OSR Commenary- DA3 City of the Gods By Dave Arneson & David J. Ritchie & The Reflections of Blackmoor

"New Magic?

That's what the flying egg has. New magic unlike any ever encountered in Blackmoor. New magic of a type that could give the fledgling kingdom an important edge in the wars that are brewing on its borders.

There are only a few minor problems. Like the fact that the magician who piloted the metal egg to one of Blackmoor's sworn enemies, the monks of evil and eccentric Order of the Frog, are also interested in the magic represented by the egg. And, most important, the fact that the egg came from the distant and dangerous City of the Gods.

Set amist the blistered salt flats of the Valley or the Ancients, the City of the Gods is a strange and deadly metal metropolis whose powerful guardians do not welcome intruders. Yet it is to this place of deadly menace that Blackmoor's leaders now send a daring expedition? to bargain for aid in the coming wars? or to steal the magic of the gods."

DA3 City of The Gods has been available as a pdf from Wizards of The Coast going all the way back to 2016. 'DA3: "City of the Gods" (1987), by Dave Arneson & David J. Ritchie, is the third of the four Blackmoor adventure. It was published in March 1987.' , this one the best science fantasy resources available to bridge gap Greyhawk & Blackmoor together. While dodging snow flakes & snow shoves last night I did a bit of research into the origins of TSR version of Blackmoor. I came across the following on the Canonfire forum by poster rasgon; "I was collecting quotes about the history of ancient Blackmoor, to see if I could piece together its history. From the following, it seems that it was a Flan land that became claimed by the Baklunish Empire to the south. Taking Baklunish magic and technology to previously undreamt-of heights, the nobles there founded the City of the Gods and declared independence, becoming an ally of the rival Suel Imperium in order to help maintain its sovereignty. Eventually the constructs of the city were brought down by a plague of chaos introduced by the slaadi, then swallowed by the encroaching Land of Black Ice (cause unknown) at about the time of the Twin Cataclysms. The expansion of the Land of Black Ice was ultimately stopped by native Flan sorcerers using the power of the oerthmagic native to the region, but by that time the City of the Gods culture was ruined and forgotten.

The Egg of Coot also uses construct servants, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if there was a connection.

'After they dug down to the shape, they found it to be a strange construct from an ancient realm that predated the Black Ice. They freed the creature's head and were amazed to see that it still lived. The creature is known as a nimblewright, and it told tales of the wealth of southern lands, of magical constructs, and of the secrets of its ancient empire.' - Dungeon #115, page 32.

'Long ago, a small fiefdom in the northlands reached the heights of civilization--its craftsmanship and knowledge of artifice were unmatched. Constructs served the lords and ladies of the land, performing menial labor and freeing the city's aristocracy to devote more time to art, philosophy, and war. The heart of these lands was called the City of the Gods, and it was unlike any city before or since. Some say the City's automatons were struck down by a plague... Over the ages, the advancing ice drove out what few denizens remained...' - Dungeon #126, page 43.

'Mathghamhna was somewhere in the Baklunish Empire (for example, the northwesternmost spur of the Yatmil [sic] Mountains or the "City of the Gods" in Blackmoor).' - College of Wizardry, page 9.

'The secret of creating brass men is said to have been given to humans by the efreet, who hoped that in time the brass men could take control of the humans and help the efreet rule the human lands from their City of Brass.' - Dungeon #126, page 60.

'...oddities such as "memory gears," "animating spirit-gems," "everwound springs..."' - Dungeon #126, page 45.

'Clockwork eunuchs balance the skills of clockwork artisans, clerics, and genie-binding sorcerers. They depend on carefully set everwound springs, memory gears, and magical rune-powered animating gemstones that pulse with elemental power.' - Dragon #334, page 39. "

That's right the Egg of Coot has been very busy across the planes, while its been trapped in its higher dimensional prison. The Egg has been expanding its black ice clad kingdom across time & space especially in Greyhawk's Blackmoor Barony  & the world of  Blackmoor itself. Don't think that this hasn't been noticed at the City of the Gods but the question is which one?! There are a multitude of these locations scattered across space time from the Wilderlands of High Fantasy to Greyhawk herself as well as Mystara.


The Egg is responsible for far more then it seems;
"'In the earliest days of the conflict between the Suel and Baklunish empires, Suloise magi sought to turn the legendary Baklunish affection for the elements against them. To do this, they created four artifacts of surpassing power and infused these symbols of elemental magic with a portion of the spirits of powerful elemental princes.. After detecting the flaws in the elemental items, the Suel dispatched them to foreign lands as gifts of the emperor's gratitude... The Unquenchable Scepter traveled north, to what would become Blackmoor (and rested in that land's fabled castle for centuries).' - Dragon #294, page 94.

