The Tainted Lands & The Vampire Queens of Europe Campaign Set Up Using Old School Resources

 So its been a long while since we've cracked the spines of classic Castles & Crusades & old school supplements with Halloween rolling around the corner. I've been looking into possibly running a Bruce Campbell Vs The Army of Darkness meets Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust hence my grabbing James Ward's Tainted Lands last night. 

The mists of the Tainted Lands have coming rolling across Middle Ages Europe ages ago. 
A mondernish Europe controlled by vampire royalty now rule most of the world. Possibly set during the  Franco Prussian War Steampunk campaign setting that we used ages ago. 
Europe during the Age of the Vampire queens. This might be the perfect venue for trotting out the 1976 by Wee Warriors, Palace of the Vampire Queen. The Palace of the Vampire Queen reprint by Precis Intermedia is sitting on my hard drive as I write this. 

Ravening hordes of undead control parts of Europe from the Tainted Lands. The species of vampires & undead are the royals of Europe literally the 'old blood'.  Many variations of these vampires might be similar to 'Vampires of the Olden Lands' by James Mishler games. 

A European war has been coming  under the vampire queens has been because the French queens are trying to re establish their dominance over the world Empire. This is a dangerous world & now the campaign  notes are being sorted. Where & when the Tainted Lands began its ascendance still has to be worked out. The human resistance has been pushing back for the last two hundred years or so. 

Some Random Thoughts on Vampires, Salem's Lot (1979),The Fiend Folio & Old School Campaigns

This morning in Connecticut is gray & nasty, I was thumbing through the Advanced Dungeons & Dragon's Fiend Folio this morning especially the undead. So touring through internet I came across the break down of the Fiend Folio undead on Dragon's Foot in a thread. 

Here's the quick break down that Geoffrey McKinney did of the eleven monsters that are of the undead species  in the Fiend Folio:

apparition
coffer corpse
death knight
huecuva
penanggalan
poltergeist
revenant
sheet ghoul
sheet phantom
skeleton warrior
son of Kyuss

If there was one film that brought home & burned in the evil infection nature of the undead on my nine year old brain then it was the Steven King 'Salem's Lot' made for television mini series that premiered on CBS. That artifact of television history burned its way into my brain like not too many other television mini series.Well, maybe The Thorn Birds or JR's Shooting on Dallas. But I digress.

So what does this have to do with the Fiend Folio? Well, besides the themes of small town corruption, evil, the complete stripping of every vestige of Americana from the town, loss of innocence, the mini series working as a homage to the classic monster movies of a bygone era & it being one of Tobe Hooper's best films?
"Directed by Tobe Hooper and starring David Soul and James Mason, the plot revolves around a writer returning to his hometown and discovers the citizens are turning into vampires. It combines elements of both the vampire film and haunted house subgenres."
Its the way that the evil of the Marston house attracts houses the vampire nest. There is a sense that evil attracts evil theme in the film that pervades throughout. Salem's Lot presented vampires as an evil to be vanquished, with no gray areas given. These undead monsters are mockeries of their living selves. This is one of the ways that I've always seen undead monsters from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. An infection rotting away towns, city states, & even isolated communities often working with other undead creatures to further some alien agenda.

The nature of the undead is attracted to the sink of evil that is presented by each urban, village or countryside haunted house. These locations seem to draw & reign in these types of horrors.This approach works well with death knights, apparitions, huecuva,etc.  This might also  be especially true of the vampires of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. Of course all of this would be soon replaced by the Ravenloft setting. This took the sink of evil idea to new heights.

I've always used vampires in conjunction with many of the top undead from the Fiend Folio. Vampires make excellent co rulers or domain level threats because their abilities especially from the Monster Manual :

• Vampires live in two planes at once - the material and the negative material.
• Vampires have an 18/76 strength.
• If it hits an enemy, the enemy loses two levels.

That purple, rat-like faced bastard from Salem's Lot made quite the impression on my nine year old brain making monsters working in adventure & dungeon locations a theme I've used for years. James Mishler's Vampires of the Olden Lands plugs right into this very OSR setting trope.


Jack Shear's Tales of the Grotesque & Dungeonsque series is a great addition to a DM's arsenal looking to beef up and pull out all of the stops to taking their games into the realms of the Gothic that Salem's Lot draws so heavily from. In fact I'd say that Mr.Shear's material is some of the best out there to add in set dressing, additional powers and abilities and breath new life into undead horrors and add in new life to a Gothic D&D setting. The beauty of the Fiend Folio in my humble opinion is the flexiblity & weirdness of the book. How it easily adapts to all different styles of play & how with a bit of creativity it can be molded to what the DM wants it to do.

