Fangs, Falsehood, & The Rise of the Serpents Doug Niles N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God & The Hundred Year War Campaign

 "Who fares to find the sunset ere it fly,

Turning to light and fire the further west,
Shall have the veils of twilight for his guest,
And all the falling of an ashen sky.

On lands he shall not know, the splendor lies—
A pharos on some alienated shore,
In foam and purple lost forevermore,
Where dreams are kindled in remoter eyes."

Ashes of Sunset  (1922) 
by Clark Ashton Smith

"Terror by night! The village of Orlane is dying. Once a small and thriving community, Orlane has become a maze of locked doors and frightened faces. Strangers are shunned, trade has withered. Rumors flourish, growing wilder with each retelling. Terrified peasants flee their homes, abandoning their farms with no explanation. Others simply disappear. . .

No one seems to know the cause of the decay -- why are there no clues? Who skulks through the twisted shadows of the night? Who or what is behind the doom that has overtaken the village? It will take a brave and skillful band of adventurers to solve the dark riddle of Orlane!"

So I'm dusting of N1: "Against The Cult of the Reptile God" (1982), by Douglas Niles, for a moment as a thought excecise. My players last night were saying that their familiar with the 
 Dark Albion rpg setting, Dark Albion: Cults of Chaos, & the Lion & Dragon Rpg. The background of this rpg is the historical Rose War. But since they know of the historical events. We're going to twist things up a bit using a classic TSR module;"N1: "Against The Cult of the Reptile God" (1982), by Douglas Niles, is the first adventure in a novice-level series for AD&D. It was written in February 1982, so it was probably published in the first half of the year." 

This campaign was a thought excercise using OSR resources to run a Hundred Years War campaign in a Dark Europe. I ran this campaign from 2017 through 2019 using Dark Ablion, Cults of Chaos, & finally Lion & Dragon.
This campaign started with 

Blood, Thunder, Beer, & The Hundred Years War - Campaign Commentary Set up 

Europe was changing fast & the occult forces of Law & Chaos along with the supernatural raged in the background;"The Hundred Years' War was a series of conflicts in Western Europe from 1337 to 1453, waged between the House of Plantagenet and its cadet House of Lancaster, rulers of the Kingdom of England, and the House of Valois over the right to rule the Kingdom of France. "

Edward as a Knight of the Garter, 1453, illustration from the Bruges Garter Book, British Library

Imagine if you will that in 1343 'The Prince of Wales' faced down a threat to his throne during  the Hundred Years' War through the machinations of an inhuman threat taken on by his agents ( the adventurers) in the Welsh town of Orlane. The Black Prince acts through his agents the PC;

 "Edward of Woodstock, known to history as the Black Prince (15 June 1330 – 8 June 1376),^[1][a] was the eldest son of King Edward III of England, and the heir to the English throne. He died before his father and so his son, Richard II, succeeded to the throne instead. Edward nevertheless earned distinction as one of the most successful English commanders during the Hundred Years' War, being regarded by his English contemporaries as a model of chivalry and one of the greatest knights of his age.^[2] He is on the other hand remembered in France for his well documented brutality and the massacres he ordered.^[3]

Edward was made Duke of Cornwall, the first English dukedom, in 1337. He was guardian of the kingdom in his father's absence in 1338, 1340, and 1342. He was created Prince of Wales in 1343 and knighted by his father at La Hogne in 1346."

At this point the Black Prince isn't sure if his court has been infiltrated by serpent men/liszard men shape shifting turn coats. His advisors know of some of the influence that the witch covens & former reptile cults have in the area but those are merely the prattlings of old men & the local Welsh. Right?! 

Edward of Woodstock already got his hands full in many of the fields of battle, politics, and the state of England. The black prince has heard of some of the reports of a hersey. His agents know some of this from events from Cults, Chaos, & Dungeons Design Amid War - More D1 Descent Into The Earth By Gary Gygax Commentary. 

This version of N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God By Douglas Niles takes a good deal of its Lovecraftian thunder from Children of the Night by Robert E. Howard.

"Humans they were, of a sort, though I did not consider them so. They were short and stocky, with broad heads too large for their scrawny bodies. Their hair was snaky and stringy, their faces broad and square, with flat noses, hideously slanted eyes, a thin gash for a mouth, and pointed ears. They wore the skins of beasts, as did I, but these hides were but crudely dressed. They bore small bows and flint-tipped arrows, flint knives and cudgels. And they conversed in a speech as hideous as themselves, a hissing, reptilian speech that filled me with dread and loathing.

They are frequently described as snakes or having snake-like qualities. So are the old serpent kings rising again in the area?! The hills, standing stones, lonely moorlands that lead to the underground fairyland like world may have far more sinister connotations then the PC's realize. 

The adventure will balance out with the inclusion of a showdown in a "traditional" dungeon at the end of the module.And given the Welsh headlands around the area this is going to be quite the challenge. 



