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

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

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


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



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

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



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

Going Full Cha'alt - Volton The Deathless Major NPC!

Resurrected from the billion year old junk yard of super science & demonic energies beneath the shifting purple sands of Cha'alt's Vega Corso. A lone demonic agent of chaos strides out for his mecha again. Call from beyond by the demon worm sultan of Cha'alt Nevar'us the Damned. Volton The Deathless has been called forth from the Abyss to defend the armies of  the Egg of Coot. The blind Elven occult technicians make the final adjustments to his war wheel mecha. And the agents lives.. again to tear the wastelands apart! 


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


So this morning things have been very interesting. The concept of an anti paladin A.I. mechanism came to me while rewatching Hawk The Slayer film last night. This Voltan is a cloned  organic brain in a cybernetic body mechanism. This Voltan has been service to the forces of Chaos for thousands of years. This is another job in a very long line of jobs from the time that the brain has been cloned & recloned time after time. The mecha pilot cybernetic organism has been asleep beneath the sands for thousands of years. Well, there's no rest for the wicked & the blind Elven occult technicians have been working for two weeks straight without rest on his war wheel! And now the mechanism has taken off across the wasteland!



Voltan speaks exactly like Jack Palance's character in Hawk The Slayer & feels imaginary pain from his optics. He's so over the top & is gonna be great fun to play chewing up the scenery while going on full on bouts of chaos,mayhem, as well as rounds of destruction!
And he's on a mission of revenge for the players closing the planar gateway in last night's game. What other horrors lurk below the shifting sands of Cha'alt's Vega Corso wasteland junk yard?



Straight outta of the shifting sands of Cha'alt baby!


Voltan The Undying was created from the ground up using Cha'alt/Godbound rpg systems & then bringing home the tone of the cybernetic bastard in all his glory! The fact is that he's actually a triple agent working for the demon worm sultan of Cha'alt Nevar'us the Damned whist in the employ of the Egg of Coot. But his loyalties might lay elsewhere in actuality!  

He may in his full on bouts of insanity descide that one of the PC's is his long deceased brother Hawk & go on a blood fueled bout of ultra-violence soaked round of revenge for imaginary crimes! He's tear assing across Cha'alt wastelands now for the nearest Chaos warp for the wastelands & the PC's! 

The Drawing Battle Lines With Gary Gygax's Greyhawk & Blackmoor - Cha'alt/Godbound Campaign Commentary Session Report Part Eight

Tonight's  Cha'alt/Godbound campaign game was a very interesting dichotomy of old school & OSR elements with the PC's thrown into the deep end of my campaign. They dealt with the town of Low Star Arizona & came across the forces of Murlynd. His forces were rolling in from Greyhawk attracted by the armies of chaos in the form of the Egg of Coot.  The party of Godbound adventurers were drawn to the town by the opening of a planar gateway. 



What the PC's embroiled themselves in the affairs of a town of Greyhawk transplants which is actually the front for the forces of Heironeous making a beach head into Earth's reality. But what really happened is the party found a planar wizard. The planar wizard was based on  Patricia Quinn as Sorceress from  the film Hawk The Slayer. In the cellar of the local tavern there was a night road gateway. A fire wizard & his body guard routine of  the 'Order of the Lords of Mystery'  Abbott & monks were pinned on the other side. Our fire wizard made it through but the player's PC's were small fish in the affairs of the town. 



This Greyhawk is a whole different affair a world of Sword & Sorcery mixed with science fantasy elements. The order is observing the accounts of the Cha'alt wave & the effects of the armies of Chaos. 

The forces of Law representing Greyhawk have been gathering but Cha'alt's Chaos was there to interference in the form of a gang of  Cha'alt death stalkers who had been upgraded by the Egg of Coot. The adventurers hit the death stalkers hard. But what the party didn't understand is that the Egg knows about em.


The PC's are completely unaware of the fact that one of the demon worms of Cha'alt is observing all of the goings on. It has its own agenda & its sending in a team to take down our player's PC's!
The party has a supply of techo magical weapons that are being sent back to the dragon king's city state.



There's a certain magic ring from Cha'alt that has all of the player's in tonight's game. The deserts of Cha'alt teem with mutated bulettes the purple sands have been stained with the blood of the great Old Ones. The bulettes   respond to the wishes of the demon worms.

The bulettes will be sicked on the players when their PC's cross the wasteland to get back to the dragon king's city. Things are not as they appear however. There's a lot going in this campaign.

