OSR Treasures of Reality, The Threshold, & More- Rpg Pundit's The Invisible College & Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan.

There is a single main definition of the object of all magical Ritual. It is the uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm. The Supreme and Complete Ritual is therefore the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; or, in the language of Mysticism, Union with God.
Ch. 1 : The Principles of Ritual
Aleister Crowley 
We are living through one of the last cycles of Chaos & scorn according certain Hindu sacred texts. All of this is a part of the 'Invisible College' rpg on some back burner paragraph but its there. But what if there were high dimensional realities right around the corner where we might escape to as a part of the Great Work?! We'll pick up right here from where we left off from here last time on the blog. 

Try to imagine for a moment that the D&D or AD&D campaign settings that we know & love ala Greyhawk are actually higher dimensional realms perhaps a part of a mega dimensional campaign. Now its only been eight days since our last blog entry on this OSR ousting here. Since then several thoughts have been going through my conversations with DM Steve. He suggested Kevin Crawford's Worlds Without Number simply get rid of the Latter Earth which is the game's default campaign setting. And insert in your own version of a TSR mega setting perhaps Blackmoor, Mystara, & Greyhawk as one mega campaign setting. The ritual magick of  'Invisible College' rpg taps into the same other dimensional source as D&D. That source is the realm of Chaos inherit within the center of  'dream'. The same energies that 'gods' and 'immortals' access. 

Let me simply go on record as saying that I don't give two shites about any of the authors of these rpg's political or religious beliefs. Now that being said there are monsters under the bed and these monsters sometimes come into our world through some very dangerous back doors. And this is all very David Lynch. And this brings us right back to Welcome to Saint Cloud. The Lynchian vibe is very strong in this adventure & this brings up a point. That many of the places that David Lynch's literature, films, etc. talk about are places where reality is breaking down. Whose doing this?! The magus of course by their very acts of magick because it serves to bring in the corrosion of chaos. 

 Lynch's Mulholland Drive could well be a magus dealing with the breakdown of their own reality. The whole affair looping back on itself in higher or lower dimensional reality. There are cracks that form within such realities allowing demons or worse to exploit them. 

Now if we follow the anti logic here then we can see several factions within 'Invisible College' rpg exploiting such weaknesses. On the extreme end of such manipulation you have villains or magus such as John Carpenter's 'In The Mouth of Madness''s Sutter Cane taking pieces of reality & turning them into their own personal balloon animals. 

These piece of reality could be seen as fragments of the dreamlands bound up as domains floating next to the endless void. They circle but can not touch the endless exo planet. But what about all those valuable 'treasures' and artifacts that seemingly & endlessly end up in every pawnshop, estate sale, etc. across the Earth? Why are these allowed to come into our world?! Because the Fey & the monsters of the dungeons  of these over & underworlds want to spread their countless baubles from dungeon to reality for the endless parade of fresh meat. And this is where  Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars Companion  By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan comes into play. The monsters are the magus's muscle & boots on the ground. This is because this end of reality is so dangerous. The PC's have to keep back the hordes from overrunning us. Part Jack Kirby's Fourth World & part Clive Barker's Nightbreed for influence but its gonna be Ben Laurence's Through Ultan's Door that's gonna be the hungry location. This place is quietly going to casting its net into our local time space reality for the unwary & the foolish. This end of the dreamlands feeds very well indeed. Why?! Next time... 

Terror, Treasures, Chaos & Trinkets of the OSR With Rpg Pundit's The Invisible College & Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan.

 

"I am certainly of opinion that genius can be acquired, or, in the alternative, that it is an almost universal possession. Its rarity may be attributed to the crushing influence of a corrupted society. It is rare to meet a youth without high ideals, generous thoughts, a sense of holiness, of his own importance, which, being interpreted, is, of his own identity with God. Three years in the world, and he is a bank clerk or even a government official. Only those who intuitively understand from early boyhood that they must stand out, and who have the incredible courage and endurance to do so in the face of all that tyranny, callousness, and the scorn of inferiors can do; only these arrive at manhood uncontaminated.
"Energized Enthusiasm : A Note On Theurgy" in The Equinox Vol. 1 no. 9 (Spring 1913)"
Aleister Crowley

Let's pick it up right from here on the blog yesterday. . Magick is the inherit science & practice of changing reality as we know it. What happens when reality breaks us down instead?! The reality as we know it becomes corrupt?! And it begins to body & mind harm?! Several factors got me thinking about about this fact. Last time we mentioned Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius  & its Cornelius's cycles of reality that come into play here. We are living through one of the last cycles of Chaos & scorn according certain Hindu sacred texts. All of this is a part of the 'Invisible College' rpg on some back burner paragraph but its there. 

