Behold! The Sword of Power! Excalibur! - Destiny Against The Darkness In Old School Campaigns

 "Look upon this moment. Savor it! Rejoice with great gladness! Great gladness! Remember it always, for you are joined by it. You are One, under the stars. Remember it well, then... this night, this great victory. So that in the years ahead, you can say, "I was there that night, with Arthur, the King!" For it is the doom of men that they forget."

Merlin, following the decisive British Victory over the Saxons at the Great Siege and Battle of Mount Badon
Excalibur 1981

Work took me away from the blog today but my mind was on original Dungeons & Dragons again. More specifically the Greyhawk Folio. The folio back in the early Eighties was my introduction into the world of  both  Greyhawk along with the works of C.S. Lewis & Arthurian literature." In 1975, Gygax and Kuntz published a booklet called Supplement I: Greyhawk, an expansion of the rules for Dungeons & Dragons based on their play experiences in the Greyhawk campaign." The supplemental books for the original Dungeons & Dragons lines  were the only books along with the Arduin material my dungeon master needed back then.
Science Fantasy & pulp material regularly plane hopped into our world setting & this was something that we took as incidental. Today I head from a 5th edition Dungeon master that he didn't know if he was 'allowed' to do this. Back when I first started with the OSR Lamentations of the Flame Princess blew my mind because of the fact that the retroclone system broke the unwritten rules conventions of second edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Namely working in real world history events where & when they wanted. This convention was something I hadn't seen since the heydays of 'The Dragon'. This was when gamers mixed & matched WWII miniatures  rules sets with original  Dungeons & Dragons adventures. Lately the OSR scene seems a bit too harmonized for my tastes. I play fast and loose with my games because I enjoy the hobby.

I've talked at length  about the fact that the powers Fairyland played havoc with Camelot & that it continues to echo through history in my campaign settings. This is especially true using the various families found in Camelot as both the source for PC's & as the movers & shakers of European history. Bloodlines & royal families  are the prime moves in the Boorman  film 1981's Excalibur we see this. But we also see one of the forces of chaos in old school games artifacts & treasures. In this case the sword of power Excalibur's hold on those who behold the sword's power in the hands of the rightful king.



Its one of many such treasures in the ranks of Arthurian literature. These items of magic  stand in sharp contrast to the ceaseless stark darkness of H.P. Lovecraft's materialist darkness of the Great Old Ones & the Outer Gods.  Robert Howard's Bran Mak Morn the last king of the Picts is one of the character's who helps bridge the historical gap between Arthurian legend & the Mythos. There is a clear line from Robert Howard's Bran all the way back to King Kull of Atlantis.
"Kings of the Night" (first publication: Weird Tales, November 1930). The first story to feature Bran as a king and describes him as a direct descendant of another Howard character, Brule the Spear-Slayer, companion of the Atlantean King Kull."

I would hazard to guess that there is a faction of Bran Mak Morn's cult residing along with Arthur's knights in Camelot even as the forces of Le Fey family weave their spells. The cult survives well into the Twentieth Century.
""The Children of the Night". In this tale Bran does not appear directly but rather the story elaborates on his cult, which first appears in "The Dark Man" and which seems to have survived into the 20th Century. Events in the narrative correspond with the timeline and events noted in "Worms of the Earth"."

"Atlantis, Lemuria, and Valusia all sank into the sea along with Camelot but the legacy of magick & heroics survive well past the kings & knights. Part of the reason for this is the fact that the Elves of myth & legend can't leave the affairs of man alone.  Artifacts & items of magick seem to have a life of their own often taken by the tides of destiny. They go where & when Fate dictates that they are needed. Gods, Demi Gods, & Heroes by Robert Kuntz & James Ward as well as Dark Albion, Cults of Chaos, & Lion & Dragon are full of these items of power.
Blood & power seem to call them & they play their parts within history for good or ill. Much to the detriment of  Fairyland & Hell's designs.

"Though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time."
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) Ch. 15: Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time

The sheer weight of H.P. Lovecraft's cosmism stands in the rooted materialistic yet magick driven pulp rooted storytelling of Clark Ashton Smith's cycles. Someplace between the two there is room for Arthurian & heroic deeds as well as the gestures of heroes in the form of the PC's.
"Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men."
HP Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu

This is where Greyhawk & Blackmoor come in allowing the PC's to step into the realms of campaign adventure without side lining the main campaign of the game play taking place in Europe especially during the events of the Hundred Years War, The Rose War or The Thirty Year War.
The advantage here is the fact that there is such a range of gaming possibility within these historical events that entire generations of a royal family could take place & there would still be room to place dungeons, ruins, and fully fleshed out adventures.




