OSR Commentary & Reskinning of D3 Vault of the Drow By Gary Gygax

 As a member of a bold party of adventurers, you and your associates have trekked far into what seems to be a whole underworld of subterranean tunnels -- arteries connecting endless caves and caverns which honeycomb the foundations of the lands beneath the sun. Your expedition has dogged the heels of the Dark Elves who caused great woe and then fled underground

This blog post fills in some of what we talked about the last blog entry. Here we finally get the full threat of the Drow & their works that we see in this Gary Gygax classic. Gygax's writing & flexiblity is on full throttle in this tournament style model.  And we get the full extent of the underworld of D3 Vault of The Drow here. And since we're pickup from last blog post these are Myrkálfar straight out of Norse mythology & legend twisted by super science of space gods eons ago. We see this in the Myrkálfar's god  Atlach-Nacha.  Reskinning the Drow means that Atlach-Nacha's cult is going to be front & center throughout the module. The Drow's manipulation of the surface's Lovecraftian races is going to be fully exposed. 

And the alien nature of the Drow whose relation back to the surface world's Arthur Machan's White People is going to pretty evident. The Myrkálfar's god  Atlach-Nacha whose been brain washing people from the upperworld for eons. Possibly turning them into more of the Myrkálfar for the purpose of eventual invasion of the surface world. 

And this invasion promise works in the Myrkálfar's favor as the fire giants rush to thier banner. Because of the fact that  they see the springing up of cults across the planet. This ties back into A.Merritt's 'Moon Pool' & the caches of alien technologies from 'The Metal Monster'. 

The fire giants have been enslaving the various giant factions over the centuries after the events of Ragnarok on Hyperborea. And now with the Deep One push because of the events of the first part of D1-2. Things heat up because all of this  connects in with events from The Mystery At Port Greely. Why?! Because the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons version of Earth & Hyperborea are ripe for exploitation by the powers that be. The events depicted in D1-2 Descent Into The Depths of the Earth mark the adventurers passage from one set of events in the chain into another if they survive the experience. 

 D3 Vault of the Drow By Gary Gygax presents the next evolution in this chain of events marking it up and into a possible resolution. This is only the beginning of what set's up a possible invasion for Hyperborea with a multi sided war. And we're going to look at how & why it would be solid campaign. 

Using Gary Gygax's Against The Giants G1- 4 With D3 Vault of the Drow & Queen Of The Demonweb Pits Along With Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea - As A Mini Campaign

"Giants have been raiding the lands of men in large bands, with giants of different sorts in these marauding groups. Death and destruction have been laid heavily upon every place these monsters have visited. A party of the bravest and most powerful adventurers has been assembled and given the charge to punish the miscreant giants."


G1-3 module picture taken from Wayne's book site. I get a ton of adventures from Wayne's over the years. Always solid quality & good service. 

Yesterday I updated the blog entry on D3 Vault of Drow By Gary Gygax  with Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.  So let's talk about exactly why this is an important step campaign step  & what is the Drow's plan. What does this actually have to do with Gary Gygax's Against The Giant series of adventures & how this knits itself into the framework of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. Or at least how it does in my AS&SH campaigns.




The giants, the Drow, etc. in Hyperborea are all basically all relics of a bygone age that's come & gone. Underborea has been settled for centuries. The time of mankind is long over after the events of the ancient history of Ragnarok? So why would the giants be attacking mankind at the behest of the Drow? What would be the Drow's plan?! That has to do with the events depicted in the  Jeffrey Talinian's The Sea-Wolf's Daughter &  Chainsaw's The Lost Treasure of Atlantis.

We're not talking one or two alien entities here we're talking about the former servants of the gods turning right back on mankind again. The last of the tribes of Jotunn within Hyperborea have turned upon mankind. Why? Well if we look at the fourth chapter of the Prose Edda we get our answer; 

"In chapter 4 of the Prose Edda book Gylfaginning, the enthroned figure of Third tells Gangleri (described as King Gylfi in disguise) about the location of Múspell. Third says that the bright and flaming region of Múspell existed prior to Niflheim, and it is impassable to those not native to the region. To defend Múspell, Surtr is stationed at its frontier. Third adds that Surtr has a flaming sword, and that "at the end of the world he will go and wage war and defeat all the gods and burn the whole world with fire". The stanza from Völuspá that foretells Surtr moving from the south is then quoted.^[11] In chapter 18, Gangleri asks what will protect the fair hall Gimlé "when Surtr's fire burns heaven and earth".^[12]

