Tegel Manor - Worlds Without Number & Cities Without Number Rpg - Green Horde Attack! Session Two Report

 I haven't had time to blink wrong over the last couple of days let alone do a session update. But let's get deep  into it. This blog entry picks up from here. 
The player's PC's got into a fire fight with some Green Martian hordes at the outter edges of the Tegel Manor valley. And one of the PC's got a taste for exactly what the radium rifle ammo can do. Now there are two different Worlds Without Number & Cities Without Number groups of players exploring the manor. And no I'm not explaining why there are two different versions of the manor at this time. 

The players made it too the dead sea bottom & managed to snag some weapons, ammo, and more from the dead Green Martians. They didn't have long as the Green martians about five of them had formed a 'blood squad'. And then closed in for the kill. They picked off two our operators quickly. They weren't dead but in rough shape. 
And then the Greens broke off! The group limped back to the manor house and ran straight into a party of Martian low landers who were preparing to trade with one of the villagers. 

There was a very heated series of rolls for languages and then telepathy. The player's PC's were able to get to a local Martian scientist  who worked under  Ras Thavas. 
There was discussion about the bad reputation of the Tegel Valley and how the locals think it's haunted. Anything coming out of the valley is attacked by the Green Martians. 

Ninety Nine percent of all of our Mars info is coming straight outta of  Warriors of The Red Planet. 
Thrivu Burr the low lander Martian village the PC's met up with a pair of  displaced Martian nobles.   Hemaza Dee our princess turned thief & Nazaa the space noble who is masquerading as a warrior. These two will be taking the place of our two operators who are on the mend for about 4 months. 

These two come straight out of last May's Warriors of the Red Planet rpg mini campaign. Two of our players don't want to be out of the action so they pulled out two older characters. 
These two older characters have cybernetics and not Martian parts so they are pariah among Martian society. 

The party of operators is considered  a party of panthans. A panthan is a Martian soldier of fortune. The low lander villages consider them as a vital resource but among places like Helium and other royal cities there could be trouble. The party exchanged thier Green weaponry for low lander weapons. 
What the players don't know is that  Hemaza Dee our princess turned thief & Nazaa the space noble both have a 'blood debt' on thier heads from a clan of Deodanths. 

Mail Call & Unboxing - North Wind Adventures's Hyperborea rpg Unboxing & Saltmarsh Campaign Update

 Couldn't plan this mail call today any better today when a giant arrived on our doorstep! This lovely box was packed to the gills with Sword & Sorcery goodness. And North Wind Adventures filled their Kickstarter rewards very quickly. 

Now this couldn't come at a better time because we've got a Hypeerborea rpg game tonight. These beauties are going to be for adventure & campaign design. We've got other Hyperborea rule books spiral bound for players in tonight's Hyperborea rpg game session. 

The HYPERBOREA Player's Manual & HYPERBOREA Referee's Manual couldn't have come at a better time. We've got the Hyperborea rpg campaign set up for our game campaign adventure tonight Tegel Manor. The haunted manor will set up the events of the upcoming U1 Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh marathon. My version of Tegel manor by Greg Gorgonmilk used with permission of the artist made with the Midjourny A.I. program. 



The manor & it's valley will be appearing around the Lizardmen Swamp area & then on the Hyperborea coast near Saltmarsh. 

I guess  we should talk about the Hyperborea rule book because it is quality and very solidly done. The artwork is very nice and the whole package says OSR to me as a DM. 

North Wind Adventures packs em right & delivered the goods today! Let's find out how all of this works out when we start chucking dice! 

The Rise of the Haunted Manor - U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, The Hyperborea rpg, & Judge's Guilds Tegel Manor

 

So the other day we were talking about the role that the oceans of Hyperborea has in the average Hyperborean's lives on the blog here.And this has been at the back of my mind with the advent of reading through U1 Sinster Secret of Saltmarsh, again. U1 Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh by David J. Brown along with Don Turnbull has an undercurrent of desperation about it. 

