High Tech Mysticism & High Caliber Adventure - Nightshift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan -

 This is a continuing series of posts about several conversations with my players, friends, & fellow DM's concerning using Jason Vey's original Dungeons & Dragons Conan hack available here  along with  Tim Brannan & Jason Vey's Veterans of the Supernatural Wars.  Today's blog entry picks up right from here. 

Searching through my dream shattered sleep is often a weird at best & horrid experience  at worst. Overe the years there are one or two modules that bring home the station of Dungeons & Dragons to me. One of these is B2 Keep on the Borderlands by Gary Gygax. Everything about B2 feels like a set up by Clark Ashton Smith in his  Averoigne stories 

What if the humanoid hordes within B2 were gathering for another reason?! What if the Lovecraftian forces of the Caves of Chaos were about to send in the first force of an invasion?! Think about it for a second, hordes of humanoids in an ancient place of power waiting. Waiting for your adventurers to bust in?! No. I think they could be waiting to rampage across the threshold of worlds & into a modern Earth. And the prospect is  terrifying. 
Oh but our modern fire arms, armies, etc. There are lots of ways that an evil cleric or wizard could & should exploit the situation. Now often in this series we've talked about the forces of Law & Chaos. Well the dark forces of caves of Chaos is perfectly suited to exploit this in spades. If we set B2 on The Wilderlands of High Fantasy then this becomes even more evident. That's right the Wildlands instead of Greyhawk. Why? Three reasons one the wilderlands is far more concentrated in its humanoid forces according to Judges Guild materials. Two the humanoids are motivated by the dark powers there for expansion. Three the modules present a world on the edge of barbarianism & expansion. That expansion is painful & ripe for exploitation. Think about it, Earth is perfect for the dark powers to expand into. The player's PC's might be dealing with supernatural investigation & are ill prepared for the coming of a whole army. The random encounters with the odd orc warrior or the gnoll scout in New Jersey could lead them on a trail of the moat house of T1-4 The Temple of Elemental Evil by Gary Gygax & Frank Mentzer. 

The fog of war might just be looming as the balance of power shifts and shifts again between Law & Chaos. This is something over the years that we've seen over & over again. The Earth's time or an Earth as the case may be might yield unexpected allies from across space & time. But we'll get into that next time folks. 

High Tech Mysticism & High Caliber Adventure - Nightshift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars By Jason Vey & Timothy Brannan - Unboxing of Runelore & The Lovecraftian Gods

 "In the crumbled ruins of ancient cities, tombs and crypts where dead Kings lie, in the halls of libraries upon tablets of stone and vellum scrolls echo the secrets of worlds gone by. In their ruin lay written clues, faint reminisces of power and glory, unnoticed by men and elves, passed by as curiosities or riddles best forgotten. Runes. Dwarf runes. Runes of power. Runes that captured the language of creation, recast it in symbols and glyphs pregnant with power."

Introducing Rune Lore, an exciting new supplement for the Castles & Crusades Role Playing Game. You ve played the divine; you ve wrestled with the eldritch sorcery of the arcane; now, unravel the mysteries of the runes and a magic like you ve never played before. Rune Lore takes full advantage of the Siege Engine, bringing its power to the table. Runic spells, over 40 in the book, allow the caster to use his or imagination and bend them to their will. Use the rune of fire to light torches, burn fields, set wagons afire; use the rune of fire to bring flames to life or burn foes. Combine runes for greater affect. All this by use of the Siege Engine. The only limit is your imagination.
Rune Lore is the perfect symbiosis of the philosophy of Castles & Crusades, its designers, and the world of all our collective imagination.
The runemarks, these are the nameless heroes who seek to master these runes, who take power in hand for the sheer glory of its mastery. They are hunters, scholars, voyagers, explorers, travelers; they are those who unravel the mysteries of the world behind and prophecy the one ahead. They are the runemarks."

So over the past couple of months one of the things that I've been angling for is to grab a few of the older Castles & Crusades books especially Runelore. This has been on my to get list. Why?! Because of the fact that it slides into my own version of  Judges Guild's Wilderlands of High Fantasy. The idea that mythologically the gods, dwarves, & others left behind during the Ragnarök. Many artifacts & other piece of god weaponry when it comes to the runes. 

 

Runelore provides the DM with some of those tools. But with the coming of the Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea rpg third edition kickstarter. We've decided fall back to either Fantastic Heroes & Witchery or perhaps Castles & Crusades for this Sword & Sorcery campaign. 

