Stormbringer rpg Session Report Three - Guests of The Dark Empire of Granbretan! The Appearance of Kane.

  Our party was herded into two cages drawn by mutant horses and our weapons were taken away. Devices were also searched for and then it was a long trip to the capital of Londra. All of the while it was a miserable trip with animal headed guards watching our every move and our party was in mostly silence. This session picks right up where we left off here on the blog. 

We were briefly paraded through the streets on our way to the capital buildings & then it was our time to brought before King Huon. King Huon, also called Huon the Immortal and the  King-Emperor, The freak of a king emperor floated in a strange 25 foot bubble of biogenetic liquid who awaited us. 

'A strange melodious voice said, 'Adventurers, mercenaries, and villains a man of royal linage awaits you. Mr. Kane wants a word with you and then we'll have our way with you ourselves' 

Waiting for us was a warrior whose face was cragged over with tons of wrinkles and two very icy blue eyes surrounded by a wreath of red hair. 'Warriors, I have need of your skills and it's a deadly quest we've got line up for you!' 

'The staff of the demon stone is an artifact of Chaos that lies outside of the purview of Runestaff. We want it! ' the voice was horse and dire of purpose. 
'The Mantis sorcerers of the  Empire of Granbretan have opened a doorway deep into the Million spheres as a part of the holdings of a powerful wizard of the empire. We want you to grab this bauble for the emperor'  

'We will richly reward you warriors' , the voice was smooth as velvet but artificially weird in it's echoes & held an icy undercurrent of menace to it. 'Gold, slaves, lands, and titles could be yours if you bring us the artifact' the speaker barked in response. 
Given our current condition within the walled cage of steel and wood we were in position to refuse. We held out a bit and asked to discuss it among ourselves! And we did. We asked for further warrior retainers of mutant stock & two wizards who were on the execution rolls of the Great Empire. Actually two other players we'd added too our motley crew of scum! 
'Granted!' What else!?' 

So what's going on here is that we're sorta of connecting this Stormbringer campaign with my uncle's old campaign from the early 90's. The retainers and prisoners are actually PC's who'd been locked up by the dark empire back in the 90's.  And one of our players had the old sheets! So we connected the two campaigns through the PC's. One of which is Abe Sentient a mutant and psionic PC whose been locked up since the end of the old campaign. 

Stormbringer rpg Session Report Two - Guests of The Dark Empire of Granbretan!

  Still not sure what we're doing in the  Dark Empire of Granbretan but we're still sneaking around from the animal headed knights that we saw from the side of the road we're on. From behind us we saw a new warrior who had no idea who we were and why he was with us.  Seems Radic the Great was a prisoner of Pan Tang one moment on board one of their slaver ships and next with us. This session picks right up from here. 

We were able to quiet him as soon as he saw the animal headed knights of 

the Dark Empire of Granbretan. We explained that we'd heard rumors of the inhabitants of the Dark Empire of Granbretan; "The inhabitants of Granbretan are renowned for their cruelty, and for their practice of wearing masks at all times." We hid in the remains of a cottage and were able to find some fruit baring trees from which we got breakfast. "The Granbretanian aristocracy, and the soldiers they lead, belong to the equivalent of  chivalric orders, characterised by a totemic animal. The orders have their own secret languages and their animal-masks make their members resemble bipedal beasts." according to one of our number Count Orlock the Damned. Apparently Orlock had spent time within the dungeons of Londra.  We had no wish to spend any time in the tender care of the Dark Empire of Granbretan.

