to do with the overall style that Chaosium's writers put into this and other material at the time. You hear a lot of praise for AD&D/D&D for the hobby these days, even to the degree that they put it in successful TV-series like Stranger Things. But what company have made it through all these years, and still is here to talk about it? Chaosium! Back in the day when these kind of supplements were produced, they implemented a certain sort of composition that made the Gamemaster who wanted to run them feel that the material was made in the style of the atmosphere of the source books (Elric-books by Moorcock). And still make it blend with the BRP system, or Basic Roleplaying." See this is a completely different feel then say Advanced Dungeons & Dragons where the DM is trying to blend the rpg material to their own campaigns. The DM is blending their campaigns to the Stormbringer universe and material. This was especially true for us and the Hawkmoon rpg supplement. 

Which was accurately described Hawkmoon  by Rpg Geek user pestigor as; 'Gamma World with with Law and Chaos...in the universe of the Eternal Champion using the tried and true Chaosium system...AWESOME!"  And this supplement tied back into Demon Magic through it's use of realms of Law & Chaos having detrimental effects on technology, & magic as these forces play marry havoc with the PC's magic items. This played a key point in visiting both the planes of the mini campaign 'The Velvet Circle' which was a key point of adventure within the Demon Magic supplement. Was Demon Magic balanced?! Hell no! But it did work when it came to setting the Stormbringer mythic feel into the rpg.

Dangerous Beginnings - Darker Tides of Chaos - Oceans of Eternity of Karl Edward Wagner's Kane & The Stormbringer rpg

  So how did our party eventually end up at the End of Time or one of it's timelines?! Well that goes back to the fact that our party ended up together aboard a Pan Tangian slaver galley. These were sent all over the Young Kingdoms collecting workers ie slaves for the massive Pan Tangian machine. This is the beginning of our Stormbringer rpg campaign that came from here on the blog. 

We were each captured by Pan Tangian pirates & raiders. Ended up in irons, & down in the hold of a Pan Tangian sloop on it's way to the main country. Our party escaped when they went for supplies at a neighboring country sea port. 

We had one shot to break free & steal away during the night. These circumstances that we found ourselves enabled us to sign up with a mercenary outfit. And we targeted the Pan Tangian interests every time we could. 
According to the Sorcerers of Pan Tang wiki entry;"Shannon Appelcline noted how after the fourth edition of Stormbringer was published, "the best books to date for the line were produced first by Keith Herber, then by Mark Morrison. They consisted of thick, well-written books of background, such as Sorcerers of Pan Tang (1991) and colourful adventures, such as Rogue Mistress (1991)." This book delivers the Pan Tang island in colourful and dangerous detail.
We made contact with a dark red bearded sea captain with whom we signed on. This sea captain backed down the Pan Tangians on our party's behalf. That sea captain was Karl Edgar Wanger's Kane! 

Darker Tides of Chaos - Oceans of Eternity of Karl Edward Wagner's Kane & The Stormbringer rpg

   The edge of the Eighties were dead on a busy for our group of players of the Stormbringer rpg campaign that my uncle had been running. We had eight regular players and it was due to the DMing of my uncle. He was awesome when it came to keeping his campaigns consistence. 

 

 Back on the edge of the Eighties we ended up on the shores of the end of Eternity & time. This picks right up from here on the blog. There was no wind, no animals, and nothing whats so ever to really encounter. And waiting for us was Kane clad in his armor. He was surrounded by eternity ships all beached and waiting for captains who might never come. This was Ninety three & some change or so. 'Choose your ship lads' the heavy voiced Kane looked at our party and pointed around him. 
My uncle's passing had brought out the fact that there was a giant hole in our collective hearts. We were shocked when a party of Chaos pack mutants attacked our party! We climbed aboard one of the ship wrecks and found one that was still serviceable.  We went on exploring the Million Spheres after we dispatched the Chaos mutants. 

During one of our jaunts we came face to face with our former Hawkmoon general who'd taken on life as a mercenary general. Our party had accidentally killed his aid de camp at the End of Time. This act guided him on a revenge against our party of adventurers. He had his own planar ship and chased us across the Million Spheres. 

 We had some of our crew killed and kidnapped to drop into Chaos spawn areas. The Black Mantis was once upon a time a Mantis scientist priest of Great Britannia of the "Tragic Millennium,".  This was only the beginning of his revenge. Fortunately we had Kane as a patron or Heaven help us. 