Runelore was a key purchase for me as a dungeon master because of the fact that it provides key information. About a key mythological concept for my version of the Wilderlands of High Fantasy. The science fantasy aspect has been ratched up in this instance. 
The Dwarven race plays a key part in both the Wilderlands & my version of Dark Europe which we'll get into much later on. One of the aspects about The Wilderlands of High Fantasy is the sci fi elements that cross over into other Judge's Guild products. Runelore fills in some of the gaps for the occult & dangerous runes that the Dwarves & other elder races left behind. 

This is something that's been on my mind over the last two weeks or so. Something that's I've talked over with DM Steve & DM Ricky. Could these runes bind up an eternal champion?! Not looking through Runelore. 

But it could rightly drive one back. I think that these runes used correctly could keep an agent of Law or Chaos at bay. 
And that gets into how they may have been used in the past of our campaign where you have balrogs & their lawful evil counter parts pit fiends being driven back into the darkness. Yes this was something that I think also happened within the realms of the Higherlands. We know that there were literally thousands of Balrogs according to this reference on Tolkein. 
But we also know that in the original City State of the Invincible Overlord that out in the wilderness they have been uncovered from time to time. What does any of this have to do with other settings or Runelore?! Quite a bit. 

 

Castles & Crusades Tome of the Unclean has all of the material that we'll be needing for Stats. But think for a second what might happen if a Balrog or its Lawful counterpart reached an Earth such as our own. The loss of life would be horrific. But Balrogs & Lovecraftian god things existing side by side. What hertical nonsense is this!? What if I was to tell you that there were not only Lovecraftian things in Tolkien but that they were there the whole time as explaind here. 
Does any of this have to do with Lamentations of the Flame Princess?! Yes it does. Remember Kennith Hite's Qelong?! Well those god things doing battle  are another manifestation of the forces of Law & Chaos. As are the god things of Tolkien. 

These things have been driven back beyond the darkness between the planes & the thresholds of reality trapped within their own prisons of the Outer Darkness. Does this sound familiar?! Yes Conan fans the Lovecraftian gods that we've seen time & again especially in 2004's Hellboy might be the same entities we see in both Tolkein & Clark Aston Smith. Perhaps different branches of the same family. 

Can they be driven back beyond the threshold?! For a bit, a few million years here & there perhaps. In the Wilderlands of High Fantasy?! Who knows?! Perhaps only the Runes can hold them for a time. But the dreams are a very fickle thing. And the dreams of sorcerers are even more dangerous. 

Zothique is a real aligned to the Lovecraftian gods & things a place of demons, semi fiends, and worse still. That place plays its part coming up. And they must feed & feed they do on the monster ecology of Fairy & Elves. For chaos begets chaos indeed. 

High Tech Mysticism & High Caliber Adventure - Nightshift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars By Jason Vey - Elves & Fairy

We've been talking about Timothy  Brannan & Jason Vey's  Nightshift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars. Along with the Age of Conan 'hack' for using OD&D in the Hyborian Age of Robert E. Howard. And now this comes full circle again. 

Elves & Fairy have bothered me in original Dungeons & Dragons going all of the way back to my gaming roots. And here's why, if we look deeply into definiation of Elves from both Wiki & the Encyclopedia Britticana 
"An elf (plural: elves) is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic mythology and folklore.In medieval Germanic-speaking cultures, elves seem generally to have been thought of as beings with magical powers and supernatural beauty, ambivalent towards everyday people and capable of either helping or hindering them. However, the details of these beliefs have varied considerably over time ..." And if we dive into orginal Dungeons & Dragons & the rule book we get the following;"Elves can begin as either Fighting-Men or Magic-Users and freely switch class whenever they choose, from adventure to adventure, but not during the course of a single game. Thus, they gain the benefits of both classes and may use both weaponry and spells. They may use magic armor and still act as Magic-Users. However, they may not progress beyond 4th level Fighting-Man (Hero) nor 8th level Magic-User (Warlock). Elves are more able to note secret and hidden doors, able to locate secret passages on a roll of 1-4. At the referee's option, Elves may be allowed the chance to sense any secret door they pass, a 1 or a 2 indicating that they become aware that something is there. Elves have the ability of moving silently and are nearly invisible in their gray-green cloaks. Elves armed with magical weapons will add one pip to dice rolled to determine damage, i.e. when a hit is scored the possible number of damage points will be 2-7 per die." 
And no this isn't the first time we've covered Elves on this blog. Back in 2018 I did whole retrospective on them & yes I still subscribe to those beliefs there. 

The Elves back story within Tolkein is explored very nicely in this video here  But how can you have both a mythological view point & the Tolkien view within a campaign?! Easy there are different kinds of Elves created by different gods via many different time & space continuums. Elves and Fairies are distinctly different & in some cases very much far more then rivals. 
 