Both Dark Albion & its attendant retroclone system of Lion & Dragon have room enough so that a DM could take the events of Camelot shunt them next to the machinations of the Frogmen. Then take a classic set of B/X Dungeons & Dragons Expert adventures such as the U Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh  series & still have room to place them within historical context. The thing to remember is that the PC's are real movers & shakers within a historical or legendary series of events.
The focus is always on the party and not on the elements of the adventure or the campaign. Roots of the future center around the PC's actions allowing a campaign to grow organically.

Sunken Lands, HP Lovecraft, Appendix N Weirdness & Old School Campaigns

"Dazed and frightened, yet not without a certain thrill of the scientist’s or archaeologist’s delight, I examined my surroundings more closely. The moon, now near the zenith, shone weirdly and vividly above the towering steeps that hemmed in the chasm, and revealed the fact that a far-flung body of water flowed at the bottom, winding out of sight in both directions, and almost lapping my feet as I stood on the slope. Across the chasm, the wavelets washed the base of the Cyclopean monolith; on whose surface I could now trace both inscriptions and crude sculptures. The writing was in a system of hieroglyphics unknown to me, and unlike anything I had ever seen in books; consisting for the most part of conventionalised aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopi, crustaceans, molluscs, whales, and the like. Several characters obviously represented marine things which are unknown to the modern world, but whose decomposing forms I had observed on the ocean-risen plain.

It was the pictorial carving, however, that did most to hold me spellbound. Plainly visible across the intervening water on account of their enormous size, were an array of bas-reliefs whose subjects would have excited the envy of Doré. I think that these things were supposed to depict men—at least, a certain sort of men; though the creatures were shewn disporting like fishes in waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic shrine which appeared to be under the waves as well. Of their faces and forms I dare not speak in detail; for the mere remembrance makes me grow faint. Grotesque beyond the imagination of a Poe or a Bulwer, they were damnably human in general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to have been chiselled badly out of proportion with their scenic background; for one of the creatures was shewn in the act of killing a whale represented as but little larger than himself. I remarked, as I say, their grotesqueness and strange size, but in a moment decided that they were merely the imaginary gods of some primitive fishing or seafaring tribe; some tribe whose last descendant had perished eras before the first ancestor of the Piltdown or Neanderthal Man was born. Awestruck at this unexpected glimpse into a past beyond the conception of the most daring anthropologist, I stood musing whilst the moon cast queer reflections on the silent channel before me."
Dagon is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft, written in July 1917
I've been doing a lot of thinking about Appendix N authors tonight namely HP Lovecraft & his novella "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" (1931). The mythological connections between mermaids & Deep Ones hit me as a kid since I read the novel. As clear as day I was looking at paperback of Lovecraft's fiction & straight into a Lang illustration of a mermaid. The connotations were obvious to me as a kid & dungeon master. Since that time period I've always held the Deep Ones having a strong connection with the Black Hag, Green Hags  & Sea Hags of B/X Dungeons & Dragons &  Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition Monster Manual. These these three species live in both swamp & oceans environments respectively.  These three species of hag all have ties with the Le Fey family covens of witches & through them ties with the forces & rites of Chaos from Lion & Dragon.



Now I've talked about the Elves & powers of Fairyland playing merry havoc with Europe since the time of Camelot. But how is easy enough, the hags have been hiding in plain sight this whole time. This goes back to original Dungeons & Dragons origins of the hags;

"In the original Dungeons & Dragons, the sea hag first appeared in the Blackmoor supplement by Dave Arneson (1975).^[1] The Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set included its own version of the hag. The sea hag and the black hag appeared in the Dungeons & Dragons Master Rules (1985),^[2] and the Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia (1991).^[3]

In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition, the sea hag appears in the 1977 Monster Manual,^[4] where it is described as inhabiting thickly vegetated shallows, and hates beauty and is so ghastly in appearance that it makes other creatures weak with fright. The night hag also appears in the Monster Manual, where it is described as the ruler of the convoluted planes of Hades. The book states that night hags form larvae (the most selfishly evil of all souls who sink to lower planes after death) from evil persons they slay, and sell them to demons and devils."