At the end of the events of U1, the PC's should end up with a sweet little boat which will come in very handy coming up as the party ends up in the lap of the lizard men. 
Why are the lizardmen so riled up to begin with?! If we're looking at U1 taking place on Hyperborea then we've got a partial answer. If U1 Sinster Secret of Saltmarsh's  Saltmarsh is placed  near Brigand's Bay. Then these are the fishing grounds of the tribes of lizardmen who for thousands of years have been fishing these waters peacefully with the human population.So what's put the screws to them besides the Deep Ones?! Well, the undead  leader of the Deep one corrupted smugglers for one. 

The smugglers in U1 in my version are actually headed by the Alchemist a lich who simply watches the PC's as their looking around the 'haunted house' & whose also the head of the knarly group of slavers. The Alchemist is deeply connected with the undead of Tegel Manor. Yes that Tegel Manor which is a deeply cursed haunted house that dimensionally travels between Hyperborea & Judges Guild's The Wilderlands of High Fantasy. 

This is how OSRIC, Castles & Crusades, and other OSR game's  PC's have come to Hyperborea in the past through Tengel Manor. The manor's undead are not entirely static. The haunted house because of it's dimensional cursed nature regenerates but the undead don't forget. These undead continually make sport out of any other dimensional travelers who fall into their midsts. And through lesser undead have forged a network of criminals across a few worlds over the centuries. The coming Deep One, human, and lizardmen war is simply another diversion in their eon's long undead existence. 
These bastard undead are not done with the party in Hyperborea, yet.. This is just starting. 

Darkness in The Big City - Bad Moons & OSR Lovecraftian Evil - Tegel Manor Session Update One

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis

Its been a very long drawn out sorta of a day here at Casa De Fabiaschi but I was more then somewhat dismayed to read about James Raggi IV's Lamentations tragedy over at Tenkar's Tavern site. Today was one of those days where work has been very busy & didn't get a chance to thank 'They Might Be Gazabo's blog for the shout out & Cha'alt review.' Back to James situation now I haven't covered Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventures or products in months for reviews or anything. Now I'm really upset at this turn of events. The reason is quite simple, Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg was one of my alternative OSR venues to look at for adventures & settings for old school games. Will James pull himself outta of this situation?! I don't know but I wish a wealthy lover of all things Lamentations would take over the business end of the rpg line. At least for awhile until James can get back on his business footing again. 



This brings me back to Lamentations of the Flame Princess's Carcosa. I was an early adapter & advocate of Geoffry McCanney's campaign setting & vision. Today I was working on the  Cha'alt/Carcosa as one whole planet setting That brought me to the idea that someplace deep within the blackness between planes near H.P.Lovecraft's  dreamlands is a trapped space god that is being used to power on of the aspects of the black pyramid of Cha'alt. 



This was inspired by going over Giorgio Comolo's artwork for the Kirby Museum. The man possess an extraordinary talent for handling the cosmic workings of Jack 'The King of Comic books' Kirby's work Not only can I say that his work excites me as both Kirby homage but as adventure fodder for Cha'alt. 


And this brings me to the Arduin rpg & Cha'alt, in the demonology of Arduin there are 21 planes of a very alien set of Hells. Could be Cha'alt number 22?! In this combined campaign  setting of mine I think so! The various locations of Cha'alt have some very definitive & completely dangerous connotations for my 1870's campaign setting. If the Prussians  got a hold of some of the forbidden & chaos tainted technologies?! Things could end up going very badly for the super humans of the Victorious rpg especially heading into events prior to WWI. On Carcosa/Cha'alt there are vast fields of A.Merritt's 'the Metal Emperor's' technologies just waiting for some fool to stumble upon it. These technologies are detailed in Victorious's Hunter & Hunter Catalogue. 