Eternal Champion With A Bit of Genocide On The Side - Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion & Old School Gaming

 "John Daker dreams of other worlds, and a name: Erekosë. He finds the strength to answer the call, travelling to a strange land ruled by the aging King Rigenos of Necranal."

 

Michael Moorcock. The Eternal Champion Vover Art by Frank Frazetta .

"Humanity is united in a desperate fight against the inhuman Eldren, and John must fight with them. But the actions of his brethren turn his loyalties—and, as Erekosë, he will take a terrible revenge." 

The Eternal Champion is one of those books that seems to be forgotten in the shuffle of Appendix N lore. The book concerns a hero who is taken from his twentith century life to affect the outcome of a different world or universe; "John Daker, an ordinary 20th century man, is pulled through time and space to the tomb of Erekosë, a long-dead hero of a version of Earth that may be the distant past or distant future." Imagine if you will that a party of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons or B/X PC's are whisked to a campaign world only to find out that thier the reincarnations of the heroes of the past. This is exactly what happens to John Daker the protagonist of 'The Eternal Champion'. 
The Eternal Champion by Michael Moorcock is the first of his Eternal Champion series and the wiki entry reveals a very interesting detail about it's publication; "The Eternal Champion is a fantasy novel by Michael Moorcock that introduces the hero known as both John Daker and Erekosë. Originally written in the late 1950s, it constitutes the first novel of Moorcock's sprawling Eternal Champion series. The tale was first published in 1962 as a magazine novella ^[1] Moorcock expanded the novella to novel length for publication in 1970. He revised the text for its 1978 publication. Along with expanding the original story, the novel makes some minor changes to narration and scenes, and also includes references to other short stories by Moorcock. The Eternal Champion is the first in a trilogy of novels known as the Erekosë series (though the lead character adopts other identities in subsequent novels). The sequel novels are Phoenix in Obsidian (1970; published in the US as The Silver Warriors), and The Dragon in the Sword (1987)." The revised text of 'The Eternal Champion' brings this series of novels into line with Moorcock's Elric line. John Daker realizes that he is an aspect of the Eternal Champion; "Daker realizes he is the reincarnation of the warrior Erekosë and is now being called to assume that identity again by the people he once served. Daker also sees memories of other lives he's lived or will live and realizes he is one of many incarnations of the Eternal Champion, a key figure in the mythology of Michael Moorcock's multiverse. The Eternal Champion is often called to restore or maintain the multiverse's balance between the cosmic forces of Law and Chaos. With his memories of Daker's life and family quickly dimming, the warrior accepts his identity as Erekosë, and armed with a radioactive sword called Kanajana, joins a great war between humans and an alien race, the Eldren. Throughout the novel, he is skeptical about the just nature of the war he fights and feels conflicted about his duty to humanity in contrast to his duty as an Eternal Champion who may need to defy humanity. He is also occasionally tormented by the lingering memories and principles of his 20th century life, as well as glimpses of his other lives under a multiplicity of names."
The Eternal Champion is written in a Moorcock Pulp style & is a very questional book because Moorcock wrote it when he was seventeen. Many of his attitudes are reflected in the book throughout especially when it comes to the Eldren vs the Colonial attitudes of the book's version of  humanity. 

 is
The Eternal Champion By Michael Moorcock
 Cover art by Bob Haberfield. Mayflower Books, London, 1970.

"Many incarnations of Moorcock's Eternal Champion are unaware they serve this role and/or have no memories of their other lives. Daker/Erekosë stands apart by being able to remember aspects of his multiple lives. While his books were not as popular as those featuring some of Moorcock's other characters, Erekosë is frequently mentioned in other stories of the author's multiverse. Along with his own novels, the character has appeared in crossover stories involving other Eternal Champion incarnations. His radioactive, poisonous sword echoes the vampiric, living sword Stormbringer wielded by the other aspect of the Eternal Champion called Elric." 
Daker/Erekosë stands apart from other versions of the Eternal Champion because the forces of the Balance keep him from his lovely Eldren. Could PC's encounter Daker as Erekosë?! Without a doubt! The book emplies that he's had many,many, adventures against both Law and Chaos throughout his multiple lives. Erekosë is tormented by his memories as Elric, Hawkmoon, etc. According to the Wiki entry Daker is tightly woven into the Eternal Champion incarnation; " Daker's trip through time and space reveals scattered memories from many other incarnations, such as Erekosë and Michael Moorcock's other characters such as Elric, Prince Corum, Dorian Hawkmoon, Jerry Cornelius, the Rose, and members of the family Von Bek." This means that PC's could theoritically run into Erekosë on Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, the Young Kingdoms, or any campaign world. Daker is extremely deadly after his killing of humanity during the Eternal Champion era (yes they had it coming but still it bothered many of the players in our group). 

