Mutants, Murder, & Wilderness Weirdness - Olathoë' Session Report Nine

Hyperborean trade house business, petty murder, & deep wasteland exploration market tonight's game. A trade caravan is now on its way deeper into the Western Wastelands. The part is going to be passing the head quarters of a cult  operating fifty miles outside of the Outpost of the Western Wastelands in an abandon temple of the Huldra ("hidden beings") but tonight their dealing with the threat of weird wilderness happenings!

So during tonight's game the market place started to break up & the local trade houses were breaking out their sky ships & putting together their mammoths, woolly rhinos, & other giant pack mammals for the caravan into the deeper into the Western wastelands to trade with the local tribes of cave men, mutants, etc. Leaper Camels, scouts, rangers, & several flyers started scouting ahead by a couple of days whilst blue mutant tribesmen came to trade crystals with one of the trade houses. Here's where things went down hill, the PC's last game had been invited onto the trade caravan.


artwork from C. Sedwick (1 April 2008).
"What Killed the Woolly Mammoth?". PLoS Biology 6 (4): e99

The blue mutant tribesmen were there to trade with one particular trade house but things went bad quickly as the trade representative only offered a third of what was originally promised. The tribesmen left in disgust as the party's bard stepped in.

"The Aeropile." Art by H. Lanos for
"When the Sleeper Wakes" by H. G. Wells (1899)


Meanwhile the party's sky ship pilot was given the routes through the wasteland along with the trade routes along the Old Mammoth trails. Guns, heavy crossbows, and other weaponry were loaded on the howdahs of the mammoths & pack animals because  the Hyperborean traders are worried about inhuman raiders! Meanwhile the mutant traders had wounded from an attack by a pride of rogue manticores. The pride had recently been displaced by an insect cult that had moved into their old temple digs & the manticores had settled into the mutant's crystal mine as a lair! Now to comesate the price of the crystals had risen in recent months. The crystals are used in certain alchemical applications. The bard who has some clerical style healing abilities treated the mutant tribesmen while the trade representative scoffed at him back at the camp's tent city.

An accidental heavy crossbow shot impaled the trade representative! Several witnesses swore that it was truly an accident. This was the same Hyperborean trade house that wanted to ritually eat the bard last game! He of the
Huldra ("hidden beings") bloodline! That night at camp there was a ceremony & some mockery on the part of the party. But things got on their way the next day as camp broke up! About ten miles outside the bounds of the Western Wastelands outpost patrol zone the caravan got shot at by Reu''rii mutant goblin tribesmen with their poorly constructed long guns. The whole thing was more for show & counting coup but several of the Hyperborean guardsmen returned fire killing the occasional goblin tribesmen.
Outside the patrol  perimeter the night passed quickly even as several groups of mutant junk dealer tribesmen approached the sky ship landing zone for trade. They were bold, ballsy, & aiming for a deal. They got one with the skyship's pilot who trade high quality parts & junk for a quick profit.

A soldier with a plume of peacock feathers in his helmet carries a young woman home on his horse with goblins giving him directions. Engraving by Ludwig Freidrich after Eduard Steinle. Iconographic Collections
A soldier with a plume of peacock feathers in his helmet car Wellcome V0039122.jpg

The trade caravan made it outside of the patrol parameter & out of the woodland trails. They were now out in the deep grasslands where wild mammoth, saber toothed tigers, dire wolves, and worse lay in wait. Everyone in the caravan was on edge. Across the temperate grasslands scattered here & there were giant alien totem pools of inhuman carving marking unknown territories. The scouts & rangers returned to the caravan reporting a rogue manticore lying in wait for a group of cavemen! The same cavemen who had signal fires lit for the trade caravan indicating they were open for trade & commerce with the Hyperborean houses! Several of the caravan guards & adventurers are moving in to assist them!


Will the party help the tribe of cave dwellers or could this be something worse? A possible set up of a trap but unknown hostile forces? Only time will tell what intent these people have or if they will survive at all unless the claws of the manticore get them!? The party is now in the grassland wilderness where life is cheap and danger is ever present! Could this be a set up for inhuman raiders?!

What happens next week?
Tune in next week!

Tooth, Claw, & Paralysis - The Ghoul In Gary Gygax's Descent Into The Depths & Beyond In Dark Europe

 

So during the last couple of days I've been writing about The Hundred Year War campaign & mixing in the Gary Gygax classics D1-2 Descent Into the Depths of the Earth. with a twisted  Hundred Years War campaign idea using the  Lion & Dragon rpg system & the Dark Albion campaign as a  source book!?
Today I want to talk about the lowly stop gap race of undead horror & Chaos moving across Europe causing mayhem.

I want to talk about one monster that crosses from classic original Dungeons & Dragons , through various fantasy writers including Clark Ashton Smith & H.P. Lovecraft an into actual mythology. A heinous form of undead near & dear to my heart. I'm speaking of the ghoul. Ghouls are the invisible undead able to blend into the three o'clock in morning twilight time & not be seen. They've been around since the time of Sumeria & Babylon, and later as a part of Arabic legend traveling down the spice & Silk roads. The ghul is a fiendish type of jinn believed to be sired by Iblis.



Faramarz kills the shah of demons (ghuls), from the Shah Nameh, 10th century Persian epic of the Kings Asian Collection. Welcome images collection

But talking with friends tonight who specialize in Babylonian mythology & legends they told me that the ghoul is related to the Gallu Demons of Babylonian mythology. These might have been their origin point having feed on the locals & mated with them until we got the traditional ghoul.