'Through a series of improbable accidents, the green slaad and its sword (a source of raw chaos) entered the orderly waters of the Gearspring Well... the Well could no longer create clockwork creatures; instead it infected all the clockwork creatures near it with gear madness.' - Dungeon #126, page 58.

'Legend says that the numerous mounds and standing stones throughout the archbarony were created by the Northern Adepts of Old Blackmoor (presumedly a cabal of Ur-Flan sorcerers) to constrain the encroaching Black Ice.' - Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, page 34. " The Archbarony of Blackmoor in Gary Gygax  World of Greyhawk setting may have been a homage for Dave Arneson but fact it might be more of an idealized reflection of what the Egg of Coot intents for other universes. Dave Arneson's Blackmoor, Mystara's Blackmoor, & Greyhawk's Archbarony of Blackmoor may be higher mathematic reflections of different interdimensional locations in space time which exist or co exist across a number of well established published product settings including Mystara. "The Mystaran cataclysm could have caused a split in spacetime and sent some Blackmoorian people (and also the Egg of Coot) to Oerth"

According to the thread called Blackmoor,does it belong to Greyhawk or Mystara?? poster GVDammerung ;"Blackmoor comes in a number of flavors. It ties in to Greyhawk, Mystara, the Wilderlands and its own, seperate "reality."

While no two versions are identical, it is obvious that each version is related to the others. To use a Greyhawk example, Oerth appears in published Greyhawk but in an altered form in the Sagard novels by EGG as Yarth. If each Blackmoor had a slightly different name (Blackmeor, Blakmoor etc.) the Oerth/Yarth parallel would be nearly exact. Blackmoor is to Greyhawk as Yarth is to Oerth or near enough.

While the differences between the Blackmoors are stronger than the similarities, the similarities are strong enough to suggest some sort of connection. The nature of the connection is then left to each DM. Can you get any mileage out of playing up the common elements?

At the least, I think it fair and safe to say that each Blackmoor appears to have influenced the other Blackmoors within the game (just as each Blackmoor influenced the others in real life). But, again, the nature and extent of the influence, is left up to each DM.

On this note, it may be useful to recall that, while we speak of "Blackmoor" what we are really talking about are a series of peoples, places, items and events, any one of which may have parallels beyond a single published setting. So, for example, there is a Duchy of Tenh incorporated into more than one Blackmoor setting. So, one need not port over to Greyhawk or any other setting it touchs, all that we summarize when we say "Blackmoor." We can take the whole (whichever version) or choose from among the pieces parts.

Why would one do this? Well, the Arch Barony of Blackmoor is by geography and the history of the Flanaess something of a remote backwater. It fills up some space on the map and provides some civilization near the Land of Black Ice. If that's all one wants, that's okay. If, however, one wants to bring some unique and interesting features to this area, tapping Blackmoor's varied incarnations is easy and natural to do.

As Rasgon sagely noted, Fred Weining in the LGG, and the late lamented print Dragon, strengthened the ties between Greyhawk and the various Blackmoors. And he did it very well. Others, like Wolfgang Bauer, have added more.

There is no right, correct or canon definition of the relationship between Greyhawk and the Blackmoors beyond being able to say there is some sort of connection. In the best Greyhawk fashion, there are suggestions or possibilities that each DM can choose to develop for themselves or not.

Personally, I like Blackmoor for all its possibilities.

I am running a converged campaign there right now, where Blackmoor is an Atlantis-like lost civilization destroyed in the same cataclysm that saw the birth of the Land of Black Ice. Think LoBI and ancient Blackmoor as their eras Baklunish and Suel empires. Blackmoor largely sank beneath the waves of Blackmoor Bay and ice covered its rival. Reactivating the Stornawane road as a dirwane (sp?) road (dating from the early period of Ferrond) allows easier access to the area from civilization - ie Furyondy, which IMC is recolonizing the lands of the Horned Society and Iuz after Iuz' defeat and apparent banishment in the Second Northern Crusade.

IMO, Blackmoor is an underdeveloped but high potential place to play."

One of the one constants that seems to be across the various Blackmoor settings is the dangers of the Black Ice which claims the ruins of the City of the Gods & surrounds parts of Greyhawk. Could this stuff be concentrated debris from entropy & chaos coming into the reality of the normal space time?!
I think so, Canonfire poster Dr_Asworth brings up this lovely little gem from the Mystara Wraith of the Immortals set; "On page 25 of Codex of the Immortals from the Wrath of the Immortals box set there is an interesting reference. It talks about the immortal Khoronus who, as a mortal, discovered a time travel device, and saw what was to become of his beloved Blackmoor. His reponse was to set up a colony based on Blackmoor's culture on a "world which was far, far away in the Prime Plane." You could easily make the case that is far away world is Oerth. It also gives a bit of an out when trying to place the events of the DA adventures in Oerth's timeline, since any event from those books could have happened in "old" Blackmoor, but their cultural impacts felt in "new" Blackmoor."
The dangers that the Egg of Coot & its forces represent is far greater the sum then the parts & this is one of the huge secrets between the Gods of Greyhawk & the Immortals of Mystara. The problem is the rivalry between the gods & the immortals because there is a significantly different approach to the mortals on both sides. This creates friction between the two camps from time to time.