In chapter 51 of Gylfaginning, High describes the events of Ragnarök. High says that "amid this turmoil the sky will open and from it will ride the sons of Muspell. Surtr will ride in front, and both before and behind him there will be burning fire. His sword will be very fine. Light will shine from it more brightly than from the sun." High continues that when the sons of Múspell ride over the bridge Bifröst it will break, and that they will continue to the field of Vígríðr. The wolf Fenrir and the Midgard Serpent will also arrive there. By then, Loki will have arrived with "all of Hel's people", Hrym, and all of the frost jötnar; "but Muspell's sons will have their own battle array; it will be very bright". Further into the chapter, High describes that a fierce battle will erupt between these forces and the Æsir, and that during this, Surtr and Freyr will engage in battle "and there will be a harsh conflict before Freyr falls". High adds that the cause of Freyr's death will be that Freyr is lacking "the good sword" that he once gave his servant Skírnir.^[13]

As foretold by High further into chapter 51 Gylfaginning, Once Heimdallr and Loki fight (and mutually kill one another), Surtr "will fling fire over the earth" and "burn the whole world". High quotes ten stanzas from Völuspá in support, and then proceeds to describe the rebirth and new fertility of the reborn world, and the survivors of Ragnarök, including various gods and the two humans named Líf and Lífthrasir that will have hid from "Surtr's fire" in the wood Hoddmímis holt."

Surtur & the giants of Hyperborea are literally the only survivors of Ragnork that are alive & worshiped as gods on Hyperborea. The reason that the Drow have begun to instigate the extinction events again in G1-3 is because mankind's numbers have begun to increase across Hyperborea. Remember it was the Green Death that wiped mankind out in AS&SH. The Drow have little to no interest in seeing the rise of the Hyperboreas or men again.


The Giant with the Flaming Sword (1909) by John Charles Dollman

This isn't new this is something that's been built into the back story of both G1-3 & AS&SH itself as a rpg OSR system. Its also built into the story cycles of Clark Ashton Smith & the HP Lovecraft circle of writers. The alien gods & entities of AS&SH have played their part in the cycle of mankind eon ala Clark Ashton Smith's writing. 

 Chainsaw's The Lost Treasure of Atlantis connect up with the underborea world of D3 Vault of Drow By Gary Gygax  through Crystal Point! Crystal Point marks the cut off point  of the otherworldly empires of Hyperborea. A place of both horror & absolute terror for any humans caught within its boundaries! Humans are going to be at a loss to deal with its inhuman empires. 

Those empires have used humans for eons as food, entertainment, cannon fodder, etc. they have zero love of humanity. Hyperborea is not the play ground of humans. Its a completely alien place with humanity playing second or third fiddle other worldly powers. Heroes are simply needed. Their needed to survive in the place. But the world is entering a new phase & the inhuman alien gods & things that abound there know this. 

Using Gary Gygax's D3 Vault of the Drow & Queen Of The Demonweb Pits With Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea - A Mini Campaign

"As a member of a bold party of adventurers, you and your associates have trekked far into what seems to be a whole underworld of subterranean tunnels -- arteries connecting endless caves and caverns which honeycomb the foundations of the lands beneath the sun. Your expedition has dogged the heels of the Dark Elves who caused great woe and then fled underground. "


 I want to run D3 Vault of Drow By Gary Gygax  with Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. Now its been a very long while since I've done anything with the D3 series of modules. But I've had an idea sitting in the back of my mind now for quite a while which goes all of the way back to October 2016. But let's quickly get back to the world of D3. The dungeons of Chainsaw's The Lost Treasure of Atlantis connect up with the underborea world of D3 Vault of Drow By Gary Gygax  through Crystal Point! 

