Among The Fairy Haunted Halls of B3 Palace of the Silver Princess By Moldvay & Wells For Your Old School Campaigns

Are there hidden agents of chaos scattered across Dark Europe? Have there been cults of chaos within European confines for thousands of years since before the time of the Roman occupation of Europe? What are  the connections to a TSR classic adventure & Arthurian legend?
Let dive right into the deep end of the royal gene pool!

Now I've talked about the '81 John Boorman cultclassic film Excilbur on yesterday's blog post & some of the familial connections its had in my games over years. And let's talk a bit about the connections between adventure locations, NPC bloodlines, & classic era TSR adventures. Everything revolves around the Le Fey family  because they're  the last bastion of the Elven bloodlines on Earth in Dark Europe.
Because there isn't just one Morgan Le Fey there are many daughters in the Le Fey line especially when we get into the 13th-century Old French romances of the Lancelot-Grail (the Vulgate Cycle) & some of the early Arthurian works:
"Morgan first appears by name in Vita Merlini, written by Norman-Welsh cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth. Purportedly an account of the wizard Merlin's later adventures, it elaborates some episodes from Geoffrey's more famous earlier work, Historia Regum Britanniae (1136). In Historia, Geoffrey relates how King Arthur, seriously wounded by Mordred at the Battle of Camlann, is taken off to the blessed Isle of Apple Trees (Latin Insula Pomorum), Avalon, to be healed. In Vita Merlini, he describes this island in more detail and names Morgen as the chief of nine magical queen sisters who dwell there, capable of shapeshifting and flying,^[13] and using their powers only for good.^[14] Her sisters' names are Moronoe, Mazoe, Gliten, Glitonea, Gliton, Tyronoe, Thiten and Thiton.^[15][16][17] Morgan retains this role as Arthur's other-worldly healer in much later literature, and Geoffrey might have been inspired by the 1st-century Roman cartographer Pomponius Mela, who described an oracle at the Île de Sein off the coast of Brittany and its nine virgin priestesses believed by the Gauls to have the powers of curing disease and performing various other marvelous magic, such as controlling the sea through incantations, foretelling future, and changing themselves into any animal.^[18] In Lanzelet, written by the end of the 12th century by Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, the infant Lancelot is spirited away by a water fairy (merfeine in Old High German) and raised in her paradise island country of Meidelant ("Land of Maidens"); his water fairy queen might be related to Geoffrey's Morgen of Avalon."
That's right kids the relationship between the Morgan line & Arthur's is  as complex & convoluted as anything you'll find in Tolkein or Game of Thrones. Because the Morgan line are Elven bloodlines that have been watching & tending mankind this entire time all across Europe. Each one has a witch cult,grove, or mystery cult as well as  other connection to Fairyland and even perhaps gasp HP Lovecraft's Deep Ones?! There are a number of lost under water kingdoms in Celtic folklore that might have connections to various locations taken back by the Deep Ones. Again another blog entry for another time.



Why would the royals of  Morgan line be allowed to continue across Europe then?! Because as I said their relationship to the crown heads of Europe is complex and familial. The families have produced some of the premiere doctors, healers, lawyers, merchants etc. in all of Europe some of whom are beyond reproach;

"Prior to the cyclical Old French prose, the appearances of Morgan are few. The 12th-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes mentions her in his first romance Erec and Enide, completed around 1170. In it, a love of Morgan is Guinguemar, the Lord of the Isle of Avalon and a nephew of King Arthur, a derivative of the legendary Breton hero Guingamor.^[19] Guingamor's own tale by Marie de France has him in relation to the beautiful magical entity known only as the "fairy mistress",^[20] who was later identified by Thomas Chestre's Sir Launfal as Dame Tryamour, the daughter of the King of the Celtic Otherworld, and who shares many characteristics with Chrétien's Morgan.^[21][22] It was noted that even Chrétien' earliest mention of Morgan already shows an enmity between her and Queen Guinevere, and although Morgan is represented only in benign role by Chrétien, she resides in a mysterious place known as the Vale Perilous (which some later authors say she has created as a place of punishment for unfaithful knights).^[18][23] She is later mentioned in the same poem when Arthur provides the wounded hero Erec with a healing balm made by his sister Morgan. This episode both affirms her early role as a healer and provides the first mention of Morgan as Arthur's sister; healing is Morgan's chief ability, but Chrétien also hints at her potential to harm.^[24] Chrétien again refers to Morgan as a great healer in his later romance Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, in an episode in which the Lady of Norison restores the maddened hero to his senses with a magical potion provided by Morgan the Wise. While Modron is the mother of Owain mab Urien in Welsh literature, and Morgan would be assigned this role in later French literature, this first continental association between Sir Ywain and Morgan does not imply they are son and mother; she is first mentioned as Ywain's mother in the early 13th-century Breton lai Tyolet."

