The Mythological Tarasconus For Your Old School Adventures & Campaigns

 " The Tarasque is a fearsome legendary dragon-like mythological hybrid from Provence, in southern France, tamed in stories about Saint Martha, such as the one told in Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend (13th century)."

The tarasque was described as having a lion-like head, a body protected by turtle-like carapace(s), six feet with bear-like claws, and a scaly tail like a serpent's tail in a text (pseudo-Marcelle or pseudo-Marcella) which is similar to and roughly coeval with the Golden Legend, and issued poison breath according to one hagiography (pseudo-Raban Maur) of perhaps somewhat later date."

No. Enc.: 0 (1d3) Alignment: Chaotic  Movement: Swim: 90’ (30’) Armor Class: 5 Hit Dice:  15  Attacks:4 Claw, Claw, Tail Sting, Breath Weapon  Damage: 2d6 Claw Strike, 3d6 Tail Sting, Breath Weapon  4d6 4 Times A Day, Dung Fling 2d6 Acidic Damage  3 times A Day Save: L4 Morale: 8 Horde Class: H 

The Tarasque (Latin: Tarasconus) was said to have come from Galatia, a cross-breed between the biblical Leviathan and the legendary Onachus (or onacho, or bonacho^[c][d]) of Galatia, this onachus being a creature that retaliated against pursuers by flinging its dung (Latin: stercus) like an arrow, and causing burns. 

A huge dragon, half animal, half fish... fatter than a bull, longer than a horse, it had the face and head of a lion, teeth sharp as swords, the mane of a horse, a back that was hatchet-sharp with bristly scales keen as augers, six feet with bear-like claws, the tail of a serpent, and a double shield/carapace, like a tortoise's, on each side.

A terrible dragon of unbelievable length and great bulk. It breathed out poisonous fumes, shot sulfurous flames from its eyes, and emitted fierce hissings with its mouth and horrible noises with its curved teeth. With its talons and teeth it tore to pieces anyone who crossed its path; with its poisonous breath it killed anyone who came too near.

The Tarasconus was a product of the Pre Biblical Flood & is a  creature of absolute malice & Chaos. The dragon like horror is capable of devouring the flesh of anyone that crosses its path. And will attack with its deadly claws at the first chance it gets devouring horse and rider easily. The Tarasconus has the ability to breath out poisonous fumes four times per day devestating plant life, flesh, and anything else that it comes into contact with it. The way to heal from this breath weapon is to use a  only remove curse spell  and magical healing has any chance of healing anyone caught in its wake. The Tarasconus will also fling its offal at anyone trying to pursue it on horse back or in a body of water. The offal is highly acidic causing horrid burns to any metal or  exposed flesh. The Tarasconus is known to destory entire cities, towns, and other urban areas out of a sheerly evil nature. The Tarasconus has reproduced due to the mating with certain undisclosed infernal dragons. There is gossip in certain occult circles that Tiamat or her mates were involved in these matters. 

The Tarasconus can be cast out by a cleric of 7th level or better but only a saint can cow the monster due its semi infernal nature. These monsters are often released by the Chaos gods to sew discord on the prime material plane 

War In The Shadows - The Dwergaz & Their Hidden Legacy

I've been doing a lot of thinking about my Godbound/Cha'alt rpg campaign over the last couple of days. A friend of mine asked me, 'Are there Dwarves on Cha'alt?'. This got me thinking about my notes from my Adventurer, Conqueror, King  campaign from a few years ago. The wiki entry on the mythology of the Dwarves has this to say; "Norse mythology provides different origins for the beings, as recorded in the Poetic Edda (compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources) and the Prose Edda (written by Snorri Sturluson in the 13th century). The Poetic Edda poem Völuspá details that the dwarfs were the product of the primordial blood of the being Brimir and the bones of Bláinn (generally considered to be different names for the primordial being Ymir). The Prose Edda, however, describes dwarfs as beings similar to maggots that festered in the flesh of Ymir before being gifted with reason by the gods. The Poetic Edda and Prose Edda contain over 100 dwarf names, while the Prose Edda gives the four dwarfs Norðri, Suðri, Austri and Vestri (Old Norse 'North, South, East, and West') a cosmological role: they hold up the sky.^[1] In addition, scholars have noted that the Svartálfar (Old Norse 'black elves') appear to be the same beings as dwarfs, given that both are described in the Prose Edda as the denizens of Svartálfaheimr"