Crystal Point marks the cut off point  of the otherworldly empires of Hyperborea. A place of both horror & absolute terror for any humans caught within its boundaries! Humans are going to be at a loss to deal with its

The underworld of Underborea is my games a maze of cold hells, forgotten ruined cities full of undead souls & the damned, vaults of ancient treasures, & more dungeonesquely hellish delights. The Drow are not as you might expect, they've settled down quite a bit after the events of Ragnarok. Most of the gods that we know today  are dead! Their corpses twitch to life & sometimes spill onto the surface of Hyperborea. The North Winds held countless worlds within their grasp & Hyperborea was rife with all kinds of relics,alien objects, forgotten temples, & more. In underborea there are rare doorways & gateways that open into the ancient back halls of extinct giants who once ruled large swaths of land. Many of these were later killed by the Hyperboreans in war of conquest once the Boreas winds whisked them into orbit around Saturn.
How I would spin this is that the Drow appear on the surface of Hyperborea & do a series of lightning raids seeking sacrifices for their demon goddess. A local chief hires the PC's to rescue his  son & daughter whose been taken in one of the raids! The PC's use the ancient giant temple halls to slide into the world of Underborea. But they get whisked into the twisting & turning maze of the world of the Drow Svartalfheim (Svartálf[a]heimr, "home of the black-elves"). This is not the traditional Underdark but something straight out of Norse mythology. This is the dwelling place not only of the Dark Elves but also the vile Dwarves of Hyperborea, maggot things that craft many of the treasures of the Hyperboreans. These enslaved dwarves forged many of the treasures, relics,engines of divine destruction that were used on humanity. Will the PC's make it back home?! 

"In Norse mythology, svartálfar (O.N. "black elves", "swarthy elves", sing. svartálfr), also called myrkálfar ("dark elves", "dusky elves", "murky elves", sing. myrkálfr),^[1][2] are beings who dwell in Svartalfheim (Svartálf[a]heimr, "home of the black-elves").^[3] Both the svartálfar and Svartálfaheimr are primarily attested in the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. Scholars have noted that the svartálfar appear to be synonymous with the dwarfs and potentially also the dökkálfar ("dark elves"). As dwarfs, the home of the svartálfar could possibly be another description for Niðavellir ("dark fields")." 

This could help to explain the dark & fast link between the giants of Hyperborea & their servant slaves the Dwarves. After the events of Ragnarok giants became complacent & were easy pray for the Hyperboreans. The Drow were seduced into worshiping a spider demon goddess instead of their rightful goddess of fate  Atlach-Nacha. There are still 'true' Drow who worship their mother goddess as they see here but they have retreated into the darkness of Earth's Dreamlands. The PC's are hopelessly lost in the twisting churning tunnels that lead into the underworld of Gary Gygax's Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits. 

 Gary Gygax's Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits matches itself up with the alien entities dungeon locations found within Jeffrey Talinian's The Sea-Wolf's Daughter. This is a truly epic mini campaign taking the player's PC's across the underworld of Hyperborea & onto the alien weirdness of a very dangerous Underborea.
These are very high level adventure modules & even experienced players of AS&SH are going to need to bring their 'a' games & extra character sheets! 

Further Thoughts On Using Gary Gygax's D3 Vault of the Drow For Your Old School Campaigns.

"As a member of a bold party of adventurers, you and your associates have trekked far into what seems to be a whole underworld of subterranean tunnels -- arteries connecting endless caves and caverns which honeycomb the foundations of the lands beneath the sun. Your expedition has dogged the heels of the Dark Elves who caused great woe and then fled underground"
Today I've been doing a lot of thinking about D3: "Vault of the Drow" from (1978), by Gary Gygax. My God I do love this module not so much because its an adventure but because its more of the Drow first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventure location  sourcebook.

The real show stopper here is  Erelhei-Cinlu, & Gygax & co. go absolutely old school nuts in this Drow capital. This place is nadier of evil with a captial 'E' in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons giving the dungeon master unlimited acess to the backstage of the Drow & its here that we get a very interesting genisis of an idea;

"D3 Vault of the Drow is set in Erelhei-Cinlu, an underground stronghold of the drow, and the Fane of Lolth, their evil spider-goddess.^[7] After traveling for league after league into the Underdark, the adventurers come upon Erelhei-Cinlu, the vast subterranean city of the drow. The adventure is written in a very open-ended fashion, giving the Dungeon Master (DM) free rein to script any number of mini-campaigns or adventures taking place inside the drow capital. An extensive overview of the drow power structure is given for just this purpose. Eventually, the players may discover an astral gate leading to the plane of the Abyss, leading into the Q1 module"The Drow are a corrupt and decadent people ever the match for any of Michael Moorcock's  Melniboné or Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperboreans. Yes I said Hyperboreans! The Drow in D3 Vault of The Drow make excellent enemies of the Hyperboreans. But how they are in completely different systems & it wouldn't make sense. Well, the worship of the Elder Elemental God may be threatening the drows' matriarchal goddess, Lolth & this gives way into maze like politics of Erelhei-Cinlu. The PC's could with some very careful bobbing & weaving make their way into the inner workings of the incredibly dangerous city of the module.
Classic Jeff Dee artwork