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
Puck, Act III, scene ii.
William Shakespeare 

The Fey or Fairy cause headaches because of the fact that their origins are obscured in the mists of legend or mythology. Or are they?! There are multiple origins for these beings but let's go with the demoted angels,  pagan gods, & demons theory from legend & use the wiki entry explaination here;"A Christian tenet held that fairies were a class of "demoted" angels.^[15] One story described a group of angels revolting, and God ordering the gates of heaven shut; those still in heaven remained angels, those in hell became demons, and those caught in between became fairies.^[16] Others wrote that some angels, not being godly enough, yet not evil enough for hell, were thrown out of heaven.^[17] This concept may explain the tradition of paying a "teind" or tithe to hell; as fallen angels, although not quite devils, they could be viewed as subjects of Satan" 

King James, in his dissertation Daemonologie, stated the term "faries" referred to illusory spirits (demonic entities) that prophesied to, consorted with, and transported the individuals they served; in medieval times, a witch or sorcerer who had a pact with a familiar spirit might receive these services.^[19]

In England's Theosophist circles of the 19th century, a belief in the "angelic" nature of fairies was reported.^[20] Entities referred to as Devas were said to guide many processes of nature, such as evolution of organisms, growth of plants, etc., many of which resided inside the Sun (Solar Angels). The more Earthbound Devas included nature spirits, elementals, and fairies,^[21] which were described as appearing in the form of colored flames, roughly the size of a human.^[22]

Arthur Conan Doyle, in his 1922 book The Coming of the Fairies; The Theosophic View of Fairies, reported that eminent theosophist E. L. Gardner had likened fairies to butterflies, whose function was to provide an essential link between the energy of the sun and the plants of Earth, describing them as having no clean-cut shape ... small, hazy, and somewhat luminous clouds of colour with a brighter sparkish nucleus. "That growth of a plant which we regard as the customary and inevitable result of associating the three factors of sun, seed, and soil would never take place if the fairy builders were absent."  

Now there is a third race that we see in Lamentations of the Flame Princess's 'The Pale Lady' by Zzarchov Kowolski. A type of horrid  rabbit pagan goddess that we see has many of the characteristics of a demoted or fallen god that has become a type of fairy horror.

 The Pale Lady might also may an excellent modern horror adventure unto itself. And crosses into the realm of demoted pagan gods & once again the wiki fairy entry;"At one time it was thought that fairies were originally worshiped as deities, such as nymphs and tree spirits,^[24] and with the burgeoning predominance of the Christian Church, reverence for these deities carried on, but in a dwindling state of perceived power. Many deprecated deities of older folklore and myth were repurposed as fairies in Victorian fiction (See the works of W. B. Yeats for examples)." 
Recently the revamp of Cthulhu Dark Ages has the Old Ones which seem to bridge gap between the classic mythological concepts & the Fey according to the CDA book;"Most myths of mankind mention the existence of a race of intermediary beings between men and gods. Despite the many names given to this race, most descriptions draw a disturbingly consistent image of what the Necronomicon calls, “the Old Ones.” Don’t confuse them with the Great Old Ones. As the Necronomicon writes, “Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly.” The old ones are spirit-like entities serving Yog-Sothoth. They are naturally invisible but often manifest as a halo of light that makes them shine like stars. In fact these beings can appear in all sorts of ominous ghostly shapes, from beautiful maidens to dreadful things with golden wings and bronze talons. Some accounts also allude to the unwholesome smell that accompanies them. Old ones have the gift of being able to move very quickly, and even, some say, to be everywhere at once. The old ones are innumerable, they know neither good nor evil, and they walked the earth long before mankind. Now they wander forever, “not in the spheres we know, but between them”—the ultimate abyss filled by Yog-Sothoth" 

And this really seems to be in line with the ideas put forth in Clark Aston Smith's Zothique setting. And in the deep end of the  Qliphotic lore of the CAS Zothique literature.

This again is something that we find deep within the back end of Mystara via X2 Castle Amber By Tom Moldvay. 

In terms of a modern Earth prime it means that X2 may have points that connect to the waking world or the underworld of the Dreamlands. And those mists that surround X2 may be more dangerous then then even the PC's have a clue about. The world of dreams isn't bound by normal space time but something far more dangerous. This isn't to say that they can be used to cross on purpose from one point to another in history but these may cross worlds or points in history where things can be far more unstable. This means that the magicks that the Ambervilles may connect into far more insidious issues then even their aware of. And it also puts both the player's PC's and others at risk. Perhaps even the modern Earth as we know it. 