There  are deep occult connections between royal houses & mythological sea creatures. The mermaids of legend are in fact the handmaidens of Dagon & Mother Hydra or at least some of them. These are the comely female Deep One hybrids whose connections to Arthurian legend dive into the house of  Sir Lancelot du Lac itself.



"However, one scholar has suggested that Lancelot may be a variant of the name Lancelin.^[3] Lancelot or Lancelin may instead have been the hero of an independent folk-tale which had contact with and was ultimately absorbed into the Arthurian tradition. The theft of an infant by a water-fairy, the appearance of the hero at a tournament on three consecutive days in three different disguises, and the rescue of a queen or princess from an Otherworld prison are all features of a well-known and widespread tale, variants of which are found in almost every land and numerous examples of which have been collected by Theodore Hersart de la Villemarqué in his Barzaz Breiz, by Emmanuel Cosquin in his Contes Lorrains, and by J. F. Campbell in his Tales of the West Highlands."

The Lancelin family has been fighting the forces of Chaos & its cults for centuries. This also ties into the fact that around France & England may of the major sunken cities & countries were sunk at the end of the last Ice Age by the Deep Ones & the forces of Chaos.

• Avalon, the mythical lost land or island in Arthurian, Cornish and Welsh legend.
• Buyan, an island with the ability to appear and disappear in Slavic mythology.
• Cantre'r Gwaelod, in Welsh legend, the ancient sunken realm said to have occupied a tract of fertile land lying between Ramsey Island and Bardsey Island in what is now Cardigan Bay to the west of Wales.
• Kitezh, A legendary underwater city located in Russia, populated by spiritual people.
• Llys Helig Welsh legends regarding the local rock formations conceal the palace of Prince Helig ap Glanawg, said to be part of a larger drowned kingdom near Penmaenmawr, Wales.
• Lyonesse in Arthurian literature, it was the home of Tristan and is associated with the Isles of Scilly, Cornwall (an area inundated by the sea c.2500BC)^{[citation needed]}, the tale parallels the Welsh and particularly Breton legendary lost lands.
  
•  Ys; a mythical drowned city in Brittany, similar to other Celtic lost lands in Welsh and Cornish tradition. Most versions of the legend place the city in the Baie de Douarnenez.

These places in Arthurian literature & lore are what sets up events for the invasion & take over of France by the Frogmen who are simply another form in the alien evolutionary path of the Deep Ones ala the Frogmen of the Swamps of France.


There were centuries of resistence to the struggles of the Frogmen trying to assume full ruler ship of France. Especially from Lyonesse in Arthurian literature & its king Tristan.
"Tristan(Latin & Brythonic: Drustanus; Welsh: Trystan), also known as Tristram, is a Cornish knight of the Round Table and the hero of the Arthurian Tristan and Iseult story. He is the son of Blancheflor and Rivalen (in later versions Isabelle of Cornwall and Meliodas), and the nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, sent to fetch Iseult back from Ireland to wed the king. However, he and Iseult accidentally consume a love potion while en route and fall helplessly in love; the pair undergo numerous trials that test their secret affair."
Walter de la Mare's "Sunk Lyonesse" (1922) evokes the country as as a lost Lovecraftian world:

"In sea-cold Lyonesse,
When the Sabbath eve shafts down
On the roofs, walls, belfries
Of the foundered town,
The Nereids pluck their lyres
Where the green translucency beats,
And with motionless eyes at gaze
Make ministrely in the streets.

And the ocean water stirs
In salt-worn casement and porch
Plies the blunt-nosed fish
With fire in his skull for torch.
And the ringing wires resound;
And the unearthly lovely weep,
In lament of the music they make
In the sullen courts of sleep:
Whose marble flowers bloom for aye:
And—lapped by the moon-guiled tide—
Mock their carver with heart of stone,
Caged in his stone-ribbed side."