Ironically the way into the back door of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea's Underborea is by Gary Gygax from the Drivethrurpg entry on D3; "During his lifetime, Gygax offered a few different sources for his drow. Ultimately, they're probably derived from the Svartálfaheimr — the dark elves of Norse mythology. Ironically, when the drow were printed up in the Fiend Folio (1980), that book also contained the "xvart," which had been called the "svart" when published in White Dwarf #9 (October/November 1978) and which were thus another Svartálfaheimr derivative." Now if the Svartálfaheimr have been tunneling into the world of Underborea for centuries perhaps picking apart the corpses of the heroes & old gods killed during Ragnrok. Now  I can see the Drow using these tunnels to  make a series of lightning raids on the surface of Hyperborea. After all the Drow & the  Svartálfaheimr share some common ancestry; ""In Norse mythology, svartálfar (O.N. "black elves", "swarthy elves", sing. svartálfr), also called myrkálfar ("dark elves", "dusky elves", "murky elves", sing. myrkálfr),^[1][2] are beings who dwell in Svartalfheim (Svartálf[a]heimr, "home of the black-elves").^[3] Both the svartálfar and Svartálfaheimr are primarily attested in the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. Scholars have noted that the svartálfar appear to be synonymous with the dwarfs and potentially also the dökkálfar ("dark elves"). As dwarfs, the home of the svartálfar could possibly be another description for Niðavellir ("dark fields")." " This is long before the film 'Thor Dark World' & its proto Dark Elves using ancient science fantasy technology.

The Drow of Gary Gygax's D3 Vault of the Drow are not misunderstood EMO PC's, no these are the utterly & unremittingly evil alien bastards of the Fiend Folio. These Drow are more likely to enslave, corrupt, & debase any PC's they come across in the process. And no plane Prime is safe from them!




At the end of the module there's a gate that opens into the Abyss & yes that gate leads straight to the lair of the demon goddess  Loloth. But what if this isn't the only gate in the deepest parts of Erelhei-Cinlu? What if before the religious split the Drow's fifth columist agents & forces were carrying out sabotage, intrigue, & corruption missions across the planes as we saw in the Against The Giants series of modules? What if those were only the tip of the iceberg! What if the forces the Drow of Erelhei-Cinlu are on the march again? I wrote about something like this all of the way back in July of this past year on this blog; "This could help to explain the dark & fast link between the giants of Hyperborea & their servant slaves the Dwarves. After the events of Ragnarok giants became complacent & were easy pray for the Hyperboreans. The Drow were seduced into worshiping a spider demon goddess instead of their rightful goddess of fate  Atlach-Nacha. There are still 'true' Drow who worship their mother goddess as they see here but they have retreated into the darkness of Earth's Dreamlands. The PC's are hopelessly lost in the twisting churning tunnels that lead into the underworld of Gary Gygax's Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits. " Meaning that the tunnels of Erelhei-Cinlu connect to a wide  variety of underworlds & underdarks across the planes perhaps even your own campaigns.

Ten thoughts On Using Gary Gygax's D3
 Vault of the Drow For Your Old School Campaigns

1. The Drow could pop up quite literally anywhere in the underworld of your own campaign setting. 
2. Drow spies are infeltrating royal courts, working as kingly assasins, spies, & mercenaries to gather information about their enemies by working within their midsts. 
3. The Drow are corrupting & using graft to bend various races to their wills for unknown reasons & their on the rise. 
4. Because they have the ability to plan hop there is no reason to use them as an option for PC & instead use them as the alien enemies of all that is good as they were intended. 
5. The split in Drow politics & religion might increase the number of Chaotic cults on the surface world as the Drow renew old hates & dangerous ancient alliances. 
6. Drow are some of the most dangerous foes that PC's can face ever. 
7. Ancient Drow liches from  Erelhei-Cinlu may have been left on the surface world to help pave the way for future invasion. 
8. Mind Flayers & other ancient enemies may use the Drow invasion as an excuse to make their move on the surface.
9. D3 Vault of the Drow is a tight & very dangerous adventure location & using it for old school play may result in some very deadly encounters & adventure. 
10. There is enough material within Gary Gygax's D3 Vault of the Drow for three or four campaigns. 