The Morgan line are not simply healers but tacticians, events did not go as planned with the Camelot affair & after Arthur's death Avalon's return to the world of men didn't happen.

A detail of The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon by Edward Burne-Jones (1898)

How bad did events get?! Well when dealing with Chaos & the occult events are unpredictable & highly dangerous. B3 Palace of the Silver Princess might be the perfect old school example of another adventure location taken off to Fairyland whose chaos energies have warped the entire classic adventure location. Let me get this bit out of the way; "Palace of the Silver Princess is an adventure module for the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set. It was recalled on the same day it was released, then rewritten and re-released some months later. The original version, with an orange cover, was written in 1980 by Jean Wells.^[2][3] When the orange version was recalled (and most copies destroyed), the module was rewritten by Tom Moldvay and released with a green cover. Writing credit on the second version was given to both Moldvay and Wells, although there was very little of Wells' original content in Moldvay's version."

So The Thirty Years War is raging across Europe and the PC's are on the border of France's wastelands and battlefields. The PC encounter evil creatures that have taken over the palace after one of the more bloody battles which puts events of B3 right around the Catholic Intervention.
So why the Catholic Intervention? Because the violence & bloodshed has warped the country depicted in B3 right back into the world. The Morgan line's curse was responsible for its disappearance in the first place. All of this time its been in Fairyland its been warped by the energies of chaos. What sort of possible Lovecraftian powers might have had a claw in this? Clark Ashton Smith's Mother of Toads (1934) goes into the dark connections to a possible source?!

This isn't a simple dungeon crawl as its a fight for survival against some terrible odds against the backdrop of the Thirty Years War. Because B3's adventure location has been warping in and out of reality for a long time and time does not pass in our world as it does in the palace. So there are bound to be an NPC cast  of adventurers and fortune seekers from across history within the palace.  The palace's inhabitants and monsters are native to Fairyland but is there evidence of the Morgan line's connection to the palace and events of The Thirty Years War?! Will the Morgans let the PC's live if they manage to escape the palace?

Contemporary painting showing the Battle of White Mountain (1620), where Imperial-Spanish forces under Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly won a decisive victory.

Let's face it, B3 Palace of the Silver Princess is a mess of an adventure but it adaptable to a wide variety of campaign settings and circumstances. By weaving a bit of Arthurian literature into the mix and some real world history we get a great backdrop for an alternative  Lion & Dragon retroclone setting. More to come! 

ACK's Dwimmermount + Dark Albion Equals a Massive Campaign Setting Idea As Your Old School Campaign

Near the Black Forest of Germania people are going missing, weird relics & strange magics have been filtering into the cities of Germania, tales of monsters stalking the countryside, and now the entire region around the city of Muntberg has disappeared like it never existed!?
Tales of centuries old cults becoming active again people disappear in the night have started again. All of this is happening even as tales of the country of Avalon boiling over in civil war! People are whispering that the olden days have returned & it is all the work of that devil mountain Dwimmermount! Yes, I'm talking about crossing Dwimmermount with Dark Albion here & your right its madness in a way. But let's just go along with this thought exercise here for a moment. How did all of this come about?

Not my actual tea but one created by Nikon D70

This morning I got together with some other dungeon masters & gamers for coffee, we were talking about OSR gaming. We spoke at length about some of the challenges of using Dwimmermount with other products specifically lower fantasy and sorcery products such as Dark Albion. One of my coffee clutch pointed out an article from The Soldiers of Misfortune website which has an interesting article breaking down the War of The Roses;"Many historians consider the masses of defeated mercenaries returning from France to be one of the main causes of the Wars of the Roses. There had undoubtedly been dynastic conflicts in England before, but apart from the long feud between Queen Matilda and Stephen of Blois, there had never been such an enduring and bitter struggle for the English throne. The unemployed veterans of the Hundred Years War were the ideal reservoir for anybody looking for experienced and ruthless fighters. In addition, in recent decades the English had settled many colonists in Normandy, and these were now also returning having lost everything.