While we discussing our next move, we heard the ground being churned up and immediately went on the defensive. From under the ground some weird mutant tentacled  horror turned up! And we went to work and got into combat with the thing! Ripping and tearing the ground and around us it took the ground out from under us. Count Orklock got in a couple of solid hits with his demon sword & dagger. Turk The Violent got his battle axe deeply embedded in the thing's tentacled head and that gave Theusu the opening he needed. 
And that's when a bunch of crossbow bolts from  the wolf headed knights finished the thing off. We were surrounded by the very forces we were trying to avoid! 'Welcome my friends you are now guests of the empire of Granbretan! Please put down your arms! " 
We ended here for the moment 

Stormbringer rpg Session Report One - Through The Flesh Gate Of The Young Kingdom

 "Well. I can tell you now that Stormbringer's 'real' being is related to other supernatural forces on another plane. I know how to summon them, but these relations are also creatures of Chaos and therefore, as far as you're concerned, somewhat hard to control. They could well get out of hand in some way” perhaps even turn against you. Stormbringer, as you have discovered in the past, is bound to you by ties even stronger than those which bind it to its brothers, but its brothers outnumber it and Stormbringer might not be able to protect you against them."

-Sepiriz, Stormbringer p. 87-88

This session report picks right up from here on the blog. There is an unspoken rule within the Stormbringer rpg & that's never mess with the soul stealing sword! Let alone mess with other incarnations of Stormbringer. And tonight our crew of marauders went to work for a wizard who stumbled upon a strange time doorway in the center of the Young Kingdom. Dar'varn was a strange Melniboné wizard who hired us to investigate the gateway. 

The gateway was made out of a strange flesh like material & crossing over the threshold of the gate found ourselves within a strange realm surrounded by millions of Black Swords hanging in space. According to the Moorcock's  Multiverse wiki entry on the Black Sword entry; "The Black Sword has been called by many names in its different manifestations across the Multiverse, including Stormbringer, Mournblade/Ravenbrand, Kanajana, the Cold Sword, the Dragon Sword, and Murakamo-No-Tsurugi (Japanese for Sword of the Gathering Clouds). The blade may not always manifest in the color black either, such as Corum Jhaelen Irsei's moon colored sword Traitor."

"Though the Black Sword is a being of Chaos, it seems to be an instrument of the Balance, akin to the  Runestaff  and the Horn of Fate. This is likely because in some cryptic way, the Black Sword and the Eternal Champion are one."

Tur The Terrible is a mercenary from Pan Tang who decided to claim one of the blades as his own. Big mistake! Several of the blades closed in on Tur and impaled him and sucked his soul into several different blades! 
While this was happening our party backed up and back out through the gateway! We made it only to find ourselves in another universe surrounded by the giant runes of the Black Swords. Everything was surrounded by these giant eldritch charged glyphs! Our party backed up and exited once again through the gate only to find ourselves in a strange huge battlefield surrounded by millions of bodies that were once people. These corpses kept changing and mutating with flesh coloured slop & gore that came towards our party. 

The party backed towards the gate as fast as we could and went through only to find ourselves in a strange countryside! We heard hoof beats approaching and we hid behind a wood pile and the ruins of a cottage. We saw the animal masked knights of

 the Dark Empire of Granbretan. We need to find out what era of this world we find ourselves in!  And that's when we heard someone cough from behind our party! 

Betweeen Kane & The Granbretan Empire - The Stormbringer rpg, Karl Edward Wagner's Kane & Michael Moorcock's Hawkmoon

  "The Eternal Champion is a mystical hero who lives upon all planes of existence, in all ages and times. Whenever the greatest need arises, the Eternal Champion awakens to ensure mankind's survival. His names are many: Elric, Corum, Erekose, Urlik, Hawkmoon, and a multitude of others. Into the thick of the fray he strides, heroic companions at his side."

This is going to pick right up from yesterday's blog here. Today is one of those days that I seriously need to recharge the batteries. For the moment I've handed off both my Castles & Crusade campaign & my Wretchedverse campaign. Russ Nicholson's passing has effected me more then I thought. However I wanted to take a few moments to discuss the Hawkmoon box set by Chaosium. This is especially true after reading through Wayne's Books article on the Hawkmoon box set available here.