"Gallu demons hauled unfortunate victims off to the underworld. They were one of seven devils (or "the offspring of hell") of Babylonian theology that could be appeased by the sacrifice of a lamb at their altars.^[3]

The goddess Inanna was pursued by gallu demons after being escorted from the Underworld by Galatura and Kuryara.^[4][3] An especially fierce gallu demon, the monstrous Asag, was slain by Ninurta using the enchanted mace Sharur."
So right from their origin point it takes enchanted weapons from the gods to damage these demonic horrors.

So why do I mention these undead feeders of the dead in connection with the Hundred Years War? France was the perfect breeding ground for tribes & parties of ghouls especially  in France, civil wars, deadly epidemics, famines, and bandit free-companies of mercenaries reduced the population drastically. France is the perfect place for these horrors to operate during the Hundred Years War especially given ghouls connections with the thieves guilds, highwaymen, & the witch cults of France. Given the bodies that are piled high & deep with the Black Plague ravaging Europe its the perfect cover for ghoul tribes to be operating. They feed on the dead & perform rites under the stars of the Damned all the while moving from one cell of witches & chaos worshipers to another. They move among the grave stones & dream worlds of Europe with ease!

"Why did I drop him? Don't be impatient. Wait till I ring for coffee. We've had enough of the other stuff, but I for one need something. No—it wasn't the paintings I saw in that place; though I'll swear they were enough to get him ostracised in nine-tenths of the homes and clubs of Boston, and I guess you won't wonder now why I have to steer clear of subways and cellars. It was—something I found in my coat the next morning. You know, the curled-up paper tacked to the frightful canvas in the cellar; the thing I thought was a photograph of some scene he meant to use as a background for that monster. That last scare had come while I was reaching to uncurl it, and it seems I had vacantly crumpled it into my pocket. But here's the coffee—take it black, Eliot, if you're wise.
Yes, that paper was the reason I dropped Pickman; Richard Upton Pickman, the greatest artist I have ever known—and the foulest being that ever leaped the bounds of life into the pits of myth and madness. Eliot—old Reid was right. He wasn't strictly human. Either he was born in strange shadow, or he'd found a way to unlock the forbidden gate. It's all the same now, for he's gone—back into the fabulous darkness he loved to haunt. Here, let's have the chandelier going.
Don't ask me to explain or even conjecture about what I burned. Don't ask me, either, what lay behind that mole-like scrambling Pickman was so keen to pass off as rats. There are secrets, you know, which might have come down from old Salem times, and Cotton Mather tells even stranger things. You know how damned lifelike Pickman's paintings were—how we all wondered where he got those faces.
Well—that paper wasn't a photograph of any background, after all. What it showed was simply the monstrous being he was painting on that awful canvas. It was the model he was using—and its background was merely the wall of the cellar studio in minute detail. But by God, Eliot, it was a photograph from life!"

Pickman's Model  (1926)  by H. P. Lovecraft

There is a deep & abiding connection between the ghouls of legend & the Elves of France. These monsters were originally created their demented & damned Elven masters all of the while feeding on recycle human refuse a perfect closed system. This makes the Hundred Years War & the Rose War  of France later on  the perfect feeding ground & breeding ground for the witch cults of ghouls.  The ghouls abilities in Dungeons & Dragons to paralysis prey is an artificial ability and might well be related to their supernatural heritage from the Gallu demons. This connection can be found within the ghoul's name;
"Ghoul is from the Arabic غول ghūl, from غال ghala, "to seize".^[3] The word is etymologically related to the word galla, the name of a class of Underworld demons from Sumerian and Akkadian mythology."

"Amine Discovered with the Goule", illustration for "History of Sidi Nouman" of the Arabian Nights. Engraving from The Arabian Nights Entertainments, translated by the Reverend Edward Forster, carefully revised and corrected by G. Moir Bussey. Published London 1840.



They exist half in our world & half in the others because of their supernatural heritage. Ghouls slip into our world & out again into the world of Fairy & Dream as well others which well could be due to them being created from both human & Elven genetic material. There is also an instinctive sense of the mathematics involved in the various supernatural or preternatural spells needed to breach the walls between worlds. We get a prime example of this in Dreams In The Witch House by HP Lovecraft. This story was spun from inspiration from a fragment of Nathaniel Hawthorne's unfinished novel Septimius Felton".
"

Toward the end of March he began to pick up in his mathematics, though the other studies bothered him increasingly. He was getting an intuitive knack for solving Riemannian equations, and astonished Professor Upham by his comprehension of fourth-dimensional and other problems which had floored all the rest of the class. One afternoon there was a discussion of possible freakish curvatures in space, and of theoretical points of approach or even contact between our part of the cosmos and various other regions as distant as the farthest stars or the transgalactic gulfs themselves—or even as fabulously remote as the tentatively conceivable cosmic units beyond the whole Einsteinian space-time continuum. Gilman's handling of this theme filled everyone with admiration, even though some of his hypothetical illustrations caused an increase in the always plentiful gossip about his nervous and solitary eccentricity. What made the students shake their heads was his sober theory that a man might—given mathematical knowledge admittedly beyond all likelihood of human acquirement—step deliberately from the earth to any other celestial body which might lie at one of an infinity of specific points in the cosmic pattern.
Such a step, he said, would require only two stages; first, a passage out of the three-dimensional sphere we know, and second, a passage back to the three-dimensional sphere at another point, perhaps one of infinite remoteness. That this could be accomplished without loss of life was in many cases conceivable. Any being from any part of three-dimensional space could probably survive in the fourth dimension; and its survival of the second stage would depend upon what alien part of three-dimensional space it might select for its re-entry. Denizens of some planets might be able to live on certain others—even planets belonging to other galaxies, or to similar dimensional phases of other space-time continua—though of course there must be vast numbers of mutually uninhabitable even though mathematically juxtaposed bodies or zones of space.
It was also possible that the inhabitants of a given dimensional realm could survive entry to many unknown and incomprehensible realms of additional or indefinitely multiplied dimensions—be they within or outside the given space-time continuum—and that the converse would be likewise true. This was a matter for speculation, though one could be fairly certain that the type of mutation involved in a passage from any given dimensional plane to the next higher one would not be destructive of biological integrity as we understand it. Gilman could not be very clear about his reasons for this last assumption, but his haziness here was more than overbalanced by his clearness on other complex points. Professor Upham especially liked his demonstration of the kinship of higher mathematics to certain phases of magical lore transmitted down the ages from an ineffable antiquity—human or pre-human—whose knowledge of the cosmos and its laws was greater than ours."

