Fang & Poison - Hammer's 1966 'The Reptile' & Classic AD&D's N1: "Against The Cult of the Reptile God" (1982), by Douglas Niles

Last night I got caught up with one of the family's all time favorite Hammer films the 1966 film 'The Reptile'. This sixty six production has a bit of everything for the connisueur of the serpent men. You've got snake cults luring in the background, strange black magick curses, and more. But the 'The Reptile' while well known in Hammer horror fan circles doesn't have that much of an audience among the D&D minded. 
Here's the low down according to the wiki page; "The Reptile is a 1966 horror film made by Hammer Film Productions. It was directed by John Gilling, and starred Noel Willman, Jacqueline Pearce, Ray Barrett, Jennifer Daniel, and Michael Ripper."

The plot is straight outta of the classic Hammer horror bag & its not surprising because this film is from the golden age of grand production house of Gothic horror; "At the turn of the 20th century in the fictional village of Clagmoor Heath in Cornwall several locals are dying from what is deemed to be the "Black Death". Harry Spalding (Ray Barrett) inherits his late brother's cottage and arrives with his new bride, Valerie (Jennifer Daniel) . The inhabitants of the village keep clear of the newly arrived couple and only the publican, Tom Bailey (Michael Ripper), befriends them. Bailey explains that the hostility exhibited by the townspeople is the result of many mysterious deaths in the community.

The sinister Dr. Franklyn (Noel Willman), the owner of the nearby Well House, is the only resident in the vicinity of the cottage and he lives with his daughter Anna (Jacqueline Pearce). The Doctor treats his daughter with cruel contempt and she is attended by a silent Malay servant (Marne Maitland).

Hoping to learn something of the deaths, Harry invites the local eccentric, Mad Peter (John Laurie), home for dinner. After warning them that their lives are in danger, Mad Peter quickly departs only to return later that evening foaming at the mouth, with his face blackened and swollen. He dies within a few minutes. The Spaldings attempt to alert Dr. Franklyn, but Franklyn arrogantly states that Peter's death is not his concern, explaining that he is a Doctor of Divinity, not a surgeon.

In an attempt to help Harry clear up the mystery, Tom Bailey illegally unearths Mad Peter's corpse and discovers a strange neck wound like a snake bite. Harry and Tom dig up the coffin of Harry's dead brother, Charles, and find that corpse also has those same strange marks. Realizing that they are threatened by something far worse than they had ever imagined, Harry is quick to answer an urgent message from the Well House. There he is bitten by a mysterious reptilian creature, but he still manages to return to his home and recover from the bite.

Meanwhile, at the eerie abode, Valerie witnesses Dr. Franklyn's attempt to kill his own cursed daughter (who was changed into the reptile creature after being abducted by a Malay snake cult that included the doctor's own servant). She also witnesses a fierce struggle between the doctor and the deranged Malay servant. During the battle, a lantern is overturned and Dr. Franklyn is bitten by the venomous fangs of his reptilian daughter. Both the doctor and the reptile die in the fire and the Well House crumbles in flames, with Harry and Valerie fleeing for their lives."


There are so many questions about 'The Reptile' but let's take it up with  the fictional village of Clagmoor Heath in Cornwall. Why would the Malay serpent men cultists be drawn to this dreary location in the middle of a Nineteenth century England. That I can answer right away with Robert E. Howard's 1932 novella 'The Worms of the Earth'. Personally I think that the village might be one of the last remains of the serpent men's seats of power;"The seat of the First Empire of the Serpent People, during the Paleozoic era, is Valusia. Valusia is a fictional country in the Kull stories of Robert E. Howard and his stories tell, among other things, of the Serpent Men trying to conquer the world once again, around 20,000 years ago, where Kull from Atlantis reigned over the Valusia Kingdom, located on the west coast of the main continent of Thuria." 

