The Razor's Edge of the Wasteland - Cha'alt/Godbound Campaign Session Report

The player's party went through the wastes of California on their way trekking the two hundred & seventy seven miles to the Grand Canyon in my  Cha'alt/Godbound game. They dealt with a flock of  desert harpies! And it took them a good amount of time to deal with the flock while their hover skifts caravan side tracked. The party is on its way back to the city state of  Rex Harenae Crawler In Toxix (King Sand Crawler The Toxic) from Fort Hope.


As the party came across a minor aspect of the Cha'alt rift they managed to acquire two starving hireling mercenaries on hover bikes. I've got to use the Cha'alt rule book to roll em up but I've got their basic stats down & made em up on the fly using the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide. I'll finish them up for next week's game. These guys were made up on the fly during a random  encounter roll.




The dragon born nobles had the party camp in the ruins of another town along the way & found the place completely empty. The whole place was abandoned but it wasn't clear why?! The party quickly moved on but were a bit paranoid after dealing with the location. The next town wasn't quite as empty as the last one. There was fighting & a giant horde of zombies (the sorry remains of the town's former inhabitants ) animated by some strange occult power.  At the center of the horde there are was a rival faction of adventurers fighting for their lives.



The player's party saved the rival adventurers from the horde of undead but it soon became evident things are not as they appear. The town's bank suffered from a magical implosion. The adventurers investigated the ruin within their was a huge platinum cylinder cracked! There was strange metal with lots of people trapped within it but still living. They were caught in the magical implosion.
The metal cylinder was part of cache that was captured by the rivals when the adventurers were summoned to Earth. They captured a cargo of Azoth from Cha'alt and hid it within an abandoned mine near the town. The 'treasure' was found by some of the towns folk & the cylinder was cracked to gain access to the 'riches' within causing an occult implosion.

The cylinders were created using the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master Guide first edition. These cylinders count as artifacts & the rules from the DMG are perfect are generating these dangerous artifacts.




The material from the Adventurer, Conqueror, King rpg Heroic Fantasy Handbook added to this enabled the final pieces of the Swords & Sorcery formula.So now the PCs are on their way to deal with the dragon but also now the adventurers have noted the cache of Azoth. But the rival adventurers were banished by the dragon royals.


The Azoth is produced when the Cha'alt warp interacts with the Earth. On Cha'alt the Azoth is used to refine & process  xanthium-183. 
Now next week the PC's will be taking a trip into  the dragon's den & learn the true extent of the darkness of Cha'alt!

A Dragon in the Ointment - Godbound/Cha'alt Play Session Recap Part II

Things got a little weirder in my on going  Cha'alt/Godbound Rpg game!
Well, sometimes players love to throw a spanner into the works using one of  my wife's idioms! The players seized on one small aspect of our play sessions from about a month ago. This bloomed into an entire night of campaign catch up & play! So the wizard & his war machine ala Thundar The Barbarian is now going to attack the city state of the dragon! The players took one small adventure  thread & completely ran with it! And we played it out!


My players instead spent the night gathering information on the supply trains coming into Fort Hope from Rex Harenae Crawler In Toxix (King Sand Crawler The Toxic). They had encounters with the refugee train & found out about the Dryadale raiders who attacked & completely decimated the train! Rex Harenae's son Count Eul' Zu is a dragon born straight outta of  Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu by  Omer Joel, & Alexander Macris.


Now the party is on a supply train running straight into the den of the dragon. The party is gonna be riding shot gun & watching for raiders who are gonna be coming straight from the random tables of Cha'alt itself. But I've got a few tricks up my sleeves these days thanks to Venger Satanis & Jeff Talanian. There are several Hyperborean mercenary factions already operating inside the city state of Rex Harenae Crawler In Toxix .

But its gonna be the a bit of a sort of megadungeon when I begin to design out the mega dungeon city of the serpent men that the dragon king has settled into. For this I was reading through A Paladin in Citadel's blog post on Dungeon Module D1: Descent Into the Depths of the Earth By Gary Gygax. I pulled out my copy of the classic module & began to thumb through & he's right! Let me summerize;"This post really needs to be subtitled "A Megadungeon Template."  I say that because the Drow module series is the best example I can find of a TSR-published adventure that provides the sort of megadungeon I would want to run."  I read through D1 & he's utterly right but this quick reread got me thinking about one of my all time favorite ACK's modules the ACK's version of  Dwimmermount. 

I've decided to locate my campaign's version of Dwimmermount down in South America specifically in Argentina. The German like town of Muntburg situated itself right into the mountain plateau towns. As the megadungeon wound its reality into the surrounding underground & underworld. The whole of the country is experiencing a bit of a gold rush with its appearance. Powerful factions within the dungeon have been out maneuvering the Hyperborean influence within South America & Mexico. These are not simply mega dungeons but fully functioning power houses unto themselves! 

They know about the dark influence of Zoth &  xanthium-183. These dark beings are playing a very dangerous game as Cha'alt wave pulses & circles the Earth. Its EMP effects continue to play havoc with the Earth's technologies sending the Earth's technologies into the early Nineteenth century. Another mega dungeon that I'm thinking of pulling out is  ASE1: Anomalous Subsurface Environment By Patrick Wetmore . This mega dungeon could easily be somehow attached to Dwimmermount via teleportation pods or the like. I've had a ton of experience running   ASE1: Anomalous Subsurface Environment By Patrick Wetmore  & it seems perfectly suited for this campaign! 