The events of Wraith of the Immortals put the fear of God into a great deal of the fear of the gods into a great many planar entities. Especially given the destiny of Khoronus. Khoronus has a solid Greyhawk connection & its tied into both the religious destiny of this immortal & his worship on Greyhawk. Poster rasgon goes deeply into it;
"One issue with the Khoronus connection is that Khoronus was supposed to have become an Immortal - the "gods" of the Mystara setting - while on the other world he'd colonized. The question becomes why the modern people of Oerth don't worship Khoronus as they do in Mystara.

But maybe they do. In Mystara, Khoronus is the patron of time. Perhaps Khoronus became known as Cyndor, mythic guardian of the timestreams. Oerth Journal #5 places an abbey of Cyndor in Blackmoor, calling it a highly respected pilgrimage site. This Broomsage Abbey appeared on the map of Blackmoor in Dungeon #126.

The story in Wrath of the Immortals has the mortal Khoronus traveling to three different future time periods (as part of what is known as the Path of the Dynast) to defend his colony against great threats to its existence. If Khoronus' colony was the City of the Gods in Oerth's Blackmoor, what three threats did the colony face?

My guesses are:

1. The Baklunish-Suloise Wars. Khoronus helps his descendants avoid being annihilated during the strife between the two great empires, and avoid being destroyed by the Invoked Devastation.

2. The Black Ice. Perhaps the most critical of the three threats, Khoronus has to figure out a way to maintain the dynasty he founded even as the City of the Gods that he created is overwhelmed by the encroaching ice. I'm not certain if he can be reasonably said to have succeeded in this, considering how much was lost, but if descendants of Khoronus continued to rule the area even after they're driven to the south, then he can be said to have succeeded.

3. Aerdy conquest. During this stage of the Path of the Dynast, Khoronus has to ensure that his descendants continue to rule the region even after the Great Kingdom conquers his land. Presumedly they intermarry with the Aerdi, and Khoronus ensures that his half-Oeridian descendants rule Blackmoor in the way he prefers, and that the land remains recognizably Blackmoorian.

Blackmoor continues to face other trials afterward (the collapse of Aerdy power, the conquest of the Egg of Coot), but through it all, his descendants still rule. And in any case, Khoronus's quest is complete."

Yeah its complete alright,the very act of these quests is one of the set ups for the Egg to continue to spread across the planes Prime. The Egg of Coot is the second most dangerous foe in Dungeons & Dragons. The real title goes to the head of the Froggies, Saint Stephen the Rock. Each & every time that a machine nest appears across the planes he & his cultists are gazing into the deep to find it. The City of the Gods is of prime interest because each one on each world is different. Some are ruined, some have been ransacked, some are still in full operation. The constant for the city  is there is power there & he as well as the Egg are driven for it, the fight for it, & they are locked in an eternal struggle across the ages. But why?! We'll tackle that coming up!

OSR Commenary -S3 Expediation To the Barrier Peak By Gary Gygax & Echoes of Blackmoor For Your Old School Campaign

'The Grand Duchy of Geoff has recently been plagued by a rash of unusually weird and terrible monsters of an unknown sort. This western area, particularly the mountain fastness which separates the Grand Duchy from the Dry Steppes, has long been renowned for the generation of the most fearsome beasts, and it has been shunned accordingly -- save a handful of hardy souls with exceptional abilities. Within the last few months, however, a walled town not far distant from the area, and four small fortresses as well, have been destroyed by mysterious attacks! '


What happens if the Warden completely destabilized the planes as it passed through on its way to the Grand Duchy of Geoff? I was reading S3 Expedition To the Barrier Peaks & the article Using Blackmoor In Your Mystara campaign by Havard. A really evil thought occurred to me, what if the Egg of Cott was responsible for bringing down the Warden on Greyhawk? Is the Warden interdimensionally stable?! I think it isn't & all that wondrous technology is actually Blackmoor technology that the Egg has been importing onto various planar settings because its trapped & no matter how powerful it gets or what the Egg does. The monster can't leave its various portions of its prisons & so its power is scattered across the multiverse. Its been searching for technologies close to some of Blackmoor's across time & space. There already is a connection between Blackmoor & Greyhawk's S3 Expedition to The Barrier Peaks.  From the Wizards of the Coast Expedition entry on Drivethrurpg;
'A Level of Machines. When Gary Gygax sat down to write "Barrier Peaks" he sought help and inspiration from another source: Greyhawk co-GM Rob Kuntz and his "Machine Level". Kuntz originally created the Machine Level for his own Castle El Raja Key, to challenge Gary Gygax's characters. He later moved it to Castle Greyhawk when he became a co-GM of Gygax's campaign. This allowed players like James Ward to explore the legendary level; Ward wrote about the experience in Dragon #17 (August 1978) when he spoke of the conveyer belts, cellophane machines, die press, slot machines and levers found in the original level.
Besides contributing machinery to "Barrier Peaks", Kuntz also provided content for the garden level of the spaceship.
Origins (III): A City of the Gods. There may have been one other inspiration for "Barrier Peaks". In 1976, Rob Kuntz and Gary Gygax explored Blackmoor's "City of the Gods" when Dave Arneson ran a session for them at TSR's Dungeon Hobby Shop. Gygax's Mordenkainen and Kuntz's Robilar rather famously wreaked havoc on the City, got in way over the heads, and barely escaped with their lives.
As it happens, that City of the Gods was actually a crashed spaceship!'

