Friday, July 3, 2020

Blackness Rising - Bad Moons & OSR Lovecraftian Evil

Over the last two nights I've been going over Lamentations of the Flame Princess's Carcosa. I was an early adapter & advocate of Geoffry McCanney's campaign setting & vision. I grabbed my copy of Carcosa off the shelf last night. Its been a very long hard time since this tome has drawn me back to it. 

Lamentations of The Flame Princess Carcosa by Geoffrey McKinney ...

Carcosa & I have a very long drawn out history together. Once upon a time way back before the first Disney Marvel movies came out I ran a quite extensive Marvel/Carcosa crossover game that consumed two Summers back in '08 & '09. Lately I've been going over lots of notes for this campaign & familiarizing myself with the campaign. I watched a pretty extensive review of Carcosa on GrimJim's channel last night. Can't really say that I'm a fan of his, I love Machinations of the Space Princess rpg. But our rpg processes & rpg politic are way too far apart. 



The thing I took away from the review  was the Cha'alt/Carcosa as one whole planet bit?! Why $$# didn't I think of that? The rules for randomizing Hit Dice with every combat are quite bewildering & we never made use of them. While I can't really agree with Dungeons & Possums review of Carcosa there are some points in it. So out comes the Lovecraft's 'The Dream Quest of Kadath' & I begin brain storming.  
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series ...

Anything from Carcosa is going to read as 'Chaos tainted' in my mind. I've made use of both Dark Albion & the  Lion & Dragon rpg when it comes to anything Carcosa &  Dreamlands. This goes back to several mini Dark Albion rpg campaigns. 



Its that Cha'alt/Carcosa Jack Kirby comic book vibe that goes back to my early OSR blog days in '08 and stumbling upon Giorgio Comolo's artwork. His artwork's inspiration 
 made that campaign extend way beyond the mini Summer campaign
it was supposed to be. 

modokgiger | Comic book villains, Marvel villains

So how does a  dungeon master get a heavily armed group of Carcosa cultists into their campaign?! Well I've gotten a bit sick of using Michael Moorcock's elements but let's go back to Lovecraft & one particularly nasty group of Lovecraftian monsters. The moonbeasts are prone to going to all kinds of worlds to sell their wares & slaves through their black ships. The ships are crewed by their hybrid turbaned slaves. Again this plugs into HP Lovecraft's 'The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath' where they first appear. 



Portuguese black carrack in Nagasaki, in the early 17th century
 are good stand in for the black ships of the moonbeasts. 

An extra moon rising over the upside down city of New York 1870 when the black galleons of the moonbeasts make port to sell rubies, moonwine, and rare wares. Meanwhile Carcosa & Cha'alt mercenaries, mutants, & marauders  make extensive off loading into the city. 
litza 🖤 on Twitter: "MY CHA'ALT HARDCOVER ADVENTURE BOOK CAME ...


Now this is all going to tie into the extensive set up I've been doing all year with Frog God games 'Encephalon Gorgers on the Moon' Swords & Wizardry Edition adventure. 



The reason behind this is the extensive & harried history of the player's PCs with the brain lashers over the years. This is another nugget of weirdness that's slowly growing behind the scenes of my campaigns festering & bringing with it some real nastiness. 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.