The Continuing Outer Realm War Round Three/Four - Godbound/Cha'alt Play Session Recap

So the trip to the Cosmic Kitten ended up with DM Steve's PC giving over a minor artifact to Barron (nothing ever good comes from getting involved with Barron. Ever). They learned about major goings on in the Hollywood Hills which Barron referred to as a "great party".  Guess where DM Steve's PC headed as soon as they got back to 'Earth'?! This got a great chuckle from Barron whose attention went back to his latest play thing. 

During last night's game DM Steve learned a very important truth in our Godbound/Cha'alt session. Don't mess with the Elves on Cha'alt! His Godbound PC was literally torn apart & sacrificed to a parasitic god! He was playing it fast & loose striking out on his own without the rest of the party to back him up! They warned him & lately we've been incorporating a number of B/X sources into our game including a free pdf called Adding Unspeakable Horrors From Beyond The Stars. There are Lovecraftian Space Elves that have been the source of many of the Elven tribes on Cha'alt/Carcosa. A huge mob of about 60 of these bastards got a hold of his PC last night. They been trying to open a gate on the Night Road  in California's Hollywood Hills for their parasite god! Well the rest of the Godbound party warned him not to go without backup. He encountered several Cha'alt space elves assassin strike teams.They caused him waste his energies & that was that. The rest of the mob overwhelmed him with shear numbers. Then the knife came down! 

A desert  Phkeh Giant came to take the sacrifice on behalf of his god  & things slid way down hill. Now DM Steve is off making a new PC to bring in next week. So to say it wasn't pretty is an understatement. These things are the raw chaotic  & Lovecraftian Elves that have been eluded to in the Dark Albion setting & the Lion & Dragon Rpg. 

This isn't the only mention of these Elves! Now throughout this game campaign the  Adventurer,Conqueror,King's rpg has been in use! ACK's dungeons & adventure modules have been a part of this campaign since the beginning.  AX4: Ruined City of Cyfandir's ruins have appeared near the deserts of Utah. The dragon king warned the party to stay clear of 'em. The Elves are still occupying them & they are extremely dangerous.  But if you take your motorcycle ride up to the Hollywood Hills & then challenge the space elves then roll a '1'. Well folks your gonna die even if your Godbound. 

The party of adventurers right now has summoned a 'lawyer demon' straight outta of The Metallic Tome. To see if they can bargain for DM Steve's old character's soul. But as the demon told them, 'Sometimes dead is dead even in the Abyss'. 

So this goes back over year ago when DM Steve's PC & his team  were  messing with AX1: The Sinister Stone of Sakkara. They barely made it out alive & my other player's adventures plus the American military's mecha had to mount a rescue! The pig faced orcs serving the horror behind the stone wanted their souls for lunch badly. 

The PC's hiked it back to the dragon king last night & they had picked up a hitch hiker NPC who looks suspiciously like Barron's latest play thing. Lisa Watts is the lead singer in the 'Crags' a hard core metal band & adventurer. Is she godbound or perhaps demon spawn?! Unknown at the moment but the team's hover van broke down right after stranding them in the middle of nowhere squared & that's when the Cha'alt manticore attacked! 

Everyone was getting to roll initiative & I purposely ended right there on that cliff hanger because I'm that much of a bastard. 

The Continuing Outer Realm War Round Two - Godbound/Cha'alt Play Session Recap

 

Between January 24th 2020 to today 9/9/2020 there have been two deaths at our table, two of our most experienced players have passed. Twenty twenty has been a rough time for many of us but for our players its been an especially rough time. Back in January 2020 I had my first Godbound/Cha'alt session you can read about that right here. 
Now with stiff drink in my gut & having had a meeting with my players about this game. There's been a consense to get this campaign back on track. There are several reasons for this. Eighteen months game time have passed everyone wanted the player's PC's buried with appropriate shrine locations worked into the campaign. Cha'alt waits for no one however. The EMP spread across the planet, millions dead or were converted into mutants or demonic something elses.  Now with Cha'alt: Fuchsia Malaise out  it was only a matter of time before the California campaign came back in spades. 