The troglodyte are an excellent minion link up between the serpent men & the lizard men of N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God By Douglas Niles. The dimensional byways & doors used by the ancient serpent men & Elves 
 make an excellent bridge gap between a traditional Greyhawk campaign & a more modern adventure.


A better question is once N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God By Douglas Niles ends do others in the vicinity bear the Lovecraftian taint of Children of the Night? Will the Black Prince then station the player's PC's in the area to act in his stead as a reward & will the hills remain silent? As the drone of bloodshed & war rage across England will the shadow of the serpents rise again?


But the big question comes at what happened to the the Cymric people in the Dark Albion setting if we N1: "Against The Cult of the Reptile God"? Was there far more to their wandering & displacement?! I think so. Given the idea that maybe they were attacked thousands of years ago from all sides. Imagine if you will that after the defeat of their former Elven masters in a weakened state the hated enemies the serpent folk used this opportunity to strike at them. Here's where SERPENTINE - Oldskull Serpent Folk by Kent David Kelly comes in really handy. As a displaced people even from their own homeland the Cymric are not going to stand idly by while ancient enemies dispoil their homeland. 

The french providence of  Averoigne by Clark Ashton Smith has quite a bit of experience with these serpents/reptiles. 

And this is where RPGPundit Presents: The Old School Companion 1 comes in handy to fill the gaps. This isn't the only royal though watching  the goings on of the PC's. We'll get to him soon coming up next. 

More Notes on Adding A Clark Ashton Smith Campaign Veneer To B3 Palace of the Silver Princess (Basic) By Tom Moldvay, & Jean Wells

Tonight its been a busy day thinking over the crater that DM Steve has left in my collective brain about his own experiences with B3 Palace of the Silver Princess by Tom Moldvay & Jean Wells. We've been talking about using the adventure as a sort of showcase for an almost Ravenloft style Fey romp into the The Shadowfell.



We've been going over some of the particulars tonight & how there could be rival groups of adventurers from different worlds entering into B3. If you've been following some of the ideas that put forward a few days ago in this blog entry.  I wondering if I should go the route of Tim Brannan's take on Rpg Pundit's Cults of Chaos? Expanding the empire of elves & Fey to help reflect the mythological nature of B3 Palace of the Silver Princess by Tom Moldvay & Jean Wells. I'm only now just starting to get the barest bones of a mini campaign together.



The real trick is gonna be connecting all of this with the plane of Nighmares which one of the players has an incredible fondness for. I'm thinking that the kingdom of Haven might be trapped between these two realms. In fact if it was up to me I'd connect both B3 Palace of the Silver Princess & X2 Castle Amber (Château d' Amberville) By Tom Moldvay.

I know that this module is heavily inspired by the works of Clark Ashton Smith, & once again I'm reminded exactly how powerful Stephen Amber (La Tombe Étienne D'Amberville)  really is. The whole adventure module reeks of the stuff of nightmares.
"Trapped in the mysterious Castle Amber. you find yourselves cut off from the world you know. The castle is fraught with peril. Members of the strange Amber family, some insane, some merely deadly, lurk around every corner. Somewhere in the castle is the key to your escape, but can you survive long enough to find it?"
I'm reminded once again of Clark Ashton Smith's Averoigne stories: 

• Beast of Averoigne, The (1933)
• Colossus of Ylourgne, The (1933)
• Disinterment of Venus, The (1934)
• Enchantress of Sylaire, The (1941)
• End of the Story, The (1930)
• Holiness of Azédarc, The (1933)
• Maker of Gargoyles, The (1932)
• Mandrakes, The (1933)
• Mother of Toads (1934)
• Rendezvous in Averoigne, A (1931)
• Satyr, The (1931) [Variant Conclusion to "The Satyr"]

What Clark Ashton Smith's Averoigne stories do is set the tone for canonically for the modules & it provides the perfect excuse to get B3 into shape. All of this ties directly into the very nature of B3 The Silver Princess into line for a campaign still taking into account the weirdness of such a campaign. Events that surround such an undertaking will have both the nightmare but hard core fans. The sum of the parts of such a campaign is greater then the parts that are presented in the modules themselves. 

Alien Weirdness In X2 Castle Amber By Tom Moldvay As Old School Campaign Set Up

Its Saturday six thirty A.M. in the morning, we've come through a rather nasty Nor Easter here in Connecticut & most of New England. The wife is quietly sleeping & we've had a relatively good time of it compared to some folks in New England. I busted out the Clark Ashton Smith again this time his "Captain Volmar" sequence of novels offers a stark contrast to 'the devil may' care attitude of Edgar Rice Burroughs's characters  that's been crossing my literary palette as of late. 
""Marooned in Andromeda", the first entry in his "Captain Volmar" sequence, was the cover story in the October 1930 issue of Wonder Stories. illustrated by Frank R. Paul" 

 In my mind the "Captain Volmar" sequence of novels by CAS take place in the same universe as his Mars stories on a post Colonial Mars with its fading grandeur & strange alien Martians quietly watching the humans colonists arriving. They secretly know that their planet wide god will be waking up in the eons to come.
Vulthoom is a part of the greater Great Old One seen in both Dweller in the Gulf, The (1933) &  Seedling of Mars or The Planet Entity.  All of CAS's Martian sequence slot into his  "Captain Volmar" stories nicely giving a deadly far future timeline & one that I've coupled with events in my 'Old Earth' campaign sequence.
The commercial metropolis of Mars - Igarth, with its 'old quarter' has in my mind stood in the long shadow of Edgar Rice Burroughs Helium. CAS's Mars material was more compelling because it brought a back alley alieness to the Martian landscape.