One element of Hawkmoon's era that stood out to us as players were the Mantis scientist/priest/ magus who were Emperor Huron's personal bodyguards. These guys were whom we were captured by and tortured. It took a renegade Mantis priest to get us out of the dungeon and onto  ship. Then we had a cabal of six Mantis on our party's asses.
And let me tell you these guys were a pain in the ass. The Mantis priests are highly formidable, highly motivated, and filled with forbidden occult knowledge. We managed to make it out of Londra and out into the Atlantic. This was after getting acid filled globes hurdled at our PCs, dodging Wolf patrols, killing a bunch of animal masked assassins, and then digging out the surgical tracker/controller implants that had been implanted by the Mantis.

Did I mention that we did recover the 'Super Science' artifact?! And this is what kicked off this manhunt in the first place. And one of our number killed one of the Mantis priests to get it. And this indebted the Mantis priest/scientist absolutely wanted revenge against our party with the orders of Emperor's Houn. Even through 5 editions the Mantis continued hunting our party! This has been a major plot point to our games. Families have been generationally targeted by the Mantis through the super science of the burgeoning Tragic Millennium time travel projects. We did get paid for our efforts and almost double crossed by Kane. We got tired of the double crosses and what not so we simply told him that we wanted get paid. This earned a bit of respect from Kane.

Kane's got a great video overview right here.

Here's the thing our party of scoundrels and rogues were not good guys. We were really in a mercenary  band mold. We did five jobs in the world of Hawkmoon and eventually had several mutants among our ranks. Curiously we haven't heard from the Mantis in a very long time. This doesn't mean that there not out there. Note that this is a repeated blog entry because we're starting up a new round of our Stormbringer campaign soon.

Dangerous Beginnings - Darker Tides of Chaos - Oceans of Eternity of Karl Edward Wagner's Kane & The Stormbringer rpg

  So how did our party eventually end up at the End of Time or one of it's timelines?! Well that goes back to the fact that our party ended up together aboard a Pan Tangian slaver galley. These were sent all over the Young Kingdoms collecting workers ie slaves for the massive Pan Tangian machine. This is the beginning of our Stormbringer rpg campaign that came from here on the blog. 

We were each captured by Pan Tangian pirates & raiders. Ended up in irons, & down in the hold of a Pan Tangian sloop on it's way to the main country. Our party escaped when they went for supplies at a neighboring country sea port. 

We had one shot to break free & steal away during the night. These circumstances that we found ourselves enabled us to sign up with a mercenary outfit. And we targeted the Pan Tangian interests every time we could. 
According to the Sorcerers of Pan Tang wiki entry;"Shannon Appelcline noted how after the fourth edition of Stormbringer was published, "the best books to date for the line were produced first by Keith Herber, then by Mark Morrison. They consisted of thick, well-written books of background, such as Sorcerers of Pan Tang (1991) and colourful adventures, such as Rogue Mistress (1991)." This book delivers the Pan Tang island in colourful and dangerous detail.
We made contact with a dark red bearded sea captain with whom we signed on. This sea captain backed down the Pan Tangians on our party's behalf. That sea captain was Karl Edgar Wanger's Kane! 

Darker Tides of Chaos - Oceans of Eternity of Karl Edward Wagner's Kane & The Stormbringer rpg

   The edge of the Eighties were dead on a busy for our group of players of the Stormbringer rpg campaign that my uncle had been running. We had eight regular players and it was due to the DMing of my uncle. He was awesome when it came to keeping his campaigns consistence. 

 

 Back on the edge of the Eighties we ended up on the shores of the end of Eternity & time. This picks right up from here on the blog. There was no wind, no animals, and nothing whats so ever to really encounter. And waiting for us was Kane clad in his armor. He was surrounded by eternity ships all beached and waiting for captains who might never come. This was Ninety three & some change or so. 'Choose your ship lads' the heavy voiced Kane looked at our party and pointed around him. 
My uncle's passing had brought out the fact that there was a giant hole in our collective hearts. We were shocked when a party of Chaos pack mutants attacked our party! We climbed aboard one of the ship wrecks and found one that was still serviceable.  We went on exploring the Million Spheres after we dispatched the Chaos mutants. 