All of this is gonna tie back into me using the ACK's  Heroic Fantasy  Handbook for many of the monster templates to give the level of violence & OSR weirdness that's been happening in this campaign! I personally blame Venger Satanis for this!


More coming up soon & I'm gonna go into how Cha'alt & ACK's play with one another! 

Matters of State & Dragon - Dragonic NPC - Rex Harenae Crawler In Toxix - The Blue Dragon of The Grand Canyon

So last night I was thumbing through my Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual & thinking about dragons & power vaccums. Dragons are huge engines of change for whatever area they settle in.
Out comes my Monster Manual & I settle onto the Blue Dragon. I love blue dragons! Here's a quick break down on them from the Forgotten Realms Fandom.com website (this site came up a while back & its pretty comprehensive even though I don't use the FR's setting);"Blue dragons, also known as storm dragons,^[6] were orderly creatures and are unusual for chromatics in that they keep fairly well-ordered, hierarchical societies. They were more likely to be mocking and manipulative than outrightly cruel or murderous to 'lesser' creatures, aided greatly by their natural talents for hallucination. They were infamous for tricking desert travelers into drinking sand or going miles out of their way to avoid nonexistent dust basins. Their breath weapon was a line of lightning or a large electrical discharge." 


Monster Manual page 31 Blue Dragon. Copyright & Trademark Wizards of the Coast.

Fantastic but for my Cha'alt/Godbound Rpg I just need an NPC dragon that's something a bit different. Not too much departure away from the classic source material but just a wee bit. So I started thumbing through my Adventurer,Conqueror, King books. Then I remembered seeing dragons in the ACK's  Heroic Fantasy  Handbook.
The dragon generating rules within the Heroic Fantasy Handbook have an interesting wrinkle the dragon elementally adapts to the environment that they settle in. Hmm I wanna keep the traditional blue dragon but adapt it to the NPC role in the campaign.



Recently I wrote about the mysterious serpent men city that had been uncovered by the Cha'alt wave within the Grand Canyon that rolled through the Earth. There was a power vaccum there & given such a mega dungeon structure an ancient blue dragon has plane shifted his own desert city & moved into the 'abandoned' serpent men city.
 
Rex Harenae Crawler In Toxix (King Sand Crawler The Toxic) is an ancient blue dragon of almost god like stature. He rules over a large 50,000 human & near human population. He's a king that is worshipped as a god. He is a very contemplative ruler & a renowned necromancer. Rex Harenae crawler lives in the ancient serpentman city but has a thriving metropolis 8 miles away from the Grand Canyon with a large desert palace. Rex has a love of power & treasure but treasure to him includes his human subjects. Anything harming one of them will have to answer to him. He has several powerful allies within his domain. A Hopi god of death  that rests within the canyon is fine with this arrangement because the dragon keeps people away from his realm. He is also on excellent terms with several Cha'alt royals including several princes. 

Fontes toxicus is a city ruled by a duly elected human council with the dragon having the overruling power . The desert oasis is tourist & trade destination with several natural aqueducts & a large reservoir of water in huge underground holding tanks. This is actually his 'treasure' because the water is used in large gardens & nature preserves for the human population. Rex Harenae Crawler is an ancient dragon with blue copper scales, notoriously large & vicious claws, & a breath that smells of electricity or ozone depending upon the dragon's mood. Make no mistake Rex Harenae Crawler is an evil dragon. His hoard is made up of the spoils of several wars with Dryadales kings (Elven kings) & a protracted war with a particularly nasty Dryadale arch wizard. It is rumored that he was taught necromancy by a Draydale lich who also added his own riches to the dragon's hoard. Rex Harenae Crawler In Toxix has a love of all things mechanical & in particularly objets d'art mechanical. Rex is fascinated by the workings of machines & this knowledge has proven invaluable during times of war. He has a castle at the edge of his realm in the desert where he as several workshops & keeps a large cache of mecha & other mechancial treasures from a raid he conducted several centuries ago after a slice of Heaven was caught within an area of Fairyland. Right now the rumor is that he is studying K'nyanian & serpent men aquisitutions that have come into his possession with his recent take over part of the Grand Canyon.
Rex Harenae Crawler half human projeny over see military & security throughout his realm while dealing with some of their father's day to day issues. They also are overseeing the harvesting of the purple power crystals that grow in the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

William Bell's photograph of the Grand Canyon,
 taken in 1872 as part of the Wheeler expedition

Rex Harenae Crawler In Toxix is thinking of employing a small army of adventurers to over see the exploration of his holdings within the abandoned serpent men city. He is convinced that the dungeon workings may not be as abandoned as they seem. His senses are extremely powerful & well beyond the ken of humanity but even they can not pierce the entire gloom of the darkness. He worries about the safety of himself, his city, & his subjects.
Anyways I wrote up Rex Harenae Crawler In Toxix using The Heroic Fantasy Handbook & for Rex's draconic projeny I used the  Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu by  Omer Joel, & Alexander Macris.