All We See Is An OSR Dream Within A Dream - Laurence & Heard - Ben Laurnence's Through Ultan's Door & Bruce Heard's Calidar Campaign Setting Part II

 Skyships trading with other realms, the dreamlands of the weird intruding on other realities, barbarian hordes threatening the realms, and even Lovecraftian weirdness seeping into reality. This is campaign that was started back in June you can read about it here on the blog. 

Today I sat down with DM Steve & DM Iris at lunch for a bit of a powow over the lingering campaign that was started back in June of 2021. Scheduling being what it is with work & such not much materialized. But its gotten me thinking about both Calidar &  Ben Laurnence's Through Ultan's Door dreamlands. 

Is there several problems with Calidar?! No unless  you count the fact that the product line is extremely expansive. And so its a question of concentrating on one aspect of Bruce Heard's campaign setting. 

DM Iris has had a number of wrinkles that have come from real life because of Covid & the resulting pandemic.

Calidar is high fantasy with the knobs turned up to elven and then some with elements of Steampunk thrown into the mix as well. Skyships are the norm & Calidar as a series works very well. Personally, we'll be concentrating on series two & series three of Calidar.   Calidar's sky ships have been trading their way through the dreamlands for decades. And there's been more then a bit of friction between the wizard power blocks over some of the trade opportunities. These are going to be regular D&D characters & not Godbound BTW. 

Meanwhile, Ben Laurence's series of adventures  has moved on quite a bit & it means quite a bit of reading on DM Steve & myself's part. And give the amount of sheer world building Ben does its gonna be interesting. 

This campaign is gonna end up someplace between High Fantasy & Sword & Sorcery in my estimation. Ben Laurence's worlds are weird, dangerous, and filled with lots of opportunities. 

All in the Whisper of The Mind Session Report - Mind Flayer Variants - The Appearance of the Bothrians A Mindflayer Variant (Well At Least In Our OSR Campaigns)

In a lost land, that only dreams have known,
Where flaming suns walk naked and alone;
Among horizons bright as molten brass,
And glowing heavens like furnaces of glass,
It rears with dome and tower manifold,
Rich as a dawn of amarant and gold,
Or gorgeous as the Phoenix, born of fire,
And soaring from an opalescent pyre
Sheer to the zenith. Like some anademe
Of Titan jewels turned to flame and dream
The city crowns the far horizon-light
Over the flowered meads of damassin ....
A desert isle of madreperl ! wherein
The thurifer and opal-fruited palm
And heaven-thronging minarets becalm
The seas of azure wind....

(Note: These lines were remembered out of a dream, and are given verbatim.)
The City in the Desert  (1922) 
by Clark Ashton Smith

 I've been quietly looking into Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique over the last twenty four hours. Zothique is one of those places that infects my imagination. Zothique is a world millions of years in the far future. There have been literally been hundreds of countries, kingdoms, & empires that have turned to dust among its deserts. 


Clark Ashton Smith artwork by my friend  Andrea Bonazzi used without permission.

Last night around the campfire there was talk about the Mind Flayers from back in July on the blog. We were speaking about the fact that our guys from our old Amazing Adventures campaign have unfinished business on Zothique. And this involves  the Bothrians view themselvs as the only true mind flayers & brain lashers left. All of this went back to the party almost dying at the hands of a mercenary unit of  githzerai.They were tracking the Bothrians through the astral plane.The Bothrians in  their astral plane hopping nautiloid style ship decended into a lost kingdom in the wastelands. 

There was a major fight between the party's two martial artists & the monks of the Githzerai. This all came to a crashing halt when the Botherian guards started to pour from the city. 

Many of these events tie into Arch Villain Games Descent Into Madness miniatures kickstarter which DM Steve had backed. 

All of this ties back into a discussion that was going back in April of 2021 over at the Piazza website on the reappearance of the nautiloid Spelljammer ships in fifth edition D&D here. 
The player's PC's and  the monks of the Githzerai parted ways quickly as the guards were dispatched by the monk's leaders. And then they disappeared in a haze of psionic energies. The question what happens now?! The PC's were confronted by a sky ship straight out of   Bruce Heard's Wings of Darkness during tonight's game session after fleeing the rest of the guards! 

The Unfriendly Skies - Mind Flayer Variants - The Appearance of the Bothrians A Mindflayer Variant (Well At Least In Our OSR Campaigns)

 So there's been a bunch of talk going on over here at Casa De Fabiaschi regarding Mindflayers & more specifically the fate of planet KB 2420. This exoplanet was invaded by a mindflayer variant back in 2019 & we've not done that much with it since. The heroes had gotten to the exoplanet & then we stopped because two of our number passed. So the planet is still sitting out there being invaded by astral gating in Nautiloid ships! The colonists on the planet were in total confusion!  Remember this is back in 2019, so these are two year old campaign notes. The first thing we started doing is going old school with Dragon magazine 150! This is all going to tie back into our on going Ben Laurnence's Through Ultan's Door & Bruce Heard's Calidar Campaign Setting game. 