During one of our jaunts we came face to face with our former Hawkmoon general who'd taken on life as a mercenary general. Our party had accidentally killed his aid de camp at the End of Time. This act guided him on a revenge against our party of adventurers. He had his own planar ship and chased us across the Million Spheres. 

 We had some of our crew killed and kidnapped to drop into Chaos spawn areas. The Black Mantis was once upon a time a Mantis scientist priest of Great Britannia of the "Tragic Millennium,".  This was only the beginning of his revenge. Fortunately we had Kane as a patron or Heaven help us. 

Darker Tides of Chaos - Ending Reflections of Karl Edward Wagner's Kane & The Stormbringer rpg

Back in the Eighties where we live it wasn't eassy to obtain Sword & Sorcery paperbacks. Sure there was the used book store across time and occasionally something would pop up in a tag sale or a yard sale. Now I talked at length about working for Karl Edgar Wagner's Kane here. What bothered me about our party working for Kane was the fact that everytime we saw the character he looked a bit more harried & even more worked over then the last time. Events of the Kane books continued around our campaign and we weren't even sure which version of the anti hero we were dealing with. 

That's no joke at all. After the events of 'Cold Light' we met up with Kane in a small abandoned town outside of  the capital of Demornte, an oasis in the middle of the West Latroxian desert. Kane was wounded bleeding, etc. Still he wanted the artifact we had recovered from some nameless Chaos shrine in the Young Kingdoms. We got paid and then were given our next task. Each & everytime we didn't know where Kane was going to pop up. We'd end up on a world of Law and Kane was a drug lord working the angles. We end up in the Young Kingdoms and Kane was working for and then we'd hear in gossip had killed a local warlord. 

And this went on for a longtime until we struck out on our own as a mercenary company. By that time our Stormbringer rpg first edition game had picked up speed. We'd lost at least two or three wizards to Chaos. And obtained at least three other warriors. Kane as patron disappeared and it wasn't until years later that I figured out that it was because Karl Edward Wagner had passed. The hole that this death left was felt keenly by my uncle for many years. And to a certain extent it mirrors his own death by Agent Orange complications and alcoholism. My uncle was friends with Karl Edward Wagner. And the loss went very deep. 

Kane was and is far more to me than merely a Sword & Sorcery character. Kane is a sorcerer, a villain, a swordsman, a scholar, and a searcher for darker truths. But he's also the equal in many respects to the demon sword Stormbringer. Kane is the physical embodiment of murder given flesh by an uncaring God. Stormbringer is a demon sword forged by a lost race using order to give metal the principles of Chaos & the  sin of murder capable of killing a host of gods. 
These two entities are cursed to cause death, violence, and horror to all that they come across. And they do. They're also both connected with a Cynic's view of thier respective worlds. 
We came across the ruins of the Young Kingdom much later on after my uncle's passing. After my uncle's death we continued our Stormbringer first edition game campaign with two of us dealing with DMing duties. Kane as patron faded into the background. 

Somehow the party ended up at the end of time & this was about '93 or '94?! The party ended up on the shores of the 'end of time' surrounded by the wrecks of planar ships. And with no where else to go!? So was this the end of our travels?! Hell no! 

Betweeen Kane & The Granbretan Empire - The Stormbringer rpg, Karl Edward Wagner's Kane & Michael Moorcock's Hawkmoon

 "“The Eternal Champion is a mystical hero who lives upon all planes of existence, in all ages and times. Whenever the greatest need arises, the Eternal Champion awakens to ensure mankind’s survival. His names are many: Elric, Corum, Erekose, Urlik, Hawkmoon, and a multitude of others. Into the thick of the fray he strides, heroic companions at his side." 

This is going to pick right up from yesterday's blog here. Today is one of those days that I seriously need to recharge the batteries. For the moment I've handed off both my Castles & Crusade campaign & my Wretchedverse campaign. Russ Nicholson's passing has effected me more then I thought. However I wanted to take a few moments to discuss the Hawkmoon box set by Chaosium. This is especially true after reading through Wayne's Books article on the Hawkmoon box set available here. 