I've already got the Neulow Games  Amulet of Leng in play as of the week before last's game but its right now in possession of the brother of  Captain Nemo! But he's a whole blog entry by himself for another time coming up. 
At the moment  the Balls of Yog-Sogoth which are someplace in Tegel Manor  on the island where the manor is at the moment. Several Prussian agents are in the manor at the moment! 



Several of the agents of the Prussians swarm through 1870's New York City & some of these are super powered on their own. But several high end mutant Carcosa & Cha'alt  cultists are also on the move in the city!?! Did I happen to mention that these two groups don't get a long at all?! What happens from here!? Is New York about to become a Lovecraftian warzone? You bet! 

Iron Clads & Para Elemental Mages - The War 1870 Tegel Manor Session Report #5

Friday night's Victorious rpg/Castles & Crusades hybrid  game session went into the wee hours & lots got done in Tegel Manor environs. The player's seem almost a bit scared to take on the manor's mysteries. So it a case of dealing with the surrounding villages & whatnot around the manor. Their also dealing with the Germans who gated in six new ships near the manor.


The real action started when the party started to investigate some of the islands at the edge of the manor & the plane of water. They ran into a para elemental magus of some stature who temporarily created a cause way & island. Waiting for them were alien Lava Children whom I had waiting just in case the players wanted to cause trouble. No such luck though.



Russ Nicholson Lava Child Fiend Folio AD&D first edition. 

The party was there to get a wand of fire balls recharged by the paraelemental mage (who may or may not be a god). The German ships not too far off now but seem to be keeping their distance at the moment. Meanwhile a blerg of lava mephits had taken a notice of the party they were a by product of the elemental forces employed by the magus. And they started to mess with the heroes!


AD&D Fiend Folio Lava Mephit artwork AD&D first edition.

The party had a Hell of a time with the lava mephits while one of the players spoke with the magus. It was a sort of two way rope a dope with the player's having to chew gum & walk at the same time! The party spent a good portion of the evening trying to keep  the lava mephits from destroying them. Fun times! The party was after the gems & diamonds created by the elemental forces of the magus! 
The night went very well but there was the fact of the mysterious victim that the party had appear at the temple of Thor earlier in the evening. A strange wound unlike anything a vampire would make & the victim apparently had a parasite of some type under his skin. The party's bard/healer did what he could before the head priest(cleric) of Thor appear to take care of the man but is it already too late!? All of the monsters in Friday's game were from Castles & Crusades Classic Monsters book.

All in all everyone had a ton of fun & I played the paraelemental NPC magus as very friendly but very weird & alien. Someone whose been on the elemental & para elemental planes for way too long. I took a lot of his knowledge for this character from the wizards from the Lion & Dragon game.


So yes he's willing to help the PC's but there's a lot more going on here then meets the eye. Some of this material for this PC I'm going to be spinning from RPGPundit Presents: The Old School Companion 1 From  Spectre Press. But its finding the time to get all of this done & written up

Dretches On Hold Enter Sir John & Philip - Tegel Manor Session Report #4

So in last night's Castles & Crusades/Victorious rpg game one of my player's completely had his PC walk right by the important NPC & the build location within Tegel Manor Village. Then the PC had a confrontation with a group of dire bats & was able to nail one of them. That's when the PC stumbled across the corpse of an adventurer named Philip Le Diamona. Philip had been beheaded & his corpse cooling in the night air. Our adventurer had literally just arrived in Tegel Manor Village.. He somehow had gotten all of Philip's equipment. 

The adventurer in question was a bounty hunter who working for Amazon Mutual . Amazon mutual basically recover adventurer's bodies for resurrection contracts. The village watch walking along the village road meeting Philip Le Diamona mistook the PC for him. They led him back to the village lock up where he was confronted by Sir John the slayer. Sir John had destroyed a local bar down to the foundation killing everyone within! His bounty was being picked up by Baron Ronald Rump & the bounty was to be turned over to Sir John's enemy the Duke De Lamont in 1870! That didn't happen.
After a series of rolls & lots of role playing the PC was able to get Sir John into his custody & even blag a cargo wagon. But they went back to grab Philip Le Diamona corpse for resurrection at the local temple of Freya where arrangements had been made ahead of time.
For now the PC agreed to take the place of Philip Le Diamona's role with Sir John on the recovery of adventurer's contract.



