More Commentary On Law & 'The Priests of The Golden Peacock' in Kuntz & Ward's 'Gods,Demi-gods, & Heroes

 This post is going to pick right up from what we spoke of yesterday on the blog. 
Let's dig deeper into the role of Law on Carcosa for a moment & its legacy with the Golden Peacock. 

So over the last forty eight hours we've been going over our notes for original Dungeons & Dragons & Gods, Demi-gods, & Heroes by Kuntz & Ward. And one of the things that has occurred to me is the amount of artifacts of Law in the Hyboria mythos that has been included! Take for example; 'HEART OF AHRIMAN Device of great power able to work over any distance, which acts as an anti magic shell for six people'. Seems like a simple & straight forward artifact that would be but consider it within the contents of the Hyboria mythology of original Dungeons & Dragons. There's a great little Carcosa thread on the original Dungeons & Dragons Facebook group here.  If we take them together with other artifacts of Law & Neutrality on Carcosa including personages. Then the struggle for Law & Chaos on the bleak Pulpy planet becomes clear. 

Take for for example; "HEART OF TAMMUZ A lawful artifact used to counter the effects of the Claw of Nergal. With this, the user can undo the action of the claw without knowing who the claw affected, merely by bringing the Heart within 500 yards of a victim."  On Carcosa these artifacts would be invaluable pieces of example of Law. Tribal coloured nations would go to war over such artifacts hence why within Gods, Demi-gods, & Heroes these would be in multi tiered dungeons of incredible complexity. Law stands for civilazition & order, on a planet such as Carcosa this means the difference between survival & death. The problem here is one of complexity & scale, because original Dungeons & Dragons is modular its easy to add or subtract supplements as needed. 
Now what is the role of neutrality & law on Carcosa?! That in my humble opinion is one of survival and eventually civilization. And this brings  Milk Tous & his ilk to Carcosa easily. Given the almost twisted Lovecraftian 'Garden of Eden' setting that is primitive Carcosa. It's easy to see why Earth bound demonic Lovecraftian enities would be right in to corrupt Carcosa & its inhabitants. 

Demoness of the Wasteland Published: May 4, 2014 by MrZarono artwork used without permission. Available here.