The Dreams in the Witch-House  (1933)  by Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Because Ghouls can & have been interbreeding with humans for centuries the perfect invasive physical, spiritual, horrid undead parasites who have been using the tunnels below Paris & within the French countryside for centuries. They would be feeding the dead after every battle of the Hundred Years War. Taking corpses, learning various battle plans,etc. all within an effort to prolong the battles & war to keep the stock of food coming.


Edward III counting the dead on the battlefield of Crécy
We are talking about the continuing times of the Black Death & so there was a great supply of corpses and could be considered a golden age by these monsters. The population across Europe is being devastated & ravaged. The dead are piled high & it seems like the end of the world. Perfect cover for the various ghoul cults & tribes to move across Europe information we find in both Clark Ashton Smith's  Averoigne stories and some of his later efforts.

This map is attributed to Wiki but could also show the progression of various ghoul herds following the  spread of the Black Plague.

The Averoigne stories go into much more detail of this region & its connection to its  fictional history during the Hundred Years War.

• Beast of Averoigne, The (1933)
• Colossus of Ylourgne, The (1933)
• Disinterment of Venus, The (1934)
• Enchantress of Sylaire, The (1941)
• End of the Story, The (1930)
• Holiness of Azédarc, The (1933)
• Maker of Gargoyles, The (1932)
• Mandrakes, The (1933)
• Mother of Toads (1934)
• Rendezvous in Averoigne, A (1931)
• Satyr, The (1931) [Variant Conclusion to "The Satyr"]

My question going back to the Plague goes something like this for Gary Gygax's Descent Into The Depths of the Earth & Lion & Dragon. Did the Elves release a doomsday weapon that go way out of their control? This could be one strong possibility with the ghoul race using various prehistoric or secondary Ice Age works to move among the population almost unseen.
There are a ton more facts that can be found in Encyclopedia.com's article on Ghouls.
For Lion & Dragon or Dark Albion one thing I've found thinking about these various modules over the years is the fact that no adventure location is going to empty for long. Various monster races & what not are going to be using the same locations & cross points because of their interaction with mankind himself. When you come down it we are the resource that keeps these races going. This is a fact that was born out in Lord Dunsany's stories as well.



As time goes on ghouls become increasingly animalistic & insane as the ravages of undeath eat away at the human mind. Eventually these monsters will drop dead or decay away in the real world. Supernaturally they may escape to Dream or Fairy if they're very lucky. Association with ghouls breeds more of them as the physical & supernatural compentents conspire to create more. The instincts take over & suddenly one day you might look in the mirror to come face to face with one of these creatures. During the Hundred Years War they might have banded together in family units or covens for protection.
Its a fine line between fantasy & speculation but for my campaigns ghoul witch covens are the stop gap to spreading more chaos down through the centuries.

Return Into The Nightmare Realm of the Underworld - D1 the original Descent into the Depths of the Earth By Gary Gygax

"The final confrontation with the Dark Elves, the Drow, had instigated the giant alliance and its warfare upon mankind and its allied races! "


Wait you've covered D1 Descent Into The Depths of The Earth did you with latter part of the Hundred Years War campaign idea using the  Lion & Dragon rpg system & the Dark Albion campaign as a  source book!?  So well yes & no.  The party is going to have to return to the Underworld once again!
Joan of Arc is dead! Events have turned chaotic & murky as the English take it on the chin & things are not going as the Dark Albion Elves had planned!



"Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians at the siege of Compiègne on 23 May 1430. The Burgundians transferred her to the English, who organised a trial headed by Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais and member of the English Council at Rouen. Joan was convicted and burned at the stake on 30 May 1431.^[76] (She was rehabilitated 25 years later by Pope Callixtus III.)
After the death of Joan of Arc, the fortunes of war turned dramatically against the English.^[79] Most of Henry's royal advisers were against making peace. Among the factions, the Duke of Bedford wanted to defend Normandy, the Duke of Gloucester was committed to just Calais, whereas Cardinal Beaufort was inclined to peace. Negotiations stalled. It seems that at the congress of Arras, in the summer of 1435, where the duke of Beaufort was mediator, the English were unrealistic in their demands. A few days after the congress ended in September, Philip III, duke of Burgundy, deserted to Charles VII, signing the Treaty of Arras that returned Paris to the King of France. This was a major blow to English sovereignty in France.^[74] The Duke of Bedford died on 14 September 1435 and was later replaced by Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York"

The factions of the Hundred Years war at at each other's throats. The Siege of Orleans has brought things to a turn around point. Things are falling apart and the PC's are going to have to revisit The Underworld where  the factions including Elves , Deep Ones, Svirfneblin, Derro, and many more are scrambling to keep even their own existence together!  Those alliances with the faction of the Underworld that the PC's made earlier are going to come in very handy.  The events here are going to be partially in the underworld & in the world above where the PC's are balanced between the various factions of The Hundred Years War & the Underworld. All the while they're going to have to skirt the powers of the Church whose already had Joan of Arc killed!