Switch to my other player's whose been keeping an eye on Bark & Byte bar. Where the bard was keeping an eye on the interests of the Romps. That's when a very attractive girl walked in & bought the bard a drink everything went down hill. Our other player's new PC walked into the village & found one of the 'local's feeding on a group of sailors. He went into melee with her & it was on! The melee took the better part of a half an hour. The dice were flying & he got off a very lucky shot. The player staked her! 


Deodanth concept art by Greg Espinosa for the Arduin Monster Cards,1977 The attractive lady in bar went white & her skin changed shape into a deodanth momentarily as they left the bar with the two sailor victims that they had charmed. The bard followed the 'girls' & the PC's got into straight one on one combat & things turned nasty! There was a ton of melee action as one of the PC's let loose. The player's weren't taking changes with these deodanth vampire sisters. The ladies were stalked after a longed out & dragged out melee. Then the player's PC's were confronted by the vampire's spawn who had shape changed into wolves.

Wolf, Fuchs und Schaf by Christopher Paudi 

The bard dropped two chem ex grenades he had grabbed on his time on Cha'alt. And then the whole scene turned into an inferno! The vampire sisters, the spawn, & the sailor victims were all destroyed. All except one spawn who got away who fled to the Manor & went back to his master's side!

This leaves the question of where & when they will be dealing with the manor, the slavers, the pirates, & the undeath influence of the Romp's legacy. So what do I do to deal with really bring the needle up to eleven with my take on the Undead. And that's where James & Jodi Mishler's Ghosts the Incorporal Undead comes in. The perfect little gem to add into the alien weirdness of Tegel Manor & the rest of this nasty little business of a campaign.

I'm already working on a few James Ward Tainted Lands NPC's to sprinkle into the back ground of Tegel Manor village. There's also a number of ghost cults that have been rattling in the back of my demented mind.

The liches of Orcus are also on the boil a council of lich royals that control several of the cults of the undead demon lord but what's the connection to the Romps!?

Make The Damned Great Again - Tegel Manor Session Report #3

If you've been following my Castles & Crusades/Victorious rpg mash up campaign in which I'm running my haunted house plane traveling version of Tegel Manor things are about to get demonic! 
There's been a weird 'Mandela effect' happening in our game 'new adventure ' locations popping up!  
Odd alterations of events?! New NPC's!? Is the DM adding stuff ?! Is he drunk or is something far more sinister happening?! 
Something far more sinister is happening of course! These alterations are happening to frequently not to be noticed! There's gonna be an infernal encounter in tonight's game as a swarm of Dretches are gonna grab one of the party members! 

Those adventure location alterations & changes to the Tegel manor landscape don't come cheap & an NPC has been dogging the trail of the PC's for awhile now. Someone is using the 'Dretches' to say 'hi' to the PC's. 

Is it one of the Rumps or someone far more sinister & weird?! And how could they be altering reality on a whole sale basis?! A powerful artifact must be involved!? One of the party is going to find a small stone demonic statue based on The Other Worldly Miniatures figure of the fat demon lord Orcus 

And what about those Cha'alt bounty hunters?! Did they take a vacation?! Where's the family Rump in all of these goings on?! 
Events in the Village Tegel are about to get 'interesting' to say the least. And what about rumors of a group of Lich Lords at the manor?! 

Then there's the village guard sputtering something about a demon slayer whose in the local lock up!? One thing's for sure we can expect chaos & mayhem in tonight's game session! 
Note that James Ward's Tainted Lands is playing a big part in tonight's game but I can't say too much. 

Liches are some of the royals of the damned! They can help be that change in the dungeon! Kill more adventurers! Put your faith in the liches of Orcus! Paid for by the friends of Orcus & the Add Council!