Even more dangerous were the struggles of the great magnates, trying to control the increasingly insane King Henry VI. The war in France had long served as a valve allowing the power-hungry nobles to expend some of their pent-up energy. The most dangerous contender for power, for example, Richard Duke of York - also a descendant of Edward III and thus a Plantagenet - had served several times as a commander in France. After the final English defeat at Castillon (1453) the nobility focused their energies on the struggle for power at court, many of them looking for compensation for lost estates in France."
Those bitter and unemployed veterans of the Hundred Years war are the key here. Everything here is set up for the return of these veterans to become the catylist for the events of the War of The Roses'. While Dark Albion follows the exact events of history it does not follow the actual supernatural forces that would have a lot to gain by the falling of Albion itself. This includes the Elves of Dark Albion, who have a vested interest in humanity and restoring their rightful place as Albion's rulers. Their cults have infiltrated every level of society across Dark Albion's Europe as per Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos. But what does this have to do with Dwimmermount? Centuries ago the mega dungeon was a site of a battle between the other world Eld & the Dark Albionian Elves. The Elves with their dark magics were able to drive away the mega dungeon location into the realms of Fairyland & for a time all has been right. But now with the intrigue & bloodshed happening across Europe especially Albion. The mega dungeon has returned & when the first few relics poured into Muntberg filtered through the hands of adventurers the region's fate was sealed. More & more relics have made the town  even the entire region unstable as the Aztoth pulls them back into the world of the fairy and spirits.


Landsknechts mercenaries have come to Albion to seek work but also to ask the temple of the Unconquered Sun to send inquisitors to find out what has happened. The returning of the hidden valley of Dwimmermount in the Black Forrest regions of Germania have not gone unnoticed supernaturally at all. The foul star creature's worshipers have seen signs in the sky that point to coming violence that could upset their master's heinous plans for Germania. They have sent several groups of cultists under the guise of adventurers to investigate but not one has returned. Now the temples of Albion have sent their own under guise of Landsknechts back to their homelands even as war threatens to tear Albion apart from within.


The Lancastrian army of Margaret of Anjou had ill-disciplined Scottish and French mercenaries, as well as northerners and Welshmen, in its ranks during the campaign. So the black magicians of the French are well aware of the return of the devil mountain & it's black secrets. They long for the power & possible advantages that it could give their country but they don't realize the price. For the more power & relics that adventurers, mercenaries, and others collect the further from Albion's European reality are they taken.

As events unfold around the war and its ripples that echo round Europe what role will the PC's play? Can they unravel the mysteries of Dwimmermount or become part of its legacy of black evil & treachery?


Events in Albion will unfold around the war even as the power & foundations of  church of the Unconquered Sun are shook to the core. Such as when King Edward IV and his Yorkist troops are beseeched by a priest to stop the pursuit of their Lancastrian foes who have requested sanctuary from the abbey. Everything can change on the whims of war, the power & desperation of the factions drive such a campaign. At its heart and soul the domain level of play is determined around the events of the Rose War. A mega dungeon or adventure location such as Dwimmermount is going to be incredibly important. Rumors or legends of such a site are going to attract both the royals and their circles & the inquisitors especially if the place is next door in Germany.
This is the exact sort of thing that Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos was created for, that is the creation of factions,cults, weird happenings & more centered around the forces of Chaos within cults. Yes, a lot of this is going to fall hard on the shoulders of the dungeon master to alter the flow, tone, and more of Dwimmermount but there is a system to hand such a task. Adventurer, Conqueror, King is a perfect system to merry to such a task. Dark Albion & ACK's work very well together & I'm surprised that more folks haven't talked about it.


While this is only a thought exercise, its one that has the gears turning in my head. I can see several of the systems of Dark Albion filling in ACK's backstory very quickly & being able to turn adventures out around the areas of  Muntberg with impunity. There are several serious hang ups to such a campaign, one of which is to be able to find experienced role players who would be willing to take on some of the challenges of this.
These include the following: 

• Dealing with the tonal issues of  Dwimmermount's OSR game setting voice verses the low sword & powder levels of Dark Albion 
• The campaign wide issues of Dwimmermount's doors opening in Dark Albion's setting. Not to mention the factions of the dungeon should they have influence within the setting of Dark Albion. My vote is not to have them have any at all. Dwimmermount should be a self contained adventure location. 
• Dwimmermount would be an adventure location sponge tempting fools, idiots, and adventurers across Albion's Europe and could be a location that would take years to pin down. The War of The Roses would continue to rage onward. 
• This sort of a campaign would require a lot of time on the DM's part and be a commitment of love. He or she would have to have a real love affair with the material and history of both Dwimmermount & Dark Albion. It could work very well and be very rewarding.