 Xanthium-183 which has been showing up across the underworld of  the United States & as well as California for sometime. The United States military has been incorporating vast amounts of alien military advisors, weapons, mecha, etc. from Cha'alt. The cabals of Elysium have engaged with the US military & been found wanting on several battle fronts. 



During tonight's game the PC's had to go to the USA's military base in the Grand Canyon to summon more PC Godbound  from a nearby fantasy Prime plane. The player's PC Godbound were taken into the US military base built into the Isle Temple & Cancid's Caves. The place is heavily guarded by US Cha'alt converted mecha. 


Something went entirely wrong as the moment the PC's were summoned. An old foe namely the Egg of Coot decided to attack the California base in tonight's game! The PC's teleported back via one of their new Godbound allies. And yes this is Havard's Giger version of the Egg of Coot! 


And the cybernetic army along with a Juggernaut of Doom is fully engaged with the PC's & the US military. Things are looking very grim indeed for our PC's if only there might be some possible allies?! Note that the DA1 Adventures in Blackmoor isn't geared toward Mystara but Greyhawk. Note that my version of the classic Greyhawk is actually Sword & Sorcery Greyhawk with twists & turns within its history. With this campaign world setting I've used a good deal of AS&SH along with Adventurer, Conqueror, King's product line to build this & expand it out. Will the PC's survive?!

The Egg of the Coot & The Demon Worm - Cha'alt/Godbound Campaign Commentary Session Report Part Ten

The Witch Coven of Garlghast & the Egregore set by Privateer Press (34035), make excellent substitutes for the witches of Egg of Coot. 

 Cha'alt/Godbound  campaign had a high rate of ultra violence! 
In tonight's game the party encountered a Cha'alt demon worm along with purple demon  cleric summoner  & its  the sky ship guardians. The demon worm turned on the handlers as its cleric was teleported away! The party was on its way back to the dragon's city state & had to deal with a scout party controlling a minor Cha'alt demon worm or was it the other way around.  The demon worm is going to be seeking revenge on the party of adventures 


Rex Harenae Crawler In Toxix found out that his guards were way laded by a group of Egg of Coot witches & an egg aviator. The group took their time dealing with the witches & had a bit of a rough time with the avatar.



Voltan the Deathless had a bit of a confrontation with the party but they beat feet away from him! He's porting in  a part army of the Egg of Coot to lay siege to the dragon king's city state. Stepthen the Rock's spies are watching all of the action happening at the city state. There is no love lost between the Stephen The Rock & the Egg of Coot. The Egg is very petty that way & beyond capriciously chaotic evil itself.

The action is picking up next week as Cha'alt's power grows in intensity around the PC's. There is an alliance between one of the Demon worms of Cha'alt & Voltan the Deathless. A confrontation between the dragon, the party, & the Egg of Coot is coming up next week!



Gray Morrow - Robot Soldier Illustration  that I think is exactly the right style for my NPC Voltan the Deathless a Godbound rpg agent of Chaos. Art is used without permission but no copyright or trademark infridgement is meant. This blog post is for educational & entertainment purposes only. If you don't know who Gary Morrow is then read about this over looked master right here. 

Blackmoor, Dungeons, & The Terror of the Gas Station - -Cha'alt/Godbound Campaign Commentary Session Report Part Six

While this is a mock up cover for an imaginary Dungeons & Dragons module by Havard.
The bio mechanical artwork of H.G. Giger is exactly how I picture the egg operating.  

