Rage & Ruin - The Return of Dark Albion's 'Elves' Added 'One Shot' Campaign Commentary

 

This blog entry is going to pick right up from yesterday's blog enrty here.  If we're going to talk really nasty & dangerous antgonist NPC's in a Fantastic Heroes & Witchery rpg campaign then we're gonna have to talk about the fact that Dark Albion's Elves are evil incarnate. And 'the RPGPundit Presents: The Old School Companion 1' From Spectre Press brings this fact home in spades. 

Because when it comes to the Elves of  Dark Albion you are looking face to face with the true servants of Chaos with a capital 'C'. These things are baby stealing, soul munching, soul draining horrors from beyond the pale who once ruled most of Europe. And they'd love to again. The ruins & remains of the Elves are scattered all over Dark Europe. And its this fact that seems to drive scholars crazy because the reality of the Elves of legend seems to be fading. Because they were exiled to the 'Twilight Realm' according to 'The Old School Campanion. But if we look into Wiki's Elves entry the following comes up; "

Identifying elves with the demons of Judaeo-Christian-Mediterranean tradition.^[9] For example:

• In English-language material: in the Royal Prayer Book from c. 900, elf appears as a gloss for "Satan".^[10] In the late-fourteenth-century Wife of Bath's Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer equates male elves with incubi (demons which rape sleeping women).^[11] In the early modern Scottish witchcraft trials, witnesses' descriptions of encounters with elves were often interpreted by prosecutors as encounters with the Devil.^[12]
• In medieval Iceland, Snorri Sturluson wrote in his Prose Edda of ljósálfar and dökkálfar ('light-elves and dark-elves'), the ljósálfar living in the heavens and the dökkálfar under the earth. The consensus of modern scholarship is that Snorri's elves are based on angels and demons of Christian cosmology.^[13]

Elves appear as demonic forces widely in medieval and early modern English, German, and Scandinavian prayers"
This cement's the Elves of Dark Albion as something between demonic & Fairy, perhaps one of the left over races of the Pagan gods not destroyed during the Biblical Flood. And how does this squire with D&D Elves?! It doesn't & nor does it have to. 
The Elves of D&D fare are actually cattle to the true Elves of Dark Albion. The Dark Albion Elves have passed themselves off as 'pagan gods' and took full advantage of local populations while feeding enmass under the cover of plague or disaease; "Scholars have at times also tried to explain beliefs in elves as being inspired by people suffering certain kinds of illnesses (such as Williams syndrome).^[28] Elves were certainly often seen as a cause of illness, and indeed the English word oaf seems to have originated as a form of elf: the word elf came to mean 'changeling left by an elf' and then, because changelings were noted for their failure to thrive, to its modern sense 'a fool, a stupid person; a large, clumsy man or boy'.^[29] However, it again seems unlikely that the origin of beliefs in elves itself is to be explained by people's encounters with objectively real people affected by disease." 
And so this brings up the fact that perhaps the island of California has one or two Elven holdings. I haven't even remotely addressed the fact that both Drow & Elves will instinctively hate with a vengence these ancient Albion Elves. But there's a Chaos cult or two that has foot holds in these areas. 

So how will I be explaining this switch up of power from the serpent men?! I'm not because power vaccuums in D&D or AD&D are filled all of the time. And these Dark Albion Elves often pass themselves off as Pagan gods. They are quite capable of causing mayhem to anyone or anything they come across. 

Fantastic Heroes & Witchery One Shot - Dave Cooks's I1: "Dwellers of the Forbidden City" (1981)

One of the things that happens when you deal with a changing roster of players is the fact that players come & go. But certain game systems remain & in these is the fact that I always turn back to eventually and so it is with Fantastic Heroes & Witchery rpg.  Each & every time that Fantastic Heroes & Witchery comes up is the fact that Dark Albion also comes up into the mix. 

And one of the ideas that comes up is that Albion has before the Rose War an expansionist & discovery based trade economy. The Rose War comes along & all of that halts & the economy of Europe stalls or so it seems. But what the Hell happened to those exploratory expeditions?! Well it brings up one of my favorite old school campaign set ups  'the castaways '.

The idea of the 'Castaways' campaign is a group of misfit characters from old school & OSR resources find themselves on a 'deserted' isle and all is not as it seems. And yes this isn't original at all & owes more then a glancing blow from X1 Island of Dread by Cook & Moldvay. But to be honest we've  done X1 Isle of Dread to death. And possibly I'm thinking of Dave Cooks's  I1: "Dwellers of the Forbidden City" (1981) instead. 

And there's a couple of reasons for this, one is the fact that the island might be more then just a simple island & instead be a part of the island of California instead. My version of Dave Cooks's  I1: "Dwellers of the Forbidden City" (1981) was originally a serpent men colony and it was taken over by the humans until the serpent men took it back. And now they in turn are having to deal with inhuman populations from the mainland. 

Add into the mix PC's & stir gentility until they begin to make their way in land & then all Hell breaks loose. And is this a possible old school module location where I could add in Dark Albion's Frog royals as a possible hidden faction?! More as this develops.