This could work very well as one hell of a great campaign setting and idea that would take years to play through. This sort of a game lends itself to the sort of a game that inquisitor PC's would love to play through.

The Hidden & Dangerous Corruption of S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth By Gary Gygax For Your Old School Campaigns

"Find the perilous Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth and you may gain the hidden wealth of the long-dead arch-mage - if you live!" 


So the Thirty Years War has been raging across Europe, the gates of Fairyland have been flung open a few times & closed again by the machinations of a plethora of adventurers! The whole of the war has been taking on and out of circulation scores of adventurers by design or event. That's where one of the classics comes in! I'm speaking of the classic S4  "The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth," but we're not taking about a simple redo and romp. We're talking about re skinning the classic module so that it now takes on the role of death trap for the Lion & Dragon retroclone system.
Our little adventure goes something like this, the Thirty Years War has been raging on and off across Europe but the Elves are both losing & gaining ground to the humans. The war is taking its toll but the Elves have brought out the big guns in the form of  Drelnza, the vampiric daughter of long-deceased archmage Iggwilv. She's been sleeping the sleep of the ages in Fairyland & with clues laid out in T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil the the PC's are going to follow the trail to S4  "The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.

The module's history contains a clue to where it should be placed within the ring of the Lion & Dragon retroclone rpg system.

"The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth is an adventure module for the Dungeons & Dragonsfantasy role-playing game. It was written by Gary Gygax and published by TSR in 1982 for the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) rules. The 64-page adventure bears the code "S4" ("S" for "special")^[1] and is set in the Greyhawk campaign setting. It is divided into two parts, a 32-page adventure, and a 32-page booklet of monsters and magic items. The plot involves the player characters investigating rumors of lost treasure."
Toward the end of the next cycle of conflict in the Thirty Years War the coffers were beginning to run dry in Europe. The French military were facing down the disasters of the conflict & real tolls were taking place on the coffers of Europe. The French were investigating any rumors of treasure now enter the S4 "The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth" which is right on the French borders having been vomited into the real world. Men are desperate & the promise of riches and power is far too much a temptation for the Europeans. But surely there's no Arthurian connection here?


Well let's look into this end of the leg of the Thirty Year War;

"Emperor Ferdinand II died in 1637 and was succeeded by his son Ferdinand III, who was strongly inclined toward ending the war through negotiations. His army did, however, win an important success at the Battle of Vlotho in 1638 against a combined Swedish-English-Palatine force. This victory effectively ended the involvement of the Palatinate in the war.

French military efforts met with disaster, and the Spanish counter-attacked, invading French territory. The Imperial general Johann von Werth and Spanish commander Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Spain ravaged the French provinces of Champagne, Burgundy, and Picardy, and even threatened Paris in 1636. Then, the tide began to turn for the French. The Spanish army was repulsed by Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar. Bernhard's victory in the Battle of Breisachpushed the Habsburg armies back from the borders of France.^[66] Then, for a time, widespread fighting ensued until 1640, with neither side gaining an advantage." The French provinces of Champagne, Burgundy, and Picardy, and  Paris in 1636 were hot beds of chaos cult activity going all the way back to the time of Arthurian legend. All of these places have some claim of Merlin The Magician and the Devil himself in Arthurian legend. These legends  contrast with Drelnza, the vampiric daughter of long-deceased archmage Iggwilv. As one or more versions of Merlin were supposed to be the anti Christ.

"Several decades later, the poet Robert de Boron retold this material in his poem Merlin. Only a few lines of the poem have survived, but a prose retelling became popular and was later incorporated into two other romances. In Robert's account, as in Geoffrey's Historia, Merlin is begotten by a demon on a virgin as an intended Antichrist. This plot is thwarted when the expectant mother informs her confessor Blase (or Blaise) of her predicament; they immediately baptize the boy at birth, thus freeing him from the power of Satan and his intended destiny. The demonic legacy invests Merlin with a preternatural knowledge of the past and present, which is supplemented by God, who gives the boy a prophetic knowledge of the future.

