They Are Not As Noble As They Seem - Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Adventurer, Conqueror, King, and Original Dungeons & Dragons

 "What you get is a clear and focused restatement of the Basic D&D rules focused on what those rules do best: survival horror. But unlike the high fantasy safari of Dungeons & Dragons, LotFP Weird Fantasy concentrates on desperate treasure hunters hailing from a grimy replica of our own planet in the Renaissance/early modern period, where magic is a dreadful aberration and ne'er-do-wells who rob tombs and chance brushes with unknown horrors are shunned." 
John Q.Public Amazon Review 2019 Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg 

There was a time right around 2015 or so when Lamentations of The Flame Princess became a bit too main stream for my taste. LoFP has gone back into it's 'game whose name we can't talk about status' and that's fine with me. Reading further into John Q Public's December 2019 review; "Each place where Weird Fantasy differs from Mentzer's Basic D&D really doubles down on the game's weird survival horror vision. Characters have 3 Alignments as in Basic—Neutral, Law, and Chaos—but it represents your character's role in a cosmic conflict regardless of their moral outlook. Certain classes are polarized by Alignment: Clerics must be Lawful, and Magic-Users and Elves must be Chaotic. Furthermore, the rules otherwise treat Elves as inhuman monsters, making them vulnerable to holy water and certain spells cast by Clerics." 

Call me old fashioned but Elves in my mind for Weird Fantasy should absolutely alien. And other OSR games such as Adventurer, Conqueror, King's Secrets of the Nethercity takes the Elven/Chaos connection even further. We get an Elven empire that subcombed to the terrors of Chaos with  the ancient elven empire coming  to life with the Elven Cultist, Elven Hierophant, Elven Warlord, and Elven Wizard.

And this picks up steam with Rpg Pundit's Lion & Dragon where the Elves are an ancient malevolent force of nature from the time of the Pagan gods. Giving the Elves of traditional D&D fame a Fairy like malevolence is right in line with many of the legends and Fairy tale mythological connections. There's always been something very weird and dangerous about the Elven race of original Dungeons & Dragons fame. 'The too perfect, we're better at everything, and we're almost but not quite perfect' vibe of the Elven race. Elves literally are the 'other' to humanity and perhaps were an early precursor to us. And there for dangerous. 

And this goes back to 1974's Original Dungeons & Dragons supplement Greyhawk. If we look at the Wiki entry on the Greyhawk Supplement; "Greyhawk instead focused on new game rules that had been developed by Gygax and Kuntz during long hours of home play. The 68-page supplement also introduced new character classes (thief and paladin),^[4][5] as well as new combat rules, spells, monsters, and treasures.^[4] Greyhawk included new rules on weapon damage varying by weapon. The supplement added new treasure and magic items, and new spells, including 7th, 8th, and 9th level spells. The supplement also included a section on monsters, introducing the lizard men, beholders, displacer beasts, blink dogs, carrion crawlers, and many others". We really start to see the foundation of original Dungeons & Dragons forming from Gygax's and Kuntz's home campaigns. But there's something weirdly alien about the world setting that original Dungeons & Dragons was forming. And this isn't a bad thing just very alien. 
And among those alien monsters and races were the Elves. 

Now recently we started plugging back into these themes of alieness, the other, the outsider, and more into several other OSR games. The Elven mercenaries & sell swords who are far more problematic then thier worth. The image of Elric of Melibone by Michael Moorcock immediately springs to mind here. 

Demon haunted Elven communities & ancient cities on some long forgotten coast of Europe or Greenland immediately springs to mind here. Ancient Elven legendary sword masters and dragon riders now only myth and legend are told in whispers. Tales of children snatched and raised as one of thier own whose ears are pointed by long exposure to strange radiations and forbidden magics are told around camp fires. 
All of these were told when the Ice were coming down from the top of the world to claim thier lands and the cities of Man were being crushed beneath the coming ice walls. 

Review & Commentary On Womb Cult by Andrew Marrington from From Grimm Aramil Publishing For The Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg & Your Old School Or OSR Campaigns

 "A race of alien-human hybrids hides in a rural area, disguising its activities as those of a witch cult. It offers the power of witchcraft to gullible countryfolk; all it asks in exchange is that they serve as the cult’s wombs, to keep their hybrid lines viable, as they have since Time Immemorial.