“There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns.
If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself.
What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't decipher. what we can't understand we call nonsense. What we can't read we call gibberish.
There is no free will.
There are no variables.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

Chaos as we've seen it in the classic Anderson sense is a fell beastie that seeps through the cracks of our reality & it fundamentally changes those it touches. It takes various forms of mutations across the spectrum of reality. Our own doesn't fundamentally tolerate those. Cancers & death seem to be the result but on the very fringes of our so called reality we see the occasional mutant or cult of chaos arising. Mostly what we get is henchmen for magical lodges whoe abilities serve them across several realities. And this brings us right back to Welcome to Saint Cloud. The Lynchian vibe is very strong in this adventure & this brings up a point. That many of the places that David Lynch's literature, films, etc. talk about are places where reality is breaking down. Whose doing this?! The magus of course by their very acts of magick because it serves to bring in the corrosion of chaos. 

The extremes of this sort of ritual abuse of reality allows those things on the otherside enterance across the threshold into our reality. See these cults thrive in enviroments where the fundamental reality has been turned into Swiss cheese. Higher & Lower dimensional entities such as demons & gods just love to exploit these weaknesses in reality. If you want to expand upon such cults in the 'Invisible College' then I suggest Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos. 
And please don't tell me that such cults can't exist today because the news tells us otherwise in every back page story coming out of some God forsaken corner of the Earth. 

'The Invisible College' isn't going to be that concerned with such cults. The various factions  may on occasion use them. But on the whole you are actually looking at the street level minions & workers who are going to be in the dark underworld of the streets. And this is where  Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars Companion  By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan comes into play. The monsters are the magus's muscle & boots on the ground. This is because this end of reality is so dangerous. Yhe fact that this setting is only a foot fall away from our current consentual reality. Turn down the wrong corner & you could find yourself between the fire fight of a different kind. 
The hearts & minds of the societies of the Earth are not the only things that these factions are fighting over. There are real & dream like treasures of the occult at stake here. Caverns of faery gold lay unguarded across the threshold of reality for th taking but these come with their own price. The gold of myth & legend is closer to the Rhine gold then the gold of a jewelry or pawn store.  Other treasures are also there but the guardians know who you are & why your coming don't worry they have thier own operatives in our own reality. And their coming for you. 

Walking The Razor's Edge Aspects of the OSR With Rpg Pundit's The Invisible College & Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan.

 "Float down the sewer river of the dreamlands with Through Ultan’s Door double issue 3. This issue presents a pointcrawl along a sewer river of the dreamlands that connects the dungeons from issues 1 & 2 with 7 new locations. It introduces an entire settlement, the Sanitarium of the Benefactors, and numerous factions including the sewer wyrm Cephaia, Prophetess of the Muddled Waters; her rival the Cranemay, melancholy fey witch; and the Lurid Toads, ominously polite cannibalistic parasites. Complete with a giant dreamy sewer encounter table, and rules for playing your very own opium dreaming wizard! It is illustrated more lushly than ever, with over 30 gorgeous illustrations by Huargo, Orphicss, Gus, Daria Khlebnikova, Johan Tieldow, Jeremy Duncan, and David Hoskins."

Through Ultan's Door issue#3 represents the sorta of point crawl that can slide into our reality without us even knowing it. The powers of the 'Invisible College' & the  Nightshift The Vetans of the Supernatural Wars are working hard to prevent it.Why?! Because its already happened in the past. 
We have a tendency to believe that reality as we know it stinks, the world is rotten, etc. We've all heard the thought or caught a glimpse of this in opinion in the past. This blog post picks right up from here. 

“A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. A psychotic is a guy who's just found out what's going on.”

― William S. Burroughs

Magus are going to be outsiders at the best of times & part of the machinery of society at other times. Society is going to think them the madmen & the fools, along with every other 'ism' on planet Earth. The truth is so much more stranger. What makes the  darkly surreal Tech-Noir game setting and adventure of 'Postcards From Avalidad'   'Postcards from Avalidad' By Miguel Ribeiro  & Manuel Souza so dangerous is the fact that this setting is only a foot fall away from our current consentual reality. 

'Once upon a time' became reality for a time & the land of dreams is a very hostile & imicial place for mankind. Gods, demons, faeries, magick was reality & then the immortals of the higher realms or dimensions finally set back reality. The 'Invisible College'  factions, one of them at least called back in the immortals not the gods but the immortals to set reality right again. There were those who were still changed by the experience. The mutates, the mutants, etc. who were left behind. They were left behind in the reality of 'Postcards From Avalidad'  & that place is used to dealing with its mutants quite quickly in point of fact. 