Robert de Boron lays great emphasis on Merlin's power to shapeshift, on his joking personality, and on his connection to the Holy Grail. Robert was inspired by Wace's Roman de Brut, an Anglo-Norman adaptation of Geoffrey's Historia. Robert's poem was rewritten in prose in the 13th century as the Estoire de Merlin, also called the Vulgate or Prose Merlin. It was originally attached to a cycle of prose versions of Robert's poems, which tells the story of the Holy Grail: brought from the Middle East to Britain by followers of Joseph of Arimathea, the Grail is eventually recovered by Arthur's knight Percival.

The Prose Merlin contains many instances of Merlin's shapeshifting. He appears as a woodcutter with an axe about his neck, big shoes, a torn coat, bristly hair, and a large beard. He is later found in the forest of Northumberland by a follower of Uther's disguised as an ugly man and tending a great herd of beasts. He then appears first as a handsome man and then as a beautiful boy. Years later, he approaches Arthur disguised as a peasant wearing leather boots, a wool coat, a hood, and a belt of knotted sheepskin. He is described as tall, black and bristly, and as seeming cruel and fierce. Finally, he appears as an old man with a long beard, short and hunchbacked, in an old torn woolen coat, who carries a club and drives a multitude of beasts before him.^{[11] "} 

^{So could the local Chaos cultists be summoning back the temple from S4 "The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth" to wreck havoc on the countryside of France & Europe itself? Yes I think that many of the cults of Elves listed in Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos would be the perfect vehicle after the fall of the Temple of Elemental Evil.}

This would be a great resource for generating the death worshiping Elven witch cults who wish to bring back the temple and begin the times of darkness for which the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth are legendary. The fact is that these caverns were banished to the chaos ridden lands of Fairy by the deaths of a multitude of brave knights & paladins.



Now the adventure environs represent a  pure and honestly dynamically dangerous place of chaos where the forces of the realm come to trap and destroy any adventurers they come across. Clark Ashton Smith's Averoigne stories Colossus of Ylourgne, The (1933), Enchantress of Sylaire, The (1941), & Mandrakes, The (1933) have at their core the type of spiritual and mortal corruption just as S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth does as well. 



Should the  S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth be released back into the world of men, it could and will spell the doom of all of Europe. The forces of the adventure are very dangerous and powerful and only a brave bunch of adventurers have a prayer to pull this mission off in the middle of the Thirty Years War.  My advice is to bring lots of extra character sheets for this module has taken more then its share of PC's in my personal experience. 
There are several monsters & avatars of the 'Old Ones' from the Manual of Monsters for Amazing Adventures! rpg by Troll Lord. Monsters that might be left overs from various cults & such that that have been summoned to the Prime Material. 

These monsters are the essence of Chaos itself & perfect foils for the horrors that might be unleashed by doorways being opened into the Dreamlands & Fairyland. These horrors can wreck reality as we know it. Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth is a place of absolute terror that could derail a campaign if not used carefully. 

Echoes Of The Past In UK1 Beyond The Crystal Cave By Brown, Kirby and Morris For Your Old School Campaigns

"Fleeing the rage that consumed their feuding families, Juliana and Orlando fled to the Cave of Echoes, where it is said every wish is granted. Two years have passed, and all attempts to return the lovers to their parents have failed, though some believe them lost in the enchanted garden beyond the cave.

Many are the rescuers who have entered that enchanted park; a few have returned after long absences, their minds and memories curiously disturbed. Now, the handsome reward offered for the return of the lovers has tempted you, but who knows what lies beyond the Crystal Cave?" 




Sorry for not being around for a bit and yes I'm late with this blog entry but I want to expand upon the idea of the lost lands of Arthurian legend & old school game adventures. So for a moment I want to talk about Eighty Three's UK1 Beyond The Crystal Cave By Brown, Kirby and Morris. This adventure in particular could be used as the set up for a latter day Arthurian campaign with over reaching adventure plot points for our on going Thirty Year War campaign with the Lion & Dragon Retroclone system. Long before the end of Camelot was a dream, mankind had shaken off the shackles of Elven tyranny. A wide variety of kingdoms & countries in and around Scotland, England, Ireland, & parts of the French coast were settled by the refugees from the Fall of Atlantis and other antediluvian countries. They were slave & food resources fought over by the Elves & various Deep One Tribes.