Using Gary Gygax's D3 Vault of the Drow & Queen Of The Demonweb Pits With Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea - A Mini Campaign Part II

The PC's are hopelessly lost in the twisting churning tunnels that lead into the underworld of Gary Gygax's Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits.  Now this would seem to be the end of the saga but instead I propose that its just the beginnings of the problems for the PC's. They've incurred the wraith of a whole people & they've destroyed the avatar of one of the most powerful demons of the Abyss. Notice I said avatar not demoness herself. Or at least that's how I've played it in the past. There are several reasons for this & they all have to do with the publication of the module series; " as described in the "Drow" series of modules: D1 (Descent into the Depths of the Earth), D2 (Shrine of the Kuo-Toa) and D3 (Vault of the Drow). D1 and D2 were later compiled into a single adventure, D1-2: Descent into the Depths of the Earth. This module sends the player characters to the Abyss to defeat the evil demigod Lolth of the drow."Don't worry this has plenty to do with using Q1 in Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea for a Sword & Sorcery campaign.



Now if we look at the publication  qualifier of these modules; "The module, the D-series' sequel, was later republished as part of the Queen of the Spiders supermodule (coded GDQ1-7) with the entire saga." The review from  Elisabeth Barrington  really gives us a vital clue as to how these modules can be woven together; "Queen of the Demonweb Pits in 1981 as part of a review in the 35th issue of The Space Gamer.^[5] According to Barrington, players and the Dungeon Master need to be fairly experienced because some spell effects have been altered: "It takes skill, courage, and ingenuity to make your way into (and possibly, if you're lucky, out of) the pits. A good challenge for experienced players."^[5] Barrington did complain that some of the spell alterations felt unnecessary, as some of the spells which were very useful under ordinary circumstances became almost useless due to the alterations. She did note that the book contained "many excellent ideas", and that the artwork was "up to TSR's usual neatness and simplicity", but that overall the module was "Not one of TSR's best efforts, but a worthy try. "  Yeah I don't agree with the worthy "try bit"  at all.
 But the idea that the Abyss is a bit of a planar  catch all presents some interesting ideas unto itself. The lower world of the planes of the Abyss are home to this demonic spider goddess but where in the world did she come from originally?! According to her wiki entry; "Lolth was first mentioned in the modules Descent into the Depths of the Earth (1978) and more fully described in Vault of the Drow(1978),^[2] and was the main antagonist of the module Queen of the Demonweb Pits (1980).^[1] These modules were later reprinted as part of the Queen of the Spiders collection in 1986.^[3] Lolth's role as a deity was first explored in Deities & Demigods (1980).^[4] Her game statistics were reprinted in the Fiend Folio (1981)"
In fourth edition she was transformed into a goddess with the demon webpits being her home plane. But think she's been a goddess this whole time. Flash back to the time of when the Lydian peoples ruled their land in Lydia, a region in western Anatolia, &  who spoke the distinctive Lydian language, an Indo-European language of the Anatolian group.  "Arachne (/əˈrækniː/; from Greek: ἀράχνη "spider", cognate with Latinaraneus)^[1] was a talented mortal weaver who challenged Athena, goddess of wisdom and crafts, to a weaving contest; this hubris resulted in her being transformed into a spider"  I think that Lolth is Arachne & has been this whole time.  Arachne's legend bares it out according to the Roman poet Ovid or latest that's how it is in my future history of Astonishing Swordmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. 

"One version appears in the Metamorphoses of the Roman poet Ovid.

In this version, Arachne was a shepherd's daughter who began weaving at an early age. She became a great weaver, boasted that her skill was greater than that of Athena, and refused to acknowledge that her skill came, in part at least, from the goddess. Athena took offense and set up a contest between them. Presenting herself as an old lady, she approached the boasting girl and warned: "You can never compare to any of the gods. Plead for forgiveness and Athena might spare your soul."