But a change has swept Europe. No longer are stories of witches dismissed as superstitious ravings of uneducated peasants, and now, the witch hunters have come to put an end to the Womb Cult...

An adventure for low level characters for Lamentations of the Flame Princess"

Third party Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg products have always been hit or miss for us. But  the recommendation of a friend does carry some weight & boy is this one solid. 'Womb Cult' by Andrew Marrington from From Grimm Aramil Publishing is a forty four page adventure for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg that packs in the weirdness. And unlike other LoFP products this one actually delivers the alien goods. 


 Womb Cult is an adventure with a cross witchcraft & alien invasion theme as a basic adventure starter package. Man this one is well laid out, gives the punch to the PC's straight out of the gate, & the whole cloth of the adventure is well done. This isn't an adventure that exploits women but an adventure that exploits everyone.. period. You can drop this adventure into the back end of rural England during the English Civil War or the Hundred Years War campaign. 

The layout here is concise, the themes a cross between disturbing & the high weirdness of a 50's Science Fiction movie on the late night channel on cable, the encounters are nasty. 

'Womb Cult ' is the type of low level adventure that I wish had been out when I running LoFP Carcosa or 'World of the Lost' by Rafael Chandler. The reason is simple 'Womb Cult '  takes the tired cliché of a beginning adventure & turns it into a campaign spring board. For LoFP's 'Womb Cult ' turns up the adventure without sacrificing the content. This is a pure alien invasion of the worst kind & it shows. But this isn't a nega dungeon of the usual Lamentations variety instead  'Womb Cult ' is a campaign beginning or spring board. 

The production values here are top notch & the artwork is on point for an LoFP third party product. Is this a winnable adventure for a party?! Its gonna depend upon the players expectations & what they choose to do. There are some direr & dangerous things here in  'Womb Cult '. 
Don't make any mistakes here  'Womb Cult ' isn't for the kids folks. This is a Lamentations of the Flame Princess module so there's adult themes, ideas, & some icky content for everyone. Can  'Womb Cult ' be used with a traditional Dungeons & Dragons style game?! In a word, yes! 

You could drag & drop  'Womb Cult ' into the back end of a Greyhawk campaign or even Mystara with little effort. But  'Womb Cult ' is a hard core Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventure. Could it be used with other OSR systems?! Oh most certainly. 

First of all  'Womb Cult ' could easily be used with an Adventurer, Conqueror, King rpg campaign in spades. The whole thing lock, stock, & two smoking blunder buss barrels could be dropped into that system using ACK's Guns of War book. Because of the black powder weapons & such. 

'Womb Cult '  could also work very well into a black powder Castles & Crusades game campaign. The science fantasy high weirdness makes this a very easily adaptable adventure. The cult operating in some country back water means that they can spread quite easily throughout a region.  The PC's could have a Hell of a time eradicating it. 

And this also means that 'Womb Cult '  could work very well as a heresy within a Dark Albion or Lion & Dragon rpg campaign. There's tons of mileage that a DM could get out of this adventure. 

Is 'Womb Cult ' perfect? No its not but it provide a really nice alternative beginning adventure & tool kit for a from the ground up Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg game campaign. This adventure played right could provide years of 'cat & mouse' play easily & could be used as the basis for an entire alien invasion from the ground up within a campaign. Its nice to see an alternative 'alien invasion'  adventure that doesn't use the usual Mind Flayer adventure. 'Womb Cult ' is in fact a solid OSR module & very well done. FYI 'Womb Cult ' was bought with my own money & I will be running it for my players coming up.

Raids, Ruins, & Hersey In The Countryside - G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief (1e) By Gary Gygax & The Hundred Years War

 So what happens when the giants during The Hundred Year War start to stir in the Welsh terrorities?! The players have already gone through the N1 Against the Reptile Cult & that's been put down. Now reports of giants have begun to get reports that giants are raiding the countryside. 

Now here's the thing, a prisoner has escaped back to the authorities, & she reports a pagan hersey involved as well. She seen Ysbaddaden Bencawr; "Ysbaddaden, Chief of Giants, among them.