The Arizona leg of my campaign last night was getting the PC's settled into their new digs inside the dragon king's city state. Then the ball started moving with them assisting the Hyperborean mercenaries with some of the Egg of Coots forces. Throughout this I've been leaning really heavily on both  the  Cha'alt rule book & the Godbound rpg rule books. Last night's game was no different with spice frackers from Cha'alt playing a major part in the game. The frackers had seen an Egg's scouting party messing around with some dungeon ruins ten miles away from the city state.  Diving into Cha'alt I divined that my version of the spice frackers were waiting for the Cha'alt wave to crack into the dimensional energies of the local space time.





This creates a planar explosion attracting one of the demonic worms of Cha'alt. The frackers use a combination of ecological & engineering power armor with laser rifles to collect the raw Azoth & Zoth. These products  are created when the worm feeds on interaction of the reality energies. This is later on collected into spice, energy, & other products. The worm is subdued & harvested or allowed to roam again. The work is very profitable but dangerous. The Egg of Croot's forces  are  likely to be murdering a worm & simply stripping the corpse for all its worth for its army.


The spice frackers are working for the dragon king & have no interest in the ruins. The Egg however has groups of mercenaries & adventurers working for it looking for ruins, dungeons, etc. That have been activated by the appearance of the Cha'alt wave. Mecha belonging to mercenaries were already inside the planar dungeon that the ruin were a part of. Stone to mud sank the mech into the mud! It thrashed & I as the DM failed the rule with a one. The thing sank completely into the mud at was quickly turned back into stone!
That's when the adventurers ran across the floating doors! A giant set of floating doors in a door jam floating five feet above central spiral of ruined stone blocks. The dungeon guardian NPC engaged the player's PC in a game of cat & mouse about their intentions. Meanwhile a scout party  of beast men belonging to the Egg watched intently on the spice fracker's operation  waiting for their opportunity!

The party of adventurers wasn't having any of it! An A.I. drone belonging to the dungeon guardian approached the party & scanned them. The party's portal wizard sealed the doors! They sealed in the NPC rival party! Then they bashed the A.I. drone with a magic staff & collected its remains for parts! They went on to tackle the beast men & that took a bit of time! The beast men forces came straight outta of AX2 Secrets of the Nethercity for the forces of the Egg. I modified them using a combination of the  Cha'alt rule book & the Godbound rpg rule books.



It took the players awhile to deal with the beast men. They burnt the bodies & left no trace of the small force of chaos. It was on the way back that they ran into something unexpected. A fully operational gas station in the middle of the desert wasteland! With cars, pumps, & everything the size of a big box store! The whole place looked like it didn't belong at all! And there were people milling around in the place! It was a combination a big box store & a location from a 50's sci fi movie?!  The second the first party member crossed the threshold was the second the front door locked! The 'customers' were all wearing shock collars ala a dog's invisible fence. But these were much more powerful & the victims pleaded for the adventurer to help them.


My version of this filling station was based on The Skovshoved Filling Station, in operation since 1935, in Copenhagen, Denmark.  The A.I. of the place had tons of androids waiting for the party & two twenty five foot tall maintenance & engineering droids just waiting to do battle with any mecha. After about ten androids made their way out on to floor of the gas station to inform our adventurer that they had his room waiting for him permanently. And a brand new shock collar. Things disintegrated completely! The adventurer in question is the party's portal wizard & he's got quite the temper. He proceeded to portal way over half the station & free all of the 'customers'. Meanwhile the mech belonging to the party was about to engage the engineering droids but they went dead as soon as the controlling A.I. disappeared! 
Originally this encounter was done as a part of an old Mutant Future campaign I ran several years ago. I needed to keep the game going & so just threw it in to see if the players would go for it & they did! 

Evil In The Wastelands -Cha'alt/Godbound Campaign Commentary Session Report Part Five

In tonight's game my players are going to deeply embroiled within the city of the dragon king while the forces of the Egg of Coot march across the wastelands!



Came across these The Witch Coven of Garlghast & the Egregore set by Privateer Press (34035) in a random
Google image search they make excellent substitutes for the witches of Egg of Coot. 

