OSR Commentary on Frazetta & Bakshi's 'Fire & Ice' film from 1983 As Inspiration For Your Old School Campaigns

" At the end of the ice age, an evil queen and her son are set on conquering the world using magic and warriors. The lone survivor of a crushed village fights back as does the king of Fire Keep."

Few movies are as Sword & Sorcery especially Astonishing Swordmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea inspiration as Ralph Bakshi's 1983 animation  'Fire & Ice'.We litterally wore the VHS tape of 'Fire & Ice' out as a kid. The plot is straight out of every drug store Sword & Sorcery paperback during the Eighties especially straight from the wiki entry;"From their citadel Icepeak, the evil queen, Juliana and her son, Nekron send forth a wave of glaciers; this forces humanity to retreat south towards the equator. Nekron sends a delegation to Firekeep, the volcano citadel of king Jarol, ostensibly to request the king's surrender. In truth, the ice queen has orchestrated it as a ruse so that her subhuman troops can abduct Jarol's beautiful daughter, princess Teegra. Juliana feels that Nekron should take her as a bride to produce an heir.

Teegra escapes her captors and comes upon a young warrior named Larn, the only survivor of a village destroyed by Nekron's glaciers. The two grow close, but they become separated when Larn is attacked by a monstrous giant squid, and Nekron's subhumans recapture Teegra. She briefly escapes again, but runs into the witch Roleil and her son Otwa, who intend to use her as a bargaining chip for incurring Nekron's favor. However, the subhumans simply kill them and take Teegra to Icepeak. Nekron refuses to marry Teegra, in spite of his mother's plan, but keeps the princess as a hostage.

While looking for Teegra, Larn encounters Darkwolf, a mysterious masked warrior who pursues a personal vendetta against Nekron and Juliana"

'Fire & Ice' works on several layers as both a pursue film, a Sword & Sorcery film, & as perfectly fuctional Sword & Sorcery inspiration. The film represents the clash of two ordersor ages  in the form the steady conquest of citadel Icepeak forces led by  the evil queen, Juliana and her son, Nekron against the more advanced kingdom of Firekeep. Dark Wolf is definitely a demigod belonging to an earlier 'age of heroes'. Fire and Ice has so much of Frank Frazetta's essence about it because of his involvement with the production according to Wiki;'Because Fire and Ice was the most action-oriented story Bakshi had directed up until that point, rotoscoping was again used, and the realism of the animation and design replicated Frazetta's artwork.^[2] Bakshi and Frazetta were heavily involved in the production of the live-action sequences, from casting sessions to the final shoot.^[2] The film's crew included background artists James Gurney and Thomas Kinkade, layout artist Peter Chung, and established Bakshi Productions artists Sparey, Steven E. Gordon, Bell and Banks.^[2] Chung strongly admired Bakshi and Frazetta's work, and animated his sequences on the film while simultaneously working for The Walt Disney Company."

There are five reasons why this film is excellent for Sword & Sorcery inspiration:

1. Fire & Ice main plot is over but the forces of darkness are not vanquished this is where the PC's come in. Firekeep needs to secure the land and there are still tribes of subhumans out in the wilderness. 
2. Dark Wolf is not done with prince Lam & he's gonna need help to secure the borders of Firekeep. 
3. What happened to the other kingdoms that Neckon's forces have overrun someone is going to have to help them recover. 
4. There are tons of monsters just waiting for adventurers to stumble upon them in abandon cities & ruins across the land. This also means treasure as well and evil artifacts. 
5. The witch Roleil and her son Otwa, are not the only witches in the kingdom of Firekeep and these evil practiciers of dark magick may be the next evil facing the scatttered nations left in the wake of Neckon's evil. 

While 'Fire & Ice ' is a perfect film as an inspiration for Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. There are also several 2d6 Sword & Sorcery rpg's that also could draw perfectly from the world of Arn, Teegra, & Dark Wolf.  Barbaric! by Omer Golan-Joel from Stellagamma Publishing springs to mind coupled with Warpland is perfectly suited to simulate the rotoscoped world of 'Fire & Ice'. 

Warpland especially captures the rotoscoped weirdness of the clash of elements, ages, and even hints of older inhuman prehistoric weirdness found in 'Fire & Ice'.  The elements that clash in the film also could very well represent the hard realities of the world setting of Warpland. 