Illustration by John D. Batten (1892)

Whose Ysbaddaden?  Ysbaddaden Bencawr is  the chief antagonist of the early Arthurian tale How Culhwch won Olwen. And very dangerous as well as cunning;"Ysbaddaden Bencawr; "Ysbaddaden, Chief of Giants," is the primary antagonist of the Welsh romance Culhwch ac Olwen.^[1] A vicious giant residing in a nigh unreachable castle, he is the father of Olwen and uncle of Goreu fab Custennin.

Culhwch's father, King Cilydd son of Celyddon, loses his wife Goleuddydd after a difficult childbirth. When Cilydd remarries, the young Culhwch rejects his stepmother's attempt to pair him with his new stepsister. Offended, the new queen puts a curse on him so that he can marry no one besides the beautiful Olwen, daughter of the giant Ysbaddaden. Though he has never seen her, Culhwch becomes infatuated with her, but his father warns him that he will never find her without the aid of his famous cousin Arthur. The young man immediately sets off to seek his kinsman. He finds him at his court in Celliwig in Cornwall and asks for support and assistance.

Arthur agrees to help, and sends six warriors to join Culhwch in his search for Olwen. They travel onwards until they come across the "fairest of the castles of the world", and meet Ysbaddaden's shepherd brother, Custennin. They learn that the castle belongs to Ysbaddaden, that he stripped Custennin of his lands and murdered the shepherd's twenty-three children out of cruelty. Custennin set up a meeting between Culhwch and Olwen, and the maiden agrees to lead Culhwch and his companions to Ysbadadden's castle. The warrior Cai pledges to protect the twenty-fourth son, Goreu, with his life." 

Make no mistake this turns 'G1 The Steading of the Hill Giant Chief ' by Gary Gygax into a full on inquistor's campaign starter module involving Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos . The PC's are going to be acting as the Black Prince's agents in the Welsh countryside. 

Edward The Black Prince is a major NPC influence here & isn't to be taken lightly. The PC's are going to report directly too him through mystical means. The major NPC villain here is going to acting through intermediatary NPC's so the chief in Gary Gygax's Steading is a vassel or chieftain of Ysbaddaden Bencawr. 
The PC's are dealing with the fall out of Arthur and Gwalchmai fab Gwyar efforts & this propels things ahead at break neck speed. The PC's are going to be up to their necks in this one. 

Culhwch at Ysbaddaden's court. An illustration by E. Wallcousins in Celtic Myth & Legend, Charles Squire, 1920 "Horses shall I have, and chivalry; and my Lord and kinsman Arthur will obtain for me all these things. And I shall gain thy daughter, and thou shalt lose thy life." "Go forward...and when thou hast compassed all these marvels, thou shalt have my daughter for thy wife."

The Drow are going to be mentioned & they have an entirely different agenda & its not a good one. "
Temple found under the steading is explicitly stated to be dedicated to the Elder Eye, which by 4th edition was synonymous with Tharizdun." And this might tie in with Norkers being a part of the mercenary armies of the Drow and  'The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun' by Gary Gygax. 

The PC's are being manipulated from all sides here & they are going to be dealing with some very heavy duty foes. Extra player characters are going to need to be on stand by. Basically this is simply going to turn into yet another front in the Hundred Years war. The Drow are following an age old pattern set out by their Elven god ancestors to manipulate the humans. They don't bank on humanity's ability to cope with the mythological at this point. 

We'll get into the tie in with 

RPGPundit Presents: The Old School Companion 1 coming up! 

Cults, Chaos, & Dungeons Design Amid War - More D1 Descent Into The Earth By Gary Gygax Commentary

 So PC's have explored Gary Gygax's D1 Descent Into The Depths of the Earth & now the world is safe! The Hundred Years War is wrapping up, all is right, & now events are in motion after  the Battle of Castillon. The party can relax & move on with their lives! Not in the least. Moping up the affairs of Europe are going to years and here's why.

Right so one of the side lines of talking about adapting the Hundred Years War into an actual campaign for Lion & Dragon is that fact Chaos is a constant threat & theme throughout a campaign. But where exactly is chaos coming from?  The simple fact is that the entire countryside of Dark Europe is riddled with ancient prehistoric highways created by the slaves of the Elves thousands of years ago. These tunnel systems lead throughout Paris, the countryside of France, England, Italy. most of Europe, & this includes Spain as well.