The Eternal Champion introduces the Eternal Champion concept to the Moorcock multiverse. And it was innovative for it's time during the 1970's. What does it mean for old school gaming?! Well, it means that PC's could run across  Erekosë and his deadly radioactive demon sword. 
Our party of adventurers ran across him during one of our encounters with Karl Edgar Wagner's Kane. Kane was selling a piece of information to the Daker personality &  Erekosë was paying for it with a quest for an artifact. Our party of adventurers got drafted to accompany him into the dungeon. Given  Erekosë's passion for depression and violence. We ditched him after the end of the dungeon! We skipped the pay and the world only to run into Kane back in Greyhawk.. We ended up working for Kane because of the 

 Erekosë affair! 

Review & Commentary On "Stealer of Souls: A Quest For Vengeance in Ilmiora " By Ken Rolston For Stormbringer rpg

 "  The scenarios depict a woman’s quest for revenge against a deadly conspiracy of merchants in Bakshaan. The four merchants (rivals of the woman’s father, a man named Haver Nikorni hired Elric to storm his keep and kill him. That battle is chronicled in the Moorcock story entitled “Stealer of Souls”."

"Freyda Nikorn, the dead merchant’s daughter gathers together a group of adventurers and friends to embark on her mission of vengeance. The adventures in this book tell the tale of Freyda’s vengeance against the four merchants, and her success or failure is determined by the players."
"Stealer of Souls: A Quest For Vengeance in Ilmiora " By Ken Rolston came out in '85 & clocks in at only forty four pages. But this adventure set in motion a set of circumstances that killed off a major part of our players back then. Its this adventure that had one rule for playing the Stormbringer rpg, 'Never go after Elric'.  The contents for 'Stealer of Souls' is solid unto itself; "The gamemaster is provided with extensive information on the government, culture, and environment of Bakshaan. A complete description of a Bakshaan-Karlaak trade caravan is also included. Extensive character descriptions aid the gamemaster in storytelling.

" Four pages of player pullouts provide the players with all the information they need to start playing the scenarios. The pullouts include player-character knowledge of Bakshaan, a map of the city, and statistics for Freyda Nikorn."" 
Sound very straight forward, a daughter's vengence against Elric & Moonglum along a trail of adventure. Well yes & no.. The party is caught in the fall out of the the Moorcock story entitled “Stealer of Souls”.

 Over all Stealer of Souls as an adventure is a mid to upper teir adventure. It takes the concepts laided out in the Young Kingdoms and brings new Sword & Sorcery chops into it. The PC's are challenged to deal with the fall out of vengence & how it colours not only the NPC's lives but their own. 

Phil Frances from White Dwarf gave 'Stealer of Souls' an over all positive rating; 

"Phil Frances reviewed Stealer of Souls for White Dwarf #77, giving it an overall rating of 8 out of 10, and stated that "Stealer Of Souls is the first Stormbringer supplement that I respect (even reading it is enjoyable). Its freshness will revive the palate of many a jaded GM, and it will pose a healthy challenge to an experienced group of characters.""

 Freyda’s quest overall is interesting & very dangerous for the lives of the PC's. The feel here is that the player's PC's are along for the  quest. The dangers here are real & path of adventure is a long & bloody one. I don't agree at at all with the review of 'Stealer of Souls' from Space Gamer/Fantasy Gamer No. 81 by Michael R. Jarrell, Jarrell commented that "The game just doesn't cut the mustard. If you are a SBophile you'll want it. if you are looking for quality versus cash outlay you may be seriously disappointed as I was."Freyda’s quest  isn't disappointing & this adventure is a strong outta of the gate effort. The player's PC's become involved with the machinations & consquences of the actions of Freyda. This is high level stuff & remember Elric is a force of nature within the Stormbringer rpg universe. He's never the good guy. 

Jack Gaughan artwork for The Stealer of Souls by Michael Moorcock ...