So for the last two weeks I've been messaging my players with both the  Cha'alt rule book & the Godbound rpg. After encountering the scout army in last week's game & dealing with the dragon king. I'm pulling in far more old school & OSR material within my campaign world's version of Arizona. The problem has been where & which OSR books I'm using. The Cha'alt campaign megadungeon  is a major player within my game tonight.


I'm also using DA2: "Temple of the Frog" (1987), by Dave Arneson and David J. Ritchie. This points up the foreshadowing presence of Stephen The Rock . And his expanded role in the down fall of this Earth coming up.



That is if the players don't figure out the ins & outs of the dread tome that they may run across if certain adventure criteria are met. Meanwhile I've been quietly working on converting over certain humanoid forces of Chaos to Adventurer,Conqueror,King's  Axioms Compendium 1-8 article Issue #2 - Beastmen. The savage swords of chaos, are unleashed. Then these are put through some of the random tables of Cha'alt to give the forces the right sort of Egg of Coot chaos feel to em.


There are a number of minor dungeons & ruins that I've peppered through Arizona that I've really had to do a bit of reaching to populate. Fortunately before I was able to meet with some of my OSR & old school illuminaties in the local area. One of whom reminded me of the fact that I own a copy of Dragon Lords Monster Manuscripts which is sort of an anti Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. There are lots of weird & wonderful monsters that I can give the Cha'alt treatment too.


Then there's an old Immortal  foe of my players from way back in the 90's from my Nexus The Infinite City campaign  whom I've dusted off & given a Godbound fresh coat of paint. He's a vile villain with a copy of the Necronomicon Roman edition & a very nasty agenda of his own. Tdnarbmer The Scribe & Scholar  is an occult adviser to kings & queens whose working his way in the court of  Rex Harenae Crawler In Toxix (King Sand Crawler The Toxic). He was made using the guidelines found within Adventurer,Conqueror,King rpg's ACK's The Heroic Fantasy Handbook. 


Tdnarbmer The Scribe & Scholar is based on Rembrandt - A Scholar Seated at a Desk

Tdnarbmer The Scribe & Scholar is an NPC villain of higher caliber then the players are used to dealing with. He's the sort of a wizard who can & will position player's PC's in ways they they don't see coming. Tdnarbmer is also watching the Hyperborean mercenaries that serve the city state & perhaps positioning himself to make the planar jump over to Blackmoor. He's been studying the clock work cybernetics of the Egg of Coot now for some time but has yet to come under the influence of the Egg or its machinations.


The question is will the party of adventurers or is there something else watching in the wings from Cha'alt itself?!

The Egg of Coot Forces & The Dragon's Lair - Cha'alt/Godbound Campaign Commentary Session Report Part Four

The Witch Coven of Garlghast & the Egregore set by Privateer Press (34035), make excellent substitutes for the witches of Egg of Coot. 

The party was accompany my dragon king NPC's hover caravan in the  Cha'alt/Godbound campaign play session tonight. 
In tonight's game the party encountered the Egg of Coots scout army coming through the gateway into one of the Egg's base cities. A fire on the horizon along with a fiery Boreas indicated the presence of a Juggernaut of Doom surrounded by the chosen of Egg of Croot & its witch covens. There were orc,goblin, & hobgoblins that had been converted over to full Egg convert technicians with clock work cybernetics connected with the occult supernatural network. 



Our party's gate wizard godbound was able to teleport away six of the Egg's minor technicians who then went completely catatonic & confused away from the Egg of Croot's neural network. The party then found a rival NPC group of mercenary adventurers who were working for one of the Egg of Coot's witch covens. They argued over getting paid by the witches & the portal wizard took the opportunity to teleport the NPC adventurers to their camp. The player's PC's recruited the rivals to work for them instead. 
The party then find out that Cha'alt Syndicate had taken over Las Vegas & the adventurer mercenaries had gotten in hock to the Syndicate over their own mecha. They were recruited to spy on the Egg of Coot's army. The egg wanted them to help recover an artifact god walker but didn't want pay for it. The Egg is very petty that way & beyond capriciously chaotic evil. 