Battle of Poitiers (miniature of Froissart)


So where is Chaos coming? The dungeons both within this world of Dark Europe & outside of it in the realms of the Fairylands. This occurred to me reading through Gylnn Seal's Middenlands campaign which uses the idea of Chaos as a mutating and constant threat. Glynn Seal of Monkey Blood Design has a new Middenlands Kickstarter campaign expansion coming up I highly suggest that you support. The Middenlands isn't simply some backwater country area. The setting  exposes the mutating & near constant threat of Chaos.



Top this off with cults of witches & ghouls that are quietly striking at the heart of Europe from within and well scenes like this are all too common in Dark Europe.  You are going to get entire families wiped out by war, famine, & monsters. Titles,lands, & deeds are going to be the rewards of the day. The Church is going to another huge factor when the forces of Chaos are around.



But why are scenes like this common in both folklore & mythology in Dark Europe even admist the turmoil of the Hundred Years War? Because there is a marked history of conflict going all the way back to the Elven empires of thousands of years ago. So whose exposing these dungeons? The monsters are! They're basically operating a brush fire war amid the battles & mini wars of the humans! 



Why?! Because there's no Underdark but an Underworld! The Underworld is both physical & occult touching both the realms of the Fairylands & Earth. This is because it was arranged by the Elves thousands of years ago. The strange radiations & energies of these dungeon lands have very bad effects upon the humans who are exposed to them for too long. This has been happening since the time of the Greeks & well before that into the time of the secondary last Ice Age.

Peter Paul Rubens - Aeneas in the Underworld

So why would these dungeons, ruins, haunted mountains,etc. always be open & have adventurers stumbling into them? Well its the monsters of Chaos & the cults who are opening them up for the alien gods from below. At the end of the day this isn't our world sure it uses real world history as the basis for a campaign but there has to be a balance between the Dungeons & Dragons elements & real world history.

Frans Francken (II) - Orpheus in the Underworld.


The Church & the royals is going to be busy purging the elements of Chaos from amid their lands but for every one they catch two or three may slink back into the darkness. The forces of Satan & the Underworld are vast & very tempting for average man or woman during this time. Cults are going to flourish and dungeons in remote areas could well become full blown menaces to various kingdoms. Dungeons offer meeting places, hidden temple areas, and vast resources for a cult. Add in the alien influence of the Underworld here & well the uptick in secret societies we see during the Rose War is understandable. Clark Asthon Smith's Mother of Toads has some interesting notions about the alien influence of the occult upon the senses of his protagonist.
Given that its a part of the  Averoigne stories it certainly fits the genesis of the themes today.

Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld

For cults dungeons are full on places of religious significant & all that implies. There are villages where the ruins at the edges of the place are places where forgotten sacrifices ensure a bountiful harvest and this means the difference between life & death. This is especially true during the Hundred Years War. Don't forget that the vast mazes, warrens, etc.  that Gary Gygax describes in Descent Into the Depths of the Earth are a part of a far vaster network & its right below the streets of Paris itself. This puts the heart of Chaos right into the midst of the heart of France! This puts soul searing temptation, danger, & mutation right at the heart of the PC's during the Hundred Years War!

Among The Fairy Haunted Halls of B3 Palace of the Silver Princess By Moldvay & Wells For Your Old School Campaigns

Are there hidden agents of chaos scattered across Dark Europe? Have there been cults of chaos within European confines for thousands of years since before the time of the Roman occupation of Europe? What are  the connections to a TSR classic adventure & Arthurian legend?
Let dive right into the deep end of the royal gene pool!