What we have in 'Stealer of Souls' is the equivelant of a woman's vengence against the bastards who choose to take that away from Freyda Nikor the most precious thing in her life. Her father's love is gone & her soul swims in the darkness of the aftermath. Will the PC's make any difference to this vengence!? They may have to take care of many loose ends in the her wake. And this is just for starters. There will be choices & side quests to take care of. 
Stealer of Souls is a rare beast, an animal that goes about sorta rail roading the PC's but does it with a style all of its own. Many of the adventure elements within 'Stealer of Souls are solildly done but this adventure takes the 'rail road' to new heights. Over all Stealer of Souls is a four outta of five. The reason is simple this is only the first adventure in an over all trilogy of Sword & Sorcery adventure. More to come! 

Review & Commentary On 'The Octagon of Chaos' by Tony Fiorito From Theatre of the Mind Enterpr For The Second Edition Stormbringer rpg box sets

 

"In the time of Sadric the LXXXVI, the Bright Expire was experiencing a time of peace belying the decadence and retrogression that has gripped the empire. Imperial garrisons in the far-flung Southern Kingdoms are brought home to Imrryr, the dreaming city, their need apparently past. Upon this vacuum the greedy theocrat of Pan Tang cast a crafty eye. He was not known to waste his time on trifles. In another place, a faceless Duke of Chaos contemplated the coming slaughter." 


In the middle of  Game News (Issue 11 - Jan 1986) was an advertiment for a new adventure for the Stormbringer rpg. 'The Octogon of Chaos' by Tony Fiorito hit the stands in '86 & was real change from the Stormbringer adventures that preceeded it. And that difference straight up is that the  'The Octogon of Chaos' is a human centric adventure. There are no Melibonians allowed! 

Now we own a few Theatre of the Mind Enterprises, Inc adventures but this one is more then a bit different. This adventure focus of 'The Octagon of Chaos' is within the Young Kingdoms itself but as a fodder for the adventure & its place as a legacy of the Meliboneans.  'The Octagon of Chaos' takes place twenty years before the events of Michael Moorcock's "Elric of Elniboné'' & so this module could be used as a prequel to that book's events within the campaign;""For ten thousand years Melnibone ruled the world.

Elric, the 428th Emperor, seemed destined to see that era come to an end. An albino, sustained by rare drugs, it fell to him to confront the rise of the Young Kingdoms, of the monsters and sorceries which were threatening to overwhelm him and his ancient crown.
The Elric novels have already become classics of heroic fantasy and future projection. DAW is proud to present them to an eager public in new editions, corrected and revised by Michael Moorcock. ELRIC OF MELNIBONE is the first."" 

 'The Octagon of Chaos' by Tony Fiorito isn't a light weight adventure & requires six players dealing with four to six players running eight to twelve PC's. Of those half of those should be warriors easily. Hell, I would add in here that the players may sprinkle in another one or two just to deal with some of the encounters of  'The Octagon of Chaos'. This is a solid & dangerous module for the Stormbringer rpg. And it deals with two things that the players will not expect  a faceless Duke of Chaos & the greedy theocrat of Pan Tang. And a dungeon master running  'The Octogon of Chaos' is going to need to take full advantage of White Wolf: Temples, Demons, & Ships of War. Both for some of its military rules & the ship rules. I certainly did to deal with some of the nastiness that the PC's encounter. We get a very detailed description of Bakshaan & its environs. 

 'The Octagon of Chaos' takes full advantage of the rpg resources of the Stormbringer 2nd edition box set dealing with the material in spades. This is both a module & a potential resource that the DM should take full advantage of. We get a full cast of NPC's, factions they belong to, full background, & full on adventure time line. Personally if as a DM I  was going to run 'The Octagon of Chaos' with fourth edition Stormbringer, I'd grab my copy of 'Sea Kings of the Purple Towns'. 
The reasoning is simple, there's fully fleshed out addional  rules & guidelines for sea travel. 

There's murder, intrigue, and plenty of chances for double & even triple crosses within 'The Octagon of Chaos'. The material within this adventure reminds the players that their PC's are on the 'date card' for a chaos lord. For an Eighty Six adventure There's murder, intrigue, and plenty of chances for double & even triple crosses. 'The Octagon of Chaos' is a very progressive adventure for Stormbringer in the fact that it teases, uses, & exploits the PC's. 
Even the encounters can be scaled as needed. 'The Octagon of Chaos' presents a few opportunities to really go to town with this concept. The DM is going to have his hands full but this doesn't mean that 'The Octagon of Chaos' is a bad adventure far from it. But it does take advantage of both the players & its target audience. 'The Octagon of Chaos' isn't simply any old module this is a mini campaign unto itself.