Traveling from one universe or reality isn't the problem getting back to ours is! Magick is the science or act of change especially ritual magick. The college picks up whom it can to train as magus for its factional 'invisible or occult' war. The problem is the fact that is that there are monsters who get left behind. Some of which can be trained to become adventurers in their own right. But this is a 'war universe' and factional wars are messy businesses at the best of times. 

The cult of Typhon for example knows this & yet they strive to bring 'things' into our reality to cause mayhem. The blakc & white of alignment systems get very twisted  in the face of the war for reality. Dungeons & ruins as we've spoken of since the last time are invasive remants of past battle grounds. They linger here & bring with them monsters, murderers, madmen, & mayhem. This is where the agents of 'Postcards From Avalidad' sometime end up butting heads & spilling blood with the members of 'The Nightshift'. One side is unaware of the true nature of the other. But blood is still spilt & lives are lost.  I'm reminded of my college days of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius & William S. Burroughs. Seen through the Cornelius & Burroughs lens at the end of the world. The question become what world through   the strange lives of Avalidad's celebrities, fiscal royalty and seedy underbelly of Postcards? 

Adventuring with either the invisible college, the Nightshift or God help you the agents of 'Postcards From Avalidad and you will not comeback unaltered. Lives are shattered, adventurers are created, & survivors may live to tell the tales. Our reality doesn't suck, its what you make of it really. The fact is that the powers at be within '

'Postcards from Avalidad' know what's at stake. At the higher viberational realms are places of ruin & abandoned dreams.  Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars Companion  By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan comes into play here. Because the magus are going to need muscle on those layers of reality.And many of those layers cross into the realm of dreams. Dreams of power, sex, and all of the other primal weirdness. Because these are the keys of need & want within the human psyche. All of these layers of reality are invasive organisms that crawl into our psyches & try to become the new 'normal'. Can magick fix what's broken & are adventurers merely those that survived. And what about those 'treasures' from those invasive realities?! We'll get into those next time. 

Invasions From The Surreal Aspects of the OSR With Rpg Pundit's The Invisible College & Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan.

 The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits.
 William S. Burroughs


If PC's crossover the planar threshold into a weird & surreal setting such Postcards From Avalidad.   'Postcards from Avalidad' By Miguel Ribeiro  & Manuel Souza from two B/X powered games such as Rpg Pundit's The Invisible College & Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars.  Are  such PC's going to be able carry out missions for their respective powers?! Several factors got me thinking about about this fact. Last time we mentioned Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius  & its Cornelius's cycles of reality that come into play here. 

Recently Jason Vey changed up the video on his Night Shift Veterans of the Secret War's Companion Kickstarter. And its gotten me thinking about a few things especially Rpg Pundit's The Invisible College  rpg and his recent video about it. The real gem of this was a comment that was made by Fernoll on Youtube; "This reminds me of Clive Barker's Jericho, a video game. You control a squad of occult soldiers in the service of the US Chaplain Corps, like a gun-slinging catholic priest, a mestizo shaman with a minigun and a telekinetic sniper. Really neat stuff." Now we're not gonna rip off Clive Barker here today. There are way too many folks who have done that already. And instead I want to take a moment to address 'Postcards from Avalidad' By Miguel Ribeiro  & Manuel Souza. 

The Invisible College is going to take a look at the fact that if we get a bleed over into our reality from the world setting of 'Postcards from Avalidad' By Miguel Ribeiro  & Manuel Souza then things are going become very complicated very fast. And ritual magick may be the only way to 'fix' it. 

'Postcards from Avalidad' By Miguel Ribeiro  & Manuel Souza isn't the 'real reality' instead its an invasive organism universe or reality that comes across into our colllective universe to take over & conquer. And it does this through its agents, its vitality, & the constant crushing of the human spirit. And it also houses its own inner lodges & colleges of magick at its highest levels. How does one deal with such an agency of reality? Drive it back into the furthest ends of the planes as one can! You play out an invisible war or occult war driving back the lower vibrational planes as quickly as one can. 

The fact is that the powers at be within 'Postcards from Avalidad' know what's at stake. At the higher viberational realms are places of ruin & abandoned dreams.  Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars Companion  By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan comes into play here. Because the magus are going to need muscle on those layers of reality. And many of those layers cross into the realm of dreams. Dreams of power, sex, and all of the other primal weirdness. Because these are the keys of need & want within the human psyche. 