So there's a Ward, Gygax, Kuntz, & Arneson cross connection but it marks both Expedition & Blackmoor technologies as highly dubious at best.


Blackmoor technologies are very dangerous & deadly. An artifact of Blackmoor caused the events of the Wraith of the Immortals box set but some of the other relics are just as deadly.
'The same goes for the lands of the Shadow Elves which is tied to the very same legacy that Glantri is. Many different items and remnants from Blackmoor keep showing up in modern day Mystara. Historically, the discovery of some unstable artifacts lead to the minor cataclysms of BC 1700 when elves tried to activate the devices.'

In yesterday's blog entry I mentioned Caladar's Vortex & its effects but what if the space craft wreckage of the Warden passed through it on its way to Greyhawk? What if that was only one part of the debris trail that was passing across the planes?! Could there be more debris heading towards Oerth & what are the refications for Blackmoor, Mystara, & Greyhawk? There could be far more happening behind the scenes here? I think that there is the thread  How many spaceships visited Oerth? from the Canonfire forums goes into some pretty solid details on exactly this. This stuff is about as far from canon as one can get but its great campaign fodder. But why would the Egg of Coot be doing this?! Why not?! Well I think that the Egg is frustrated in its higher dimensional prison & very, very, pissed off.  The Egg of Coot is trapped in  higher five dimensional prison & has been for eons. Its highly influential  as  its power rages across time & space as both artifact & minor god. But its limited in that it can corrupt, create, & even take over but its still trapped in its prison. So it continues to search the various prime material planes hoping to stumble across the one that will free it. Rasgon from the 'How Many Space Ships visited Oerth thread provides the fodder for the Egg & the technologies;
"Aeolius chronicles references to time travel on Oerth in this thread; relevant here is the metal ship with neither mast nor oars found in the Jungle of Lost Ships described in the Glossography. This might be another crashed spaceship.

There are also the "sheens" introduced in Dragon #258 and Dragon #270, which were explicitly tied to Greyhawk:

"At least two points of origin for machine life cysts are currently known, the Barrier Peaks and the Rael cysts. Many more are suspected to exist, but they are as yet undiscovered." - Dragon #258, page 30. I assume the Rael cyst is a reference to Tale of the Comet.

The S3 ship, which was a modular section of a larger ship afflicted by a plague, ended up in Oerth's universe after falling through a black hole. What this hole in the fabric of time and space looks like on Oerth's side is unknown, but it can't be another black hole, or the ship would have been drawn immediately back into the gravity well. A very strong candidate is the Sisters, a mysterious "constellation" of nine starlike objects in Greyspace (described in the sourcebook of that name) that functions as a gateway to other times and places. Perhaps the Sisters, and the offending black hole, are also the source of the other technological incursions. Possibly the other crashes are other sections of the S3 exploration-colonization vessel.

Fred Weining's article on the Archbarony of Blackmoor in the Oerth Journal #5 suggested that the Egg of Coot was actually the same Egg of Coot from the Mystara/Blackmoor setting, who had fled Mystara to Oerth after the Rain of Fire that destroyed the Blackmoor civilization. Similarities between Mystara's Blackmoor and Oerth's Blackmoor (for example, a City of the Gods in both) are blamed on the Egg of Coot, who has been secretly influencing events for thousands of years in order to make his new home more like his old one."


They are the same Egg because each of the Eggs of Coot upon each world is only a portion of the original seen as a bit of planar cross section. Each & every time an artifact, relic, robot, ray gun or treasure finds its way into some poor adventurer or pawn shop owner's hands the evil spreads just a little. A cult might start in some hidden alley or backroom location perhaps just enough to summon  a sheen cyst down into the world. And why would the Egg bring the Warden to Greyhawk? Because if it can't have technologies then it can have sheer chaos & mayhem instead that way everyone is unhappy. But the Egg of Coot's influence isn't the only one causing mayhem. Next time we dive deep into the under currents of even more evil!