Now I've talked about the '81 John Boorman cultclassic film Excilbur on yesterday's blog post & some of the familial connections its had in my games over years. And let's talk a bit about the connections between adventure locations, NPC bloodlines, & classic era TSR adventures. Everything revolves around the Le Fey family  because they're  the last bastion of the Elven bloodlines on Earth in Dark Europe.
Because there isn't just one Morgan Le Fey there are many daughters in the Le Fey line especially when we get into the 13th-century Old French romances of the Lancelot-Grail (the Vulgate Cycle) & some of the early Arthurian works:
"Morgan first appears by name in Vita Merlini, written by Norman-Welsh cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth. Purportedly an account of the wizard Merlin's later adventures, it elaborates some episodes from Geoffrey's more famous earlier work, Historia Regum Britanniae (1136). In Historia, Geoffrey relates how King Arthur, seriously wounded by Mordred at the Battle of Camlann, is taken off to the blessed Isle of Apple Trees (Latin Insula Pomorum), Avalon, to be healed. In Vita Merlini, he describes this island in more detail and names Morgen as the chief of nine magical queen sisters who dwell there, capable of shapeshifting and flying,^[13] and using their powers only for good.^[14] Her sisters' names are Moronoe, Mazoe, Gliten, Glitonea, Gliton, Tyronoe, Thiten and Thiton.^[15][16][17] Morgan retains this role as Arthur's other-worldly healer in much later literature, and Geoffrey might have been inspired by the 1st-century Roman cartographer Pomponius Mela, who described an oracle at the Île de Sein off the coast of Brittany and its nine virgin priestesses believed by the Gauls to have the powers of curing disease and performing various other marvelous magic, such as controlling the sea through incantations, foretelling future, and changing themselves into any animal.^[18] In Lanzelet, written by the end of the 12th century by Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, the infant Lancelot is spirited away by a water fairy (merfeine in Old High German) and raised in her paradise island country of Meidelant ("Land of Maidens"); his water fairy queen might be related to Geoffrey's Morgen of Avalon."
That's right kids the relationship between the Morgan line & Arthur's is  as complex & convoluted as anything you'll find in Tolkein or Game of Thrones. Because the Morgan line are Elven bloodlines that have been watching & tending mankind this entire time all across Europe. Each one has a witch cult,grove, or mystery cult as well as  other connection to Fairyland and even perhaps gasp HP Lovecraft's Deep Ones?! There are a number of lost under water kingdoms in Celtic folklore that might have connections to various locations taken back by the Deep Ones. Again another blog entry for another time.



Why would the royals of  Morgan line be allowed to continue across Europe then?! Because as I said their relationship to the crown heads of Europe is complex and familial. The families have produced some of the premiere doctors, healers, lawyers, merchants etc. in all of Europe some of whom are beyond reproach;

"Prior to the cyclical Old French prose, the appearances of Morgan are few. The 12th-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes mentions her in his first romance Erec and Enide, completed around 1170. In it, a love of Morgan is Guinguemar, the Lord of the Isle of Avalon and a nephew of King Arthur, a derivative of the legendary Breton hero Guingamor.^[19] Guingamor's own tale by Marie de France has him in relation to the beautiful magical entity known only as the "fairy mistress",^[20] who was later identified by Thomas Chestre's Sir Launfal as Dame Tryamour, the daughter of the King of the Celtic Otherworld, and who shares many characteristics with Chrétien's Morgan.^[21][22] It was noted that even Chrétien' earliest mention of Morgan already shows an enmity between her and Queen Guinevere, and although Morgan is represented only in benign role by Chrétien, she resides in a mysterious place known as the Vale Perilous (which some later authors say she has created as a place of punishment for unfaithful knights).^[18][23] She is later mentioned in the same poem when Arthur provides the wounded hero Erec with a healing balm made by his sister Morgan. This episode both affirms her early role as a healer and provides the first mention of Morgan as Arthur's sister; healing is Morgan's chief ability, but Chrétien also hints at her potential to harm.^[24] Chrétien again refers to Morgan as a great healer in his later romance Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, in an episode in which the Lady of Norison restores the maddened hero to his senses with a magical potion provided by Morgan the Wise. While Modron is the mother of Owain mab Urien in Welsh literature, and Morgan would be assigned this role in later French literature, this first continental association between Sir Ywain and Morgan does not imply they are son and mother; she is first mentioned as Ywain's mother in the early 13th-century Breton lai Tyolet."

The Morgan line are not simply healers but tacticians, events did not go as planned with the Camelot affair & after Arthur's death Avalon's return to the world of men didn't happen.

A detail of The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon by Edward Burne-Jones (1898)

How bad did events get?! Well when dealing with Chaos & the occult events are unpredictable & highly dangerous. B3 Palace of the Silver Princess might be the perfect old school example of another adventure location taken off to Fairyland whose chaos energies have warped the entire classic adventure location. Let me get this bit out of the way; "Palace of the Silver Princess is an adventure module for the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set. It was recalled on the same day it was released, then rewritten and re-released some months later. The original version, with an orange cover, was written in 1980 by Jean Wells.^[2][3] When the orange version was recalled (and most copies destroyed), the module was rewritten by Tom Moldvay and released with a green cover. Writing credit on the second version was given to both Moldvay and Wells, although there was very little of Wells' original content in Moldvay's version."