But the big unknown is the spawning pools of the Deep Ones deep below Paris. The party's meeting with Blibdoolpoolp, the Sea Mother of the Deep Ones was no accident at all. There are hundreds of spawning pools deep within the dungeon tunnels of Paris that the Elves have no idea about. In Dark Albion these are directly responsible for the take over of Paris not so during the Rose War of the Lion & Dragon game . Witch cults of the Deep Ones & their alleys are going to have to be put to the sword lest the corruption of chaos spread to cause more problems later!



The alien gold reserves of the Deep Ones are cleaned out and these help to fund the efforts of shaky alliances with Burgondy. Blibdoolpoolp, the Sea Mother of the Deep Ones is driven back with the help of key paladins & knights of Burgundy. But these alliances are fickle at best & shaky with violence at worst.  The PC's are going to expect double crosses & triple alliances as key families rise & fall with the whims of battle!


The Battle of Formigny (1450)


Events here are keyed to set up the French Recurrence because the PC's deal several blows to the Elves in the Underworld location of their ancestral cities in the Underworld. Then comes the next phase of the Hundred Years War.
"The allegiance of Burgundy remained fickle, but the English focus on expanding their domains in the Low Countries left them little energy to intervene in the rest of France.^[80] The long truces that marked the war gave Charles time to centralize the French state and reorganize his army and government, replacing his feudal levies with a more modern professional army that could put its superior numbers to good use. A castle that once could only be captured after a prolonged siege would now fall after a few days from cannon bombardment. The French artillery developed a reputation as the best in the world.^[79]
By 1449, the French had retaken Rouen. In 1450 the Count of Clermont and Arthur de Richemont, Earl of Richmond, of the Montfort family (the future Arthur III, Duke of Brittany), caught an English army attempting to relieve Caen and defeated it at the Battle of Formigny. Richemont's force attacked the English army from the flank and rear just as they were on the verge of beating Clermont's army"




Here we're going to see new arrangements on the Chess board of Europe as Charles VII's successful Normandy campaign in 1450. So party members & adventurers are going to change once again. The old haunts & battle fields are going to give way to new ruins & dungeons. The real key here is their alliance with the Deep Gnomes which are some of the most powerful allies the PC's can make & they need it.


The Battle of Castillon on 17 July 1453 is the real pivot point in the real world but the PC's are going to be skirting the edge of Hell itself as they fathom what supernatural forces the Elves might bring to bare on the weak humans!
But don't think that the Deep Ones are completely out of the picture for they still have numbers out in the countryside surrounding Paris. They will be pushing back against the extinction of their old familiar breeding grounds.
"And yet I saw them in a limitless stream—flopping, hopping, croaking, bleating—urging inhumanly through the spectral moonlight in a grotesque, malignant saraband of fantastic nightmare. And some of them had tall tiaras of that nameless whitish-gold metal . . . and some were strangely robed . . . and one, who led the way, was clad in a ghoulishly humped black coat and striped trousers, and had a man's felt hat perched on the shapeless thing that answered for a head.
I think their predominant colour was a greyish-green, though they had white bellies. They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the ridges of their backs were scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested the anthropoid, while their heads were the heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes that never closed. At the sides of their necks were palpitating gills, and their long paws were webbed. They hopped irregularly, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four. I was somehow glad that they had no more than four limbs. Their croaking, baying voices, clearly used for articulate speech, held all the dark shades of expression which their staring faces lacked.
But for all of their monstrousness they were not unfamiliar to me. I knew too well what they must be—for was not the memory of the evil tiara at Newburyport still fresh? They were the blasphemous fish-frogs of the nameless design—living and horrible—and as I saw them I knew also of what that humped, tiaraed priest in the black church basement had fearsomely reminded me. Their number was past guessing. It seemed to me that there were limitless swarms of them and certainly my momentary glimpse could have shewn only the least fraction. In another instant everything was blotted out by a merciful fit of fainting; the first I had ever had."
The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H. P. Lovecraft

The PC's are going to need every ounce of strength that their families have to push back against the tides of Chaos. Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos is a must here! The factions are now even more dangerous because they've been pushed to the breaking point. Tread carefully or this could be a family TPK as the Hundred Years War draws to a close and we dive in even more into the deep end next time!

The party gets pumped up to explore deeper into the underworld.
(Erol Otus, AD&D module Descent into the Depths of the Earth by Gary Gygax, TSR,)

Not The Ususual Appendix N & OSR Literary Recommendation Commentary

Straight out of Cross Plains  Texas came one of America's pulp era lights & after whose birth the world of fantasy & Swords & Sorcery literature was never to be the same. Robert Howard changed the world with his literary creations & today is his birthday!

Right so its Robert Howard's birthday today. I've already seen the usual recommendations of his Conan novels & stories. The big one that many DM's sight is of course Robert Howard's Red Nails. This is one of the original hex & dungeon crawling stories in real time that has provided countless DM's with hours of inspiration. But there's more to Robert Howard's writing then Conan.