So are these mind flayers or something else?! These things are taken directly from the 'Sunset World' article by Stephen Inniss. This article lays out the foundation for an early 1989 article that highlights some of the ins & outs of a type of mind flayer. The article goes into an exploration party with Githyanki mercenaries who pernitrate the supposed home world of the flayers. 
In point of fact this world simply another fantasy realm ala Greyhawk  invaded by the Flayers. This same issue of dragon also gives us a huge monster ecology of The Dragon's Bestiary Stephen Inniss which ties directly into the 'Sunset world' by the same author. 
These two articles set the stage for a wonderful 3.5 book by Paradigm Concepts, Inc. Unveiled Masters: The Essential Guide to Mind Flayers (2002). Now even though this is 3.5 D&D book its one of the best of the lot along with Paradigm Concepts, Inc Drow PC race book. 

What does this have to do with the OSR?! Everything because we dive back into Evolved Grottos & Griffon's  Teratic-Tome by Rafael Chandler. Why?! Because we get  the Bothrians yet another Flayer variant or at least they are in our  campaigns. They are described as thus; 
"FREQUENCY: Uncommon NO. ENCOUNTERED: 1-4 SIZE: M (6' tall) MOVE: 120 ft ARMOR CLASS: 6 HIT DICE: 7+5 ATTACKS: 3 DAMAGE: 1d4+poison or by weapon TAZ: 12 SPECIAL ATTACKS: Spells SPECIAL DEFENSES: None MAGIC RESISTANCE: 90% LAIR PROBABILITY: 55% INTELLIGENCE: Genius ALIGNMENT: Lawful evil TREASURE: Personal, cache; in lair, purse, a few gems, a few objects, a few potions. LEVEL: 8 XP: 2450+10/hp Elegant and formal, the bothrians are a mild-mannered race of beings that seek only to enjoy the good things in life -- to carefully slice flavorful meat and sip chilled wine while listening to music and watching their victims scream as the skin is carefully peeled away from the muscle. Slender humanoids with octopoid features, their smooth, moist skin ranges in hue from violet to bright green, and changes slightly with mood. Most bothrians favor damp climates, and are typically found near pools where they can soak when the mood arises. Their tentacles undulate while they speak, and many of them have pierced, tattooed, or otherwise decorated their appendages to indicate status."

The Botherians regard the changes that have taken place with the main mind flayer race as 'disturbing'. Elder Brains of the Botherians not only retain the ability to create astral plane hopping nautiloid style ship variants. They also have several other flayer occult technologies that have been lost. 

All of this ties back into a discussion that was going back in April of 2021 over at the Piazza website on the reappearance of the nautiloid Spelljammer ships in fifth edition D&D here. 

All We See Is An OSR Dream Within A Dream - Laurence & Heard - Ben Laurnence's Through Ultan's Door & Bruce Heard's Calidar Campaign Setting

 There's been some weird Summer storms tonight. We've been talking Godbound/ BECMI Dungeons & Dragons rpg tonight. Specifically the impact that Ben Laurnence's Through Ultan's Door dreamlands has been having on the ongoing campaigns.

 DM/player Iris brought up the fact that we haven't been ulitzing Bruce Heard's Calidar campaign setting. There's an on going kickstarter for Calidar "Alfdaín Ascendant" right now & Calidar being closely tied as a fantasy Renissence setting could potentially crossover into our current  dreamland campaign. This is going to mean that as players & DM's there's going to be a lot of catching up to do. 

There's gonna be a ton of backgroud material & speed reading to do if I'm going to play catch up to Iris's lofty ideas. The idea here is that the mystic ships of Calidar have been sailing between planes for eons. The realm of dreams is only one of these planes. Her suggestion was to look deep into H.P.Lovecraft's The Dream Quest of Kadath & Bruce Heard's Wings of Darkness.

For Ben Laurnence's Through Ultan's Door  Calidar might actually offer my player's PC's an actual high fantasy world from which to adventure in the exotic dreamworlds. The Godbound are not going to be actually all that powerful within the world of dreams per say. And is there a chance that they may actually become trapped within disintgrating dreamworld?! There's all kinds of implications here perhaps my own take on Calidar as a setting mixed with the psuedo Renaissance seen through the Godbound lens?! 

Calidar itself has more then a few  incredible adventuring opportunities but throw the dreamlands in & the skys really are the limits. DM Iris has her work cut out for her from here on out.But its gonna be on my own & DM Steve to sort out some of the wrinkles within this campaign idea. We're shooting for the Fall or possbly sooner depending how much things get back to normal & how quickly.