These could be higher or lower vibrational dimensions depending upon which keys & gates are used. Ben Laurence's Through Ultan's Door series of adventures is perfect for these sort's of surreal dungeon crawls. And they illustrate the dangers of decay within the higher vibrational realms of dreams. And what happens when the things don't stay put within the realm of dreams & start to invade our reality?! 

'Monsters in the Underbelly' - ~ OSR Commentary With Rpg Pundit's The Invisible College & Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan.

 

 































"This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games. All games are basically hostile. Winners and losers. We see them all around us: the winners and the losers. The losers can oftentimes become winners, and the winners can very easily become losers.
"The War Universe", taped conversation, first published in Grand Street, No. 37 "
William S. Burroughs 

The fact of the matter is that magus are going to be the low man on the totem pole. Magus & monsters in  Rpg Pundit's The Invisible College & Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars were talked about the other day here on the blog.  Magus are going to be outsiders at the best of times & part of the machinery of society at other times.   The factions of the Invisible College are going to be moving their unseen hands across the table top of the world. The B/X nature of the occult of both games goes excellent with the   darkly surreal Tech-Noir game setting and adventure of Postcards From Avalidad.   'Postcards from Avalidad' By Miguel Ribeiro  & Manuel Souza goes into some of the folks who are on the control end of 2021 reality through the lens of the Sixties & Seventies. And yet reading through the 112 page pdf, I'm reminded of my college days of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius & William S. Burroughs. Seen through the Cornelius & Burroughs lens at the end of the world. The question become what world through   the strange lives of Avalidad's celebrities, fiscal royalty and seedy underbelly of Postcards. 

 Ben Laurence's Through Ultan's Door series of adventures is perfect for these sort's of surreal dungeon crawls. There's more then enough room for the monsters & magus here. Each of the factions of the Invisible Collge rpg would love to have a backdoor into the dreamlands. But those blundering into this world might end up in the lower viberational setting of 'Postcards from Avalidad'. Firearms & all of the modern high tech toys of 2021 are not going to be enough to deal with the harsh & unforgiving underbelly of these adventures. The dreamlands reality plays for keeps. And it devours those that try to defy its long embrace.  The PC's could flip back & forth between realities only to try to find out which one is the true reality. Monster or supernatural PC's  in 'Postcards from Avalidad' are going to find themselves in a very dangerous world. A world used to dealing with them. 
And this bring ups the point that could PC's like B/X powered Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars Companion classes such as  the Divine Warrior, the Mystic Martial Artist, the Psychic Gunslinger, and the Spirit Rider even remotely make a difference in a weird & surreal setting such 'Postcards from Avalidad'?! 
This is the question that I'm pondering even now as we're planning campaign into this high weirdness & surreal jam. More coming up. 

"You Are Not One of the Elites" ~ OSR Commentary With Rpg Pundit's The Invisible College & Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan.

 "This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games. All games are basically hostile. Winners and losers. We see them all around us: the winners and the losers. The losers can oftentimes become winners, and the winners can very easily become losers.
"The War Universe", taped conversation, first published in Grand Street, No. 37 "
William S. Burroughs 

"His magic exists from a hypnotic, inadvertant demand of attention as he interrupts the Parade of Death and takes the stage, to unashamedly seize the higher pleasures they fear to reach. Dead and unborn onlookers wallow in their weakness, as the shame they emit fails to penetrate him and rebounds with force as he shoves it down their throats and they choke, vomiting up a jealous mess of many made up morals purely to justify their cowardliness and they sink back down to worthlessness. Rats of submission gnaw on his ankles but they fail to make him buckle and bow to necessity."
The Wild Boys (1971) William S. Burroughs 

Yesterday we talked about  'Welcome to Saint Cloud' here on the blog.  Today we're gonna pick it up with   Postcards from Avalidad By Miguel Ribeiro  & Manuel Souza. And while I do think that the classic edition of the excellent Over the Edge Rpg does a fantastic job of melding many of the tropes &  trends found in the underground literature of the Sixties & Seventies. We need to dive back into several important factors about Rpg Pundit's The Invisible College & Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan.  One of those first factor's is the availablity of 'real', solid, & actually available 'activated' information about the world of magick & the occult. Any true book store or even an internet site can provide the budding magus with information about the upper & lower vibrational planes. The dark forces powers of  'Welcome to Saint Cloud', have carved out their own piece of reality. These guys are actually second raters when it comes to the actual running of reality as we know it.  Postcards from Avalidad By Miguel Ribeiro  & Manuel Souza goes into some of the folks who are on the control end of 2021 reality through the lens of the Sixties & Seventies. 