Some of the occult technology used in tonight's session came from DA2: "Temple of the Frog" (1987), by Dave Arneson and David J. Ritchie. This points up the foreshadowing presence of Stephen The Rock .

The player's party then ran off as the dragon king's wizard cast the 'dawn's teleport' ritual. The party's camp found themselves just outside of the dragon's city state on a prepared plateau location. Part of the Dragon King's army met up with the party & accompanied them the rest of the way. The PC's were brought to the workshop castle of the dragon king. 



 Rex Harenae Crawler In Toxix (King Sand Crawler The Toxic) was made using the guidelines found within Adventurer,Conqueror,King rpg's ACK's The Heroic Fantasy Handbook

Inside gates of  Rex Harenae Crawler In Toxix (King Sand Crawler The Toxic)'s city state the party was brought to a local tavern where the dragon in human form questioned the player's PCs & then offered them employment. He explained the fact that he took over the Grand Canyon because the Cha'alt wave activated the serpent men's lost city planar gate way. The dragon didn't want the serpent men gate way falling to any other factions.
Rex Harenae Crawler In Toxix has a number of Hyperborean mercenaries in his employ. The fact is that many of the occult secret within the city state's walls are straight out of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea rpg. 


There are several members of  'Order of the Lords of Mystery' are among the advisers of Rex Harenae Crawler In Toxix  & he is well aware of their hidden agenda. Cha'alt's black pyramid is a far too dangerous to allow near the city state.


Next week the party sinks deeper into the old school & OSR weirdness of an Earth under assault by the Cha'alt warp & wave! 

Eggspectations & The Arneson angle - Dave Arneson, & David J. Ritchie's DA2 Temple of the Frog - Old School Lovecraftian Occult Tech Influences - Cha'alt/Godbound Campaign Commentary

"Try to imagine this.

A windowless room with just one exit. Inside it are people dressed in some hazmat suit like the ones we see on the crime scenes in some popular TV shows. These people have arranged the room, furniture and all, even some little animals, some pets. Then they go away, closing forever the only exit, so that they are certain nothing and no one will leave the room. All has been arranged in a way that whoever is inside the closed room, will retain no memory of their presence. But let’s imagine that a tiny hair or an even tinier speck of skin had fallen from one of these people. The crime scene is compromised for as tiny as this pollutant may be.

Now back to our idea: the Multiverse is the room, the Old Ones are the people in the hazmat suits, the Immortals the little pets, the Egg of Coot is the polluting element.

You may say that a tiny hair is still a tiny hair. An organic inanimate object, doomed to become impoverished, dry and in the end dissolve. With no doubt this is sound reasoning for mortal beings and perhaps for Immortal ones too. For me, this may be not true for beings (Entities? Powers?) as mysterious and powerful as the Old Ones.

During millennia, the tiny speck evolves, get a body and finally sentience. It is a progressive and enormously slow process.

When the Egg of Coot rises from the waters in front of the Blackmoor Kingdom, it puts the humanoid tribes of the North under its command and starts its journey to the world domination, it is still in the starting phase of its evolution.

The Egg, just to maintain the theme, has just hatched.

But the advent of techno-magic is a steep turning point and a big steer toward the evolutionary development for the Old One embryo.

We all know, always from official sources like Wrath of the Immortals, that the alien technology, through a lot of tinkering, first by one of the Old Ones then by the Immortals themselves, will become the energy form called Radiance.

Through the Radiance use (or influence) we know for sure that at least three Immortals are born: Rafiel, Benekander and then Rad.

