Matters Of The Demonic - OD&D Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry & The Empire of The Petal Throne Rpg

Tonight we've been cracking OD&D Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry's spine tonight where demons were first introduced in original Dungeons & Dragons. Demons are foes are nothing to add into even a high level campaign lightly. 




Demons are the counter point to Law in original Dungeons & Dragons & here's the high point in OD&D Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry; 

" DEMONS: Each type of demon, as well as the Demon Princes such as Orcus and Demogorgon have many extraordinary characteristics, and those which are not common to all the ilk are dealt with in separate paragraphs accordingly. Demons all have the following characteristics in common: Infravision; the ability to teleport (no chance of error); cause darkness (in varying degree of effectiveness); and open a "gate" (varying degree of success according to type). Demons are chaotic and evil; the smarter and stronger rule those of their kind who are weaker and less intelligent. The less intelligent w i l l attack without question and fight until slain. Demons of type V and above are not actually slain when their material form is killed in combat; their material form being removed from their use, the demon in question is thereby forced back to the plane from whence it originally came, there to remain until a century has passed or until another aids it to go forth once again. Demons will never willingly serve anyone or anything. If forced to serve through magic or threat they will continually seek a way to slay their master/captor. Those to whom demons show a liking are typically carried off to the demons' plane to become a slave (although a favored one). Demons frequently roam the astral plane. Their attention is also attracted by persons in an ethereal state. Check normally for wandering monsters, assuming a 10% chance of a demon appearing if a wandering monster is indicated."

"If the name of a particularly powerful demon is spoken there is a chance that he will hear and turn his attention to the speaker. A base 5% chance is recommended to the referee. Unless prepared to avoid such attention—or to control the demon—the demon will thereupon immediately kill by whatever means are most expeditious the one pronouncing his name."

And one of the things that comes through is the fact that demons hunt the Astral quite often. This means that the demons are always on the hunt for humanity through the Astral plane. And this brings up a very important point & that is that the Astral is also available to the Empire of the Petal Throne rpg! How did I come to this conclusion?! Reading through an OSR Grimoire blog post on the Astral 's Baron Greystone's comment from August 23, 2020; "Also please note that one of the Undying Wizards from Barker's Tekumel is also named Fu Shi. He participates in other-planar meetings between important political figures in the novel "The Man of Gold."" What does this mean?! 
Well reading closer into it. It could potentially mean that Abyssal demons haunt the Astral plane of Tekumel! 

This means that the magus priests of Barker's Tekumel are subject to the triple threat of the Abyss's attention, the depredations of Chaos, & the fact that Abyssal demons are tracking them through the Astral. And this isn't the only issue that the magus priests have to face. The planes of Tekumel are very active & many alien as well as god forms inhabit them. See Dr.Barker's Man of Gold for more interaction on Tekumel's planes. 
This also brings up questions about the role of the Abyss in Tekumel's planes? There's plenty of fodder for using the Astral within EPT's Tekumel's adventures & the adventure factor that a demon could be lurking around the corner. 

1d15 Random Encounters Table of The Astral Raiders Of The Deep Astral & The Old Solar System For Your Old School Campaigns

Deep in the Astral seas & spaces two groups fight over the bounty of local quantum eddies & space warps in the outer skein of creation. Tons of space debris & asteroids tumble into the local astral space from our solar system offering raw materials that  The Astral Raiders shape & mine for their colonies. The  flotsam & jetsom of the Astral becomes the bounty for their society, colonies, & is used to create their own ether ships.



There are other far more greedy alien eyes then these however in the deep astral. The Mi Go seek many of the semi precious ores for their own nefarious & insane purposes. The wars between these two species has been legendary & thousands of dead corpses from both sides litter the astral. Ever on guard with their crystal swords & their unique spells such as astral tether. 

The raiders spend years coring out rooms, galleries, & entire cities from these asteroids to create their legendary colony ether ships. Organs, flesh, & more from ancient giants, demons, gods, & monsters that have been prisoners for untold eons are harvested to serve the alien purposes of the raiders & create the strange control & propulsion systems for these ether asteroid ships. Some of these are miles long and hold thousands of the raiders peoples, these are the targets for the Mi Go shock troopers who raid the asteroid ships for brains, weird alien semi precious alien fuels & minerals.



The Mi Go are prime opportunistic beings of the highest order although alien & twisted as insane things who serve lesser god things & beings of the Outer Void are. They take full advantage of any ether ships they come across setting their assault swarms to attack, raid, and sack any astral ships they find. The Astral Raiders have responded with a chess like war strategy of move & counter move over the eons sacking astral Mi Go bases where & when they find them. There  has been thousands of years of cold & hot astral bush fire wars over the centuries.
To this end there are millions of astral raider colony & ether ship ruins floating in the void of astral space waiting for adventurers and others to explore their remains for relics & treasures.