The worms of the Earth might be related to an earlier modern descendants of the Serpent People from  Robert E. Howard's Children of the Night. These things are described in the story thus;"

As Aryara, O'Donnel describes the Children of the Night as:

Humans they were, of a sort, though I did not consider them so. They were short and stocky, with broad heads too large for their scrawny bodies. Their hair was snaky and stringy, their faces broad and square, with flat noses, hideously slanted eyes, a thin gash for a mouth, and pointed ears. They wore the skins of beasts, as did I, but these hides were but crudely dressed. They bore small bows and flint-tipped arrows, flint knives and cudgels. And they conversed in a speech as hideous as themselves, a hissing, reptilian speech that filled me with dread and loathing.

They are frequently described as snakes or having snake-like qualities. The Aryan legends say that the Children—none of the Aryans know what they call themselves—used to own the land in an ancient "outworn age" until they were hunted and driven underground by the Picts."

The connection to Arthur Machen's The Novel of the Black Seal is obvious for any Appendix N aficionado..Going into the Xoth D20 Conan & Kiss of the Spider God's site I found this  Miller and Clark's map showing the world of Hyboria superimposed over the continent of modern Europe.

If the Picts in Howard's works are the survivors of Atlantis then they have racial memories of Kull's time. The human villager's  reaction of utter disgust from 'The Reptile' bares this out. What was the plan of the Malay serpent men cultists in 'The Reptile'?! That's easy it was re population of true serpent people by the transplanting of the soul of a serpent men queen into the body of Dr. Franklyn's daughter. Kill off the villagers, lay eggs, & replace the villagers right in the seat of the once mighty empire of their enemies The Picts. 

The ties to both I1: "Dwellers of the Forbidden City" (1981), by David "Zeb" Cook & N1: "Against The Cult of the Reptile God" (1982), by Douglas Niles are both obvious & make the 1966 'Reptile' easily adaptable. 

In fact change the lizard men for serpent men & swap out the locations of 'The Reptile'  & add in a Peter Cushing style character plus the party of adventurers. 'The Reptile' could become a Robert E. Howard side quest for an English style OSR Hammer horror campaign. The Doctor & his cursed daughter might live.  "Against The Cult of the Reptile God" (1982), by Douglas Niles could become the first salvo in the planned return of a full on serpent men invasion. But we'll get into that coming up. 

Carcosa/Gamma World Actual Cross Game Event - Lost In The Yuthlugathap Swamps With Five House of Hammer Prehistoric Film Influences

So today I got a chance to throw back a few beers & get together with friends for a bit of Gamma World second edition/Carcosa mash up event & five favorite prehistoric & cult classic monster movies playing in the background. We're going to go in for some serious cult films today. We'll start with the house of Hammer prehistoric trilogy One Million Years B.C. (1966), Slave Girls (1967), The Lost Continent 1968, & When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth (1970).
One Million Years B.C. is a 1966 British adventure/fantasy film starring Raquel Welch and John Richardson, set in a fictional age of cavemen and dinosaurs. And its a perfect example of the type of primitive conditions that folks are dealing with on Carcosa.

Or As I like to refer to em Appendix 'C' films for Carcosa. Sure I can't be at GaryCon but that doesn't stop us from doing a bit of retroclone old schooling. One of the players in last night's Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea/Islands of Purple Putrescence game was messing around with a time/space pylon. This caused the pylon to appear in today's game & suck in the party of adventurers from Gamma Terra! And where were these poor mutant bastards and adventurers deposited? Well right over on LoFP's Carcosa & what they didn't know is that the party had picked up a shape shifting serpent man half caste priest named Nadri'al (this priest was on the Purple Islands doing a bit of recon work for his own sinister goals). The PC's ended up in The Yuthlugathap Swamps.



They ended up running into a band of Amazon women who worshiped a scared white dinosaur species which I liberally stole from the '67 film Prehistoric Women.
There are several key plot points I borrowed for today's game including the assassination of one of the Amazon women's key leaders by our serpent man/assassin NPC. 