OSR Commentary - Calidar's Vortexs & Dimensional Cancers - Otherthere & Back Again In Your Old School Campaigns

Last week I wrote about cracks in many of the major campaign worlds & what it means for players as well as their dungeon masters. Calidar newest kickstarter has exploded since I first started writing about it. But what does this hold for Greyhawk?! A lot of very weird planar threads & adventure hooks actually.




Skyships are nothing new in the skies of Greyhawk & Mystara but these worlds don't have as high an arcane index as Calidar.  Mystara is still on the trading routes of Calidar as far as the OSR dungeon masters are concerned.
'In 2012 and 2013 Bruce Heard wonderfully detailed in his blog almost all the Alphatian Kingdoms, from Arogansa in the south to Frisland in the far north, including coats of arms, maps and adventure ideas, making them much more detailed and interesting places for adventurers.'

'It’s hard to describe Calidar in just a few sentences as the setting is wonderfully rich with original themes and distinctive features. It’s not just a world, but a whole solar system, the Soltan Ephemeris, where different cultures interact and clash. It has magical flying ships, but the magic power to travel between worlds is not cheap, and the competition to acquire it is fierce. It has a central world, the namesake Calidar, with a few developed nations and a huge expanse of wild lands, where the World Soul of the planet is ready to react with hostility to any exploitation. It has, indeed, living planets with complex ecologies. It has dragons, obviously, and draconic knights serving them and eager to conquer new worlds and lands. It has steampunk dwarves and imperial elves, gnomes with a special connection to the natural world and savage halflings called fellfolk, who in some places have embraced the gifts of civilization. It has humanoids, who come periodically from the alien world of Ghüle to raid and take prisoners for their dark gods. It has heroes, who can literally become immortals and even gods, if they are able to earn a lasting fame.

And, as it seems from the previews of Beyond the Skies, the whole Ephemeris and the gods have to face a terrible menace from another universe.'
From the article 'From Alphatia to Calidar'
by Francesco Defferrari from Threshold Magazine issue 11

Could this menace of evil be the same one that we've seen time & again over the years of reading Blackmoor, Mystara, & Greyhawk products?! I think so but the fact is that Calidar's system has the Vortex.
'the important feature of Calidar which is particularly relevant for the scope of this article is the Vortex. A mysterious and unexplained tear in the fabric of time and space, the Vortex is a strange phenomenon that often brings into the Calidar universe people and flying ships from many other places. Often, the people who experience this passage have their memories altered, and can no longer remember the place from which they came.

In the setting, this is obviously the perfect excuse to bring to Calidar player characters created for other settings, and also a way to explain why some Calidaran cultures, as also happened in Mystara, closely resemble some cultures of our real world.'

This is literally a cancerous planar gateway right under the collective noses of the champions, gods, demons, & heroes of Calidar.

You can bet your bottom dollar that Greyhawk's wizards & kingdoms have been sending sky ships across the dimensional threshold. But it also means that the evils of both Mystara & Greyhawk could come to plague Calidar;

'And besides the above canon Vortex, Bruce recently detailed another one, complete with its wormhole, which also could become a gate to Calidar, in the Kingdom of Floating Ar⁶ in Alphatia.

It’s up to each DM to decide how Mystaran Immortals, or even the Old Ones, may react to a skyship returning from the Vortex. If left alone, such a vessel could report back to the Mystaran empire from whence it came, and Alphatia (or Thyatis) could decide to fund further explorations of the Calidar universe, at least if they are able to locate a spot where the Vortex occasionally appears.

It’s also worth noting that in the Poor Wizard’s Almanacs by Ann Dupuis an Immortal named Gareth began proselytizing in Sind from the Mystaran Year 1010 AC, saying to his followers he had “returned from the Vortex”. The common interpretation in the community has always been that Gareth should be Benekander, the new Immortal created during the Wrath of the Immortals adventures, but what if he is instead someone who came from Calidar?'

The horrors of The Wraith of the Immortals are bad enough but what of the more dangerous cancers let loose by the events of the Temple of Elemental Evil?! Don't think it could happen? Think again, back about 2013 a thread appeared on
The Piazza forum titled The Elemental Evil in Mystara

This thread provides an entire setting, notes, etc for the players & their dungeon master to bring the cancer of the Elemental Evil cult to Mystara. Last blog entry I wrote about the Froggies cult from DA2 Temple of the Frog becoming one of the primary menaces. But what if they were only the tip of the ice berg. Modules and adventures in Mystara article by Bouv 

the Vaults of Pandius site places many classic AD&D 1st edition modules onto Mystara's campaign world. This style of approach gives the dungeon master even more options with Calidar's campaign setting being system agnostic.



Calidar's system has been receiving visitors for centuries & its possible that a great many different OSR as well as OSR campaign settings could have interacted or left their mark on the system. I talked about using Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea's setting with Calidar in the past. The dimensional & planar cancers allow the players & DM to send their PC's over to Calidar in ancient Hyperborean sky ships which some nations might be still using. The AS&SH Kickstarter is still on going & I suggest that you check it out & support it if your so inclined.