1d7 Random Low Level Sword & Sorcery Treasures Table For Your Old School Campaigns

Dusk on the sea; the fading twilight shifts'
The night wind bears the ocean's whisper dim—
Wind, on your bosom many a phantom drifts—
A silver star climbs up the blue world rim.
Wind, make the green leaves dance above me here
And idly swing my silken hammock—so;
Now, on that glimmering molten silver mere
Send the long ripples wavering to and fro.
And let your moon-white tresses touch my face
And let me know your slim-armed, cool embrace
While to my dreamy soul you whisper low.

Adventurer  (1926)  by Robert Ervin Howard

 There is plenty of loot that flows the hands of PC's, items, relics, and treasures from a million realms. But how many of them are really life changing without the aura of magick about them? What if there are treasures from lost worlds & other places that can simply shift the role of history for a PC? There are! Each and everyday the sandal shod feet of adventurers pass over a thousand ages past's relics. There are ancient relics that have been lost to the pages of history.

Many of these treasures will be regional or local items with their own history and background endemic to the area. Because of this there may be 1d10 bandits or local outlaws interested in these items and more then willing to murder for them.


1d7 Random Low Level Sword & Sorcery Treasures Table

1. Sixteen golden disks containing the wisdom from the far off ages of the past. These disks contain 1d100 pieces of religious and occult wisdom They are worth 40,00 gold pieces because of the rarity and inhunan medium they play only with the right mechanism 
2. Nine silver statues of animal headed gods that were the respresentations of their respective gods. The statues are worth 20,000 gold pieces because they are hallow to certain active gods of Egyptians. 
3. A giant key of jade worth 10,000 gold pieces because it opens the vaults of the ages which belongs to the Ancient Ones. The vaults are rumored to be in the wastelands. 
4. Funerary vases containing ancient vials of gold that are used in elemental summoning rites and rituals. 
5. Six caskets containing magick supplies for dangerous rites and rituals. Perfectly mundane but worth   60,000 gold pieces 
6. A radium projection system able to create three dee holographic mental projections created by Hyperborean interfaces and mechanisms. Worth 40,000 gold pieces 
7. Water clock of Hyperborea that counts down the dooms of the Great Old Ones as the hours draw near and stars are right. There isn't anything supernatural about it but the graviton pulse waves signal the time. This item is priceless to a wizard of dangerous aspect.   

Forbidden Secrets Of The Lamp - OSR Campaign Commentary On Ray Harryhausen's 'The 7th Voyage of Sinbad' 1958

Top notch adventure as our hero Sinbad must rescue a princess who has been miniaturized and held captive by a ruthless magician. All sorts of obstacles are thrown in Sinbad's way, including the famous swordfighting skeleton. © 1958,

"Sokurah the Magician: From the land beyond beyond... from the world past hope and fear... I bid you Genie, now appear. "


I'm trying to remember the first time I saw 'The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad' but as it plays in the Blu Ray & that damn sound track plays again. I'm transported back to the world of Sinbad on a Saturday afternoon as channel Eleven showed endless Ray Harryhausen sword & sorcery flicks after cartoons. Here's the specifics according to Wiki;
"The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is a 1958 Technicolor heroic fantasy adventure film from Columbia Pictures, produced by Charles H. Schneer, directed by Nathan H. Juran, that stars Kerwin Mathews, Torin Thatcher, Kathryn Grant, Richard Eyer, and Alec Mango."

So what the hell does this have to do with Dungeons & Dragons or the OSR for that matter? Well there have been countless writers, artists, etc. including Gary Gygax & David Lance "Dave" Arneson who took a bit from this picture. But for a dungeon master this film is a god sent for creating & expanding upon for a home campaign. There is almost nothing written about or referenced  about the island of Collossa or its lost people. Sokurah the magician  played expertly by Torin Thatcher has been plundering their secrets, relics, treasures, & life forms for years. He reminds me on a certain level of Forbidden Planet's Dr.Edward Morbius both men are plundering the ancient knowledge of people's long gone. They're secrets are shaping them not the other way around. Sokurah has been messing with the black magick secrets of Collosa & they've been messing with him. He knows each and every detail of the island and its secrets but fails to see the bigger picture.What other secrets await in the dungeons & ruins of Collosa.

[about to land on Collosa]
Sinbad: May Allah grant we find food and water.
Harufa: And may Allah grant we find nothing else.

The peoples of Collosa mastered the transformations of flesh & the creation of chimera. The transformation of the Princess's lady into the serpent woman is both classic & telling.Telling because the magick is both smooth but very dangerous. The great thing about Harryhausen's stop-motion is the dream-like quality that sweeps over the audience. We would later on get another sample of the level of mastery of the wizardry of the people of Colossa.

