OSR Treasures of Reality, The Threshold, & More- Rpg Pundit's The Invisible College & Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan.

There is a single main definition of the object of all magical Ritual. It is the uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm. The Supreme and Complete Ritual is therefore the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; or, in the language of Mysticism, Union with God.
Ch. 1 : The Principles of Ritual
Aleister Crowley 
We are living through one of the last cycles of Chaos & scorn according certain Hindu sacred texts. All of this is a part of the 'Invisible College' rpg on some back burner paragraph but its there. But what if there were high dimensional realities right around the corner where we might escape to as a part of the Great Work?! We'll pick up right here from where we left off from here last time on the blog. 

Try to imagine for a moment that the D&D or AD&D campaign settings that we know & love ala Greyhawk are actually higher dimensional realms perhaps a part of a mega dimensional campaign. Now its only been eight days since our last blog entry on this OSR ousting here. Since then several thoughts have been going through my conversations with DM Steve. He suggested Kevin Crawford's Worlds Without Number simply get rid of the Latter Earth which is the game's default campaign setting. And insert in your own version of a TSR mega setting perhaps Blackmoor, Mystara, & Greyhawk as one mega campaign setting. The ritual magick of  'Invisible College' rpg taps into the same other dimensional source as D&D. That source is the realm of Chaos inherit within the center of  'dream'. The same energies that 'gods' and 'immortals' access. 

Let me simply go on record as saying that I don't give two shites about any of the authors of these rpg's political or religious beliefs. Now that being said there are monsters under the bed and these monsters sometimes come into our world through some very dangerous back doors. And this is all very David Lynch. And this brings us right back to Welcome to Saint Cloud. The Lynchian vibe is very strong in this adventure & this brings up a point. That many of the places that David Lynch's literature, films, etc. talk about are places where reality is breaking down. Whose doing this?! The magus of course by their very acts of magick because it serves to bring in the corrosion of chaos. 

 Lynch's Mulholland Drive could well be a magus dealing with the breakdown of their own reality. The whole affair looping back on itself in higher or lower dimensional reality. There are cracks that form within such realities allowing demons or worse to exploit them. 

Now if we follow the anti logic here then we can see several factions within 'Invisible College' rpg exploiting such weaknesses. On the extreme end of such manipulation you have villains or magus such as John Carpenter's 'In The Mouth of Madness''s Sutter Cane taking pieces of reality & turning them into their own personal balloon animals. 

These piece of reality could be seen as fragments of the dreamlands bound up as domains floating next to the endless void. They circle but can not touch the endless exo planet. But what about all those valuable 'treasures' and artifacts that seemingly & endlessly end up in every pawnshop, estate sale, etc. across the Earth? Why are these allowed to come into our world?! Because the Fey & the monsters of the dungeons  of these over & underworlds want to spread their countless baubles from dungeon to reality for the endless parade of fresh meat. And this is where  Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars Companion  By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan comes into play. The monsters are the magus's muscle & boots on the ground. This is because this end of reality is so dangerous. The PC's have to keep back the hordes from overrunning us. Part Jack Kirby's Fourth World & part Clive Barker's Nightbreed for influence but its gonna be Ben Laurence's Through Ultan's Door that's gonna be the hungry location. This place is quietly going to casting its net into our local time space reality for the unwary & the foolish. This end of the dreamlands feeds very well indeed. Why?! Next time...