In my mind the traditional Dungeons & Dragons style Dwarf or Dwergaz from the proto Germanic were originally a slave race that rose up against their inhuman masters  the Svartálfar (Old Norse 'black elves') & their original creators the Brimir. They formed their own kingdoms far away on other planes but there are still Dwarven kingdoms within Svartálfaheimr. The wars between Dwergaz & Svartálfar (Old Norse 'black elves') are legendary. 


A dwarf, in the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy roleplaying game, is a humanoid race. The idea for the D&D dwarf comes from European mythologies and J. R. R. Tolkien's novel The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955), and has been used in D&D and its predecessor Chainmail since the early 1970s. Lady of Hats artwork is awesome.

The Dwarves are seemingly a dying people but in some sense their not going extinct. They continue to wander across the planes seeding new settlements & other fortifications. But what the Hell are the Dwarves of legend  doing on Cha'alt?!  The Dwarven communities on Cha'alt are there doing the same things that they always have been doing kicking ass & taking names. But they also have been heavily involved in the demonic worm trade, doing many of the heavy duty enchantments for many of the scavenger tribes,subbing mercenary work in the desert regions, working many of the desert caravans, and living the life of adventurers.

Desert Dwarf artwork by Eric Williams II for the Shadowrun rpg Dwarf Male but I thought the artwork was cool as Hell. 

But the Dwergaz clans & tribes  have secret agendas & reasons for being on Cha'alt. Their ancient enemies the Svartálfar (Old Norse 'black elves') have been selling millions of slaves for mass sacrifices to the Great Old Ones.  The  Dwergaz clans & tribal elders have been looking to the  alien control center known as Elysium. 


There are rumors that the ancient enemies of the  Dwergaz clans the Duergar evil & vile creatures who fell to the forces of chaos weilded by the the Svartálfar (Old Norse 'black elves') are now maintaing some of the alien machinery deep below the face of Elysium.
The Duergar from the Monster Manual II  are still evil as they come! 

The Dwergaz clans on Cha'alt know that the planet is in total peril & that there's a limited time frame on the planet. Many of the clan houses have gateways to other worlds already set up. The tremors caused by the California dimensional warp have been tearing bits & pieces of the fabric of the local space time continum. 


Artwork from Cha'alt: Fuchsia Malaise kickstarter. 

Magick & Madness In The Blood - The Dwarven Races In Old School Campaigns

Delving into the original Dungeons & Dragons set I began to think about the Dwarven race in Dungeons & Dragons.



In the twisted world of  German mythology the Dwarves of old were twisted things created at the beginning of Earth. But I've been doing a bit of research on the background of these beings.
"Beyond the Proto-Germanic reconstruction, the etymology of the word dwarf is highly contested. Scholars have proposed theories about the origins of the being by way of historical linguistics and comparative mythology, including that dwarfs may have originated as nature spirits, as beings associated with death, or as a mixture of concepts. Competing etymologies include a basis in the Indo-European root *dheur- (meaning 'damage'), the Indo-European root *dhreugh (whence, for example, modern English dream and German Trug 'deception'), and comparisons have been made with Sanskrit dhvaras (a type of "demonic being")"
Now supposedly the Dwarves of old were formed from maggots from the blood of Ymir the ice giant but in ;"The Poetic Edda poem Völuspá details that the dwarfs were the product of the primordial blood of the being Brimir and the bones of Bláinn"
In stanza 9 of Völuspá, the first poem of the Poetic Edda, Brimir and Blain are both interpreted as alternate names for Ymir, although distinction between origin and issue is often difficult to discern in Norse mythology:

"Then all the Powers went to the thrones of fate,

the sacrosanct gods, and considered this:

who should form the lord of the dwarfs

out of Brimir's blood and from Blain's limbs?"

— Larrington trans."