There's something very unnerving about the skeleton from the Seventh Voyage. The magician transfers a bit of his mind into the skeleton to animate it but its aggressiveness is turned to murdering Sinbad. A friend of mine thought that the skeleton might have been a controlled Deadite ala Army of Darkness. This was something connected to the 'children of the Hydra' skeletons in Harryhausen's Jason & The Argonauts.

Sure by the end of the picture Sinbad & co. sail away from  Collosa & live happily ever after. But what happened to all the ruins & other materials left behind? Its all still there along with other cyclopes & who knows what else. The island is a perfect adventure point for a mid level party of adventurers. Was Toro the only dragon on the island? No, I doubt it. Toro was a very dinosaur like dragon of an almost singular lower tier intelligence that acted as magician Sokura's watch dog & bodyguard.


So what's the story of the island of Collosa ? In my mind there are a few hypothesis that come to mind. One its another R&D facility of the gods like 'the Isle of Bronze'. I'm not the first to put forward that theory or speculation. But there's something much more interesting about the island of Collosa. If you watch the journey that Sinbad's crew take across the island there are different variations of ecosystems that they go through. Some are very similar to Skull Island from King Kong from '33. The  dead island nation is very artificial and perhaps was there long before the people of  Collosa got to it.

Elder Thing by  Віщун - http://vixis24m.deviantart.com/art/The-Elder-Thing-395769042

The island might have been a hold over from the time of the Elder Things of H.P. Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness. "The beings first appeared in H. P. Lovecraft's novella, "At the Mountains of Madness" (published in 1936, but written in 1931), and later appeared, although not named, in the short story "The Dreams in the Witch-House" (1933). Additional references to the Elder Things appear in Lovecraft's short story "The Shadow Out of Time" (1936)." The people of Collosa came later after the oceans drank Atlantis, Hyperborea, etc. Possibly foretold before the disaster that took the ancient world during one of its extinction cycles. So what was the black wizard after? Power & recognition  on the global stage pure and simple, he manipulated events from the first meeting with Sinbad right from the get go. He wanted the secrets of the lamp, he had the secrets of the island dead island nation but that wasn't enough. It never is. He wanted the lamp's protection  because there were deeper levels to the ruins where even greater secrets and horrors awaited him. We know that volcanic vents power the island's facilities.


If we go back to the original source material from Sinbad the Sailor from One Thousand and One Nights. Then the picture becomes much clearer in the magician's actual agenda ripe with his quest for forbidden knowledge and power. In fact the comic book adaptation Four Color #944 - The 7th Voyage of Sinbad released by Dell on September 1, 1958.  bares this very fact out!



So what the hell is down blow in the vaults below Collosa? My guess is that there are incredibly ancient secrets of the Elder Things. Perhaps proto shoggoth material, relics, ancient secrets, & knowledge beyond the pale of mankind. Just the sort of thing to interest the black wizard of  Collosa. We have very little on the black wizard's background but given the make shift state of his workshop's he's been plumbing the secrets of the island for ten to twenty years. He's adapted, modified, uses the artifacts & relics of
Collosa as he see's fit.

Sinbad: What weird power restrains that monster?
Sokurah the Magician: The man that holds this treasure is safe from even greater danger.
Sinbad: Why didn't you destroy the monster?

Sokurah the Magician: The genie of the lamp cannot be used to work harm. But in protection, his powers are invincible.

So how could Collosa be used for OSR retro clone system? Well given the artifacts and relics of the dead island nation. I can see using
Collosa as an adventure location for Dark Albion. The island and its ruins make a perfect location to look for relics to help the War of The Roses brewing in Albion. The island could also fit into a Labyrinth Lord game as a destination for travelers and adventurers where the cyclops are deadly beyond measure. The island could also be used as a possible adventure location for Mutant Future as its already very dreamlike and could drift along the planar winds to wind up in the post apocalyptic world. The place would also make an excellent adventure location for Lamentations of the Flame Princess where adventurers have to locate one or more items while facing down the horrors of the island's cyclops guardians. Its also a ready made location to use with B/X Dungeons & Dragon's Isle of Dread which I've done many times!