1d15 Random Astral Raiders Ether Ship Encounters Table 

1. The burnt remains of a former colony ship of the astral raiders now the home to a few scattered colonists. The place holds machinery worth 60,000 gold pieces for air, food, and water creation but the struggling colonists are currently unaware of the treasure they sit on. 
2. A fully functioning temple to the undead goddess of the Astral Raiders which will offer healing, lodging, etc for a small donation of 5 pints of blood and breath. The place also can train PC's in the healing arts. 
3. The ruins of a raiding ship which is floating derelict in the void, it is home to 6 dangerous astral parasites and their hosts. There is artwork and relics worth 7000 gold pieces here for the taking. 
4. A small ship is covered in astral fungus & it will infect anyone approaching the thing if it can. The whole ship is part of an alien fungal hive mind. 
5. This astral raider ruin is the home to an active green dragon of exceptionally nasty personality that conducts raids on a nearby Mi Go hive on behalf of his astral raider employers. She could use any help offered and will split treasure that is taken she hardly needs any and is a dangerous wizard in her own right named Yarggautth 
6. This ruin is actually a human trading post run by a lich who trades in alien relics & information. He is lost in his own time & space continuum & has its protracted war with the Mi Go. He offers 70% trade for certain relics of a Yithian nature. 
7. A mercenary E.D.D.Y cyborg unit named Charles that is a 6th level scout for a group of technologically oriented astral raiders. It moves across the plane on a rig of its own design. It is a dangerous, humorous beast that loves the ichor of the Mi Go. They hate this thing with a dangerous passion. The feeling is mutual. It will trade information and violence for its cause. 
8. Mi Go trap, this rich relic ether ship looks fantastic but its far too good to be true. There are 1d10 Mi Go warriors who are in stasis and will swarm out deploying a nano weapon which a save or die dissembler plague. Only a cure light spell will halt this horror. There are 20,000 Mi Go relics that can be re purposed by wizards familiar with the biological/organic technologies of the Mi-Go. 
9. A dead ether spins in the void and has nothing. 
10. Sealed in crystal is a spawn of Cthulhu locked in its own tomb until the stars are right again. 
11. Demons of Saturn hunt the astral for the souls of any raiders they can find. They are armed with forks and shields. Ice wands hand from their right flanks with 1d10. 
12. A black slave ship of the Moon Things plies its way through the astral silently on its way to the black side of the Earth's Moon's astral reflection. 
13. There are strange glowing rocks from another universe moving across the astral currents sub quantum straits. Save vs wands or suffer a polymorph effect. These rocks are worth 7000 to a wizard as ingredients for a polymorph potion or 1d20. 
14. 1d10 astral hags come in for the attack! They want the souls of victims to trade their sisters in the astral Gloom overlap in one of the many floating trade posts where the demons and worse trade the souls of others! 
15. 1d20 astral raider asteroid ships on the raid! There will be 1d200 warriors aboard along with their women warriors and young apprentices who are learning the arts of violence & spiritual violence of their people! 

God walks lightly in the gardens of a cold, dark star,
Knowing not the dust that gathers in His garments' fold;
God signs Him with the clay, marks Him with the mould,
Walking in the fields unsunned of a sad, lost war,
In a star long cold.

God treads brightly where the bones of unknown things lie,
Pale with His splendor as the frost in a moon-bleached place;
God sees the tombs by the light of His face,
He shudders at the runes writ thereon, and His shadow on the sky
Shudders hugely in space.

God talks briefly with His armies of the tomb-born worm,
God holds parley with the grey worm and pale, avid moth:
Their mouths have eaten all, but the worm is wroth
With a dark hunger still, and he murmurs harm
With the murmuring moth.

God turns Him heavenward in haste from a death-dark star,
But His robes are assoilèd by the dust of unknown things dead;
The grey worm follows creeping, and the pale moth has fed
Couched in a secret golden fold of His broad-trained cimar
Like a doom unsaid.
After Armageddon by Clark Ashton Smith

The Astral Plane As Sword & Sorcery Hyperspace To The 'Old Solar System' Campaign Setting

"There were many shadows in the palace of Augusthes, About the silver throne that had blackened beneath the invisible passing of ages, they fell from pillar and broken roof and fretted window in ever-shifting multiformity. Seeming the black, fantastic spectres of doom and desolation, they moved through the palace in a gradual, grave, and imperceptible dance, whose music was the change and motion of suns and moons. They were long and slender, like all other shadows, before the early light, and behind the declining sun; squat and intense beneath the desert noontide, and faint with the withered moon; and in the interlunar darkness, they were as myriad tongues hidden behind the shut and silent lips of night."
The Shadows Clark Ashton Smith

I've been going over some of my notes from past games this weekend & was looking into the Astral Plane. Specifically, the OD&D Greyhawk Astral Spell which got my juices flowing thinking about the Astral plane as sword & sorcery Outer Space. So that's how I'm going to play it.

The Astral plane is going to become my hyperspace for OSR games. Sure its still going to be the plane of the mind buts going to be full of abandoned space stations, giant behemoth space hulks, many other strange monolithic alien mega structures. All of this is inspired by Jack Kirby's Negative Zone photomontages. 

Here are are hundreds of alien Astral planes filled with the thoughts, concepts, & artifacts of a billions of strange life form's minds. This is not a place to be taken lightly for travelers can run into demons from one of a myriad of half formed Hells.