"Ha! I only speak the truth and if Athena thinks otherwise then let her come down and challenge me herself," Arachne replied. Athena removed her disguise and appeared in shimmering glory, clad in a sparkling white chiton. The two began weaving straight away. Athena's weaving represented four separate contests between mortals and the gods in which the gods punished mortals for setting themselves as equals of the gods. Arachne's weaving depicted ways that the gods had misled and abused mortals, particularly Zeus, tricking and seducing many women. When Athena saw that Arachne had not only insulted the gods but done so with a work far more beautiful than Athena's own, she was enraged. She ripped Arachne's work to shreds and hit her on the head three times. Terrified and ashamed, Arachne hanged herself. Then Athena said, "Live on then, and yet hang, condemned one, but, lest you are careless in future, this same condition is declared, in punishment, against your descendants, to the last generation!" After saying this she sprinkled her with the juice of Hecate's herb, and immediately at the touch of this dark poison, Arachne's hair fell out. With it went her nose and ears, her head shrank to the smallest size, and her whole body became tiny. Her slender fingers stuck to her sides as legs, the rest is belly, from which she still spins a thread, and, as a spider, weaves her ancient web."^[4] This showed how goddesses punished mortals who dared to insult them."

So this whole time this Grecoroman goddess has been spinning her webs across the planes using the Drow as a sort of proto demonic Elven army to raze the Earth! She brought the Drow too her bossum & then let them loose during the time of Ragnarok.

 

This doesn't mean that there's thousands of Drow waiting in the bowels of underborea in my game campaigns & infact far from it. The Drow are going to be pure poison to the Hyperborean who see them as interlopers & a problem that needs to be quickly dispatched!


Native cults that know about Lolth now on Hyperborea look at her as an aberration & demoness of  damnation or murder. She's loathed by the followers of Atlach-Nacha who look at her as a relic of the distant past of 'old Earth'. We get this exact sort of from the newest Kickstarter from Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. The kickstarter going on for AS&SH's HYPERBOREA: OTHERWORLDLY TALES The Lost Treasure of Atlantis  &  The Sea-Wolf's Daughter.  Brings the campaign idea of the world of the old being eclipsed by the modern adventurer's Hyperborea. The results are not pretty at all with modern Hyperborea bringing a short & brutal end to many of the lives of adventurers.


If the planar  gates of Gary Gygax's Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits opened upon underborea would we see an influx of Drow trying to expand not only their territory but the cult of their faith as well especially among the cold Hells of Hyperborea.. Its certainly food for thought isn't it. But the real question is will this campaign course of action be something that I'm going to do? For now keep em rolling. 

Using Gary Gygax's D3 Vault of the Drow & Queen Of The Demonweb Pits With Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea - A Mini Campaign

"As a member of a bold party of adventurers, you and your associates have trekked far into what seems to be a whole underworld of subterranean tunnels -- arteries connecting endless caves and caverns which honeycomb the foundations of the lands beneath the sun. Your expedition has dogged the heels of the Dark Elves who caused great woe and then fled underground. "


Along with soaring temperatures I was asked  if I wanted to run D3 Vault of Drow By Gary Gygax  with Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. Now its been a very long while since I've done anything with the D3 series of modules. But I've had an idea sitting in the back of my mind now for quite a while which goes all of the way back to October 2016.  Right now there's a huge kickstarter going on for AS&SH's HYPERBOREA: OTHERWORLDLY TALES The Lost Treasure of Atlantis  &  The Sea-Wolf's Daughter. I think these two adventures are gonna add a lot of scope to the Hyperborea setting & that you should support it. Jeff delivers his stuff & does it with style. I'm really loving this illustration by  Mick Fernette For The Lost Treasure of Atlantis by Chainsaw.  But let's quickly get back to the world of D3. 