Are these earlier proto Dwarves? These might possibly the forerunners & ancestors of the Dwarven race  of Ymir. But today the names Brimir  &  Bláinn are alternatives for Ymir's corpse. But what if their prototype creatures instead the maggot creation still stands. 

 "The Prose Edda, however, describes dwarfs as beings similar to maggots that festered in the flesh of Ymir before being gifted with reason by the gods"
The gift of intelligence is often seen as a burden in some mythologies but it makes the Dwarves on par with the Germanic gods & vulnerable to their machinations. Ymir's Dwarves were responsible for many of the gifts, artifacts, & tools of the gods.


If Ymir's Dwarves were that clever then it stands to reason that they'd create their own slaves & servant race to take some of the burden from themselves. The majority of the enchantments & heavy magicks were handled by Ymir's Children. Dwarves of Dungeons & Dragons filled in many of the day to day roles.

Three dwarves equipped for battle.
(David Sutherland from the Holmes blue book basic D&D

This is part of their role as smiths, jewelers, magicians, etc. & also part of the origin for D&D's royal Dwarven bloodlines (at least within my own campaigns);
"The Poetic Edda and Prose Edda contain over 100 dwarf names, while the Prose Edda gives the four dwarfs Norðri, Suðri, Austri and Vestri (Old Norse 'North, South, East, and West') a cosmological role: they hold up the sky." These royal lines helped to maintain the cosmological & planar gateways both behind creation & under the Earth. There was a bloody war between the Dwarven race & the proto Drow.
"In addition, scholars have noted that the Svartálfar (Old Norse 'black elves') appear to be the same beings as dwarfs, given that both are described in the Prose Edda as the denizens of Svartálfaheimr"
Ymir's Children are both powerful magick workers but have several dark sides & secrets; "Very few beings explicitly identifiable as dwarfs appear in the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, and they have quite diverse roles: murderous creators who create the mead of poetry, 'reluctant donors' of important artifacts with magical qualities, or sexual predators who lust after goddesses.
They are primarily associated with metalsmithing, and also with death, as in the story of King Sveigðir in Ynglinga saga, the first segment of the Heimskringla — the doorways in the mountains that they guard may be regarded as doors between worlds.^[6] One dwarf named Alvíss claimed the hand of Thor's daughter Þrúðr in marriage, but he was kept talking until daybreak and turned to stone, much like some accounts of trolls"

Harvey Leech, a dwarf. Wood engraving. Wellcome

The healing powers of Ymir's Children are well known in certain circles; "After the Christianization of the Germanic peoples, tales of dwarfs continued to be told in the folklore of areas of Europe where Germanic languages were (and are) spoken.^[8] In the late legendary sagas, dwarfs demonstrate skill in healing as well as in smithing." There is some evidence to suggest that that they had a hand in the creation of man;
"A stanza preceding the account of the creation of Ask and Embla in Völuspá provides a catalog of dwarfs, and stanza 10 has been considered as describing the creation of human forms from the earth. This may potentially mean that dwarfs formed humans, and that the three gods gave them life.^[12] Carolyne Larrington theorizes that humans are metaphorically designated as trees in Old Norse works (examples include "trees of jewellery" for women and "trees of battle" for men) due to the origin of humankind stemming from trees; Ask and Embla."

A depiction of Ask and Embla (1919) by Robert Engels

So what of the proto Dwarven race of Brimir  & Bláinn? These are the  Svirfneblin, or Deep Gnomes who get along with the Dwarven race but mine areas close to but not too close to the Dwarven race. There has never been a war with the Svirfneblin.


Cold & hot warfare with the Drow assures this even though their mutual slow combats with these races of old. The Drow have not forgotten their Fall from the Elves original role of cosmological guardian ship. But that's another blog entry.

Ymir's Children also had their own Fall giving rise to the race of Dwarven madness in the Derro. They war continually with their own children in the darkness of the Earth whenever they encounter them.