In The Shadow of Tegel Manor - Play Session Report One

So we rolled in at about five A.M. & it was a great night of gaming! I'm using various incarnations of Tegel Manor including Frog God Games Tegel Manor. I cranked up the Gothic & Lovecraftian elements to eleven in last night's game.

Frog God Games old Tegel Manor kickstarter video. It really gets the manor's feel across!

A pirate ship anchored itself into the bay of Tegel village after making its way through the plane of water to this planar wandering Tegel Manor! One of our player's PC's followed a group of pirates escorting a VIP NPC up to the Bark & Byte to meet with one of the Houri troupe that was entertaining there. There was an exchange of gold for a small red vial of liquid. The VIP in question was a Prussian army general  in charge of the special projects division. He's got a deal going with the Slavers organization whose got some contraband from Cha'alt on board the pirate ship.


My world wary Prussian General inspired by
Gerhard Johann David von Scharnhorst  

One of the party got into a bar knuckles wrestling match with some farm hands & sailors in one of the abandoned houses around Tegel village. He won by the skin of his teeth & his second bout was even closer! But it was after the match that things got very weird & dangerous. The PC followed what looked like an ordinary couple into a small root cellar for a midnight randevu  it was anything but!
The PC crept into the darkness when something wasn't quite right. He got a glimpse of yellow stilted eyes in the darkness! Then two seconds later they vanished into the darkness. He found the sailor fast asleep & it too over fifteen minutes to roust him!? There were human foot prints on the soil that turned into strange but delicate dog like coyote tracks.
 

The party's bard meanwhile kept a close eye on the Prussian general inside the Bark & Bite tavern. Other members of the party kept the pirate ship in sight out on the bay. They are unaware of the Cha'alt mutant warlord aboard the pirate ship whose bounty hunters are even now scouring the countryside making their way towards Tegel Manor. Telepathically communicating with their boss aboard the pirate ship.



My mutant war lord was inspired by "A Barbary Pirate", Oil on canvas, 51 inches x 31.5 inches (129.5 x 80 cm) by Giovanni Guida (1837-1895). This piece has just the right amount of menace for Tegel Manor. 

The Cha'alt NPC mutant warlord was rolled up using the tables in Cha'alt & expanded upon with some of my home brew random tables. I'll be sharing those coming up! All in all it wasn't a bad game at all. Cha'alt definitely had its uses in last night's game.



I had a ton of fun adapting Castles & Crusade's Siege engine with the various OSR properties that I own. This campaign is gonna be great! All in all a good first session!
The manor continues its journey to 1870's Mexico next session. 

Lions, Dragons, Dinosaurs, & Slavers - Wrapping the Campaign World Setting Up -Tegel Manor Session Zero Play Report Part II

Off the California coast strange prehistoric beasts have been seen. The locals are trying to mount an expedition but there's been rumors of strange lights, 1400 century pirate ships,etc. Alright so I converted my old copy of X1 Isle of Dread over to my current Castles & Crusades campaign.



I'm getting a real Valley of Gwangi feel about this version of X1 in the campaign setting so I'm moving the isle down more into Baja California coast region. For 1870 this means that the isle of dread itself has some very dark & sort of sinister connotations for the locals. 

This is an island of the lost & of castaways with a strong connection to the elemental plane of water. For my games these isles have a very nefarious history with several of my Lion & Dragon rpg games in the past. Strange otherworldly pirates praying on vessels off the English coast only to vanish when given chase. System wise with Castles & Crusades converting the Lion & Dragon rpg shouldn't be a problem at all. That means that on the isle of dread or my version of it there's a small colony of Albion castaways

You can think of my games as the sort of underbelly of the OSR & I have zero problems with that. But now whose been using the dimensionally unstable isle of dread as their home base across any number of planes?! The one group that I can think of that I've used in the past  couple of months has been 'the slavers' from A0-A4: Against the Slave Lords by David "Zeb" Cook, Allen Hammack, Harold Johnson, & Tom Moldvay.


