Meeting In Xylac - Castles & Castles rpg & The CAS Zothique Campaign- Session Report One

 The PC's met with Queen Bell Avtuv Stygian queen of the wastelands who was banished from her throne of the beginning of the Cimmeria Age to Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique. She's searching for a necromatic tome called the Books of Ethiusu which contains the secrets of time and space. She's hired the PC's to search for this magical artifact.

The PC's themselves travelled to Zothique using the planar byways via thier Astral Knight Sir Tristan. The astral knight was looking for a route back to Greyhawk and rolled very badly. And so wound up back on Zothique. 

The PC's are in Xylac after following the astral thread left by Sir Tristan. The port city of Xylac is according to the Zothique wiki entry;"Xylac is a major state of northwestern Zothique, governed by an emperor. Its principal city is Ummaos. It has a western coastline which includes the port cities of Mirouane^[12] and of Oroth, from which one can sail to Yoros.^[13] Land routes lead southward from Ummaos through the Celotian Waste and past the city of Zul-Bha-Sair to the kingdom of Tasuun."

We're not leaving Xylac quite yet because our clerics and wizards are consulting the scrolls and holy books of the local gods.Yes, this is costing our party a bit of gold but the research is invaluable. Our cleric consulted the Scrolls of  Vergama; 

“...he gave thanks to Vergama who, throughout the whole continent of Zothique, was deemed the most powerful and mysterious of the genii, and was thought to rule over the heavens as well as the earth.” — The Last Hieroglyph, CAS 1934

Meanwhile Zargo the Spellweaver met with the priests and sorcerers of Thasaidon “prince of all turpitudes." From the Scrolls of Vergama we learned that the Books of Ethiusu are held within the temple palaces of Naat. And from  the priests and sorcerers guild  of Thasaidon “prince of all turpitudes." we found out that the books are sacred to ALILA “Queen of perdition and goddess of all iniquities”.These books are guarded by a tribe of lamia & contain the spells of the doors of Yog-Sothoth .The party isn't exactly happy about this and Naat isn't a kingdom to screw with because we've got to charter a boat to travel across the Black River. So that's where we ended when we went back to the Talon of the Necromancer Tavern & discussed our next move. 

So of course we're using Zothique D20 by George Hager available right over here.  However, most of our PC's are straight from the Castles & Crusades player's handbook available right over here. 

That being said we're diving deeply into the Adventurer's Backpack for some of our other more esoteric PC classes. Zothique is a complete wasteland and highly dangerous so we've had to modify some of our equipment, armor, etc. We've also had to make contacts in both the Zothique adventurer's guild, the priest and wizard's guild and other factions. More to come!