1d6 System Lost Relics of Ancient Atlantis For Your Old School Campaigns

"Above its domes the gulfs accumulate.
Far up, the sea-gales blare their bitter screed:
But here the buried waters take no heed—
Deaf, and with welded lips pressed down by weight
Of the upper ocean. Dim, interminate,
In cities over-webbed with somber weed,
Where galleons crumble and the krakens breed,
The slow tide coils through sunken court and gate.
From out the ocean's phosphor-starry dome,
A ghostly light is dubitably shed
On altars of a goddess garlanded
With blossoms of some weird and hueless vine;
And, wingéd, fleet, through skies beneath the foam,
Like silent birds the sea-things dart and shine."
Atlantis A poem By Clark Aston Smith 

The destruction of Atlantis echoes across the corridors of eternity even today & there are objects that tumble through history & the treasure chests of the lost or damned. The ancient city state empire's reach even went to the stars! Out among the Outer worlds even today objects from  the ancient legacy of Atlantis turn up sometimes much to the tinge and horror of explorers and outlaws.

Objects such as this have a 20% chance of carrying a minor curse or to have a history tinged with tradedgy and adventure meaning a Great Old One or minor demon lord might have some vague interest or connection to the piece. Often these objects or relics are guarded by horrors such as 'Squirmers'  &  other far less savory entities.


These relics & objects often turn up in the asteroid field near the outer debris fields of Mars. The inner worldlets near Jupiter also from time to time have turned up some dangerous relics from the capital of Atlantis. These worldlets sometimes only partially exist within our universe and from time to time drift on the tides of the Outer Darkness. There is a 5% chance of attracting the attentions of a deadly demon of the Outer Void when using atomic drives or rockets in these areas.


'We will roam in the marts of forgotten cities of jasper, and carnelian-builded ports beyond Cathay; and I will buy you a gown of peacock azure damascened with copper and gold and vermilion; and a gown of black samite with runes of orange, woven by fantastic sorcery without the touch of hands, in a dim land of spells and philtres. "
The Muse of Atlantis By Clark Ashton Smith

So here are 1d6 objects tainted with the legacy & weirdness of ancient Atlantis where the PC's are least likely to expect to find them out in the Old Solar System.
1d6 System Lost Relics of Ancient Atlantis 

1. A bracelet worth 700 gold pieces of beaten bronze & lupus for an older noble woman that contains a miniature star map of a long forgotten system. The place was once the  home to one of the star traders to the Atlantis merchants and contains a vast dungeon of forgotten and forbidden alien artifacts. The information can be read with a 'read technology' spell. 
2.  A bronze head containing the preserved brain of a lich once the court wizard to a minor ruler of Mu. The head could be made to function with 400,000 gold pieces worth of work by a necromancer or black wizard. The thing will be vengeful, mad, & will try to possess the body of a male youth of Eighteen years or older to exact vengeance on the living but he knows some very interesting & valuable forbidden secrets. 
3.  The Right Hand of GoT - This preserved hand is actually a mechanism designed by the artifact maker Got of Thebes, its actually a clock work computer that when a piece of coal or a pencil is put between its fingers will draw out ancient star charts and forbidden system maps now lost. The thing is priceless to an astronomer or astrologer and they will pay minimum of a 130,000 gold pieces. There is however an alien race that wants the thing back and will gate in within 1d8 months after the thing is found. They will demand it back. 
4. A ring belonging to a knight who was tracking down a murderer from Atlantis. The ruby, bronze, and gold ring contains his spirit & he will make himself known as his spirit is still within the ring. The murderer went off world and so did the knight. He doesn't know that the murderer was a creature of ancient Mars and still dwells within one of the forgotten red sea bottom cities. The ring is worth 6000 gold pieces to the knight's order as it was originally used for trading and other monetary purposes.
5. A  slab of pure gold that is a map to a treasure vault now lost among the debris and worldlets of the belt. The original location was smashed but the vault is intact and tablet tells of it. The reverse side has a summoning spell that summons a spirit of 'Thoth' that will tell the legend of the vault's place in the merchant history of the empire. The tablet is worth 40,000 gold pieces but the treasures was originally meant for one of the Great Old Ones cults and they'd love to recover it still. 
6. The mirror of PU - This mirror is a black onyx & silver metal affair that shows the soul & its astral auras but its true purpose is to teleport the owner to the abode of several minor Lovecraftian entities that live among the asteroid belt. These Lovecraftian alien demons will grant a twisted and horrid form of lichdom & immortality to the owner. The mirror is worth 760,000 gold pieces but its better that its lost in the sands of the asteroid belt.