"David Marchant (Michael Latimer), a British explorer, along with Colonel Hammond (Robert Raglan) and a guide are pursuing a leopard on an African safari. The Colonel takes aim but misses and only wounds the animal. With the guide warning that it will soon be dark, David decides to find the beast and put it out of its misery before following the party back to camp.
Walking some way, he passes various trees with a picture of a white rhino but ignores them. Finally, the weakened leopard attacks him and he shoots it dead, whereupon David is ambushed and captured by a primitive tribe. They accuse him of disturbing the spirit of the white rhinoceros, and take him to their leader's temple. As the high priest/leader makes his decision, David notices a large, ancient stone statue of a white rhino and realizes this is what the tribe worship"

The players were forced to flee into the wastelands & besides a whole host of lizard men, and some mutated crabs they dealt with several encounters with Grey Aliens & their flying saucers. They dodged most of these encounters and learned very quickly to run away. But they quickly dealt with a tribe of  Blue Men who wanted to sacrifice them to Shub-Niggurath spawn they worshiped because of the color of their hair. Obviously a nod to Hammer's When Dinosaur's Rule The Earth.
But what really freaked the players out was running into their boat from a 2011 Carcosa game that had been taken its nods from The Lost Continent from 1968. One of the mutant fools erm adventurers was killed by the vampire sea weed that was still aboard. The rest of the PC's blew the boat to kingdom come with an energy weapon they had recovered and continued on after the serpent man. This was  after he had almost succeeded in killing them in some ruins. He left them to die with a group of killer robots! If it wasn't for the party's mutant warriors they would have been toast.

They finally found the gate way back home but it was guarded by a group of tribes whom I lifted directly from Creatures The World Forgot from '71. There was a bone man sorcerer living in disguise among these people as a priest of a particularly nasty spawn of Shub-Niggurath. The players figured out who he was after he met with the serpent man assassin in the triple moonlight that night. The party followed him back to his cave and that's where they discovered his dimensional gate way. He cooked one of the mutants with a death ray but the party managed to take him out with a laser pistol they had. The serpent man NPC managed to slither away in the confusion.

All in all for a spur of the moment one shot I think things went rather well, the THE YUTHLUGATHAP SWAMPS module worked rather nicely because of its Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition gaming background. This made it rather easy to blend with Gamma World. I ended up using a good bit of second edition Gamma World to round out some of the system and artifact kinks. Everything went off without too much of a hitch thanks to the notes in the AD&D 1st edition Dungeon Master's Guide. Several of the charts from Islands of Purple Putrescence also came in handy to round out some of the random elements of today's game. So all in all it was a great one shot game.

OSR Commentary On "The Ruins of Andril" was written and designed by Ian Melluish From Dragon Issue #81

Dragon issue #81  was released in January of 1984. & it contains two of my favorite articles on the 'Ecology of the Basklisk by Ed Greenwood & a "Taking the sting out of poison: Another view on how to use toxic cocktails" by  Chris Landsea. Plus an article on "Chariots for characters: Adapting ancient vehicles for AD&D play" by  Pete Mohney.
All of these articles serve as a mini source book for "The Ruins of Andril" was written and designed by Ian Melluish, & published in Dragon Magazine #81 (January 1984) as the winner of the Dungeon Design Content (category A-3, a dungeon adventure for 4-8 AD&D PCs of levels 8-11 ) announced in Dragon #65 (September 1982).  This is an Egyptian themed & styled dungeon with several interesting features to it. 



Not only does the dungeon have a central Egyptian theme but the set up is pure golden age of Dragon magazine all of the way; "At the entrance to a mountain pass, surrounded by tropical forests and tilled fields, is the tiny village of Ruatha. Lying on the end of a local trade road, Ruatha offers little to most adventurers. There are rumors, however, that beyond the mountains lie the ruins of an ancient city, surrounded by desert waste. As with all such ruins, tales circulate of great treasures to be found there. The problem is, according to these tales, that the treasure is only available once every two years for reasons no one knows. Rumor has it that the time is now at hand for the ruins to be entered again. These rumors note that few have ever returned from the ruins, most treasure-seekers instead becoming trapped within them. The adventurers are assumed to have arrived in Ruatha at the start of this scenario. They may have arrived separately or together, and may cooperate as a group or compete in a race to get to the ruins and whatever treasure lies within them. No one knows what dangers are ahead, but the adventurers are among the most powerful there are in this land; if anyone can get into the ruins and out of them again, they can."