High Tech Mysticism & High Caliber Adventure - Nightshift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars By Jason Vey - The Flipside of Law

 

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.
"Eldorado", st. 1 (1849). Edgar Allan Poe 

Apparently Timothy  Brannan the co writer on Nightshift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars wasn't getting credit on this blog's entries as co author of the game system?! That's my oversight & now that we've remedied that let's get back to the action.  Something started to occur to in the back of my mind about Original Dungeons & Dragons booklet 'The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures Volume Three of Three booklets' the following really weighted heavy on my mind; "Lost Parties: There is a chance of being lost, the chance depending on the type of terrain the party begins its turn upon. A lost party must move in the direction indicated by the die roll (1-6, as shown in the OUTDOOR SURVIVAL rules and on that board) and may make only one direction change from that direction. When exploring the referee should indicate which direction the party is lost in." 

What happens if this isn't the players adventurers?! Think about it. Dungeons as presented in original Dungeons & Dragons are set up to be machines of evil. Places of absolute riches, murder, dread, etc. So what happens to the other parties of NPC's who go down there?! This got me talking with DM Ricky & DM Steve about this & there was even more input.  The idea that the dungeon could as adventure location become the nexus gate  of a crisis. And the central point for both Law & Chaos as entry point into a plane prime. But this can't happen in a modern Earth right?! Not only did happen but it happened with two champions of balance in the official Moorcockian canon?! The anthology 'Tales of the Eternal Champion's 'Evening Odds'  story follows Gary Gygax's Gord The Rogue & his adventure to close a portal in Miami Florida by the archfiend Baphomet.  Baphomet is actually serving the flip side of the powers of Law in the Nine Hells. 
Don't forget the powers of Law don't necessarily mean 'good' it simply means 'Law' as in pay attention to the alignment of a monster.
                                                                  

Let's flip this back to the underworld for a moment. Those lost deep in the bowels of a dungeon may be willing to do anything to escape because not even death means a release from the grasp of those powers of the underworld. The underworld means both literal & figurative. Where do you think all of those skeletons & wandering monsters come from?! And were does the power come from to animate these undead?! Well what if the powers of Chaos in the form of the Balrogs which are at the top of the heap of original Dungeons & Dragons helping wizards in dungeons. There's a fan theory that there are literally thousands if not more Balrogs in Tolkein & you can find about that here. 

Now if this is the case could there be a reason why millions of years in the future that there's a mace wielding lord of evil in Clark Aston Smith's Zothique?! This isn't my theory but a friend of mine's on MeWe. The idea that Sauron could in point of fact not only survived the events that Tolkein depicted. But morphed into the Lord of Turpitudes is frightening. Sauron survives Middle Earth to found a cult dedicated to his evil within Mu?! THASAIDON has many of Sauron's traits but this isn't the only detail that runs in this direction. 

King of Rats version of Thasaidon on Deviant Art here. 

And what does this have to do with the underworld or dungeons?! Everything & more wraps itself around this idea. Earlier in this blog entry Baphomet was mentioned & that wasn't an accident. According to the Zothique D20 fan pdf; "THASAIDON Lawful Evil

Dark archfiend, “prince of all turpitudes.” Worshiped from the central deserts (Tasuun) to the southern islands (Sotar). Thasaidon is generous with his power, because he knows that power corrupts. Thasaidon is known and feared throughout Zothique, even where he is not worshiped. The vampires and lamiae pay him homage, and wizened liches drawn upon his power for continued earthly presence beyond the grave. Typical clerics will be power-hungry bureaucrats. The game master may elect to have some high-level arcane spells available only by the grace of Thasaidon."
The fact that the semi demonic & undead races draw power from him reminds me of Sauron's necromancer guise from Tolkein. But where does this leave him in Zothique?! Absolutely no where. Why?! Because by the time we read about him in The Dark Eidolon, CAS 1935 his armies have laid siege to the world, his time is almost over, & the dark promise is done. But what happens if this world millions of years in the future is accessible to the modern age?!  Its through the underworld of the dreamlands & Sauron survived through the underworld of mankind's dreams. He navigated history using the minds of mankind himself to skim along the currents of history, time, & space until it erm he arrived on Mu & later on Zothique. 

"The beginning of Clark Ashton Smith’s short story, The Dark Eidolon:

On Zothique, the last continent on Earth, the sun no longer shone with the whiteness of its prime, but was dim and tarnished as if with a vapor of blood. New stars without number had declared themselves in the heavens, and the shadows of the infinite had fallen closer. And out of the shadows, the older gods had returned to man: the gods forgotten since Hyperborea, since Mu and Poseidonis, bearing other names but the same attributes. And the elder demons had also returned, battening on the fumes of evil sacrifice, and fostering again the primordial sorceries.

Many were the necromancers and magicians of Zothique, and the infamy and marvel of their doings were legended everywhere in the latter days. But among them all there was none greater than Namirrha, who imposed his black yoke on the cities of Xylac, and later, in a proud delirium, deemed himself the veritable peer of Thasaidon, lord of Evil."