• Dweller in the Gulf, The (1933)
• Mnemoka (1955) Fragment
• Vaults of Yoh-Vombis, The (1931)
• Vulthoom (1935)
• Seedling of Mars or The Planet Entity (1931)
  (An alternative background to the proceeding 4 stories]

At first this doesn't seem likely that the events of the "Captain Volmar" or the Mars cycles would have anything to do with a Dungeons & Dragons style game. But this Clark Ashton Smith given the length & breath of the man's imagination its not hard to connect the puzzle pieces here. Puzzle pieces that could connect back into some of my other ideas. Imagine if you will that your adventurers wander into Tom Moldvay's Clark Ashton Smith's love letter adventure X2: Castle Amber (Chateau d' Amberville) during the Thirty Years War.
"Trapped in the mysterious Castle Amber, you find yourselves cut off form the world you know. The castle is fraught with peril. Members of the strange Amber family, some insane, some merely deadly, lurk around every corner. Somewhere in the castle is the key to your escape, but can you survive long enough to find it? "

Not only does the party find itself at the mercy of the forces of the Amber clan but its also possible that they might have their backs against the events of the Bohemian Revolt.

"Without heirs, Emperor Matthias sought to assure an orderly transition during his lifetime by having his dynastic heir (the fiercely Catholic Ferdinand of Styria, later Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor) elected to the separate royal thrones of Bohemia and Hungary.^[30] Some of the Protestant leaders of Bohemia feared they would be losing the religious rights granted to them by Emperor Rudolf II in his Letter of Majesty (1609). They preferred the Protestant Frederick V, elector of the Palatinate (successor of Frederick IV, the creator of the Protestant Union).^[31] However, other Protestants supported the stance taken by the Catholics,^[32] and in 1617, Ferdinand was duly elected by the Bohemian Estates to become the crown prince, and automatically upon the death of Matthias, the next king of Bohemia."



We know that Stephen Amber was dabbling in forbidden magicks but perhaps he had stumbled upon an ancient Elven gateway deep within the catacombs of Château d'Amberville. Could some of the sources of his forbidden magicks in fact be the Great Old One Vulthoom?The Averoigne stories of Clark Ashton Smith use many traditional mythological elements in twisted & Weird Tales ways. Could the Fey creatures seen  throughout X2: Castle Amber (Chateau d' Amberville) actually be merely the Fairyland root extensions of the forbidden plant god?
I've used both Dark Albion & Cults of Chaos's OSR tool kits to set up & flesh out much of the backgrounds of the various cults & what not within my own home games. Those venturing into Chateau d' Amberville are not simply risking the encounters in the adventure location but the forces of both the Protestant & Catholic churches. Anyone wandering into Chateau d' Amberville is risking the time lost curse of the place & perhaps its forbidden weirdness just outside its walls.

X2: Castle Amber (Chateau d' Amberville) is a fairly timeless module & gives the DM a solid module to customize to their own home campaigns. The Chateau d' Amberville is steeped deeply in the occult & dangerous timelessness of the chaotic nature of Fairyland already. Blood thirst pagan cults outside its walls & dangerous fairies within its woods make
X2: Castle Amber (Chateau d' Amberville) highly adaptive. The fact that the module is connected with Clark Ashton Smith is a bonus.



The Edgar Allen Poe events of the module could trap a wide variety of time lost travelers & adventurers within its mad Fairyland location making X2 an adventure campaign point. This could move PC's from the Lion & Dragon retroclone game over into the events of Dark Albion with the forces of Fairy making a chess game of the player's PC's.


We'll get into the hows & why's of Fairyland's alien chaos cult in our next blog entry!

"The feet of animals, if not of men, had continued the path they were following, and had made an easy way into the wood of fabulous evil. The drooping boughs enfolded them with arms of soft verdure, and seemed to draw them in; and shafts of yellow sunshine rifted the high trees, to aureole the lovely secret lilies that bloomed about the darkly writhing coils of enormous roots. The trees were twisted and knotted, were heavy with centurial incrustations of bark, were humped and misshapen with the growth of unremembered years; but there was an air of antique wisdom about them, together with a tranquil friendliness. Adele exclaimed with delight; and neither she nor Olivier was aware of anything sinister or doubtful in the unison of exquisite beauty and gnarled quaintness which the old forest offered to them." Satyr, The (1931)