This is adventuring in the lower dimensions of  realms of William S. Burroughs which comes with its own brand of horror & degradation just the sort of thing that Rpg Pundit's The Invisible College & Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan PC's are fighting against. If your expecting Gandalf or the classic D&D styles of Merlin they are here but their running their own cells in this fight for reality. The down & dirtness of magick makes the monsters no less dangerous. Orcs are going to be curned out from vats by dark powers at the ragged edges of reality as disposable troops.

 The powers that be are more likely too be unknitting reality & remaking it in ways that you have no idea about. If your thinking the Shadowrun rpg think again. The monsters of D&D are here but these are left over bio weapon systems from wars for our reality eons ago. They still exist but they are mindlessly still serving the Dark Powers as they once did ages go. And if you happen to be one of the unlucky bastard's whose seen through reality then you might be fighting for your life to preserve 2021. 
Organizations like the Cult of Typhon are in this for the long haul but they want reality under their control. Things from outside such as the Mind Flayers &  Slaad have other ideas. Just because your esoteric philosphies align doesn't mean that all out war isn't going to happen. The human race is bound by powers that it can't even understand sometimes all that stands between your family & total subservience to some Lovecraftian entity is good gun & some magick rituals. 
Once you cross over the Threshold there's no going back. Sure on paper it may look all kinds of cool. But imagine that the rituals of change & war actually worked. And that there really were dark powers after you! And that's where the street level magick begins. 

The real fight for the human soul begins deep in the realm of dreams. These could be higher or lower vibrational dimensions. Ben Laurence's Through Ultan's Door series of adventures is perfect for these sort's of surreal dungeon crawls. And we'll get into why next time! 

Journey's Into The Surreal Aspects of the OSR With Rpg Pundit's The Invisible College & Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan.

"Most of the trouble in the world has been caused by ten to twenty percent of folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus."
William S. Burroughs 

 'Welcome to Saint Cloud' under points one very specific aspect of occult roleplaying. The fact that other realms lay just under the surface of our so called reality. OSR surreal adventure crosses over into several supernatural aspects that we find over & over again. The idea that places of power & sinkholes of evil not only exist but reach out for us. This something that can be done with two different OSR occult rpg games that can easily cross over with Rpg Pundit's The Invisible College & Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan. 

"I am certainly of opinion that genius can be acquired, or, in the alternative, that it is an almost universal possession. Its rarity may be attributed to the crushing influence of a corrupted society. It is rare to meet a youth without high ideals, generous thoughts, a sense of holiness, of his own importance, which, being interpreted, is, of his own identity with God. Three years in the world, and he is a bank clerk or even a government official. Only those who intuitively understand from early boyhood that they must stand out, and who have the incredible courage and endurance to do so in the face of all that tyranny, callousness, and the scorn of inferiors can do; only these arrive at manhood uncontaminated.
"Energized Enthusiasm : A Note On Theurgy" in The Equinox  Vol. 1 no. 9 (Spring 1913)" 
If we begin looking at the fact that in the television show 'Twin Peaks' which inspired & has as its homage within  'Welcome to Saint Cloud', Then the fictional 'Black Lodge' & its attendant characters make far more sense.  The  'real world' inspired occult conspiracies & magus of the 'Invisible College' rpg are not unlike the 'Black Lodge' at all. The dark forces powers of  'Welcome to Saint Cloud', have carved out their own piece of reality. The magus of  'Welcome to Saint Cloud', are going to be very dangerous & want to hold onto each & every piece of supernatural power that they've carved out for themselves. And this means that the PC's are going to have a Hell of a fight on their hands on several levels of reality. Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan comes into play here. Because the magus are going to need muscle on those layers of reality. And many of those layers cross into the realm of dreams. Dreams of power, sex, and all of the other primal weirdness.


These could be higher or lower vibrational dimensions. Ben Laurence's Through Ultan's Door series of adventures is perfect for these sort's of surreal dungeon crawls. These are not the only dimensions that our heroes may find themselves. The fact is that there are many such higher & lower dimensional realms for the adventurers to deal with one of these may be  Postcards from Avalidad By Miguel Ribeiro  & Manuel Souza. This is adventuring in the lower dimensions of  realms of William S. Burroughs which comes with its own brand of horror & degradation just the sort of thing that Rpg Pundit's The Invisible College & Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan PC's are fighting against. 

There will be more coming up as we dive deeper into the under belly of these supernatural realms & how they connect to the traditional B/X Dungeons & Dragons planes & worlds.