'A Dog Has His Day' - Further Mediations on The Stormbringer rpg & OSR Campaign Memories

 

We played a ton of Stormbringer rpg sessions in '91 but it was the visit to a variation of Jack London's Scarlet Plague Earth that nearly broke our backs. Our party was making its way to the museum to locate the 'Other Grail'. We had survived our encounter with  Karl Edward Wagner Kane as an NPC last session. It was when we ran into the  'The Thing in the Red Robe' 's Chaos Hell hounds that things turned really nasty. Try to imagine a Chaos Hell hound made from the fevered damned soul of the dead of the Scarlet Plague. Even with demon weapons we did not even try to take on these things. 

Hell hounds artwork by  

000Fesbra000 on Deviant Art 

Each & everytime we'd tear into one of these bastard spawn of Chaos it would reform from the molten soul stuff around us. Eventually we figured out that there was pack leader containing all of the souls & were able to kill it before it reformed again. 

We made it too the museum where we  had to face down a riddling demon with a sword warpact on it guarding the 'Grail of the Other'. The walls were covered in the praises of the 'Sword Queen'.  Now things got very interesting. This was our old friend   'Queen Xiombarg''s doing & her handy work was about the museum in the form of her beast men. 

I wasn't a fan of her's then & I'm not now. The demon thing had eight riddles & wouldn't give up or else required the soul of one of the adventurers of the party. Yeah, like that was gonna ever happen. 

Just as we solved the last one 'The Thing in the Red Robe' appeared behind us. He was the embodiment of 'the Scarlet Plague' that  walked this Earth & a formitable lord of Chaos. It aparently did not like trespassers or visitors to its domain. 

 Illustration of Prince Prospero confronting the "Red Death" by Arthur Rackham, 1935. One our number went down as its blood soaked hands touched Arthur's PC & he died in a sputter of blood & his soul was devoured! 

We didn't even try to fight we grabbed 'The Grail of the Other' & instantly activated a demon of transportation! Our party had no idea where we'd end up nor how close we came to dying, again. 
This would not be the last we'd see of the 'The Thing In The Red Robe' but we arrived just in time to see the sun rise on a strange peaceful looking village. Things were looking up just in time to see a strange pale warrior with a huge sword on his back. He was  leaving a tavern followed in to by a strange looking little steele limbed fellow a head shorter then him. 
We let Elric & Moonglum go off on their merry way & ran straight into the NPC Dog! The warrior & former crewmen of the Rogue Mistress. As I said before 1991 was a Hell of a year for the Stormbringer rpg and one of the most epic campaign adventure  books published for the game was Rogue Mistress.  Rogue Mistress was by Fred Behrendt, Lane Grate, Keith Herber, Michael Szymanski, Lawrence Whitaker. 

We were confronted by the NPC mercenary Dog who was working for our old 'friend' Charles D'vere The First Duke of La Roy & the second grand inquistor of the Emperor of Tragic Europe. Dog introduced himself by killing off two of our party immediately. Dog was a combination of a Shakespherian character & '90's Marvel Sabertooth or that's how our DM Charles played 'em. He wore demonic armor & carried a rather nasty sword. He wanted the 'Other Grail' & we'd already hidden it in the local money guild's vaults. We knew La Fey wasn't going to take no for an answer. There was no way we could stand up to Dog who also had other NPC bandits/mercs with him. The numbers were simply aganist us. So we ran! That's right a band of hardy adventurers turned tail & ran! A tactic that kept us alive so many times in the Stormbringer rpg. We zig zagged through a bunch of alleyways & with a few successful dice rolls we lost 'Dog & his company'. 
As soon as we got back to our hotel , the clerk said that there was a man of wealth & taste waiting the hotel resturant. Yes, we could with the seven of us afford to stay in a hotel. And sitting behind a rather nice table was Satan in a rather nice get up. 
We set four of our number to the money guild to get the grail all of the while watching out for 'Dog' and co. They made it back with some lucky die rolls & Satan had 'the other grail'. Business concluded right?! We get a boon & the chaos lord of Hell gets his artifact right?! 

Satan got the 'other grail' & we were down two PC's! We also incurred the wraith of Morgan Le Fey. A wraith that is still on going by the way. More on that later on! Satan insisted that we get paid for our efforts but the group held back on that one. An 'infernal ace in the hole' so to speak. Because what happened next session we'd need it. We went to a local watering hole & got plastered!!? Welll sortal, instead what we did was to go search for local talent to replace the two dead NPC's. 
So instead we left the 'Great Beast' with his grail & high tailed it outta of there.