Yes  "The Ruins of Andril" not only revels in the ancient world theme but also gives the players a base to adventure from in the form of  the tiny village of Ruatha; "The village of Ruatha The adult population of Ruatha numbers scarcely more than 100, with four times as many children. Farming is the major occupation. The village has only one inn, of low quality and exorbitant prices. Because Ruatha is a closely knit community, newcomers will be immediately obvious as such to everyone. Villagers will watch everything the party does, spreading gossip about them daily. The first thing all villagers will think (correctly) is that the adventurers are here to find out about the ruins beyond the mountains. Adventurers may find it disconcerting that everyone seems to know so much about their business. Worse still, the villagers will try to make ridiculous profits from talking to the adventurers, as detailed below." Yes the villagers are out to exploit the adventurers for every dime part of the life blood of Ruatha is the ruins of Andril themselves. Not only is the "The Ruins of Andril" was written and designed by Ian Melluish very well done but it could be used as a gate way adventure into I3 Pharaoh By Tracy Hickman  and Laura Hickman! Everything is there to really stir the pot of Egyptian themed old school adventure.

"The Ruins of Andril" has everything a down & dirty table top level game adventure needs from memorable traps, lots of mid level traps & tricks, plus all of the old world action a party of adventurers can handle. The elements here could converge into an entire mini campaign? Yes I think so the adventure handles its encounters with a deft hand. But why add in  I3 Pharaoh By Tracy Hickman  and Laura Hickman well there are several reasons why including the positive press & review it recieved in Space Gamer; "Harley Bates reviewed the Daystar West edition of the adventure in The Space Gamer No. 54.^[3] He commented that "It's a nice break from standard ongoing campaigns, and gives both players and judges attainable goals in shorter steps."^[3] Bates added that "The inhabitants of the tomb are far from the ordinary fare and provide the players and the judge with fascinating role-playing. There are many clues and puzzles scattered throughout the adventure. All in all, it's a very tightly-woven adventure which should be enjoyable for all involved."^[3] He criticized that "The only real flaw is that there are too many typographical errors. Most of the play supplements available today suffer from this. Couldn't designers and publishers spend just a little more time proofreading?"^[3] Bates concluded his review by stating: "Given the overall quality we are presented in this product, the typos can be overlooked [...] It's a great buy, considering the time, effort, and thought evident throughout."
This attention to detail as well as the play through makes the whole affair seem ideal suited to each other.
So could "The Ruins of Andril"  written and designed by Ian Melluish, be used with OSR systems & retroclones?! In a wild ride sort of way this isn't any thing new. If we used Venger Satanis's latest effort Cha'alt then we get a very wild ride indeed. The map of Cha'alt reveals something very interesting, the areas of the map support Venger Satanis's opinion that the megadungeon module's setting  could be used to house the "The Ruins of Andril". 

The S'kbah is the perfect location to house the Sea of Dust & the secrets of the "The Ruins of Andril". The roving gangs, the odd mutant horrors, the weird occasions of the Great Old Ones all point to situation where in the world of Cha'alt could house fantastic treasures & relics beyond imagining.

But that's just it Cha'alt isn't simply a mega dungeon but a highly adaptable source book & mega dungeon setting. I'm going to quietly be weaving & dropping its seeds into my upcoming game adventures as we start heading into the Autumn season. "The Ruins of Andril" feels very Hammer horror to me & makes me think of the Hammer horror classics especially 'Blood From The Mummy's Tomb'.

Cha'alt has this gonzo & Weird Tales vibe going for it & I'm not the only dungeon master noticing this. Vincent Florio The Evil DM has also taken quite the shine to Cha'lt as well.

Cha'alt reminds me of the classic gonzo setting where slipping anything into the module isn't gonna break. He man, Conan, Martians, etc. could all crop up on this world making Cha'lt and not even make a ripple in the weirdness of the adventure. This means that "The Ruins of Andril"  is easily gonna fit the bill for a high level but dangerous adventure in the old school style. More on this as the campaign develops! 