Hyperborea Players' Manual front cover pencils by Val Semeiks


Now at first this seems like heresy using a high fantasy setting with an OSR Sword & Sorcery world. Think again because both HP Lovecraft & Clark Ashton Smith used their own dream lands worlds. To AS&SH Calidar is merely another dreamworld. Little do they release the menace lurking right out there in the Outer Darkness. But what exactly is in the Darkness Between Worlds & could it be coming for your own campaign world?! Next time we pop open that can of worms!

OSR Commentary - The World of Greyhawk's Cracks of Evil Across The Planes In Your Old School Campaigns

I've had my back against the wall with work for some days now & I've been going over the classic  Greyhawk box set again. The Rain of Colorless Fire is one of the defining events in Greyhawk that completely & utterly wiped out the Suel Empire. Utterly & completely the peoples of  Suel are no longer a power upon the face of Greyhawk. Their war against  the Baklunish was the stuff of legend as the Invoked Devastation ravaged the face of Oerth. Were these change of events caused by the use of cross planar  magical rituals  & Elemental weapons?! I believe the answer is yes.



There's been very little trace of the Suel Empire per say except some new in the recent fifth edition Against the Giant events from Wizards of The Coast. 
There seem to whole cloth artifacts & magic rites associated with the Invoked Devestation & the Rain of Colorless Fire.  But do these events also include the use of incredibly advanced relics & lost technologies as well!?! Well the Greyhawk Grognard blog/site gives some very dedicated insight into this;
"And, to be fair, this doesn’t have to be inconsistent with the “official” version, either. Nothing says that the invocation of the power from the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Ash didn’t take place at Tovag Baragu. Indeed, the fact that it has some connection to other planes is a point in favor of this theory.
Many fans of Greyhawk have come up with their own inventive backstories for the Rain of Colorless Fire and its Baklunish-destroying counterpart, the Invoked Devastation. They range from ancient Baklunish artifacts to nuclear weapons to meteors from Greyspace to the use of the mysterious artifact/ruin Tovag Baragu. I’m sure there are many others."

Could all of these cataclysmic events help to explain the existence of a multiplicity of different versions of Blackmoor & Greyhawk locations scattered across the planes?! I think so & I also think it could help to explain the reach of two or more of Blackmoor's most infamous factions. The Great Migrations across the face of the Flanaess may have also lead to other worlds. Planar seams & shifts in reality of both Greyhawk & Blackmoor allow many peoples to escape. But its allowed the Egg of Coot to slowly blend into the background of Greyhawk over the centuries. The Egg of Coot as a Relic by Havard. goes into some of the details of the Egg's machinations. The egg doesn't make waves on Greyhawk.. yet but its cult continues to spread here & there on Greyhawk. Greyhawk's Archbarony of Blackmoor is silent & deadly quietly going about its business. There's a solidly done section about Greyhawk's Blackmoor over at the Blackmoor Archives.

The second faction from the classic Blackmoor campaign that's active in the steaming jungles of Greyhawk & beyond is the Froggies. DA2 Temple Of The Frog Dungeon Module has another location deep in the jungles of Greyhawk slowly biding its time. And you can bet your last gold piece Saint Stephen of the Rock has been very busy across the face of Oerth.


And if all of this is going on Greyhawk then what the Hell is happening in the Mystara & Greyhawk locations way in Mystara's ancient past?! I've talked about the Shared Mystara/Greyhawk elements from the  www.pandius.com site . before but what if these two adventure & fiction elements co existing are no accident. What if these elements are the uneasy result of two planes of reality co mingling together because of a dimensional cataclysm eons ago?!
What does this mean for Calidar?! Well it means that Calidar could be next in the path of a planar invasion that its sky ship wandering inhabitants might not even be aware of!?



In CC1 Beyond the Skies we get a whole load of Calidar gods, demons, etc. & scattered throughout there are several hints & outright illusions to the weird high fantasy aspect of this venerable Bruce Heard setting. These include several mentions of dimensional or planar instabilities these could well be cracks caused by the Invoked Devastation of old.



But where are these planar cracks & dimensional weirdness leading?! Is any place safe?! Could the world of Arduin be next or your campaign?! Next time we follow the winding path through the spirals of imagination & see where they take us!