But for me as a DM there are other novels & stories of his that I've found useful are his single foray into his singular style of brutal science fantasy Almuric. This is sort of the anti Edgar Rice Burroughs novel that Robert Howard did. A brutal & violent answer to the usual 'Sword & Planet' blundering stories that I'd seen up till that time. I do love Edgar Rice Burrough's writing  but for totally different reasons then REH's.
For me earlier in the latter 00's Robert Howard's Cthulhu Mythos stories have been instrumental in my OSR campaign settings, inspiration, & adventure creation. He wrote in the same era & time frame as Lovecraft because they were pen pals. As a pulp guy I love REH's El Borak stories. They've provided lots of inspiration especially for classic Dungeons & Dragon's Lost City adventure module.


The James Allison Stories are actually my preferred source material for creating Sword & Sorcery adventures on Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea second edition's hidden valleys & forbidden lands. They capture the raw brutal violence & other worldliness of Howard's vision but are not as well known among the usual Howard fans of gamers. These stories also have many of the elements of the Moorcock Elric novels without the angst bits & other half baked weirdness.


King Kull of Atlantis I've always preferred to Conan for a number of reasons including that in my mind he's a far better recommendations for a Dungeons & Dragons style Sword & Sorcery monarch. He's far more stable then Conan & deals with the Lovecraftian  horrors of his era on equal terms with a far more stable eye towards level progression. He goes from slave, to pirate, to outlaw, gladiator, finally to soldier & to king by his own hand.
I have often lamented Robert Howard's suicide and while I totally understand the circumstances I often wonder what other stories & novels might have come from that brilliant but troubled writer from Cross Plains Texas. Anyhow keep em rolling & happy birthday to one of my all time favorite writers & poets Robert Howard.

I am older than the world:
Older than life.
The race of man is a babe in the cradle of Time.
I am Alpha and Omega.

The first and the last;
The circle without end.
I am a serpent with its tail in its mouth;
I am a triangle whose tips overlap a circle.

I am the older sister of Destiny.
Before man was, I was:
And after man has vanished from the Universe, I will be.
Time is a phantom, built by the mind of man;
There is no Time.
The thing that men call Time flies before my wind;
Time has beginning, duration, ending.
I am that which was, is and shall be;
Unceasing, Neverending, Eternal.
Number all the sands of all the shores of all the worlds
Of all the Universes.
And let each sand represent a million centuries;
And they all shall not be a single instant
Of Eternity.

For I am numberless and unnumbered,
Eternity had no beginning nor shall there be ending.
I am Alpha and Omega.
That which was, is and shall be;
Numberless and unnumbered.

Eternity
by Robert Ervin Howard

Gold, Corruption, & OSR Appendix N Inspiration With A. Merritt's The Face In The Abyss

So its  A. Merritt birthday yesterday  & I supposed to do a blog entry earlier today on him. Well, work came on me as it always does on a Sunday & now its ten P.M. at night. I'm finally getting around to this. A.Merritt isn't for everyone & his prose isn't for the faint of heart. But his imagination, execution of his novels, & his lost world tales are top drawer. Way back about '89 I started feeling the crunch of second edition AD&D against my current campaign, ahh the more things changed. So I did what anyone in '89 did I completely ignored second edition until literally friends of mine bought me the AD&D second edition player handbook,DM's Guide,etc. It was around this same time period that I discovered in Appendix N A.Merritt's novels and grabbed a used 1974 copy of  The Snake Mother with the cover artwork by Rodney Matthews.So I was hooked hardcore but already there was a huge push back then to get on board the usual fantasy train of Lord of The Rings style fantasy imitation or at least what some folks think it is. See I love Tolkien but not the knock off stuff we find today so frequently on some rpg table tops but that's a blog entry for another time. So back to A.Merritt.
1974, Great Britain, Futura Publications Ltd., ISBN 0-86007-025-5, Pub date 1974, Paperback. Artwork copyrighted & trademarked to Rodney Matthews

used without permission for entertainment & educational purposes.

I've only recently rediscovered my love of Seventies  cover art's surreal qualities  & my love of obscure American & British Heavy Metal music with bands such as Nazareth Magnum, Praying Mantis, & The Tigers of Pan Tang, etc. So if my current campaign has a sound track its probably those bands that inspired it subconsciously. The Face in The Abyss first appeared in the weekly pulp magazine  Argosy All-Story Weekly in 1931. The story hit all of the high notes I was looking for during that time from lost world setting civilizations  in South America, weird religious & sorcerous connotations, corrupted wizard god things, even dungeon crawling through the ruins of a lost city.
"The novel concerns American mining engineer Nicholas Graydon. While searching for lost Inca treasure in South America, he encounters Suarra, handmaiden to the Snake Mother of Yu-Atlanchi."
A player of mine in high school during that time gave me a copy of A.Merritt's Fantasy Magazine July issue which featured the story. Today its available for free for download!

Everything about 'The Face in the Abyss' is perfectly keyed around the factions, ancient dungeon location & at the time I was reading a lot of Lovecraft. I noticed the similarities between the civilization that trapped  Nimir, the Lord of Evil & the empire created by
 H.P. Lovecraft  as a ghostwriter called "The Mound." So much so that during my second edition daze I used the South American adventure location as a colony of the empire of  subterranean civilization of  the realm of K'n-yan.

My justification for this came in 2007 when "Peter Levi has noted parallels between "The Face in the Abyss" and a story H.P. Lovecraft created as a ghostwriter, "The Mound." in
Lovecraft Annual No. 1, Hippocampus Press.