With the Radiance then it is possible to create new Immortals!"
From 'The Return of the Egg' by Giuliano Michelon from Threshold Magazine issue 12

Thanks to the Vaults of Pandius 


Let me dive back into the heart & soul of my  Cha'alt/Godbound campaign. I had the complete nerve to bring up the Egg of Coot yesterday but my own history with the egg goes back quite a long time to running through Dave Arneson's Blackmoor & through Dave Arneson, & David J. Ritchie's DA2 Temple of the Frog. My PC died repeatedly in that classic module. Flash forward to Two thousand & nine, I'm wide eyed in the OSR. I come across Havard Blackmoor blog entry on the Egg of Coot here. If there was ever an entity that perfectly fits the Road of Night entries in the Godbound rpg then the Egg is it. I really have had my view on the egg coloured by that blog entry. But strolling across the wastelands of Nevada & Arizona are miniature 'Juggernauts of Doom'. Here's a quick reminder of what these nasty pseudo mecha like  war machines of chaos & darkness are! 



Here's a profile of one of the Juggernauts from Harvard's blog; "Juggernaut of Doom
This powerful War Machine is similar to regular Juggernauts and may travel through forested areas without any movement penalty due to huge cutting blades constantly swinging along its sides. Anyone approaching the juggernaut from the sides must save vs Dragon Breath or suffer 3d8 points of damage. The Juggernaut of Doom may carry up to 50 humanoids."
So what is the Egg of Coot doing on Earth & sticking its bio mechanical tendrils into the black pyramid's business? Simply put its an invasive supernatural occult pain in the arse NPC. Its wraith troops & witch cults have absolutely no business in this campaign making it its business. The appearance of Dwimmermount on Earth down in South America's Bolivia has attracted the Egg's attention.  Because as the Cha'alt warp washes against the back blow of Earth's reality Azoth is created. The Egg of Croot is using Azoth to power its own war machines & troops.

But there are other powers interested not only in this new play thing called Earth & those powers are greedy at the best of times & chaotically evil at the worst. Where the Egg of Croot is Stephen the Rock is. These two are always the ying & yang of evil for me.  Once again I'm using Havard's Blackmoor blog entry on Stephen The Rock.  While the Egg of Coot marches his armies onto Earth, Stephen The Rock quietly sets down a few cybernetically enhanced agents here & there.



Stephen The Rock looks like DC Brianic Five in my mind. Because of Harvard Blackmoor.
This artwork is from DC universe encyclopedia site & used without permission.
No copyright or trade mark violations are meant.
This is a blog entry for entertainment purposes only



The powers below the black pyramid of Cha'alt remain unimpressed with these two cosmic buffoons in their minds. Ancient mechanisms turn below the ruins of one of the former capitals of Cha'alt. Elven voices sing the praises of ancient forbidden gods.
Here's where Adventurer,Conqueror, King rpg's AX2 Secrets of the Nethercity comes into play.



Meanwhile the downed remains of a flying saucer that crashed in Nineteen fifty five spring to life. The telepathic circuits & psionic crystals glowing with a strange & unnatural colour. The crash site still hasn't been found in the Nevada desert wastelands. Here I'm pulling on another Venger Satanis product & in this case its Dead God Excavation which could be used as a zero session adventure for Cha'alt. But in my case its gonna be a fixed point that could be exploited by the PC's as a potential base or lair ala Adventurer,Conqueror,King's Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu

These remains are what's drawing the attention of Stephen of the Rock but he's also watching the production of Azoth at the city state of a certain dragon NPC. A lot of this is being drawn from my experiences in my uncle's old Blackmoor campaign notes & OSR notes over the years. 

Happy Dave Arneson Day - Campaign Commentary On DA2 Temple of the Frog by Dave Arneson, & David J. Ritchie.

"Green Death...

That's what old hands call the Great Dismal Swamp. For centuries, this tangled maze of sluggish watercourses, stagnant ponds, and festering marshes has defended Blackmoor's southwestern frontier. Large armies and smaller parties have disappeared altogether inside its vast, dripping, claustrophobic corridors.