Remember folks keep it weird!

Review and Commentary On Vampires of the Olden Lands From James Mishler Games For Your Old School Campaigns

I'm still reeling with the passing of Sir Christopher Lee, no seriously this death along with a bunch seemed to come out of no place and pull the  rug out from under me. So I'm thinking about vampires and decided to play catch up with an old friend of mine's work. James Mishler and Jodi Moran-Mishler's Vampires of the Olden Lands is a pay what you'd like title Available right over HERE  . This pdf book comes from James Mishler's home campaign the Chronicles of Mhoriedh.

Oh sure, sure, you've seen vampire books before but this one is very different. It comes two very distinct direction to the issue of vampires. On the one hand these undead fiends are looked at from a distinctly sword and sorcery style direction. All the books in this series are dual stated with Labyrinth Lord and Castles & Crusades write ups. And everything is laid out with the dungeon master in mind, there is a one of the best approaches to the PC Dhampir in this book but the entire thing is laid out with the DM in mind. There's plenty of the usual mythology and legendary material here but this book presents vampires that have a distinctly edgy and completely dangerous aspect to them. Make no mistake these are the monsters of Hammer, horror, and myth. The blurb from Rpgnow lays everything out nicely:

Bhabaphirs – Soul-sucking child-slaying vampiric wise-women of the mountain villages that truck with night hags and liches;

Ekimmu – The Vampire Lords, founders of all the vampiric lines, masters of the High Vales of the Mountains of Blood, immortal spirits born of Chaos and Evil;

Lhamiras – Mothers of Monsters, the Vampire-Witches of the South who hunt men for sport and for game, dams of dhamphirs and lamias;

Lhamphirs – The Plague Bearers, the rotting husks of men and women who died of plague and now haunt the families and friends who abandoned them;

Mhoroiphirs – The Living Vampires, men and women who seek to continue to live their lives though they are undead, the classic blood-suckers of myth and legend;

Strighoiphirs – The Dead Vampires, mhoroiphirs who have moved on and fully embraced their undead existence and retreated from the world of living men to seek solitude;

Szalbaphirs – The Vampire Gamins, sad creatures born of horror, children transformed into blood-sucking monsters who seek an end to their undead existence even as they gather around them more of their kind that they create seeking solace and safety with siblings;

Vhukodlakhs – Vampire-Men, created as servants by the ekimmu in ages long passed, they now haunt the mountains and highlands of the Olden Lands, serving vampires and other dread lords as they prey upon man and beast alike.
 

We get an overview of these creatures with guidelines from one of the veterans of the old school hobby's pen's and it show. The organization here is one of handcrafting, the material is adapted to the author's campaign world but its done in such a way as to make it fresh, useful, and totally horrid to PC's health on a number of levels.
There's an element of old school horror and gravitas in this pdf that almost seems to have the author daring the DM to use these monsters in their own games and taunt's them to come back for more.
The author lays everything out in forty eight pages of sold work with elements of horror, a bit of humor and lots of style. Vampires of the Olden Lands knows exactly what it is and what its intended audience plans to do with these creatures and that's where the excitement of looking into the Dhamphirs comes from. The author knows his subject and knows that these monsters who are part man are intended as PC's and this version of the famous monsters are actually playable. This is one of the best versions of these horrors. And I intend to use them.
Could Vampires of the Olden Lands be used for other adventures and retroclones besides Labyrinth Lord? After looking into Vampires of the Olden Lands I can honestly say yes! I can see using some of this material for a game of your favorite space based old school campaign fun or even in a science fantasy setting as well. Such as the horrors of the sinking of Atlantis or something more akin to the Marvel vampire menace or something out of folklore and legend.
If one was running say an advanced Mutants And Mazes variation of Mutant Future I would turn to Vampires of the Olden Lands for fleshing out my wasteland vampires. Or since there is an element of almost comic book style madness lurking in the back of this book. I might tack this book on to the sweeping vampiric horrors of Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea. Do I think that Vampires of the Olden Lands is worth the download. Yes I do and then some. Serious this one of the best vampire books I've read in a very long time. Its well done, smart, savy, doesn't talk down to its audience and has a sweeping style that you will find very useful at your table time and again. Grab this one!