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

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

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





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


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

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



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


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

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

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



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

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


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



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


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


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


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

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


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

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

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

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



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


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

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



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

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


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


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

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

"Try to imagine this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks to the Vaults of Pandius 


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



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

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



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



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



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

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

OSR Thoughts & Ideas On The Mighty Servant of Leuk-o From The Book of Artifacts

If there's one metaphor in life its that one mess takes care of another, & I hate getting blindsided by players or dungeon masters at my table. Happens all of the time as my lovely wife is so fond of reminding me of. Such as today when while working on my Tegel Manor campaign. I've been today that there's been the sighting of  The Mighty Servant of Leuk-o. on the plane where the manor has appeared.  

"The Mighty Servant of Leuk-o is a towering automaton of jet black metal, shadowy crystal, and several mysterious fibrous materials. The device stands over nine feet tall, is nearly five feet wide, and some six feet deep. It is rounded and might remind one of a cross between an overly stout (if gigantic) dwarf and a lumbering beetle. The servant has two stocky legs, on which it walks with a curious swaying motion, and a pair of dangling arms.

An internal compartment is configured to seat two man-sized creatures comfortably. Externally, as many as five others might perch safely upon the servant when it is in motion. As might be expected, this dreadful thing is quite heavy, weighing nearly two tons, and is hideously noisy when in operation."

"The Mighty Servant of Leuk-o made its appearance in the the 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide as well as  he Second Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Book of Artifacts. Further research on the FATAL & Friends site shows the dangerous nature of this artifact; "The Mighty Servant of Leuk-o’s powers are written with what I think are rules for large-scale battles, so it makes sense that the book suggests that giving this artifact to an antagonist so the players have to raise an army to stop him or her. While the book says the artifact isn’t something that should be left with players for long because of its curse, it also says that adventures can be made for finding out how to use the Mighty Servant’s powers"

The Mighty Servant of Leuk-o has 60 hit points and -6 AC. It can only be struck by +2 weapons or better. Bludgeoning weapons do only 1 point of damage against it, while edged weapons only cause half their normal damage, rounded down. It has 90% Magic Resistance, and is utterly immune to acid, cold, heat, normal fire, vacuum and water. Lightning, electricity and magical fire inflict 20% normal damage, assuming the attack gets through the MR. If damaged, the Mighty Servant regenerates 2 hp/round. Anyone inside the Mighty Servant is fully protected from outside attacks. Given all these defenses, it is possible to destroy the Mighty Servant by reducing its hp to zero.

The interior of the Mighty Servant is akin to a modern cockpit, and anyone trying to use its active powers needs either to consult sages or tomes or experiment through trial and error. At least the DM is told to just abstract this learning process. The Mighty Servant of Leuk-o has a movement of 3, and can only be active for 12 hours at a time. After-which the machine must be inactive for an hour to recharge its energies. The Mighty Servant “strikes as a 10-HD creature” (does that mean it uses the default THAC0? Why not just give the THAC0? Damnit, TSR!). It can attack once a round (or at least that’s my reading) and each blow does 1d6 x 10 points of damage. The Mighty Servant is strong enough to destroy castles. If used as a siege engine, it does the same damage as a screw or ram. If used in a BattleSystem game, its stats are AD d12+d8, AR 4, HD 10, Hits 5, MV 3. For random powers, the Mighty Servant gets 6 Offensive Powers, 6 Major SLP, and 2 Healing Powers that apply to any one creature inside the interior compartment. Using any of these abilities drains one hour of continuous usage.

Major SLP: 24, 7, 50, 46, 65, 99

• 4-7: Cast animate dead 1/day
• 24-26: Cast destruction 1/week
• 44-46: Cast magic jar 1/day
• 47-50: Cast mindshatter 1/week
• 96-100: cast wither 1/week

Offensive Powers: 1, 2, 18, 1, 18, 8

• 1: Cast age creature 1/day
• 2: Cast Bibgy’s crushing hand 1/day
• 8: Cast disintigrate 1/week
• 18: Cast suffocate 1/week

Healing: 20, 19

• 19: Cause all healing spells applied to the user to be doubly effective
• 20: Erase scars and other disfigurements caused by battle (at will)

The Mighty Servant’s curse has both a short- and long-term component. First, every time the operator uses a power, he must make a save vs spell or goes into a battle frenzy for 24 hours. “During that time, the artifact is used in a rampage of destruction to any and all within reach.” Considering that the Mighty Servant has to take an hour break every 12 hours, it seems that might be difficult. Second, the character using the Mighty Servant risks Artifact Transformation. “Those affected by this power gradually have their alignment shifted to chaotic neutral”. That-that’s not what Artifact Transformation is used for. 