We know that Ymir's Children survive well into the far future of Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique. They must have survived the Ragnarok for they will bare witness to the end of the gods & help in the creation of the next race of humans.
"In Norse mythology, Ragnarök is a series of future events, including a great battle, foretold to ultimately result in the death of a number of major figures (including the gods Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr, Heimdallr, and Loki), the occurrence of various natural disasters, and the subsequent submersion of the world in water. Afterward, the world will resurface anew and fertile, the surviving and returning gods will meet, and the world will be repopulated by two human survivors."


Then the Awful Fight Began (depiction by George Wright, 1908)


By the time we get to the time of the far future we're literally going to see hundreds of cities of Ymir's children abandoned under the Earth offering prime pickings for a group of very fool hardy adventurers. Here's where I'm drawing on Clark Ashton Smith's cycles of stories for this. In the end Ymir is not going to let his children parish until their role in the cycles of fate & time are fulfilled.

A Brief Look At Dan Smith 'Smif''s Armageddon The Comic Book For Your Old School Campaigns

Dan Smith also known as the artist Smif practically defined the 90's through 2000's as far as my gaming artwork went. Lately he's been busy at work on the King of Crime game and this his latest project, Armageddon the comic book.

The basic plot outline goes something like this : 

As it has been foretold, Heaven will begin the Revelation of Saint John with Jesus opening the sacred seals of Armageddon. In the end, Lucifer will be defeated and  New Jerusalem will come into being.  The devil, knowing that God is rarely, if ever wrong, has been working on a plan for changing the course of events.

He needed to find a loophole.

Her name is Emma Doyle.

The Fallen Angels bike gang induct a new member with potential, while a young lady named Emma questions her disturbing dream patterns. Two angels get into a disagreement and a homeless man glimpses a vision of hell on earth.

The book seems to have a very weird sense of some of Dan's art work and writing from some of the materials that he's done in the past but with an interesting spin and a new take on existing Biblical themes.  I'm coming into this already into issue four and the cover looks great.

Issue two picks up and builds on the themes of those seen in issue one while moving in different directions as the events of the book heat up both figurative and literally.

The Fallen Angels create disorder in the name of the warlord, Goliath as the homeless man is shocked by the vision of an angel into unlocking his memories. The angel Muriel confronts Emma and her boyfriend Jake at a coffee shop.

Issue three begins to bring in some of the major players and I'm really interested to see where and how the themes of the book play with some of the more esoteric and solid ideas that get played out in the Book of Revelation. 

The plot goes something like this: Muriel and Micah battle over the fate of Emma while the homeless man, Dante, and Jake discuss the fate of the world. The angel Baal bestows necromantic power to Goliath and is subsequently challenged by the leader of the four archdukes of Hell, Mammon.

So now with the powers of Heaven and Hell arrayed against one another, things are going to start to really play there parts and loss the doors to the End Times and all of this is going to really get the ball rolling in issue four. 

 Dan's got an upcoming appearance in Las Vegas (kinda ironic when you think about it) at the Las Vegas Comic Con, Armageddon issue#4 is going to be available and you can get a signed copy. 

 Using Armageddon The Comic book 

as Fodder for Your Old School Campaign 

At first this comic series may not really seem like something that your old school OD&D group might be inclined to handle but given the flexibility and nature of the game and its roots back in the 'Satanic panic' this pretty much seems like a match made in Heaven. Given some of the early Dragon magazine articles of demons, devils, angels choruses, this one is a pretty easy idea to actually play with. There are a metric ton of old school resources out there for a DM to pick from. This could be a case of the PC's being brought in by one or more powers as a Prime Material gets ready for its Armageddon and the missions are going to swift, dangerous, and the body count very high. The adventures might be a mash up of Mutant Future/ Labyrinth lord or Osric which already has stats for many of the demons, devils, angels, etc. already built in. PC's can expect little to no help from the locals and the paladins which always seem a problem might become a very high asset as the military assets of Heaven and Hell are let off the chain and things go to the Lake of Fire in a real hurry. For extra old school add in a touch of Dante and really watch the body/soul count rise.  Given my own background and the games of AD&D we played back in school which involved the nine planes of Hell and all of the high weirdness that went with it. This series looks very cool and interesting to me. 

Want to know more? Check out the official website for Armageddon right over
HERE
There's a whose who, history, basic plot overview, and more. Buy the book to really get started.