One element of Hawkmoon's era that stood out to us as players were the Mantis scientist/priest/ magus who were Emperor Huron's personal bodyguards. These guys were whom we were captured by and tortured. It took a renagade Mantis priest to get us out of the dungeon and onto  ship. Then we had a cabal of six Mantis on our party's asses. 
And let me tell you these guys were a pain in the ass. The Mantis priests are highly formitable, highly motivated, and filled with forbidden occult knowledge. We managed to make it out of Londra and out into the Atlantic. This was after getting acid filled globes hurdled at our PCs, dodging Wolf patrols, killing a bunch of animal masked assassins, and then digging out the surgical tracker/controller implants that had been implanted by the Mantis. 
Did I mention that we did recover the 'Super Science' artifact?! And this is what kicked off this mahunt in the first place. And one of our number killed one of the Mantis priests to get it. And this indebted the Mantis priest/scienctist absolutely wanted revenge against our party with the orders of Emperor's Houn. Even through 5 editions the Mantis continued hunting our party! This has been a major plot point to our games. Families have been generationally targetted by the Mantis through the super science of the burgeoning Tragic Millenium time travel projects. We did get paid for our efforts and almost double crossed by Kane. We got tired of the double crosses and what not so we simply told him that we wanted get paid. This earned a bit of respect from Kane. 

Kane's got a great video overview right here. 

Here's the thing our party of scoundrels and rogues were not good guys. We were really in a mercenary and band it mold. We did five jobs in the world of Hawkmoon and eventually had several mutants among our ranks. Curiously we haven't heard from the Mantis in a very long time. This doesn't mean that there not out there. 

The Dark Path Recollections Of The Stormbringer rpg, Karl Edward Wagner's Kane & Michael Moorcock's Hawkmoon

 Wayback in the bowels of the Eighties when Conan was all of the rage and the Sword & Sorcery gerne was still fresh we played the Hell outta of  first edition Stormbringer. Now our group never ended up working for Elric, oh no we ended up working for another another anti hero. And this one was far worse in our estimation. Nope we're talking about Karl Edward Wagner's Kane in my uncle's Stormbringer first edition rpg campaign. We met Kane in the Young Kingdoms right after the events of Bloodstone. And Kane is and was an anti hero..  Kane is a sorcerer, a villain, a swordsman, a scholar, and a searcher for darker truths. His character and his stories in my humble opinion are far more interesting than many modern Sword & Sorcery tales. The death of Karl Edward Wagner was a blow to horror writing that the genre never quite recovered from. 

Or association with Kane came through a third party minor noble who was a minor noble the shores of Oin and Yu at some little sea side tavern. Kane wanted us to save some artifact from the world of Hawkmoon. 
And we'd heard rumors of double dealing with Kane. Bearing in mind that this was long before the era of Elric ascending to the Ruby Throne. 
Kane had some Pan Tang sorcerer in thrall as a minion.  And to this day we don't have any idea what he had over the sorcerer but Kane lived up to the darkest aspects of the Eternal Champion. 
We knew that this wasn't going to be easy at all. And the world of Hawkmoon isn't one that adventurers have had a good time. 
We were paid half of our fee up front & promised the other half upon completion of the task. 
Thrus Dooon the Pan Tangian sorcerer opened a door into the world of Hawkmoon. 
And we pretty much entered the dark streets of Londra. Needless to say that we were in for a very rough time. We got captured about two hours later running afoul of the animal masked warriors of the city. 

Of course this was all a part of our plan to get close to the artifact. What we didn't count on was falling into the hands of the praying mantis class of occult scientists of Londra. And getting ourselves into deep trouble. And this is where we met our enemy. An NPC member of the praying mantis scientist class who would dog our party for over two years. Two years cutting across the multiverse to avoid the destruction of the Young Kingdom and the machinations of our villain. 

Along Moonbeam Paths - Further Mediations on The Stormbringer rpg & OSR Campaign

 White Dwarf issue# 97 marks a transition from old school rpg White Dwarf to the golden era of Games Workshop's Rogue Trader game & Warhammer Fantasy Role Play. Its also the final part of 'The Madcap Laughs' Stormbringer rpg adenture in this issue. 