"There now followed a hideous whirl through frigid space, endlessly up and eastward toward the gaunt grey flanks of those impassable mountains beyond which Leng was said to lie. Far above the clouds they flew, till at last there lay beneath them those fabled summits which the folk of Inganok have never seen, and which lie always in high vortices of gleaming mist. Carter beheld them very plainly as they passed below, and saw upon their topmost peaks strange caves which made him think of those on Ngranek; but he did not question his captor about these things when he noticed that both the man and the horse-headed shantak appeared oddly fearful of them, hurrying past nervously and shewing great tension until they were left far in the rear.
The shantak now flew lower, revealing beneath the canopy of cloud a grey barren plain whereon at great distances shone little feeble fires. As they descended there appeared at intervals lone huts of granite and bleak stone villages whose tiny windows glowed with pallid light. And there came from those huts and villages a shrill droning of pipes and a nauseous rattle of crotala which proved at once that Inganok’s people are right in their geographick rumours. For travellers have heard such sounds before, and know that they float only from the cold desert plateau which healthy folk never visit; that haunted place of evil and mystery which is Leng.
Around the feeble fires dark forms were dancing, and Carter was curious as to what manner of beings they might be; for no healthy folk have ever been to Leng, and the place is known only by its fires and stone huts as seen from afar. Very slowly and awkwardly did those forms leap, and with an insane twisting and bending not good to behold; so that Carter did not wonder at the monstrous evil imputed to them by vague legend, or the fear in which all dreamland holds their abhorrent frozen plateau. As the shantak flew lower, the repulsiveness of the dancers became tinged with a certain hellish familiarity; and the prisoner kept straining his eyes and racking his memory for clues to where he had seen such creatures before"
The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath By H.P. Lovecraft

This is also the abode of the Mi Go who use the Astral as a short cut between interplanetary destinations. They may have a brain cylinder or two  with them as they go about on their unending alien agendas. Leigh Brackett's No Man's Land In Space is a perfect fit for this alien asteroid bit beyond Mars. The asteroids rubbing the edges of the Astral plane connecting the dangerous edges of reality with the beyond of the Astral has a certain appeal.


 

Mi Go mini  by Fenris Games

In the gray expansive darkness there are thousands of things waiting for prey as the Astral plane rubs against the skin of the frozen Outer Darkness.

1d20 Random Astral Hyperspace Encounters Table

1. A giant twelve mile long alien machine rusted but with a myriad of strange creatures crawling across its surface. There are 1d10 strange giant alien crab like monsters. 
2. There is the severed head of a long dead & mummified ancient god thing with thousands of mushroom like growths growing out of every end of the remains. 
3. An a giant alien flying saucer with hundreds remains of long fossilized passengers, the thing is over six miles long. 
4. There are thousands of giant fire fly like humanoid insects mating or killing on another. Spells and vast telekinetic powers are being used in some sort of weird rites & forbidden rituals. 
5. With a block of ember like material a star spawn of Ctlhlu slumbers & sends thousands of insane rantings of dream like cries into the grey. 
6. A huge alien device quietly hums to itself signaling some ancient & deep Astral god in its own weird mathematical languages. Hundreds of Greys in space suits crawl over its surface anchoring in mini saucers or worse. 
7. A huge alien city block is covered with a strange grey like web material & phase spiders hunt the streets for some ancient prey they have yet to find. There is treasure worth a cool 70,000 gold pieces for the taking if you can get past the spiders.
8. Giant silver ships hover and wink out of existence leaving their garbage of gold and silver worth hundreds of pieces of silver but how will you get it from here. 
9. A god's corpse dreams in death & tries to change its own reality with magick power not realizing it is long dead. There are hundreds of fire work like magical effects going off across the giant corpse over five miles long. 
10. Thousands of astral raiders sit on the body of an astral whale guiding some alien agenda that only they know. 
11. A alien raiding party of weird astral wanderers flies through the void on the power of their minds looking for the nightmare prey they have pursued through eight realities and ancient planes. 
12. A rainbow time storm passes through taking 1d20 years off of the life of a victim unless they save vs death.  
13. 1d4 giant astral whales pass by on an alien mission for a dead god thing whose mind has taken them over. There is a nearby temple where alien adventurers are meeting. 
14. An Elder Thing sky ship moves across the Astral on a mission of desperation and mercy for one of their deep Astral colonies. 
15. A time traveler and his machine have become stuck in time amber & float with a cargo worth  1d200X4  gold pieces. There are dangerous alien beings guarding it. 
16. There are 1d20 astral parasites crawling across the body of giant space hulk 5 miles long & they have consumed the souls of the crew. This thing can not make port or many will die. 
17. A giant stopped urn has turned up with a strange demon bound within the thing. The demon is a demon of hunger and requires a brand new host or six. 
18. Giant car sized diamond the size of a small car with a demon trapped within it. 
19. An astral black hole that opens deep into the real universe with a trapped gate keeper with its center. 
20. There is a minor demon lord within a glass coffin who wishes freedom in exchange for a magick favor.