Sunken  Lyonesse is another one of the many legendary kingdoms now lost to sunken realms of Fairyland now a plaything of the Deep Ones & their cousins from Lion & Dragon.
Tristán e Iseo (La vida) by Rogelio de Egusquiza (1912)

We get possible glimpses of the warfare between humanity & the forces of Chaos in Lion & Dragon as well as the literature of Arthurian lore. Many of the struggles between the alliances of the Elves of Dark Albion & Lion & Dragon with the Deep Ones are set forth. What might motivate the worshipers of the cult & covens of witches of Cthulhu might be the promises of alien immortality set forth by HP Lovecraft  in "TheCall of Cthulhu".
"These data, received with suspense and astonishment by the assembled members, proved doubly exciting to Inspector Legrasse; and he began at once to ply his informant with questions. Having noted and copied an oral ritual among the swamp cult-worshippers his men had arrested, he besought the professor to remember as best he might the syllables taken down amongst the diabolist Eskimos. There then followed an exhaustive comparison of details, and a moment of really awed silence when both detective and scientist agreed on the virtual identity of the phrase common to two hellish rituals so many worlds of distance apart. What, in substance, both the Eskimo wizards and the Louisiana swamp-priests had chanted to their kindred idols was something very like this—the word-divisions being guessed at from traditional breaks in the phrase as chanted aloud:

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."

Legrasse had one point in advance of Professor Webb, for several among his mongrel prisoners had repeated to him what older celebrants had told them the words meant. This text, as given, ran something like this:

"In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."

And now, in response to a general and urgent demand, Inspector Legrasse related as fully as possible his experience with the swamp worshippers; telling a story to which I could see my uncle attached profound significance. It savoured of the wildest dreams of myth-maker and theosophist, and disclosed an astonishing degree of cosmic imagination among such half-castes and pariahs as might be least expected to possess it.
On 1 November 1907, there had come to New Orleans police a frantic summons from the swamp and lagoon country to the south. The squatters there, mostly primitive but good-natured descendants of Lafitte's men, were in the grip of stark terror from an unknown thing which had stolen upon them in the night. It was voodoo, apparently, but voodoo of a more terrible sort than they had ever known; and some of their women and children had disappeared since the malevolent tom-tom had begun its incessant beating far within the black haunted woods where no dweller ventured. There were insane shouts and harrowing screams, soul-chilling chants and dancing devil-flames; and, the frightened messenger added, the people could stand it no more.
So a body of twenty police, filling two carriages and an automobile, had set out in the late afternoon with the shivering squatter as a guide. At the end of the passable road they alighted, and for miles splashed on in silence through the terrible cypress woods where day never came. Ugly roots and malignant hanging nooses of Spanish moss beset them, and now and then a pile of dank stones or fragments of a rotting wall intensified by its hint of morbid habitation a depression which every malformed tree and every fungous islet combined to create. At length the squatter settlement, a miserable huddle of huts, hove in sight; and hysterical dwellers ran out to cluster around the group of bobbing lanterns. The muffled beat of tom-toms was now faintly audible far, far ahead; and a curdling shriek came at infrequent intervals when the wind shifted. A reddish glare, too, seemed to filter through the pale undergrowth beyond endless avenues of forest night. Reluctant even to be left alone again, each one of the cowed squatters refused point-blank to advance another inch towards the scene of unholy worship, so Inspector Legrasse and his nineteen colleagues plunged on unguided into black arcades of horror that none of them had ever trod before.
The region now entered by the police was one of traditionally evil repute, substantially unknown and untraversed by white men. There were legends of a hidden lake unglimpsed by mortal sight, in which dwelt a huge, formless white polypus thing with luminous eyes; and squatters whispered that bat-winged devils flew up out of caverns in inner earth to worship it at midnight. They said it had been there before D'Iberville, before La Salle, before the Indians, and before even the wholesome beasts and birds of the woods. It was nightmare itself, and to see it was to die. But it made men dream, and so they knew enough to keep away. The present voodoo orgy was, indeed, on the merest fringe of this abhorred area, but that location was bad enough; hence perhaps the very place of the worship had terrified the squatters more than the shocking sounds and incidents."

The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft

These swamp dwelling rites & rituals are also the source for & over seen by the handmaidens of Cthulhu, the swamp hags & worse are created during these cult rituals. These some of the sources of the transition from men into monster hinted about in the works of H.P. Lovecraft & built upon by Clark Ashton Smith.

There could be far more to the background of the cousins of the Deep Ones, the Koa Tua & the Frogmen then even the B/X adventure U1  The Sinister Secret of Salt Marsh hints at?! I've touched at this before but the monster ecology of these cults of Chaos is both complex and very dangerous especially when the legendary creatures hide far more then at first they seem.