The underworld of Underborea is my games a maze of cold hells, forgotten ruined cities full of undead souls & the damned, vaults of ancient treasures, & more dungeonesquely hellish delights. The Drow are not as you might expect, they've settled down quite a bit after the events of Ragnarok. Most of the gods that we know today  are dead! Their corpses twitch to life & sometimes spill onto the surface of Hyperborea. The North Winds held countless worlds within their grasp & Hyperborea was rife with all kinds of relics,alien objects, forgotten temples, & more. In underborea there are rare doorways & gateways that open into the ancient back halls of extinct giants who once ruled large swaths of land. Many of these were later killed by the Hyperboreans in war of conquest once the Boreas winds whisked them into orbit around Saturn. 
How I would spin this is that the Drow appear on the surface of Hyperborea & do a series of lightning raids seeking sacrifices for their demon goddess. A local chief hires the PC's to rescue his  son & daughter whose been taken in one of the raids! The PC's use the ancient giant temple halls to slide into the world of Underborea. But they get whisked into the twisting & turning maze of the world of the Drow Svartalfheim (Svartálf[a]heimr, "home of the black-elves"). This is not the traditional Underdark but something straight out of Norse mythology. This is the dwelling place not only of the Dark Elves but also the vile Dwarves of Hyperborea, maggot things that craft many of the treasures of the Hyperboreans. These enslaved dwarves forged many of the treasures, relics,engines of divine destruction that were used on humanity. Will the PC's make it back home?! 



"In Norse mythology, svartálfar (O.N. "black elves", "swarthy elves", sing. svartálfr), also called myrkálfar ("dark elves", "dusky elves", "murky elves", sing. myrkálfr),^[1][2] are beings who dwell in Svartalfheim (Svartálf[a]heimr, "home of the black-elves").^[3] Both the svartálfar and Svartálfaheimr are primarily attested in the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. Scholars have noted that the svartálfar appear to be synonymous with the dwarfs and potentially also the dökkálfar ("dark elves"). As dwarfs, the home of the svartálfar could possibly be another description for Niðavellir ("dark fields")." 

This could help to explain the dark & fast link between the giants of Hyperborea & their servant slaves the Dwarves. After the events of Ragnarok giants became complacent & were easy pray for the Hyperboreans. The Drow were seduced into worshiping a spider demon goddess instead of their rightful goddess of fate  Atlach-Nacha. There are still 'true' Drow who worship their mother goddess as they see here but they have retreated into the darkness of Earth's Dreamlands. The PC's are hopelessly lost in the twisting churning tunnels that lead into the underworld of Gary Gygax's Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits. 


In the end its gonna take a lot of luck & lots of planning on the part of the players for their PC's. I'll let you know how it pans out in future blog entries.

Return Into The Nightmare Realm of the Underworld - D1 the original Descent into the Depths of the Earth By Gary Gygax

"The final confrontation with the Dark Elves, the Drow, had instigated the giant alliance and its warfare upon mankind and its allied races! "


Wait you've covered D1 Descent Into The Depths of The Earth did you with latter part of the Hundred Years War campaign idea using the  Lion & Dragon rpg system & the Dark Albion campaign as a  source book!?  So well yes & no.  The party is going to have to return to the Underworld once again!
Joan of Arc is dead! Events have turned chaotic & murky as the English take it on the chin & things are not going as the Dark Albion Elves had planned!



"Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians at the siege of Compiègne on 23 May 1430. The Burgundians transferred her to the English, who organised a trial headed by Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais and member of the English Council at Rouen. Joan was convicted and burned at the stake on 30 May 1431.^[76] (She was rehabilitated 25 years later by Pope Callixtus III.)
After the death of Joan of Arc, the fortunes of war turned dramatically against the English.^[79] Most of Henry's royal advisers were against making peace. Among the factions, the Duke of Bedford wanted to defend Normandy, the Duke of Gloucester was committed to just Calais, whereas Cardinal Beaufort was inclined to peace. Negotiations stalled. It seems that at the congress of Arras, in the summer of 1435, where the duke of Beaufort was mediator, the English were unrealistic in their demands. A few days after the congress ended in September, Philip III, duke of Burgundy, deserted to Charles VII, signing the Treaty of Arras that returned Paris to the King of France. This was a major blow to English sovereignty in France.^[74] The Duke of Bedford died on 14 September 1435 and was later replaced by Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York"

The factions of the Hundred Years war at at each other's throats. The Siege of Orleans has brought things to a turn around point. Things are falling apart and the PC's are going to have to revisit The Underworld where  the factions including Elves , Deep Ones, Svirfneblin, Derro, and many more are scrambling to keep even their own existence together!  Those alliances with the faction of the Underworld that the PC's made earlier are going to come in very handy.  The events here are going to be partially in the underworld & in the world above where the PC's are balanced between the various factions of The Hundred Years War & the Underworld. All the while they're going to have to skirt the powers of the Church whose already had Joan of Arc killed!