Shadows of Saltmarsh Amazing Adventures! Rpg Session Report #2

 Down by the docklands of New York of 2100 the PC's have started to ask lots of questions.The PC's have been hearing disturbing rumors of lizard men attacks on the outskirts of the Saltmarsh neighborhood. They also heard about blood sports going on in certain temporary underground ruins. They've decided to check out some of these blood sports but they've almost run afoul of the thieves guild & the Syndicate several times. This is continued from our last game detailed here

What they don't know about is the Deep One/Nazi assassin on their behind. But they've gained in ally in a royal renegade White Council member whose acting as the party's patron. Saltmarsh seems quiet & in fact a bit to quiet as they have no idea that there every move is being watched from the shadows by alien lizard men!?
Sailing Ships are used by the lower classes of the city to smuggle illegal cargoes right under the council's noses & most folks turn a blind eye because of the money lining folks pockets.
Saltmarsh is corrupt as it comes living in the shadow of the mega urban sprawl. The White Council itself has several Alchemist's spies among its ranks with Nazi sympathies. The Alchemist is a vile monster who controls all of the vice, sin, smuggling, & slaving down on the water front from the Salt Marsh neighborhood. This includes blood sport events into which one of the PC's brother's disappeared into.
But rumors of people disappearing in the middle of the night off of ships have the populous rattled. Alien lizard men, strange sightings at night, shipments of fish disappearing & more all point to more then mere rumors & the noose seems to be tighten around Saltmarsh itself.


Then there's the matter of a Nazi agent that came in on the smuggling ship 'The Sea Witch', the PC's had a socialite spill her guts trying to hustle one of the party. They have lots of rumors, smoke, & mirror in this past weekend's game. Where will it lead?! Quite a few places as the claws of 'The Alchmist' tighten around the throats of our heroes.
So what are the lizardmen of Saltmarsh?  They're a tribe of degenerate alien servants who have escaped to Earth of 2100 smuggled in by the Alchemists several years ago. These lizardmen were originally going to be solid as 'exotic' slaves. But they turned the tables on their captors & escaped en mass. They are degenerate Saurians detailed on page 63 of the Manual of Monsters. They have none of the special abilities of those monsters except for being amphibious. 
They've adapted to life in New York but have no wish to return to a life of slavery among the stars. But all is not well for the Deep Ones(Fishmen from the Amazing Adventures Manual of Monsters)  of New York know who & what they are they are. They have no wish to see their plans of domination of the surface world be wrecked by a tribal nation of interlopers.

The water around Saltmarsh have been teeming with Nazi fishmen hybrid scouts testing the neighborhood & the city's defenses. They refuse to engage in any combat with the PC's who ran into them! What's happening & why did one of the party detect a transmission into deep space over the weekend?!  Stay tuned to this blog for further updates!

Why Greyhawk & Mystara Matter For OSR & Old School Campaigns

Recently I've done a number of blog entries on new Kickstarters especially  The Calidar "On Wings of Darkness" Kickstarter By Bruce Heard.

Its got me thinking over the weekend how does Mystara, Greyhawk, & a setting like Calidar fit together?! Greyhawk is one of my all time favorite old school campaign settings not simply because of the finger prints of Gary Gygax but The Flanaess has its own world & adventure flavor. Mystara is an awesome campaign setting with some great high level adventures Test of  Warlords, Deaths Ride, &  Sabre River spring to mind. The  B/X rulebooks has the brief Grand Duchy info &  map are in the Expert rulebook  & X1 The Isle of Dread  has the subcontinent map. Both of these can be customized as the dictates of the players & the campaign call for. All of this fits together with the invention of the skyships. These ships may have trade routes between campaign settings.


GAZ1 The Grand Duchy of Karameikos has some excellent information that could dovetail adventure hooks into the back end of  the Calidar setting. Greyhawk and Mystara share a number of weird setting details making me wonder if the planes merge at certain planar fracture points. The Vault of Pandius has a short list of setting elements these worlds have in common.


Using Blackmoor in Your Mystara Campaign by Havard from the Vaults of Pandius site has a number of adventure elements that could be used to augment adventure & campaign  cross overs. This is especially true of Blackmoor whose dimensional & planar instability at certain places is well known. Air ships from different worlds & planar realms may not be an unknown sight in the sky. They may perhaps be legendary but know unknown to the general populous.


 

 Campaigns with multiple settings would have to take full advantage of ancient trade routes overlapping several campaign worlds.

FromAlphatia to Calidar byFrancesco Defferrari (Sturm) from Threshold magazine issue 11 takes full advantage of this. The central campaign setting spoke is going to be Blackmoor & Greyhawk in my humble opinion. These settings have so much weight with Dungeons & Dragons players that they are almost instantly recognizable. The unique nature of Calidar makes the setting unique & allows for overlap with Greyhawk;
"Calidar in just a few sentences as the setting is wonderfully rich with original themes and distinctive features. It’s not just a world, but a whole solar system, the Soltan Ephemeris, where different cultures interact and clash. It has magical flying ships, but the magic power to travel between worlds is not cheap, and the competition to acquire it is fierce. It has a central world, the namesake Calidar, with a few developed nations and a huge expanse of wild lands, where the World Soul of the planet is ready to react with hostility to any exploitation. It has, indeed, living planets with complex ecologies. It has dragons, obviously, and draconic knights serving them and eager to conquer new worlds and lands. It has steampunk dwarves and imperial elves, gnomes with a special connection to the natural world and savage halflings called fellfolk, who in some places have embraced the gifts of civilization. It has humanoids, who come periodically from the alien world of Ghüle to raid and take prisoners for their dark gods. It has heroes, who can literally become immortals and even gods, if they are able to earn a lasting fame."