So The Thirty Years War is raging across Europe and the PC's are on the border of France's wastelands and battlefields. The PC encounter evil creatures that have taken over the palace after one of the more bloody battles which puts events of B3 right around the Catholic Intervention.
So why the Catholic Intervention? Because the violence & bloodshed has warped the country depicted in B3 right back into the world. The Morgan line's curse was responsible for its disappearance in the first place. All of this time its been in Fairyland its been warped by the energies of chaos. What sort of possible Lovecraftian powers might have had a claw in this? Clark Ashton Smith's Mother of Toads (1934) goes into the dark connections to a possible source?!

This isn't a simple dungeon crawl as its a fight for survival against some terrible odds against the backdrop of the Thirty Years War. Because B3's adventure location has been warping in and out of reality for a long time and time does not pass in our world as it does in the palace. So there are bound to be an NPC cast  of adventurers and fortune seekers from across history within the palace.  The palace's inhabitants and monsters are native to Fairyland but is there evidence of the Morgan line's connection to the palace and events of The Thirty Years War?! Will the Morgans let the PC's live if they manage to escape the palace?

Contemporary painting showing the Battle of White Mountain (1620), where Imperial-Spanish forces under Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly won a decisive victory.

Let's face it, B3 Palace of the Silver Princess is a mess of an adventure but it adaptable to a wide variety of campaign settings and circumstances. By weaving a bit of Arthurian literature into the mix and some real world history we get a great backdrop for an alternative  Lion & Dragon retroclone setting. More to come! 

The Hidden & Dangerous Corruption of S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth By Gary Gygax For Your Old School Campaigns

"Find the perilous Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth and you may gain the hidden wealth of the long-dead arch-mage - if you live!" 


So the Thirty Years War has been raging across Europe, the gates of Fairyland have been flung open a few times & closed again by the machinations of a plethora of adventurers! The whole of the war has been taking on and out of circulation scores of adventurers by design or event. That's where one of the classics comes in! I'm speaking of the classic S4  "The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth," but we're not taking about a simple redo and romp. We're talking about re skinning the classic module so that it now takes on the role of death trap for the Lion & Dragon retroclone system.
Our little adventure goes something like this, the Thirty Years War has been raging on and off across Europe but the Elves are both losing & gaining ground to the humans. The war is taking its toll but the Elves have brought out the big guns in the form of  Drelnza, the vampiric daughter of long-deceased archmage Iggwilv. She's been sleeping the sleep of the ages in Fairyland & with clues laid out in T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil the the PC's are going to follow the trail to S4  "The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.

The module's history contains a clue to where it should be placed within the ring of the Lion & Dragon retroclone rpg system.

"The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth is an adventure module for the Dungeons & Dragonsfantasy role-playing game. It was written by Gary Gygax and published by TSR in 1982 for the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) rules. The 64-page adventure bears the code "S4" ("S" for "special")^[1] and is set in the Greyhawk campaign setting. It is divided into two parts, a 32-page adventure, and a 32-page booklet of monsters and magic items. The plot involves the player characters investigating rumors of lost treasure."
Toward the end of the next cycle of conflict in the Thirty Years War the coffers were beginning to run dry in Europe. The French military were facing down the disasters of the conflict & real tolls were taking place on the coffers of Europe. The French were investigating any rumors of treasure now enter the S4 "The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth" which is right on the French borders having been vomited into the real world. Men are desperate & the promise of riches and power is far too much a temptation for the Europeans. But surely there's no Arthurian connection here?


Well let's look into this end of the leg of the Thirty Year War;

"Emperor Ferdinand II died in 1637 and was succeeded by his son Ferdinand III, who was strongly inclined toward ending the war through negotiations. His army did, however, win an important success at the Battle of Vlotho in 1638 against a combined Swedish-English-Palatine force. This victory effectively ended the involvement of the Palatinate in the war.