If the armies of Pan Tang were a constant threat over the heads of the PC's in my games then about to talk about the real enemies. The masked NPC warriors who not only threatened my Stormbringer rpg group but terrified the living Hell outta of them. They chased them across the multiverse & back again.. 
So let's back up here & our group of adventurers had dealt with the events of 'The Madcap Laughs' & we had died numerous times. Not only did I get a chance to play but we often took turns being the dungeon master.  Our PC's  died by bandits, by random encounters, by demon encounters, and the list goes on from there. But two our wizards got a crack at the Whispering Codex which is the Necronomicon for the Chaos god  'The Pyaray Whisperer of Impossible Secrets'. 

One wizard ate his dagger because he went completely mad from reading the 'Codex of Impossible Secrets'. The second wizard however went temporarily insane & used a demon of transportation to plane jump our entire party to some random plane of the million spheres.
 We ended up on a null plane someplace at the ends of the muliverse & the party was in real trouble but how much we didn't know. The enemy NPC's also trapped on this featureless plane of grey sand were from the Tragic Earth. And  this was meeting with our long running enemies from Hawkmoon's world. 

Charles D'vere The First Duke of La Roy & the second grand inquistor of the Emperor of Europe. A member of the Praying Mantis division of the scared church of science  introduced himself along with his wolf & boar bodyguards. He then tried to have us murdered for the demon of transportation in the necklace that our wizard wore. Our party would not see the last of  'The Pyaray Whisperer of Impossible Secrets' nor be a part of the machinations of Balo Jester of the Chaos gods. The second grand inquistor Charles D'vere The First Duke of La Roy began his attack when some of the null  elementals of the plane made themselves known to our group. Charles was a product of  the foul Granbretan empire. While he was very well mannered he came straight out of the '87 box set of Hawkmoon from Chaosium. Charles became our mortal enemy after two of his body guards were cut down by our party during the melee. 
We knocked the wizard around until in a moment of lucidity he activated the demon of transportation again. But it required a sacrifice to feed on to get us out of there & while not in the Stormbringer rpg rules we roll played it out sacrificing the soul of one of the boar masked  bodyguard guards. The null plane that we had found ourselves on was leaching Pow out of us at an incredible rate. We found ourselves flattened on the moonbeam roads. Bleeding, battered, insane, & really out of options at this point. But we had to get moving and moving fast! We were lost among the million spheres & lost. But we saw the mantis masked  Charles D'vere  enter the moon beam roads pursuing a group of children armed with a flame lance. We managed to make our way to the children just as a very greviously wounded Charles collapsed on the road. 
Our party was able to gather the 'Children of the Grail' & with a casual snap of their wrists  we found ourselves upon yet another plane this time creepily  simliar to the Young Kingdoms. 
And we came face to face with the children's caretaker Unvia Von Bek a very pretty albino woman weilding a sword of Law known as 'The Dawn of the World'. Unvia Von Bek was the children's guardian & teacher. The children were mutants from the Tragic Europe era who did 'The Rune Staff's handiwork' in their words. They cured our wizard of his insanity & we were able to rest outside of  Unvia Von Bek's home. But during the coming dawn we found ourselves on the shores of a strange plane surrounded by strange wrecks of cosmic ships. Things were about to get very strange & dangerous for the PC's we took a path down by the beach into some woodlands & were assaulted by Fairies. Then we found ourselves within a strange snow storm only to come out on to woodlands of the forrests of Troos. 

Frank Brunner's In The Forest of Troos artwork  plate was the inspiration for what happened next! Our party found out that twenty years had passed since we had tripped into the madness of Balo's schemes. The Young Kingdoms was in shambles & things were going from bad to worse mostly at the hands of Elric! Our party did mercenary work for the rulers & around the Forrest of Troos for a while but our encounter with 'The Children of the Grail' was far from over. We were getting mixed up in the machinations of the Arthurian, The Devil & The Von Beks!