Carcosa/Gamma World Actual Cross Game Event - Lost In The Yuthlugathap Swamps With Five House of Hammer Prehistoric Film Influences

So today I got a chance to throw back a few beers & get together with friends for a bit of Gamma World second edition/Carcosa mash up event & five favorite prehistoric & cult classic monster movies playing in the background. We're going to go in for some serious cult films today. We'll start with the house of Hammer prehistoric trilogy One Million Years B.C. (1966), Slave Girls (1967), The Lost Continent 1968, & When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth (1970).
One Million Years B.C. is a 1966 British adventure/fantasy film starring Raquel Welch and John Richardson, set in a fictional age of cavemen and dinosaurs. And its a perfect example of the type of primitive conditions that folks are dealing with on Carcosa.

Or As I like to refer to em Appendix 'C' films for Carcosa. Sure I can't be at GaryCon but that doesn't stop us from doing a bit of retroclone old schooling. One of the players in last night's Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea/Islands of Purple Putrescence game was messing around with a time/space pylon. This caused the pylon to appear in today's game & suck in the party of adventurers from Gamma Terra! And where were these poor mutant bastards and adventurers deposited? Well right over on LoFP's Carcosa & what they didn't know is that the party had picked up a shape shifting serpent man half caste priest named Nadri'al (this priest was on the Purple Islands doing a bit of recon work for his own sinister goals). The PC's ended up in The Yuthlugathap Swamps.



They ended up running into a band of Amazon women who worshiped a scared white dinosaur species which I liberally stole from the '67 film Prehistoric Women.
There are several key plot points I borrowed for today's game including the assassination of one of the Amazon women's key leaders by our serpent man/assassin NPC. 


"David Marchant (Michael Latimer), a British explorer, along with Colonel Hammond (Robert Raglan) and a guide are pursuing a leopard on an African safari. The Colonel takes aim but misses and only wounds the animal. With the guide warning that it will soon be dark, David decides to find the beast and put it out of its misery before following the party back to camp.
Walking some way, he passes various trees with a picture of a white rhino but ignores them. Finally, the weakened leopard attacks him and he shoots it dead, whereupon David is ambushed and captured by a primitive tribe. They accuse him of disturbing the spirit of the white rhinoceros, and take him to their leader's temple. As the high priest/leader makes his decision, David notices a large, ancient stone statue of a white rhino and realizes this is what the tribe worship"

The players were forced to flee into the wastelands & besides a whole host of lizard men, and some mutated crabs they dealt with several encounters with Grey Aliens & their flying saucers. They dodged most of these encounters and learned very quickly to run away. But they quickly dealt with a tribe of  Blue Men who wanted to sacrifice them to Shub-Niggurath spawn they worshiped because of the color of their hair. Obviously a nod to Hammer's When Dinosaur's Rule The Earth.
But what really freaked the players out was running into their boat from a 2011 Carcosa game that had been taken its nods from The Lost Continent from 1968. One of the mutant fools erm adventurers was killed by the vampire sea weed that was still aboard. The rest of the PC's blew the boat to kingdom come with an energy weapon they had recovered and continued on after the serpent man. This was  after he had almost succeeded in killing them in some ruins. He left them to die with a group of killer robots! If it wasn't for the party's mutant warriors they would have been toast.

They finally found the gate way back home but it was guarded by a group of tribes whom I lifted directly from Creatures The World Forgot from '71. There was a bone man sorcerer living in disguise among these people as a priest of a particularly nasty spawn of Shub-Niggurath. The players figured out who he was after he met with the serpent man assassin in the triple moonlight that night. The party followed him back to his cave and that's where they discovered his dimensional gate way. He cooked one of the mutants with a death ray but the party managed to take him out with a laser pistol they had. The serpent man NPC managed to slither away in the confusion.

All in all for a spur of the moment one shot I think things went rather well, the THE YUTHLUGATHAP SWAMPS module worked rather nicely because of its Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition gaming background. This made it rather easy to blend with Gamma World. I ended up using a good bit of second edition Gamma World to round out some of the system and artifact kinks. Everything went off without too much of a hitch thanks to the notes in the AD&D 1st edition Dungeon Master's Guide. Several of the charts from Islands of Purple Putrescence also came in handy to round out some of the random elements of today's game. So all in all it was a great one shot game.