 

There are three lands that are central to the Thirty Year War, and the Elven control of England & Dark Europe after the second ice age. These lands are central pillars of Arthurian legend and include Avalon, Ys & Lyonesse. Finally rebelling against the control of the Deep Ones & the Elves the men of these kingdoms gained great knowledge of both their magicks & techniques. Or did they?! The eloped couple featured in UK1 Beyond the Crystal Cave that has fled into the Cave of Echoes seems to bare all of the hallmarks of having purchase into the Fairyland buffer of Porpherio's Garden. I would put the module within the kingdom of Avalon and the lovers as belonging to two of the most prominent royal houses centuries before the events of Camelot. As I wrote yesterday about the house of Ley Fe there are connections warped within the eloped couple's fate within the adventure. 

 The Ley Fey's have deep connections to the sunken country of Ys and its heroes.  
"Ys (pronounced /ˈiːs/ EESS), also spelled Is or Kêr-Is in Breton (kêr is the Breton word for "city", see caer), and Ville d'Ys in French, is a mythical city that was built on the coast of Brittany and later swallowed by the ocean. Most versions of the legend place the city in the Baie de Douarnenez" "

Porpherio himself might be of the Ley Fe bloodline and share a deeper connection to "the King In Yellow. "

"The legend of Ys has been used repeatedly in fantasy fiction, prominently by Robert W. Chambers in "The Demoiselle d'Ys", one of the stories in The King in Yellow, Chambers' best-known work."
These connections also worm their way through the witch cult cells & groves threaded throughout Dark Europe but the Deep Ones are not mocked and they took back these kingdoms but by then it was too late as they had been slipped back into Fairyland itself.

Poster for Édouard Lalo's 1888 opera, Le roi d'Ys

France, England, Scotland, & Ireland all claim to have a connection with King Arthur & in a way they do. For the under hill  gateways to the Elven Empire within the chaos tainted borders Fairyland all are still there having once been used by the human refugee &  rebel tribes of former human slaves.
This is where the Avalon connection appears. "Avalon (/ˈævəˌlɒn/; Latin: Insula Avallonis, Old French Avalon, Welsh: Ynys Afallon, Ynys Afallach; literally meaning "the isle of fruit [or apple] trees") is a legendary island featured in the Arthurian legend. It first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's 1136 pseudo-historical account Historia Regum Britanniae ("The History of the Kings of Britain") as the place where King Arthur's sword Excalibur was forged and later where Arthur was taken to recover from his wounds after the Battle of Camlann"

The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon by Edward Burne-Jones

"Avalon was associated from an early date with mystical practices and figures such as Morgan le Fay. It is traditionally identified as the former island of Glastonbury Tor." This is a traditional stronghold of Fairy activity & home to another branch of the Le Fey cult who are keeping a close watch on the human royals.
There are strong parallels between the legends of Tristan and Iseult & the eloped couple in UK1.

Tristan and Iseult legend is forever tied to lost Lyonesse forever the sight of Medieval undersea ghosts, fairy, and undead horrors. All of these were created when the Deep Ones took back the land at the end of the last Ice Age. The human tribes retook the country but it has always had a strange history because it borders both the Elemental Plane of Water & Fairyland. The chaos energies forever pulling & twisting the elemental power into raw chaos of the most haunted type.

Lyonesse by the time of the Thirty Year War is a wreck of underwater dungeons, ruins bordering into the underwater aspect of Fairyland and filled with the most dangerous underwater fairy races & tribes of underwater ghouls.

Giant octopus in its garden in the shade (David Sutherland, AD&D Monster Manual

The bloodshed & violence of the Thirty Year War opens up the gateways into these realms and forgotten kingdoms. Because there are several legendary Arthurian treasures & artifacts there are rumors that these gateways were opened on purpose. Key wizards on the side of the Catholics opened these doorways trying to recover certain items of power holy to the Christian Church while  the Battle of White Mountain, near Prague, on 8 November 1620 raged on. The efforts caused more occult violence and let loose incredibly dangerous forces of both Fairy & Chaos into the world of men.



UK1 Beyond The Crystal Cave By Brown, Kirby and Morris  sets up more then just the initial plot but the history for plenty of expansion & exploration of the ins & outs of a classic module modified to fit the twisted vision of a dungeon master's campaign.  

The Chaos & Madness Of WG4 The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun By Gary Gygax In Unexpected Campaign Settings

"WG4 The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun is an insult to the very legacy of the heroes of Greyhawk. A reminder that there are far more devastating forces in the planes then even the gods know about. In a place that is between places is the prison for one of the most dangerous entities in multiverse. "Tharizdun is the god of Eternal Darkness, Decay, Entropy, & is the mad god trapped in the center of its eternal prison. The sacrifices & horrors that await those PC's stupid enough to get involved in the affairs of this god are legendary even in Greyhawk. 