This one statement brings Zothique into focus but its appearance within Pagan Publishing's Realms of Shadows By Blair Reynolds means that its accessible to 1920's game campaign. Which is pretty perfect for Timothy  Brannan & Jason Vey's  Nightshift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars.  Because it ties into the back end of Mystara via X2 Castle Amber By Tom Moldvay. 

And this leads back into Hyperborea & much more coming up along with even more Lamentations so stay tuned! 

Ben Laurence's Through Ultan's Door & HP Lovecraft's Polaris - An OSR Sword & Sorcery Campaign Commentary

 Alright I haven't abandoned the possibilities of running an Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hypernborea one shot or Con run series of adventures for my players. We got hit with a snow storm & my players all cancelled this week because of work commitments. Wonderful.. So it was back to hitting the books or in this case the campaign notebooks. The campaign notebooks on redesigning  my version of Lomar from HP Lovecraft's story Polaris.




 Now this all goes back to the AS&SH game back from 2019 here on the blog; " That's right its time to unleash the Tcho-Tchoids upon the party!  Right now a Lomarian war party is on its way to ambush the adventurers. But it looks like I'm gonna have to redesign my version of Lomar from HP Lovecraft's story Polaris." 

Artwork used without permission ... I can't find the artist but love the artwork. Later it would find its way into a published book (I think). But then I happened upon The Dark Heritage blog break down on Lomar;
"Anyway, without further ado: here are some details about Lomar.  All of the known details, as it happens.

Lomar
capital city is Olathoë
which is located on the plateau of Sarkis
betwixt the peaks of Noton and Kadiphonek
there is a vaporous distant valley called Banof that can be seen from the towers of Olathoë
Olathoë is "ghastly" and built of towers, domes, pavements and pillars of marble
Olathoë is "many-templed" but only the worship of Tsathoggua is specifically mentioned
the upper part of the city has carved images of grave, bearded men
the Lomarians are tall and gray-eyed
Daikos is another city of Lomar
Lomar was at war with the Inutos and they were eventually over-run
the Inutos could come upon Olathoë via a narrow pass behind Noton
the watchtower of Thapnen guarded the pass
Alos is a politician-general of Olathoë
the Lomarians moved to Lomar from Zobna in the north due to advancing ice
Lomar is located near the north pole
the air of Olathoë was warm, despite it's northern latitude
Olathoë contains a square with many statues from which its leaders speak
besides the Inutos, they Lomarians also contended with "hairy, long-armed cannibal Gnophkehs"
the Inutos are "squat, hellish yellow fiends" come from the west, who are mighty in the arts of war and fight without scruples of honor
the men of Lomar wear strange robes and are noble and wise
the men of Olathoë were the bravest of Lomar
the men of Lomar brought with them from Zobna the Pnakotic manuscripts as well as the "wisdom of [their] Zobnarian Fathers"
the Pole Star shines balefully above Olathoë and seems to be possessed of a malignant antipathy towards Lomar

Now, granted, we can presume, I think, that some of the above is nativist propaganda since it comes from a patriotic denizen of Olathoë itself.  But that's a sufficient capsule view of Lomar to make it usable, I think, to potential gamers." Men & woman of Lomar gain a +1 intelligence & wisdom, -1 on Charisma because of the 'thousand yard' stare of theirs, +1 on strength & constitution living in the harsh climates & conditions of the volcanic lands surrounding Lomar. "




Lomar isn't necessarily a part of Hyperborea but perhaps a neighboring country?! This would help to explain the differences in the cultures of the two countries which are strongly connected with the Dreamlands. And this is where Ben Laurence's Through Ultan's Door comes in especially the second issue. The implications in that issue are that there are many such dungeon locations scattered about. 

The lands described in Ben Laurence's Through Ultan's Door  could be other  campaign settings around Lomar or within the same dreamlands campaign continuum. All of this could help to bridge a connection between Lomar, Ben Laurence's Through Ultan's Door , & even the rest of a Dunsanian or Lovecraft  campaign multiverse.. 

Are these back dreamlands connected with old ancient ancestral memories of dreamscapes or planes of the prime material that have outlasted their usefulness to mankind? I think that these planes or dreamscapes are becoming demi planes within their own right. Places that are multiverse echoes that scatter themselves among the planes to be fed on by the Outer Gods. 

 A Poem by Blank Frailty

Ah, Passion, like a voice—that buds!
With many thorns . . . that sharply stick:
Recalls to me the longing of our bloods . . .
And—makes my wearied heart requick! . .

Dead Passion's Flame
by H.P. Lovecraft
 
Ben Laurence's Through Ultan's Door Kickstarter here. 

