OSR Commentary On Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique & Castles & Crusades rpg Campaigning. Session Three Report

Our party in our Clark Ashton Smith Zothique campaign adventure in  the ruins of Xylac! The dungeons of the damned and the devils of  Thasaidon, lord of seven hells was one where we survived by not taking one piece of treasure. Instead we got the artifact we needed and cast the spell on the scroll we were proved with. This was after parleying with a fiend who was feeding on the bones of the royal family of Prince Zotulla.

We left only to find ourselves on an Ilcar trader ship after being stranded out in the Zothique wasteland. Our party has dealt with the sand zombies that started tracking our adventurers. We found ourselves putting these undead things down. We were able to find ourselves in a nameless port after hiring on to a Naat merchants caravan. The party made a few gold pieces from this small job. 

 The player's PC's met their royal contact and handed over the artifact. And the contact paid the party. The adventurers hired on with Ilcar traders on board their merchant ship. Now it was guard duty against sea demons, monsters, and pirates. 
The sea is hijacked with all kinds of demon powers and sea horrors. This goes right into Clark Ashton Smith's descriptions of Zothique; "Clark Ashton Smith himself described the Zothique cycle in a letter to L. Sprague de Camp, dated November 3, 1953:

Zothique, vaguely suggested by Theosophic theories about past and future continents, is the last inhabited continent of earth. The continents of our present cycle have sunken, perhaps several times. Some have remained submerged; others have re-risen, partially, and re-arranged themselves. Zothique, as I conceive it, comprises Asia Minor, Arabia, Persia, India, parts of northern and eastern Africa, and much of the Indonesian archipelago. A new Australia exists somewhere to the south. To the west, there are only a few known islands, such as Naat, in which the black cannibals survive. To the north, are immense unexplored deserts; to the east, an immense unvoyaged sea. The peoples are mainly of Aryan or Semitic descent; but there is a negro kingdom (Ilcar) in the north-west; and scattered blacks are found throughout the other countries, mainly in palace-harems. In the southern islands survive vestiges of Indonesian or Malayan races. The science and machinery of our present civilization have long been forgotten, together with our present religions. But many gods are worshipped; and sorcery and demonism prevail again as in ancient days. Oars and sails alone are used by mariners. There are no fire-arms only the bows, arrows, swords, javelins, etc. of antiquity. The chief language spoken (of which I have provided examples in an unpublished drama) is based on Indo-European roots and is highly inflected, like Sanskrit, Greek and Latin."

   The player's PC's picked up pigit trade language & made another 40 gold pieces. And they came face to face with some  Basatan missionary priests. These priests blessed our voyage with pleasant weather. We watched two sea serpents of incredible size who accompanied these priests. Our own ship's  Ojhal priest was very weary of these priests but kept his counsel until they left. We made note of these priests and kept on guard. 
The seas were calm but there was the feeling that the trade ship was being watched.