Besides hitting it a lot, there are two other means of destruction suggested

• A self-destruct command phrase. This causes an explosion-no specifics beyond “very big”

One of the powers of the Machine of Lum the Mad is to destroy the machine. If Lum knew that such a power existed, he never used it."

The fact is that its an artifact with lots of secrets & intercate histories tied into it. I'd venture to guess that its another example of Darkmoor technology from the fleet that came with the Warden. This time it had fallen on Greyhawk.  Why do I say Greyhawk? Because the 'Mechanism of Lum the Mad' appeared first appeared in Eldritch Wizardry for original Dungeons & Dragons. 



But this gets into a theory I've got about much of the S3 Expediation to the Barrier Peaks By Gary Gygax  technologies, artifacts, etc. are essentially all cursed in one way or another. These battles between kingdoms, warlord activity, battles of the gods, etc. This might help to explain the constant cycle of these artifacts being uncovered & then contiuing the cycle. 


This gets into the heart of the cycle of constant warfare but could there be something in the background feeding upon the violence, degredation, & warfare. Time & again I keep finding myself going back to the Egg of Coot here. The Egg has not only the capacity but the motive to keep this cycle of death & destruction going. All of that power is centered on it as well & given all of these I keep thinking that the Egg is motivated to keep the wheel going gaining power as things continue their cycle. I was reading   'The Return of the Egg' article on The Vaults of Pandius site
by Giuliano Michelon from Threshold Magazine issue 12. Its got me thinking about the Egg's continuing influence on both Greyhawk & my own campaigns. 




In terms of the Godbound rpg 'The Mighty Servant of Leuk-o' would be a prize found someplace on some back end of the Road of Night. This artifact would have fought in many wars perhaps even in the Wars of Hell & the minor Heavens. The mecha could teach priest technologists the hidden means of some of the secrets of making its style of mecha. But would a party of adventurers survive its wrath?! This might be an adventure unto itself down the line. Possibly a raid on a wizard's tower or other ruin where the last party of adventurers tried to find it & met their demise at its claws.

Happy Birthday OSR Haul & A New Free Blackmoor book - Fall of the Dwarves: A Free PDF Campaign Expansion to the CBI-2 The Rand Sourcebook By Havard Blackmoor

So my other half had a birthday OSR surprise for me done up by a local printer. Done in black & white, plastic covers, & a spiral binding in the booklets. These are for the table top & lay out from the pdfs have come out quite nicely. 'Ghosts – The Incorporeal Undead' By James Mishler, Jodi Moran-Mishler has been on my 'must get' lists. Godbound Rpg By Kevin Crawford is another one on my radar & its companion 'The Lexicon of the Throne'.  The Kevin Crawford rpg  titles are centered around  a game of divine heroes in a broken world, men and women who have seized the tools that have slipped from an absent God's hands.Secrets of the Immortals By Steve Miller is D20 based title that  brings a new kind of hero to your OGL d20 System games... a hero who rises again and again from the ashes of the ultimate defeat, reborn and remade, and ready to adventure again into a new lifetime.


 Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu by Omer Joel, Alexander Macris  for The Adventurer, Conqueror, King rpg  is another title that I've been wanting for awhile now. Yes I needed a new copy of this book after the great  salsa accident of 2018. 

Harvard Blackmoor has come out with the Fall of the Dwarves: A Free PDF Campaign Expansion to the CBI-2 The Rand Sourcebook. This book expands on Dave Arneson's Blackmoor Rand sourcebook also by Havard. This book expands upon Havard's ideas from that sourcebook & then kinda doubles up on them by expanding the Dwarven lore. "CBI-2 The Thonian Rand introduces the Duchy of Evedhur. The idea with Evedhur was to expand on the lore of Dwarves from the Blackmoor Campaign Setting. In Dave Arneson’s campaign, the dwarves were ruled by Oberstar Kazakhum , the Regent of the Mines. In CBI-2, I gave him a brother, Arkalist Kazakhum.

 My idea for the character Arkalist, was that this dwarf, like his brother, wanted a kingdom of his own and settled in a mountain chain in the Thonian Empire. Arkalist’s Duchy of Evedhur also allowed me to incorporate some of the material and characters from Clock & Steam, another Blackmoor sourcebook from Zeitgeist Games written for Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition."


There are tons of call backs, Blackmoor weirdness, & some really nicely done connections between 'The Thonian Rand Fall of The Dwarves' book & the Rand sourcebook. This one is up to Havard's usual bench mark of OSR Blackmoor goodness.