Among those who have dropped from sigh in this arboral hell is young Rissa Aleford, one of Blackmoor's most important leaders. Carried off to the sinister City of the Fron, she is now being held by the eccentric Monks of the Swamp. By making the baroness captive, the deranged monks have serioulsy weakened Blackmoor at a time when enemies already threaten it from all sides.

Yet, even as the Froggies gloat, the king of Blackmoor dispatches a small band of bold adventures to the rescue. Deep into the Great Dismal Swamp they must go - far from sunlight and sanity - there to seek and save the swamp, there to find the Temple of the Frog."

For me everyday is Dave Arneson day, the Egg of Coot has been a active & very dangerous presence in any number of my campaigns. The egg's presence was something we as players ran across in my uncle's campaign as a piece of  graffiti on one of the walls of the temple of the frog.  To say I've got history with Blackmoor is an understatement, Blackmoor has been my go to campaign for longer then I can remember. It connects with my earliest memories of gaming back in '77 when my uncle ran us through his modified version of the temple & we died. Boy I was hooked on original Dungeons & Dragons. I've got a whole blog piece from back in 2o16 about my experiences with Blackmoor. 
Here's some of the back history according to wiki on the original Temple of the Frog adventure found in the original Dungeons & Dragons Blackmoor supplement; "Following the release of the original Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson decided to publish expansions of their respective campaigns. For Arneson, this expansion would be based on his Blackmoor campaign, which had originated with the 1971 Fantasy Supplement to the Chainmail rules.^[10] In March 1975, Gygax told a wargaming newsletter that Arneson was working on a final draft, and TSR began accepting preorders for the product and advertised it in The Strategic Review. The booklet was delivered late, in part by having gone through two editors (Brian Blume and Tim Kask) and being temporarily misplaced. The final edit was done hastily in a few weeks.^[5]:111 The Blackmoor expansion was published by TSR, Inc. in 1975^[11] as a sixty-page, digest-sized book.^[1] It was the second supplement to the original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set and bears the designation "Supplement II," with Gygax's Greyhawk preceding it in the same year.

Illustrations were provided by David C. Sutherland III, Mike Bell, and Tracy Lesch. The supplement was edited by Tim Kask,^[12] who also did development on it.^[13]

The Temple of the Frog was later revised, expanded, and released as DA2 Temple of the Frog."

Instead I wanted to talk about bringing the DA2 Temple of the Frog by Dave Arneson, &  David J. Ritchie. My own experiences with this module started back in '90 when a friend bought me a copy for my birthday. But in 2019 what are the machinations of St.Stephen of The Rock & his followers doing in the Dismal Swamp? 

For me as a dungeon master Mystara & Blackmoor are two separate yet interconnected timelines via the Planes Prime. There's a series of articles on the Vaults of Pandius site that go into the fannon of this stuff. 

St.Stephen is a nasty villain who is going to be doing two things looking for other worlds to expand his empire into for future conquest. And securing his place in Blackmoor via the temple of the Frog. Over the years I've had St.Stephen clash with adventurers in Dark Albion, he's appeared in Hyperborea any number of times, etc. The bottom line is the enduring impact that Dave Arneson's creations have had on gaming. The Egg of Coot is a whole other ball game taking an active role of causing havoc with my player's PC's over & over again. But St.Steven hasn't been idle not when he's got the toad god Tsathoggua on his behind. Someplace out in the multiverse in my games these two struck a bargain. The soldier had his knowledge & given the science fantasy aspect of DA2 this isn't surprising. The toad god sees the temple & its monks as another playing piece in the grand game of time for its own amusement. 



