Showing posts with label Fairy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fairy. Show all posts

Monday, May 17, 2021

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. 

Saturday, May 8, 2021

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. 

Thursday, May 6, 2021

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. 





Sunday, October 14, 2018

Review & Commentary Of Castles & Crusades Codex Celtarum By Brian Young For Your Old School Campaigns

"The Codex Celtarum contains a veritable host of gaming material. Built around the complete mythological cosmos of the Celts, in it you'll find new spells for your druid, cleric, and illusionist. New monsters, including mountains of fey. New magic items. For the very bold, there are new powers for your characters, allowing your characters to become fey! 190 new spells 90 gods and monsters from the Celtic mythos 150 powers for the fey monsters & characters (optional) The Druids."

 

For the last two years I've been looking at the cover for
Castles & Crusades Codex Celtarum & pretty much wrote it off as yet another "elf games" source book for Castles & Crusades. Every time a Troll Lords sale would come up I look & think maybe?? Two things have occurred that changed my mind. One I'm actually running a Seige Engine powered game. Two I've got players who are nuts about all things Celtic. So I contacted (stalked) Troll Lord Games about the Mythos Bundle for Castles & Crusades.
When they didn't contact me right away I went ahead & bought the entire line of physical books. I loath & hate pdfs but love books at the table. Over the years I've seen various hog pog incarnations of pieces of Celtic mythology in many editions of  Original Dungeons & Dragons, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 3.0, OSR etc.
There is a lot of material to cover & this book tackles the subject head on & goes right into the meat & patatoes of the material. Is this a book for the player or the dungeon master? The answer is both. This book clocks in at about a hundred & seventy six pages of very well researched material.  Castles & Crusades Codex Celtarum came out about five years ago & Troll Lords has expanded the Mythos line quite a bit.
This is a book for the serious dungeon This book is for the dungeon master who wants to run an entire Castles & Crusades game within a mythological Celtic Iron age setting with Fey & all that goes with it. In one book you get all of the tools for doing this because your going to be placing all of those elements into the realm of the Fairy. This book was written by an academic who knows, eats, breathes, & lives his material. Castles & Crusades Codex Celtarum encompasses the entire experience of playing within & without in the realm of Fairy & Fey.
This book boils down all of the classic elements of Celtic mythology & legend into an actual playable supplement for Castles & Crusades. It does with professionalism, class, & its very well written. Brain Young is an academic who really gets into his mythological gaming material with wit & solid writing.
The layout is solid, the writing is easy to get through, the material sparks the dungeon master's imagination. But is
Castles & Crusades Codex Celtarum
good for other  Siege Engine products? Could this book be useful for say Amazing Adventures?!
The answer to this is yes! Much of the material here is straight up fantastic to adapt to a pulp setting & it easily lends itself to whole cloth idea. The Fey are legendary & very alien their own right. These are not weird Elves & lets play them, this is straight up epic mythological C&C material. This makes it unexpected & straight out of the box a surprise to player in a pulp game campaign. If you are going to use Castles & Crusades Codex Celtarum with Amazing Adventures what are you going to need?Much of this material has been filtered  after a fashion & adapted to the Amazing Adventures Companion by its author Jason Vey.

With 190 new spells 90 gods and monsters from the Celtic mythos 150 powers for the fey monsters & characters (optional) The Druids all of these C&C elements can be ported over easily into other Troll Lord products including Amazing Adventures! rpg. I can actually see using Castles & Crusades Codex Celtarum with the Victorious Rpg.  Using Victorious or Amazing Adventures I can see a pulp investigative or heroic campaign using the Celtic mythological material as adventure fodder. The adventure elements within the
Castles & Crusades Codex Celtarum are very fresh & well presented.
The book packs a lot into its one hundred & seventy five pages. But is the book worth its price of admission into the Celtic world of the Fey & Fairy? In a word yes! I think that
Castles & Crusades Codex Celtarum is not only a high quality book for Castles & Crusades but for any OSR or old school dungeon master. I give the Castles & Crusades Codex Celtarum a solid five out of five.