This allows the position of adventuring parties unique because they can literally earn their way across the planes on passage aboard a skyship. These adventurers are going to have a myriad of adventure & employment opportunities.

To me Greyhawk & Blackmoor matter because both of these locations are going to be benchmark & foundation settings for the generation of adventurers for these other unique campaign location settings. The dangers are also going to quite high with a lethality rate of adventurers is almost going to be of Biblical proportions. The real issue is going to be how the dungeon master balances the world setting elements so that the campaign flows together easily & the players don't get hung up on the old school vs OSR details. Several of the NPC factions of Greyhawk & Blackmoor can be quite nasty & have the ability to plane jump or journey making the player's PCs not quite as safe as they think. Dragons, liches, & even the gods or immortals may take a direct hand in the adventuring lives of PCs. All of this comes from the strength of Calidar, Greyhawk, & Mystara as viable campaign settings. Merging & overlapping them is a natural progression for a dungeon master.

OSR Commentary On The Ice Kingdoms: The Fires of Mount Surtur Kickstarter & The Ice Kingdoms Campaign Setting

Deep in the heart of Mount Surtur an ancient evil long thought vanquished is stirring. Can your heroes protect the Ice Kingdoms from the legacy of the fire giants?

Continuing the Swords & Sorcery theme with a twist with the new  Mad Martian games Kickstarter. In less then twenty four hours I've watched Mad Martian's latest Ice Kingdom's adventure Fires of Surtur Kickstarter  fulfill & now its stretch goal time.




This adventure is built around the idea of the Thanelands a full on fantasy version of Norse & full throttle Viking mythology with an old school setting twist. The Thanelands is a solid setting that could be added into an existing campaign as another Northern alternative plane or as another Norse style across the world country. There are new PC classes, spells, monsters, etc that are specifically adjusted to the the setting. The Ice Kingdoms is specifically designed for OSR games;
"The Ice Kingdoms is a fantasy setting inspired by and designed for old school RPGs. We love the ‘feel’ of old school games (such as pre-3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons) and their rules, so we are creating game material that is compatible with several modern game systems that use the Open Game License to ‘retro-clone’ those classic games. The Ice Kingdoms is compatible with OSRIC and For Gold & Glory, and our books can also be used with Swords & Wizardry, Basic Fantasy Role-Playing, and Labyrinth Lord with only very minimal conversion, as well as the original editions upon which these games are based. We are currently working to convert our earlier projects to other game systems such as Pathfinder, 3rd Edition and 5th edition."

The Thanelands has its own distinctive feel & style to the setting. Fires of Surtur takes it & amps it up to eleven, given that the Thanelands is specifically designed with its own distinct take on Norse mythology, it stands to reason that this is going to be very distinctive take of an adventure. I'm also interested to see where they take the Thanelandsversion of Kobolds in this The Fires of Mount Surtur.


The artwork looks very interesting to me & since there's an extensive catalog of adventures & supplements I'm intrigued by the direction of this Mad Martian games latest efforts. If your interested in getting a feel for the Thanelands, 'The Temple of Drawoh Rock' 1st level adventure is available for 'pay what you want'. It will give a solid overview for the adventure locations of the Thanelands;
'The Temple of Drawoh Rock is an adventure module for 1st level characters exploring the Ice Kingdoms. As warriors of Thane Ornulf the characters will sail the Atalac Sea, explore the Gate Isles, and raid the Monastery of Jove. But what starts out as a simple plan to rob some peaceful monks turns into a harrowing adventure as the adventurers cross paths with the machinations of a deadly sorcerer. The Temple of Drawoh Rock is the fourth adventure for the Ice Kingdoms Campaign Setting. For more adventures in the Ice Kingdoms see Into the Mournwood, The Lair of the White Wyvern, The Girl With the Demon Tattoos, and The Ice Kingdoms Campaign Setting all from Mad Martian Games'


Is this kickstarter worth your dime?! Seriously I think so. The Thanelands setting is flexible enough to be used with a large variety of OSR games. We're finally getting the bestiary we need & the Thanelands has expanded considerably since the their very first kickstarter. Since this is the case I'd use the Thanelands as an old school  background setting for running the '81 Gygax classic Against The Giants. The Thanelands has everything a dungeon master could want to run this classic along with the appropriate background & PC classes.


I think that the Fires of Surtur adventure could be used to enhance G1,2,3, & as a possible side quest for the adventure path. Do I think that the Fires of Surtur is worth your money?! In a word yes!!