Behold! The Sword of Power! Excalibur! - Destiny Against The Darkness In Old School Campaigns

"Look upon this moment. Savor it! Rejoice with great gladness! Great gladness! Remember it always, for you are joined by it. You are One, under the stars. Remember it well, then... this night, this great victory. So that in the years ahead, you can say, "I was there that night, with Arthur, the King!" For it is the doom of men that they forget."
Merlin, following the decisive British Victory over the Saxons at the Great Siege and Battle of Mount Badon
Excalibur 1981

Work took me away from the blog today but my mind was on original Dungeons & Dragons again. More specifically the Greyhawk Folio. The folio back in the early Eighties was my introduction into the world of  both  Greyhawk along with the works of C.S. Lewis & Arthurian literature." In 1975, Gygax and Kuntz published a booklet called Supplement I: Greyhawk, an expansion of the rules for Dungeons & Dragons based on their play experiences in the Greyhawk campaign." The supplemental books for the original Dungeons & Dragons lines  were the only books along with the Arduin material my dungeon master needed back then.
Science Fantasy & pulp material regularly plane hopped into our world setting & this was something that we took as incidental. Today I head from a 5th edition Dungeon master that he didn't know if he was 'allowed' to do this. Back when I first started with the OSR Lamentations of the Flame Princess blew my mind because of the fact that the retroclone system broke the unwritten rules conventions of second edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Namely working in real world history events where & when they wanted. This convention was something I hadn't seen since the heydays of 'The Dragon'. This was when gamers mixed & matched WWII miniatures  rules sets with original  Dungeons & Dragons adventures. Lately the OSR scene seems a bit too harmonized for my tastes. I play fast and loose with my games because I enjoy the hobby.

I've talked at length  about the fact that the powers Fairyland played havoc with Camelot & that it continues to echo through history in my campaign settings. This is especially true using the various families found in Camelot as both the source for PC's & as the movers & shakers of European history. Bloodlines & royal families  are the prime moves in the Boorman  film 1981's Excalibur we see this. But we also see one of the forces of chaos in old school games artifacts & treasures. In this case the sword of power Excalibur's hold on those who behold the sword's power in the hands of the rightful king.



Its one of many such treasures in the ranks of Arthurian literature. These items of magic  stand in sharp contrast to the ceaseless stark darkness of H.P. Lovecraft's materialist darkness of the Great Old Ones & the Outer Gods.  Robert Howard's Bran Mak Morn the last king of the Picts is one of the character's who helps bridge the historical gap between Arthurian legend & the Mythos. There is a clear line from Robert Howard's Bran all the way back to King Kull of Atlantis.
"Kings of the Night" (first publication: Weird Tales, November 1930). The first story to feature Bran as a king and describes him as a direct descendant of another Howard character, Brule the Spear-Slayer, companion of the Atlantean King Kull."

I would hazard to guess that there is a faction of Bran Mak Morn's cult residing along with Arthur's knights in Camelot even as the forces of Le Fey family weave their spells. The cult survives well into the Twentieth Century.
""The Children of the Night". In this tale Bran does not appear directly but rather the story elaborates on his cult, which first appears in "The Dark Man" and which seems to have survived into the 20th Century. Events in the narrative correspond with the timeline and events noted in "Worms of the Earth"."

"Atlantis, Lemuria, and Valusia all sank into the sea along with Camelot but the legacy of magick & heroics survive well past the kings & knights. Part of the reason for this is the fact that the Elves of myth & legend can't leave the affairs of man alone.  Artifacts & items of magick seem to have a life of their own often taken by the tides of destiny. They go where & when Fate dictates that they are needed. Gods, Demi Gods, & Heroes by Robert Kuntz & James Ward as well as Dark Albion, Cults of Chaos, & Lion & Dragon are full of these items of power.
Blood & power seem to call them & they play their parts within history for good or ill. Much to the detriment of  Fairyland & Hell's designs.