This is also something that I'm doing in my current Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea second edition  'Old Earth' campaign with necromancer tyrants of K'n-yan being a huge faction in the take over of Earth in the setting's past. A.Merritt casts a long shadow over my rpg campaign worlds, settings,adventures, so much so that I've been rereading his works over the last four years or so. Dismiss Merritt at your own risk as a dungeon master because of his critics ala Damon Knight.

Sure his novels, stories,etc. seem dated but they were written in a vastly different world & culture then 2018. Look again for there is idea, after idea, after world setting, after dungeon inspiration, factions, and much more  that can be lifted whole cloth into an on going campaign.


There's a lot more gaming related OSR stuff I could get into about A.Merrit's novels & stories but those will wait for another time. For now I'm content to bring this fantastic writer of fiction & so much more to your attention.

This blog entry is not an attempt to violate the trademarks & copyrights of the various artists & publishers named in this blog entry. This blog entry is for entertainment &  educational purposes only. North Wind Adventures is in  no way responsible for the content of this blog nor the opinions of the author. Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea is the trade mark & copyright of North Wind Adventures @2018 and is used without permission. All opinions & commentary are the writings of the deranged mind of the author & copyrighted & trademarked to Dark Corner Productions @2007 to 2018.

Intrigue, Horror, & Lovecraftian God Sacrifice in the Western Wastelands - Olathoë' Session Report Eight

So during tonight's game the PC's moped up the last of the Rhan Faced Doppelgangers groups, each of these groups operates with a spotter, a telepathic link to the hive mind, & a shifter who imitates the target. The PC's learned of an insect cult operating fifty miles outside of the Outpost of the Western Wastelands in an abandon temple of the Huldra ("hidden beings") after blowing away a ton of the spawn of the Cockhold god.

One of the PC's almost became the main entertainment &  course at an exiled Hyperborean family's cannibal festival. A quick step in by the bard's Hyperborean musketeer bodyguard hireling saved both face both senses. Another of the PC's took over one of the junk stalls of the vendor at the place whist the rest of the party strolled through the market place looking for  the good aligned a Hyperborean  priest of Yog-Sothoth called Gr'res Ru who has seemingly appeared out of nowhere two weeks ago. According to some of the other Hyperborean families he's wandered back into the wastelands.  The careful application of a crossbow in the face of a vendor got the following information Gr'res Ru had  gone back to speak with several tribes of wasteland mutants but the PC's fear that something bad has happened to him. The PC's also learned of a caravan leaving for the deep wastelands coming up in the next two days.  There were suggestions that perhaps all was not well on the mammoth trails leading to the subhuman tribe's homes! Rumors of hideous hates of old that the old cults have resurrected in the name of the twisted gods of the
'Alpha  Gnophkehs''s shamans!


Now the PC's have decided to tag along with the trade caravan leaving in a day or so on the backs of the giant woolly rhinos. But the Hyperborean traders are worried about inhuman raiders!


"In spite of himself his memory began reconstructing the utterly non-human blasphemies that lurked in the obscurer corners, and these lumpish hybrid growths oozed and wriggled toward him as though hunting him down in a circle. Black Tsathoggua molded itself from a toad-like gargoyle to a long, sinuous line with hundreds of rudimentary feet, and a lean, rubbery night-gaunt spread its wings as if to advance and smother the watcher. Jones braced himself to keep from screaming. He knew he was reverting to the traditional terrors of his childhood, and resolved to use his adult reason to keep the phantoms at bay. It helped a bit, he found, to flash the light again. Frightful as were the images it showed, these were not as bad as what his fancy called out of the utter blackness. But there were drawbacks. Even in the light of his torch he could not help suspecting a slight, furtive trembling on the part of the canvas partition screening off the terrible "Adults only" alcove. He knew what lay beyond, and shivered. Imagination called up the shocking forms of fabulous Yog-Sothoth—only a congeries of iridescent globes, yet stupendous in its malign suggestiveness. What was this accursed mass slowly floating toward him and bumping on the partition that stood in the way? A small bulge in the canvas far to the right suggested the sharp horn of Gnoph-keh, the hairy myth-thing of the Greenland ice, that walked sometimes on two legs, sometimes on four, and sometimes on six. To get this stuff out of his head Jones walked boldly toward the hellish alcove with torch burning steadily. Of course, none of his fears was true. Yet were not the long, facial tentacles of great Cthulhu actually swaying, slowly and insidiously?"
HP Lovecraft The Horror In The Museum


One of the PC's is of the bloodlines of the Huldra ("hidden beings") & has been the sacrificial  target of a cult of the Great Old Ones since the beginning of the campaign. The party's bard is the perfect sacrifice to open a gateway for the cult of the Great Old Ones. Several minor relics have been recovered in tonight's game including a flute which is a key to this temple, a wand of fire of the Huldra, and several pieces of weird gold. All of this points to a mystery of blood & fire deeper in the wastelands along the Mammoth Trails. This is very bad for this is the region belonging to the were cave hyena peoples who rule these areas. They are left overs from the brush fire wars between the Huldra ("hidden beings") & the Hyperboreans.



The PC's are marching straight into several key trails that are also owned by rampaging mutant tribes of subhuman ape men. Though primitive they are beholden to several minor Lovecraftian demon gods of the Dream Places. These tribes use enchanted rhino horrors to sacrifice humans to their twisted demon gods in the hopes of gaining power in battle. But there are rumors of several of these groups having been wiped out by some rampaging unknown horror.