French military efforts met with disaster, and the Spanish counter-attacked, invading French territory. The Imperial general Johann von Werth and Spanish commander Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Spain ravaged the French provinces of Champagne, Burgundy, and Picardy, and even threatened Paris in 1636. Then, the tide began to turn for the French. The Spanish army was repulsed by Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar. Bernhard's victory in the Battle of Breisachpushed the Habsburg armies back from the borders of France.^[66] Then, for a time, widespread fighting ensued until 1640, with neither side gaining an advantage." The French provinces of Champagne, Burgundy, and Picardy, and  Paris in 1636 were hot beds of chaos cult activity going all the way back to the time of Arthurian legend. All of these places have some claim of Merlin The Magician and the Devil himself in Arthurian legend. These legends  contrast with Drelnza, the vampiric daughter of long-deceased archmage Iggwilv. As one or more versions of Merlin were supposed to be the anti Christ.

"Several decades later, the poet Robert de Boron retold this material in his poem Merlin. Only a few lines of the poem have survived, but a prose retelling became popular and was later incorporated into two other romances. In Robert's account, as in Geoffrey's Historia, Merlin is begotten by a demon on a virgin as an intended Antichrist. This plot is thwarted when the expectant mother informs her confessor Blase (or Blaise) of her predicament; they immediately baptize the boy at birth, thus freeing him from the power of Satan and his intended destiny. The demonic legacy invests Merlin with a preternatural knowledge of the past and present, which is supplemented by God, who gives the boy a prophetic knowledge of the future.

Robert de Boron lays great emphasis on Merlin's power to shapeshift, on his joking personality, and on his connection to the Holy Grail. Robert was inspired by Wace's Roman de Brut, an Anglo-Norman adaptation of Geoffrey's Historia. Robert's poem was rewritten in prose in the 13th century as the Estoire de Merlin, also called the Vulgate or Prose Merlin. It was originally attached to a cycle of prose versions of Robert's poems, which tells the story of the Holy Grail: brought from the Middle East to Britain by followers of Joseph of Arimathea, the Grail is eventually recovered by Arthur's knight Percival.

The Prose Merlin contains many instances of Merlin's shapeshifting. He appears as a woodcutter with an axe about his neck, big shoes, a torn coat, bristly hair, and a large beard. He is later found in the forest of Northumberland by a follower of Uther's disguised as an ugly man and tending a great herd of beasts. He then appears first as a handsome man and then as a beautiful boy. Years later, he approaches Arthur disguised as a peasant wearing leather boots, a wool coat, a hood, and a belt of knotted sheepskin. He is described as tall, black and bristly, and as seeming cruel and fierce. Finally, he appears as an old man with a long beard, short and hunchbacked, in an old torn woolen coat, who carries a club and drives a multitude of beasts before him.^{[11] "} 

^{So could the local Chaos cultists be summoning back the temple from S4 "The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth" to wreck havoc on the countryside of France & Europe itself? Yes I think that many of the cults of Elves listed in Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos would be the perfect vehicle after the fall of the Temple of Elemental Evil.}

This would be a great resource for generating the death worshiping Elven witch cults who wish to bring back the temple and begin the times of darkness for which the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth are legendary. The fact is that these caverns were banished to the chaos ridden lands of Fairy by the deaths of a multitude of brave knights & paladins.



Now the adventure environs represent a  pure and honestly dynamically dangerous place of chaos where the forces of the realm come to trap and destroy any adventurers they come across. Clark Ashton Smith's Averoigne stories Colossus of Ylourgne, The (1933), Enchantress of Sylaire, The (1941), & Mandrakes, The (1933) have at their core the type of spiritual and mortal corruption just as S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth does as well. 



Should the  S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth be released back into the world of men, it could and will spell the doom of all of Europe. The forces of the adventure are very dangerous and powerful and only a brave bunch of adventurers have a prayer to pull this mission off in the middle of the Thirty Years War.  My advice is to bring lots of extra character sheets for this module has taken more then its share of PC's in my personal experience. 
There are several monsters & avatars of the 'Old Ones' from the Manual of Monsters for Amazing Adventures! rpg by Troll Lord. Monsters that might be left overs from various cults & such that that have been summoned to the Prime Material. 

These monsters are the essence of Chaos itself & perfect foils for the horrors that might be unleashed by doorways being opened into the Dreamlands & Fairyland. These horrors can wreck reality as we know it. Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth is a place of absolute terror that could derail a campaign if not used carefully.