"Though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time."
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) Ch. 15: Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time

The sheer weight of H.P. Lovecraft's cosmism stands in the rooted materialistic yet magick driven pulp rooted storytelling of Clark Ashton Smith's cycles. Someplace between the two there is room for Arthurian & heroic deeds as well as the gestures of heroes in the form of the PC's.
"Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men."
HP Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu

This is where Greyhawk & Blackmoor come in allowing the PC's to step into the realms of campaign adventure without side lining the main campaign of the game play taking place in Europe especially during the events of the Hundred Years War, The Rose War or The Thirty Year War.
The advantage here is the fact that there is such a range of gaming possibility within these historical events that entire generations of a royal family could take place & there would still be room to place dungeons, ruins, and fully fleshed out adventures.




Both Dark Albion & its attendant retroclone system of Lion & Dragon have room enough so that a DM could take the events of Camelot shunt them next to the machinations of the Frogmen. Then take a classic set of B/X Dungeons & Dragons Expert adventures such as the U Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh  series & still have room to place them within historical context. The thing to remember is that the PC's are real movers & shakers within a historical or legendary series of events.
The focus is always on the party and not on the elements of the adventure or the campaign. Roots of the future center around the PC's actions allowing a campaign to grow organically.

Grail Matters - The Other Arthurian Lore In Old School Campaigns

Sometimes you've got to go back to basics to just keep perspective, in this case it was watching one of John Boorman's classics. Excalibur today isn't mentioned except within certain circles of old school gaming & by film fans.
"Excalibur is a 1981 American epic fantasy film directed, produced, and co-written by John Boorman that retells the legend of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, based on the 15th century Arthurian romance Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory." This film has all of the classic John Boorman touches from his camera layout, pacing, sweeping weirdness of Boorman's take on not only Britain but the Arthurian legend.  This is a top drawer & stellar casts, "Nigel Terry as Arthur, Nicol Williamson as Merlin, Nicholas Clay as Lancelot, Cherie Lunghi as Guenevere, Helen Mirren as Morgana, Liam Neeson as Gawain, Corin Redgrave as Cornwall, and Patrick Stewart as Leondegrance."

It still has one killer of the best Arthurian casts & this film's  impact still resonates with certain corners of the old school gaming community to this day. Back in '81 I had to sneak into the Warner theater & this film blew me away. Lots of Arthurian violence, a heaping of nudity & sex, etc. this film wouldn't be seen again until many late night viewings on HBO. Director John Boorman was channeling a bit of Lord of the Rings in Excalibur because he was supposed to have made the film.



And its impact on old school gaming? Well, just ask Games Workshop who 'borrowed' their designs for the space marine armor from this film. And let's not even get into the number of 'historical' armor designs in fantasy gaming that also went down that same road.But let's get into some deeper connections to the Mythos or more specifically the writings of Manly Wade Wellman Whose Devil Is Not Mocked. 
This story was the inspiration for F. Paul Wilson's The Keep  A part of the Adversary cycle novel. 

The ideas of an Outer God trapped within the confines of an Arthurian era castle structure have vast over reaching ideas for a sort of reverse dungeon and these style of legends invoke echos of the mythology of sleeping kings and gods. And this symbolism  also been a part of the numerous legends of the sleeping kings. Not to mention the weirdness surrounding the
The Holy Grail.

How at the Castle of Corbin a Maiden Bare in the Sangreal and Foretold the Achievements of Galahad: illustration by Arthur Rackham, 1917

This also ties in with the sword of power Excalibur having been forged by the pagan gods in Boorman's film. But its the betray of Queen Guenevere & Lancelot against Arthur that ties into the back bone of the film & various iterations of the Arthurian literature's plot.
During the Thirty Years War there was a resurgence in the legends of Arthur & his knights within the circles of Alchemy. And this ties into the Lion & Dragon retroclone rpg quite nicely.   
When the forces of Fairy are taking advantage of the action of the various battles to touch the world of men the chaos laden realm creates the wasteland which ties in directly to the emotional states of the local inhabitants specifically royalty. A lift curse,  cure wounds, or a miracle of God  is going to be needed to lift the curse of the Wasteland.