But the big unknown is the spawning pools of the Deep Ones deep below Paris. The party's meeting with Blibdoolpoolp, the Sea Mother of the Deep Ones was no accident at all. There are hundreds of spawning pools deep within the dungeon tunnels of Paris that the Elves have no idea about. In Dark Albion these are directly responsible for the take over of Paris not so during the Rose War of the Lion & Dragon game . Witch cults of the Deep Ones & their alleys are going to have to be put to the sword lest the corruption of chaos spread to cause more problems later!



The alien gold reserves of the Deep Ones are cleaned out and these help to fund the efforts of shaky alliances with Burgondy. Blibdoolpoolp, the Sea Mother of the Deep Ones is driven back with the help of key paladins & knights of Burgundy. But these alliances are fickle at best & shaky with violence at worst.  The PC's are going to expect double crosses & triple alliances as key families rise & fall with the whims of battle!


The Battle of Formigny (1450)


Events here are keyed to set up the French Recurrence because the PC's deal several blows to the Elves in the Underworld location of their ancestral cities in the Underworld. Then comes the next phase of the Hundred Years War.
"The allegiance of Burgundy remained fickle, but the English focus on expanding their domains in the Low Countries left them little energy to intervene in the rest of France.^[80] The long truces that marked the war gave Charles time to centralize the French state and reorganize his army and government, replacing his feudal levies with a more modern professional army that could put its superior numbers to good use. A castle that once could only be captured after a prolonged siege would now fall after a few days from cannon bombardment. The French artillery developed a reputation as the best in the world.^[79]
By 1449, the French had retaken Rouen. In 1450 the Count of Clermont and Arthur de Richemont, Earl of Richmond, of the Montfort family (the future Arthur III, Duke of Brittany), caught an English army attempting to relieve Caen and defeated it at the Battle of Formigny. Richemont's force attacked the English army from the flank and rear just as they were on the verge of beating Clermont's army"




Here we're going to see new arrangements on the Chess board of Europe as Charles VII's successful Normandy campaign in 1450. So party members & adventurers are going to change once again. The old haunts & battle fields are going to give way to new ruins & dungeons. The real key here is their alliance with the Deep Gnomes which are some of the most powerful allies the PC's can make & they need it.


The Battle of Castillon on 17 July 1453 is the real pivot point in the real world but the PC's are going to be skirting the edge of Hell itself as they fathom what supernatural forces the Elves might bring to bare on the weak humans!
But don't think that the Deep Ones are completely out of the picture for they still have numbers out in the countryside surrounding Paris. They will be pushing back against the extinction of their old familiar breeding grounds.
"And yet I saw them in a limitless stream—flopping, hopping, croaking, bleating—urging inhumanly through the spectral moonlight in a grotesque, malignant saraband of fantastic nightmare. And some of them had tall tiaras of that nameless whitish-gold metal . . . and some were strangely robed . . . and one, who led the way, was clad in a ghoulishly humped black coat and striped trousers, and had a man's felt hat perched on the shapeless thing that answered for a head.
I think their predominant colour was a greyish-green, though they had white bellies. They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the ridges of their backs were scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested the anthropoid, while their heads were the heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes that never closed. At the sides of their necks were palpitating gills, and their long paws were webbed. They hopped irregularly, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four. I was somehow glad that they had no more than four limbs. Their croaking, baying voices, clearly used for articulate speech, held all the dark shades of expression which their staring faces lacked.
But for all of their monstrousness they were not unfamiliar to me. I knew too well what they must be—for was not the memory of the evil tiara at Newburyport still fresh? They were the blasphemous fish-frogs of the nameless design—living and horrible—and as I saw them I knew also of what that humped, tiaraed priest in the black church basement had fearsomely reminded me. Their number was past guessing. It seemed to me that there were limitless swarms of them and certainly my momentary glimpse could have shewn only the least fraction. In another instant everything was blotted out by a merciful fit of fainting; the first I had ever had."
The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H. P. Lovecraft

The PC's are going to need every ounce of strength that their families have to push back against the tides of Chaos. Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos is a must here! The factions are now even more dangerous because they've been pushed to the breaking point. Tread carefully or this could be a family TPK as the Hundred Years War draws to a close and we dive in even more into the deep end next time!

The party gets pumped up to explore deeper into the underworld.
(Erol Otus, AD&D module Descent into the Depths of the Earth by Gary Gygax, TSR,)