Below The Blood Soaked Battle Fields - Gary Gygax's D2 "Shrine of the Kuo-Toa" (1978)

"Having put down a rising of giants, it was discovered that the motivating force behind their depredations was that of long-forgotten evil: the Dark Elves. Determined to seek out these creatures, a body of doughty adventurers mounted an expedition to learn the strength of the Drow and bring retribution to them."
So I mentioned the second part of the Hundred Years War campaign idea using the  Lion & Dragon rpg system & Dark Albion as campaign source book. Here adventure events  are going to start heating up because the appearance of  Joan of Arc on the scene. France has been beat down before this & the powers of chaos have been taking full advantage. All of this goes back to events from  Gary Gygax's D2 "Shrine of the Kuo-Toa" (1978). You see for centuries before the events of the Hundred Years War the Deep Ones have been secretly planning to take over Paris & all of France. During the Hundred Years war they've been making in roads to do exactly this.


What do I mean by Deep Ones?! The immortal frog fish men straight out of H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innesmouth?! The Deep Ones are survivals straight out of mythological myth & legend with cities all over the oceans including Europe and that includes the swamps of Paris which was once one of their seats of power. They mean to have that particular center of power back and in Dark Albion they gain it during the Rose War.

"Thar's whar it all begun—that cursed place of all wickedness whar the deep water starts. Gate o' hell—sheer drop daown to a bottom no saoundin'-line kin tech. Ol' Cap'n Obed done it—him that faound aout more'n was good fer him in the Saouth Sea islands.

"Everybody was in a bad way them days. Trade fallin' off, mills losin' business—even the new ones—an' the best of our menfolks kilt aprivateerin' in the War of 1812 or lost with the Elizy brig an' the Ranger scow—both on 'em Gilman venters. Obed Marsh he had three ships afloat—brigantine Columby, brig Hefty, an' barque Sumatry Queen. He was the only one as kep' on with the East-Injy an' Pacific trade, though Esdras Martin's barkentine Malay Bride made a venter as late as twenty-eight.

"Never was nobody like Cap'n Obed—old limb o' Satan! Heh, heh! I kin mind him a-tellin' abaout furren parts, an' callin' all the folks stupid for goin' to Christian meetin' an' bearin' their burdns meek an' lowly. Says they'd orter git better gods like some o' the folks in the Injies—gods as ud bring 'em good fishin' in return for their sacrifices, an' ud reely answer folks's prayers.

"Matt Eliot his fust mate, talked a lot too, only he was again' folks's doin' any heathen things. Told abaout an island east of Othaheite whar they was a lot o' stone ruins older'n anybody knew anying abaout, kind o' like them on Ponape, in the Carolines, but with carven's of faces that looked like the big statues on Easter Island. Thar was a little volcanic island near thar, too, whar they was other ruins with diff'rent carvin'—ruins all wore away like they'd ben under the sea onct, an' with picters of awful monsters all over 'em.

"Wal, Sir, Matt he says the natives anound thar had all the fish they cud ketch, an' sported bracelets an' armlets an' head rigs made aout o' a queer kind o' gold an' covered with picters o' monsters jest like the ones carved over the ruins on the little island—sorter fish-like frogs or froglike fishes that was drawed in all kinds o' positions likes they was human bein's. Nobody cud get aout o' them whar they got all the stuff, an' all the other natives wondered haow they managed to find fish in plenty even when the very next island had lean pickin's. Matt he got to wonderon' too an' so did Cap'n Obed. Obed he notices, besides, that lots of the hn'some young folks ud drop aout o' sight fer good from year to year, an' that they wan't many old folks around. Also, he thinks some of the folks looked dinned queer even for Kanakys.

"It took Obed to git the truth aout o' them heathen. I dun't know haow he done it, but be begun by tradin' fer the gold-like things they wore. Ast 'em whar they come from, an' ef they cud git more, an' finally wormed the story aout o' the old chief -- Walakea, they called him. Nobody but Obed ud ever a believed the old yeller devil, but the Cap'n cud read folks like they was books. Heh, heh! Nobody never believes me naow when I tell 'em, an' I dun't s'pose you will, young feller—though come to look at ye, ye hev kind o' got them sharp-readin' eyes like Obed had."

HP Lovecraft The Shadow Over Innsmouth 1936

All throughout the countryside the Frogmen's witch covens & cults have been sewing mayhem & evil weakening France. The Frogmen are in direct competition with the Dr ermm Elves for all of the marbles during the Hundred Years War. But God is not mocked & Dagon's brood are in for a rude awakening in the form of "The Maid of Orléans" (French: La Pucelle d'Orléans).

"Joan of Arc (French: Jeanne d'Arc,^[5] IPA: [ʒan daʁk]; 6 January c. 1412^[6] – 30 May 1431), nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" (French: La Pucelle d'Orléans), is considered a heroine of France for her role during the Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years' War and was canonized as a Roman Catholic saint. Joan of Arc was born to Jacques d'Arc and Isabelle Romée, a peasant family, at Domrémy in north-east France. Joan said she received visions of the Archangel Michael, Saint Margaret, and Saint Catherine of Alexandria instructing her to support Charles VII and recover France from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War. The uncrowned King Charles VII sent Joan to the siege of Orléans as part of a relief mission. She gained prominence after the siege was lifted only nine days later. Several additional swift victories led to Charles VII's coronation at Reims. This long-awaited event boosted French morale and paved the way for the final French victory.