"In the Arthurian Grail material, the Wasteland's condition is usually tied to the impotence of its leader. Often the infirmity is preceded by some form of the Dolorous Stroke, in which the king is injured tragically for his sins but kept alive by the Grail. In Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail, the Fisher King has been wounded in a misfortune that is not revealed in the incomplete text, and his land suffers with him. He can be healed only if the hero Perceval asks the appropriate question about whom the Grail serves, but warned against talking too much, Perceval remains silent. In the First Continuation of Chrétien's work, the anonymous author recounts how Gawain partially heals the land, but is not destined to complete the restoration. Over the course of time romances place less emphasis on the Wasteland and more on the king's wound. In the Lancelot-Grail Cycle the link between the devastated land and the wounded king is not absolute, and in the Post-Vulgate Cycle much more emphasis is placed on King Pellehan's injury by Sir Balin than on the devastation this causes to his kingdom.
Scholars of the earlier 20th century devoted much study to the Wasteland motif. In one of the more popular works on the subject, From Ritual to Romance, author Jessie Weston suggested that the origin of the motif lies with an otherwise unattested pagan fertility cult. The book is mostly disregarded today, though T. S. Eliot credited it as the source of the title and the largest single influence on his famous poem The Waste Land."

Wizards, alchemists, & magic wielders are essential when the forces of Fairyland & Chaos are at play. During the Thirty Years War the blood shed & battles were like ringing the dinner bell for the powers of the Devil & Chaos. Morgan Le Fay after the fall of Camelot made a deal with the Devil & became one of the Queens of Fairy.


Morgan le Fay by Frederick Sandys (1864)



The witch cults of Dark Europe might be spreading terror across the lands acting as fulcrum & levers where needed by the Elven royalty. This includes Ireland and across Europe; "In Irish folklore, the last High Queen of the Daoine Sidhe - and wife of the High King Finvarra - was named Una (or Oonagh, or Oona, or Uonaidh etc.). In the ballad tradition of Northern England and Lowland Scotland, she was called the Queen of Elphame.
The character is also associated with the name Morgan (as with the Arthurian character of Morgan Le Fey, or Morgan of the Fairies), or a variant of Mab (such as Maeve or Mabd). In the Child Ballads Tam Lin (Child 39) and Thomas the Rhymer (Child 37), she is represented as both beautiful and seductive, and also as terrible and deadly. The Fairy Queen is said to pay a tithe to Hell every seven years, and her mortal lovers often provide this sacrifice. In Tam Lin, the title character tells his mortal lover:

At the end of seven years
She pays a tithe to Hell
I so fair and full of flesh
I fear it be myself"

These are the degenerated remains of the Roman mystery cults & pagan grove cults still doing the Elves & the demonic 'Gods' works across the lands.

"Both Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare used folklore concerning the Fairy Queen to create characters and poetry, Spenser in The Faerie Queene and Shakespeare most notably in A Midsummer Night's Dream. In The Faerie Queene, Spenser's fairy queen is named Gloriana, and is also referred to as Tanaquill, which "appears to be an epithet for Gloriana, Queen of Faeries" derived from the name of the wife of Tarquinius Priscus.^[1] She is the daughter of Oberon, who in Shakespeare's later play is married to Titania, a name derived from Ovid as an epithet of the Roman goddess Diana. Diana was regularly portrayed as the ruler of the fairy kingdom in demonological literature, such as King James VI of Scotland's Daemonologie, which says that she belongs to "the fourth kind of spirits, which by the Gentiles [non-Jews] was called Diana and her wandering court, and amongst us is called Fairy (as I told you) or our good neighbours."

These evil forces are out to kill and destroy both Catholic & Protestant alike within the bonds of war while they clean up the remains of Europe.

Morgan Le Fay by John R. Spencer Stanhope (1880)


This isn't light weight stuff here, these are the ancient powers of evil pure & simple. They will have their day and it comes fast during the events of the Thirty Year War. Lion & Dragon has these forces of Fairy being confined but they have many names and when they spread they do so where & when the chaos realm of Fairyland washes against reality. Mutation, horror, & magick are the rule not the exception. All of the old places and hates are their anchors and they will come to call. The Arthurian legends & Celtic mythologies have hints bits of the over all horror.
But the power is there & they come to call.


All of this ties back into X2 Castle Amber & matters I was speaking about in yesterday's blog entry. The Soceress of Averoigne / The Tower of Istarelle 1941 by Clark Ashton Smith talks about the exactly the sort of juxtaposition of the forces of magic & the works of mankind. This sort of thing was eluded to in the Arthurian literature & Boorman's film but also we see this a bit in the X2 The Castle Amber adventure. We'll get into the how's & why's in tomorrows blog entry coming up!