OSR Commentary - The Sword of Ultan - Using 'Sword of Cepheus' By Omer Golan-Joel, Richard Hazlewood, and Josh Peters With Through Ultan's Door issue #1 By

"Go through Ultan's door in this inaugural issue into the Ruins of the Inquisitor's Theater, a 30 room dungeon for a party of 3-5 characters of 1-2 level, replete with oneiric puddings, delicate shadow puppets, giggling white swine, and much more. This 36 page zine contains everything you need to launch a D&D campaign in Zyan, flying city of the dreamlands."

 Its been a very long day here at Casa De Fabiaschi & the sun is setting low on the horizon. Ben Laurence's kickstarter for Through Ultan's Door issue #3 is hitting the 25,514 mark. Ben is someone whom that that every confidence to come through this Kickstarter with flying colours. Let's do another thought excercise with this one being the fact that can Through Ultan's Door issue #1 be used with 'The Sword of Cepheus' From Stellagama Publishing?! The answer is yes in a couple of areas in this one hundred & forty page rpg that uses the Mongoose OGL as its basis. 

The advantage that   'The Sword of Cepheus' has is the complete lack of a real deep water campaign setting history. This is a fantasy OSR game that uses the familiar 2d6 system & then takes a Dungeons & Dragons like cloak & drapes it over itself. So this means that  'The Sword of Cepheus' works as the basis for a Through Ultan's Door  campaign. The PC's start within a sorta of stable urban or country enviroment for epuipping, spending coin, etc. but things quickly get weird as the micro dungeon enviroment of Through Ultan's Door unfurls. Starting things off at a lower tier of adventurers with skills to match makes sense here. 

The unreality & yet very engaging campaign & dungeon setting of Through Ultan's Door  hits the high marks for a 'The Sword of Cepheus'  campaign because: 

1. 'The Sword of Cepheus' is a 2d6 PC driven system & its easy to grasp for a beginning player. 
2. The bizzare nature of the Dreamlands fits the dungeonsque tone of 'The Sword of Cepheus'  nicely without a huge chunk of campaign background to afix to. 
3. 'The Sword of Cepheus' has the OSR chops to handle the action without vexing the DM. 
4. Traditional OD&D & B/X D&D easily converts to 'The Sword of Cepheus' 
5. 'The Sword of Cepheus'  already has many of the same monsters as D&D or its retroclones built in. 
6. A 2d6 skill driven system works very well with a Dreamlands dungeon. 
7. The bizarre nature of Through Ultan's Door unfurls as disguised danger as players only grasp its nature far too late. 
8. The microdungeon means less work for the DM. 
9. Old School & OSR players have an instant touch stone with 'The Sword of Cepheus'  because of its D&D roots erm original  Traveller rpg roots. 
10. The weird asthetic dreamlands quality of Through Ultan's Door  means that it can easily be strung from one 'issue' to another to advance a campaign. 

All of the classic Through Ultan's Door are there in issue #1 & by using this issue as the start point for a campaign a DM gains consistency through actual play. This means that the players have a touch stone within the dreamlands. 

Primal Chaos & The OSR Lovecraftian Legacy - A Very Different Ecology Connection For Your Old School Campaigns

"Before the ocean and the earth appeared— before the skies had overspread them all—

the face of Nature in a vast expanse was naught but Chaos uniformly waste.

It was a rude and undeveloped mass, that nothing made except a ponderous weight;

and all discordant elements confused, were there congested in a shapeless heap!"



When it comes to old school games & OSR games Chaos has been an on going substance of evil all the way back to the days of mythology. The material of creation & the substance that binds reality & planes together. Passages in Hesiod's Theogony suggest that Chaos was located below Earth but above Tartarus. Primal Chaos was sometimes said to be the true foundation of reality, particularly by philosophers such as Heraclitus. The material is deadly to anyone exposed to it for even short periods of time. The power of chaos is often associated with both the power of the blackest magick & the Lovecraft's circle of the Cthulhu mythologies. This goes all the way back to the days of Dungeons & Dragons Supplement IV Gods Demigods & Heroes By Robert Kuntz & James Wards. Back then the Conan Mythology had many of the essential Chaos elements within it. 

The OSR has recently discovered this association that we saw crystallized in Deities & Demigods way back in 1980. The Cthulhu mythology really has its alieness & power within the fact that the original Lovecraft  deities are right in line with early third party Dungeons & Dragons products. These entities are extremely dangerous & downright deadly. This trend continues into right into the OSR products of today.

The Greco Roman mythological tradition has a long history of Chaos inside its bounds & its the fact that belongs to an older set of gods. Many of these predate the Greek & Roman gods of old.