All throughout the time streams, history, etc. the 'Temple of the Toad' must exist in one form or another. Stephen has been sending out small expediations over the years to explore the planes. These have sometimes ended in conquest or sometimes in disaster. But this doesn't deter St.Stephen & his master isn't a patient entity. I do believe its time for St.Stephen & his monks to take the stage once again. Happy Dave Arneson day folks!

Thanks to Havard now in my mind St.Stephen looks like
Brainac 5. Brainic 5 is trade marked & copyrighted to DC comics.
Artwork used without permission. This blog post is for entertainment & educational purposes only. 


But can the Egg of Coot be far behind?!

And if you want to set the record straight about Blackmoor then go watch Secrets of Blackmoor for an inside look into the other history of old school gaming.

The Story of the Adventurers & the Achaierai For Dave Arneson Game Day 2019

Blackmoor is beset!"
On every side the storm clouds gather. To south and east, the Great Empire of Thonia plots to end Blackmoor's independence and reclaim its lost province. To the west, the implacable Afridhi are on the move. To the north, the evil Egg of Coot prepares to cross the thundering sea and once again bring fire and sword into the heart of the small kingdom. Beyond the realm of the Egg, the hated Skandaharian Raiders are building longships and preparing to fall upon Blackmoor's unprotected coast while its tiny army turns to meet these other threats.
Into this time of black despair, there steps a band of adventurers who clutch strange swords and wear most curious armor - and who claim that Blackmoor sank beneath the ice 3,000 years ago!

Today's Dave Arneson's birthday & as usual Havard Blackmoor is doing his utmost to celebrate it. Now me being the huge fan of Dave Arneson I was going to run a bit of DA1 Adventures in Blackmoor with DM Raj & some of his players. But I came down with Autumn cold or smut the usual disease that seems to run through the local schools. The new free  sourcebook by Original Blackmoor Player Greg Svenson is out. This is the fourth book in the series and is titled GS4 - The Noble House of Zvenzen.




So long ago about two years ago I was running a post apocalytic Mars game using Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. And the adventurers had run across a wrecked space craft & I didn't really fill in a lot of details it was supposed to be a one off write off encounter. It was not at all. The PC' side quested up to the wreckage & began poking around. They came across a huge strange technological box then  proceeded to activate & open it! That's when a huge  achaierai came out! A huge nightmarish demonic four footed chicken with the mind of a serial killer & desposition of a honey badger! The box in question came from the FSS Beagle under the heading 'alien xeno specimen' with the words 'Very dangerous' senciled on the side in Ancient. The achaierai  came straight outta of the AD&D Fiend Folio
Here's a run down from the wiki entry on them; "The achaierai (/əˈtʃaɪ.əraɪ/ ə-CHY-ə-rye)^[10] is a large birdlike outsider that comes from the plane of Acheron.

The achaierai is described as an enormous 15-foot-tall (4.6 m) flightless bird with four stilt-like legs, a plump, hulking body, blunt, shaggy stubs for wings, and a parrot-like head. Its plumage is mostly red with orange and yellow highlights, though its sides and stumpy wings are blue and green.

An achaierai is always lawful evil and they hunt together in small flocks. They are evil, clever, and predatory, with a distinct taste for torture. They can release a choking, toxic black cloud that causes temporary insanity. Their forelegs are also powerful weapons, being able to deliver an extremely powerful kick, and to grab and grasp prey. It can also attack with its beak."
Needless to say that the achaierai proceeded to mop the floor with the adventurers!



I'd later run the same players through Dave Arneson, &  David J. Ritchie's DA3 City of the Gods. Once they recognized that same style of xeno specimen cryopod they were not happy at all with me. The City of The Gods module had lots of twists & turns for the players of that adventure. It took months to solve all of the problems that seemed to plague the adventurers in that adventure. It was almost a mini campaign unto itself. 



I've got to get back to Dave Arneson, &  David J. Ritchie's DA3 City of the Gods sooner rather then later coming up. But to this day I get the no fking giant demonic chickens! Happy Dave Arneson day 2019 folks.