On 23 May 1430, she was captured at Compiègne by the Burgundian faction, which was allied with the English. She was later handed over to the English^[7] and put on trial by the pro-English Bishop of Beauvais Pierre Cauchon on a variety of charges.^[8] After Cauchon declared her guilty she was burned at the stake on 30 May 1431, dying at about nineteen years of age.^[9]

In 1456, an inquisitorial court authorized by Pope Callixtus III examined the trial, debunked the charges against her, pronounced her innocent, and declared her a martyr"

So not only is she and her forces instrumental for boasting the morale of France but she's instrumental in stopping the push by the Deep Ones during  the Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years' War. 

Everything here depends upon several pivotal battles which didn't happen in Dark Albion enabling the Deep Ones to take France. The dungeons of Gary Gygax's D2 "Shrine of the Kuo-Toa" (1978) are directly under Paris & spread out into the countryside. The Sviberfneblin are straight out of French Fairytale books from the late 1800's & later on the 20's. There is some evidence that the Sviberfneblin might also reference certain Arthurian fairies.

Blibdoolpoolp might well be another chaos god avatar of the Deep Ones she has all of the required Lovecraftian elements & lends a large amount of weight to the encounter with her. She's an interesting contrasting chaos goddess symbol for various witch cults especially given the implications that the  French population had not recovered to its size previous to the Black Death of the mid-14th century. This was a time when ripe for violence across the countryside.


PC's are going to have to bring their 'A' game playing through a Lion & Dragon campaign set up for Gary Gygax's D2 "Shrine of the Kuo-Toa" (1978) especially during the Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years' War. 

This is going to require a great deal of thought & careful planning or the party is going to end up very dead or worse. This is a location based adventure with lots of twists & turns that is going to effect the greater outcome of the Hundred Years War. As well see these events turn things inside out for the Lions & Dragons game soon.

Alien gods, Monsters, & Clark Aston Smith's "Captain Volmar" Sequence With Old School & OSR Resources

So its two A.M. in the morning on a Friday & I've had all kinds of fun this past week. So I've been quietly retreating back into some of the writings of Clark Aston Smith's  "Marooned in Andromeda", the first entry in his "Captain Volmar" sequence, was the cover story in the October 1930 issue of Wonder Stories. illustrated by Frank R. Paul

For me the "Captain Volmar" sequence by CAS is pure human exploration out beyond Pluto & Yuggoth. Humanity has been reaching deeper & deeper into the 'Old Solar System'. The Hyperborean wars are over, Old Earth is barely starting to escape the devastation of Hyperborea leaving Earth. The clock is ticking & the Old Ones almost but not quite awake.

So I'm thinking about how the Star ship Warden of S3 Expedition to The Barrier Peaks relates to other possible space craft & yes at length I've talked about S3's relationship to Killraven & The Planet of Apes Marvel comics. 

But tonight I want to put a CAS focus on this & some of the other star ships & adventure opportunities with Goblinoid Games Starships & Spacemen second edition.  "Captain Volmar" sequence fits very nicely into the style of S&S second edition very nicely. The command chain, ideas,etc. all fit into the middle ground of Realms of Crawling Chaos. Why I'm going on a Goblinoid Games bend tonight?! Because I ordered myself a copy of Apes Victorious from Lulu Publishing using the LuLu20 code for 20% off all of the various print books. I still need a new copy of Realms of Crawling Chaos & Mutant Future second edition but those will wait.


So while Apes Victorious game presents a Planet of the Apes centric world. The 1977 version  Marvel Comics version of Logan's Run featured key scenes that were left out of the film but were in the comic book. So what does this have to do with the "Captain Volmar" sequence??! Logan's domed cities might well be isolated enclaves of young sacrifices created to be conveniently waiting sacrifices & snacks for the Old Ones. The malfunction of the starship Warden might be a result of a beacon from the city of domes just outside of old Washington D.C.. Logan's city might be simply another human state unknown among the rubble of 'Old Earth'.



Both worlds might easily be the same campaign one & they might be related to the ape races of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. There are several ape related races in AS&SH second edition including an ape demon thing from Underborea that wants to return the ape race to its rightful place of total dominance over humanity. The apes might be simply unwitting tools for these demon creatures but given the WWII level technology things could get very dangerous for the PC's.
There's another older OSR release that seldom gets mentioned that expands upon S&S's rules and variants. That's "The Lucanii Drift" by Paul Kidd this book greatly expands the PC alien races, star ship combat, and adds all kinds of options for the table.  

 Some of the ideas put forth in the various AS&SH adventures especially Ghost Ship of the Desert Dunes with its lost ship, mutant creatures, strange radioactive fuels,etc. it all fits into the S3 adventure operating parameters. This same formula ideal is also found within "Captain Volmar" sequence  of adventures; the crew is stranded or captured on an alien planet, they encounter nightmarish flora and fauna, and then they escape. The PC's will be very lucky to pull this sort of an escape off!


Maybe it seems as if I'm drifting away from the Dungeons & Dragons aspect of AS&SH second edition but think again. Time after time we've seen various OSR adventures that employ isolated modern  or post apocalyptic adventure settings. So could there be other star ships just waiting to make Earth fall after the Warden makes land fall in possibly some isolated region of Europe? I think so and there's also another pay what you want resource from a well known OSR company that could fit the bill. Neoplastic press's Star Ship From Hell is a great seldom mentioned OSR resource that has all of the bells & whistles to fit the bill.

There are several weird life forms that seem to fit many of  the classic old school monster builds that we've seen in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons within CAS's
"Captain Volmar" sequence & it would be very easy to add in a twisted creature or two from the first edition Monster Manual to pad out some of the planetary encounters out beyond Pluto.