"Hesiod and the Pre-Socratics use the Greek term in the context of cosmogony. Hesiod's chaos has been interpreted as either "the gaping void above the Earth created when Earth and Sky are separated from their primordial unity" or "the gaping space below the Earth on which Earth rests".^[9]

In Hesiod's Theogony, Chaos was the first thing to exist: "at first Chaos came to be" (or was)^[10] but next (possibly out of Chaos) came Gaia, Tartarus and Eros (elsewhere the son of Aphrodite).^[11] Unambiguously "born" from Chaos were Erebus and Nyx.^[12] For Hesiod, Chaos, like Tartarus, though personified enough to have borne children, was also a place, far away, underground and "gloomy", beyond which lived the Titans.^[13] And, like the earth, the ocean, and the upper air, it was also capable of being affected by Zeus' thunderbolts.^[14]

Passages in Hesiod's Theogony suggest that Chaos was located below Earth but above Tartarus.^[15] Primal Chaos was sometimes said to be the true foundation of reality, particularly by philosophers such as Heraclitus.

The notion of the temporal infinity was familiar to the Greek mind from remote antiquity in the religious conception of immortality.^{[clarification needed][16]} This idea of the divine as an origin^{[clarification needed]} influenced the first Greek philosophers.^[17] The main object of the first efforts to explain the world remained the description of its growth, from a beginning. They believed that the world arose out from a primal unity, and that this substance was the permanent base of all its being. Anaximander claims that the origin is apeiron (the unlimited), a divine and perpetual substance less definite than the common elements. Everything is generated from apeiron, and must return there according to necessity.^[18] A conception of the nature of the world was that the earth below its surface stretches down indefinitely and has its roots on or above Tartarus, the lower part of the underworld.^[19] In a phrase of Xenophanes, "The upper limit of the earth borders on air, near our feet. The lower limit reaches down to the "apeiron" (i.e. the unlimited)."^[19] The sources and limits of the earth, the sea, the sky, Tartarus, and all things are located in a great windy-gap, which seems to be infinite, and is a later specification of "chaos".^[19][20]

In Aristophanes's comedy Birds, first there was Chaos, Night, Erebus, and Tartarus, from Night came Eros, and from Eros and Chaos came the race of birds"

There have been artifacts & other unexplained relics that have been found throughout mythology for little to no reason. I think that these occult artifacts were left overs from the 'Time Before'. 

Richard Corben artwork illustrating on my favorite artworks of his.

The fact is that Chaos is one of the most dangerous material that PC's can come across. There is one deity that composed of the primal Chaos itself;
 "There, in the grey beginning of Earth, the formless mass that was Ubbo-Sathla reposed amid the slime and the vapors. Headless, without organs or members, it sloughed from its oozy sides, in a slow, ceaseless wave, the amoebic forms that were the archetypes of earthly life. Horrible it was, if there had been aught to apprehend the horror; and loathsome, if there had been any to feel loathing. About it, prone or tilted in the mire, there lay the mighty tablets of star-quarried stone that were writ with the inconceivable wisdom of the pre-mundane gods. 
—Clark Ashton Smith, Ubbo-Sathla"

Ubbo-Sathla is the essence of primal chaos itself & one of the most dangerous beings in the planes;"Ubbo-Sathla ("The Unbegotten Source", "The Demiurge") is described as a huge protoplasmic mass resting in a grotto deep beneath the frozen earth. The being is of a monstrous fecundity, spontaneously generating primordial single-celled organisms that pour unceasingly from its shapeless form. It guards a set of stone tablets believed to contain the knowledge of the Elder Gods.

Ubbo-Sathla is said to have spawned the prototypes of all forms of life on Earth; though whatever its pseudopods touch is forever devoid of life. Ubbo-Sathla is destined to someday reabsorb all living things on Earth."



The Elder Things of HP Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness novella used the primal chaos of Ubbo-Sathla to create the Shoggoths & all life on Earth as both a cosmic joke & servants of plastic aspect & design; "They seemed able to traverse the interstellar ether on their vast membranous wings—thus oddly confirming some curious hill folklore long ago told me by an antiquarian colleague. They had lived under the sea a good deal, building fantastic cities and fighting terrific battles with nameless adversaries by means of intricate devices employing unknown principles of energy. Evidently their scientific and mechanical knowledge far surpassed man's today, though they made use of its more widespread and elaborate forms only when obliged to. Some of the sculptures suggested that they had passed through a stage of mechanized life on other planets, but had receded upon finding its effects emotionally unsatisfying. Their preternatural toughness of organization and simplicity of natural wants made them peculiarly able to live on a high plane without the more specialized fruits of artificial manufacture, and even without garments, except for occasional protection against the elements.