All of this goes back to me running the U1 Sinister Secret of Salt Marsh modules. The Sea Wasp was actually a ship in my games belonging to the slavers. The alchemist wasn't simply a corpse but a lich who was operating in his old haunts for the slavers with connections to the local Deep Ones. Yes this flies completely in the face of U1 but it worked out very well at the time for the Castles & Crusades game I had going. 


I used the Slavers organization like something straight outta of Palladium Fantasy or Rifts. I've done this repeatedly over the years & my players continue to use the various campaign histories tangled together. Why because they like me DMing Castles & Crusades like a free wheeling Rifts game & I'm perfectly happy to do so. More as this as it develops tonight.


Tegel Manor is going to cross over all of this material coming up depending upon how the PC's go with the adventure elements. 

Cha'alt 1870's - Tegel Manor Session Zero Report Part I

So tonight I got out the twins & began to go back over Cha'alt. I've owned Venger Satanis's Cha'alt now for a few months as a physical book & its been one of the best OSR gonzo Science Fantasy books on today's market. The PC's have over the last year made some really nasty enemies within the walls of the black pyramid. Those Lovecraftian  enemies are well aware of the PC's movements & the appearance of the dimensional traveling Tegel Manor.

So the powers of the black pyramid are sending some bounty hunters after the PC's. And they've got it coming! The Cha'alt/Godbound game is still on going but different aspects of the black pyramid have multiple incarnations across the planes. So deep in the Mexican desert of 1870 the black pyramid has been influencing the local cults & some of the wasteland horrors from Cha'alt have been taking locals. Various artifacts, treasures, etc have been turning up in small shops, marketplaces, & other places as the black influence of Cha'alt is making itself known in 1870's Mexico. This is attracting expeditions of the Prussians during the Franco Prussian war.  Otto Von Bismark wants to get his hands on some of the advanced weaponry & other weirdness that's been reported by his agents in Mexico at the time.



 This sort of other worldly attention  is gonna attract adventurers, planar travelers, & others seeking supernatural delights & temptations  of the world of Cha'alt. There's already Cha'alt agents within Tegel Manor after several other bounty hunters tried to murder the PC's. Some of those earlier bounty hunters still survive. Otto Von Bismark has slipped some of his Spezialprojekte agents into Tegel manor. His steam powered & clock work mecha has been seen in the areas where the planar boundaries of Cha'alt has been strengthening. Von Bismarck is absolutely ruthless in his ambition for colonization. He is also looking for an advantage over The United States its  Board of Magnates for the coming war in Europe. 

Von Bismarck's forces have managed to capture & brainwash several Cha'alt mutates to his force's side. How many is not known but there are rumors that these Cha'alt mutates weren't captured at all! There was some sort of technological  exchange between Cha'alt forces & the Germans. Von Bismark's occultists & scientists have in their possession a crystal skull from Eugène Boban. What are the German's intentions with this powerful mystical artifact? It is unknown at this time. 


Could the Crystal skull at the Musée du quai Branly, Paris be the twin to the one that the Germans have?! What amazing powers & abilities does it possess?! Is it the key to the Germans controlling Tegel Manor?! 

The Rumps of course are double dealing with anyone & everyone they can trying to undue the curse of the haunted manor. The family has powerful connections to the underworld  & the afterlife even as they along with Tegel manor  get sucked across the planes again!


So to run this I'm using a combination of the Victorious rpg by Mike Stewart & Castles & Crusades. Venger Satanis isn't too keen on the Seige Engine but that's not really my issue at this point. This is a combination of the Vengerverse & lots of OSR experimentation. Fortunately I've got my players behind this! Note that I run Cha'alt as a sort of Lovecraftian Rifts cum post apocalyptic cryto fantasy game of epic proportions. But then again I also run my Castles & Crusades games like Rifts as well with out regrets!