Tharizdun is trapped in a lower vibration planar prison outside of normal space time & that means that it is a mute observer to all of time & space. Now yesterday I spoke about Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth & how the entrance to that dungeon connects throughout the multiverse. As a nexus of probability this connection  to a wide variety of  campaign settings makes Tharizdun's influence all that much more dangerous. The cult of Elemental Evil can & does cross dimensions & prime material planes to spread its influence; Four apocalyptic cults of Elemental Evil are building secret sanctuaries and outposts throughout the North, bringing terror and destruction to the Forgotten Realms. Each cult is devoted to one of the Princes of Elemental Evil (godlike entities embodying air, earth, fire, and water) and is led by a nihilistic prophet, corrupted by power. The cruel elf princess Aerisi Kalinoth speaks for the air Cult of the Howling Hatred, while Marlos Urnrayle, a fierce male medusa, leads the Cult of the Black Earth. The Cult of the Eternal Flame scars its followers at the behest of the beautiful and deadly tiefling Vanifer, and the mutilated sailor Gar Shatterkeel plots to drown the world with his Cult of the Crushing Wave.

The cults use devastation orbs, forged of raw elemental power, to ravage Faerûn with horrifying earthquakes, typhoons, tornados, and other disasters. Independently, the cults are terrible adversaries, but now they have secretly begun transforming a long-lost dungeon into a huge subterranean temple dedicated to an alien entity known as the Elder Elemental Eye. To prevent this union of the Elemental Evils into one catastrophic force, heroes must expose the prophets' true agenda. The cults' agents are everywhere and their power is immense.

When you don’t know whom to trust, knowledge is your only weapon. Unearth the Deception." 
Wizards of the Coast. 

Essentially these cults can pop up in just about any campaign setting as they use  the archmage Iggwilv's assets & holdings to their advantage. In Clark Ashton Smith's Averoigne the entrance to the dungeons of the witch queen is well known in legend but only appears on certain Pagan holiday nights. This is especially true of the Pagan precursor holiday to Halloween in France. The massive dungeon complex's hold on the planes isn't the only issue & many heroes have found out that its corruption spreads deeply into human history & its alternate worlds. Because Fairyland is a roiling ocean of magical & chaotic landscapes, kingdoms, & Hells as well as minor Heavens. The influence of Tharizdun can be felt in the darkest pits of Fairyland where time runs in strange ways. PC's could fall into worlds were time runs backwards & become trapped in a massively alien place. 


I've talked about how Tharizdun  communicated with the evil archomentals, Imix, Ogremoch, Yan-C-Bin, and Olhydra, the Princes of Elemental Evil, convincing them that they were his creations, thereby gaining their allegiance" This gives the dungeon master yet another link into the monster kin of the Fiend Folio. But what haven't spoken about is how the mad god gained a foot hold over the dark races of the Fey. This includes other almost human races such as the Hyperboreans from Clark Ashton Smith's mythos & Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea rpg fame.



The big push begins right around the Hundred Year War when all of the plagues, famine, & warfare made mankind easy pickings at the edges of the world. Next opportunity came during the Victorian era & so forth. This is one of the era's where I pull out The Codex Celtarum by Brian Young & Troll Lord Games. 


I've said that this isn't the only world that the Temple's appearance is  going to raise alarm bells. The dungeon complex is a probability field & acts as a sort of planar heat sink for the forces of Chaos. This means that mean streets of London might be subject to the temple's influence or the sweeping streets of Egypt you could see massive influxes of cults & secret societies of Tharizdun. 



When these types of cults & societies need to be generated I turn to one of my all time favorite OSR products Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos. This book is perfect for creating a more subtle & yet just as dangerous a cult for Tharizdun. The fact is that any entrance to the dungeons & temples of Tharizdun or the archmage Iggwilv is going to bring down the hammer of the Inquisition on Albion.


I've mentioned the fact that these are not super villains out of a Marvel comic book but unnatural disasters that a party of adventurers can only minimize the impact of. The fact is that even in the Twenties & Thirties Pulp era there is only so much that heroes can do. The best thing is to hunt down the cults & societies behind bringing the these diabolical influences into a campaign world. But can characters even hope to?