It was under the sea, at first for food and later for other purposes, that they first created earth-life—using available substances according to long-known methods. The more elaborate experiments came after the annihilation of various cosmic enemies. They had done the same thing on other planets, having manufactured not only necessary foods, but certain multicellular protoplasmic masses capable of molding their tissues into all sorts of temporary organs under hypnotic influence and thereby forming ideal slaves to perform the heavy work of the community. These viscous masses were without doubt what Abdul Alhazred whispered about as the "Shoggoths" in his frightful Necronomicon, though even that mad Arab had not hinted that any existed on earth except in the dreams of those who had chewed a certain alkaloidal herb. When the star-headed Old Ones on this planet had synthesized their simple food forms and bred a good supply of Shoggoths, they allowed other cell-groups to develop into other forms of animal and vegetable life for sundry purposes, extirpating any whose presence became troublesome.

With the aid of the Shoggoths, whose expansions could be made to lift prodigious weights, the small, low cities under the sea grew to vast and imposing labyrinths of stone not unlike those which later rose on land. Indeed, the highly adaptable Old Ones had lived much on land in other parts of the universe, and probably retained many traditions of land construction. As we studied the architecture of all these sculptured palaeogean cities, including that whose aeon-dead corridors we were even then traversing, we were impressed by a curious coincidence which we have not yet tried to explain, even to ourselves. The tops of the buildings, which in the actual city around us had, of course, been weathered into shapeless ruins ages ago, were clearly displayed in the bas-reliefs, and showed vast clusters of needle-like spires, delicate finials on certain cone and pyramid apexes, and tiers of thin, horizontal scalloped disks capping cylindrical shafts. This was exactly what we had seen in that monstrous and portentous mirage, cast by a dead city whence such skyline features had been absent for thousands and tens of thousands of years, which loomed on our ignorant eyes across the unfathomed mountains of madness as we first approached poor Lake's ill-fated camp."
The first mention of Cthulhu seems to have appeared in Feb 1975, in the  Greyhawk Supplement by Gary Gygax & Robert Kuntz.  Feb 1978 an article titled Lovecraftian Mythos in D&D by Holmes and Kuntz appears in The Dragon #12. Giants in the Earth in The Dragon #36, Lawrence Schick and Tom Moldvay include an entry for "H.P. Lovecraft's Richard Upton Pickman the so called King of the Ghouls. Terminal Space rpg was one of the first OSR games to mention the Elder Things.

The Primordial Ones would appear later on in the Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea by North Wind Adventures rpg , Realms of Crawling Chaos supplement for Labyrinth Lord and the Advanced Edition Companion. & Lamentations of The Flame Princess Carcosa rpg setting 

The Primorial Ones Errol Ortiz Deities & Demigods


"Ubbo-Sathla possibly dwells in gray-litten Y'qaa. The being may also dwell in Mount Voormithadreth and may have spawned another of its residents, the being Abhoth, whose form and nature is very similar. This similarity has led some writers to speculate that Ubbo-Sathla and Abhoth are the same entity viewed at different epochs under different names"

Any dealings with the primal chaos & works of the Cthulhu mythos or its works leads to PC's being exposed to weird radiations & rampant mutation as well as insanity.. Lovecraftian Demons and god things are attracted to the energies left behind by the works of the Primordial Ones & later Mythos races.  The Immortals have taken the gods place there after several were murdered by the Great Old Ones. Several biological weapon systems in the form of certain D&D monsters still prowl the waters after the legacy left behind by the Elder Things. Rumors are that they still watch from beyond the veil of the Outer Darkness across the eons.
This is something that we see in the recent Aventurer, Conqueror, King, rpg sourcebook
 Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu™ (BCK) By Omer Joel, & Alexander Macris.

The Dreamlands of HP Lovecraft isn't immune to the machinations of the Old Ones, several mythos gods have connections to both our reality & the dream chaos of the lands beyond dreams. The countries of Fairy & Arcadia are deeply connected to the creation of the Elves who were spun from the mutated stuff left from the death of the gods. Dark Albion's Elven kings & rulers took advantage of the power of chaos to mold their great works & magicks. 


I go into this in far more detail with the connection between The Legendary Legacy of The Knight of the Yellow Pentacle & Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos in this blog entry. 
100 Oddities for a Chaotic Mutation, the 13th entry in Skirmisher Publishing's series of “100 Oddities” titles is solid for creating any random exposures that PC's happen to come across.



Primal chaos knows neither time nor space as many of the classic Pulp settings uses many of the classic Lovecraftian cults & monsters. Many of  the Amazing Adventures Manual of Monsters by Troll Lord Games has many Lovecraftian monsters whose very presence have a sheen of chaos about them.



These are some of the most dangerous monsters that PC's can run across in OSR games. The cults of these monsters are actively working on tearing apart the local time space continuum. There is a dramatic shift in the violence that the Old One's cults are taking towards various old school & OSR campaign settings.