Queen of the Martian Catacombs 'Old Mars' Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyprborea & Warriors of The Red Planet Hyrbid Campaign Notes Updated

 This is the first of the Eric John Stark stories & its got all of the pulpy weirdness we've come to expect from Leigh Brackett's Mars.

"Gaunt giant and passionate beauty, two dragged thirst-crazed across endless crimson sands in terrible test of endurance. One knew where cool life-giving water lapped old stones smooth - a place of secret horror, death to reveal
S.O.S. Aphrodite by Stanley Mullen - No wonder that signal stabbed out into the icy void from a ship of hate and evil"


When it comes to iconic Martian tales they don't come closer then Queen of The Martian Catacombs, I've been rereading this tale while I've been flat on my ass with the Flu. Yeah, yeah, I'm taking care of myself and drinking plenty of fluids and the usual whatnot that folks tell you when your sick. What I've also been doing between fever gripped spasms has been rereading Queen of the Martian Catacombs by Leigh Brackett.  Don't let 'the damsel in distress' routine of the Planet Stories pulp artwork fool you. The women in Brackett's tales are power players. They've got more on their minds then mere biological imperatives and it doesn't involve our heroes.  In fact the give and take of the players that are involved here remind me of the best of Robert Howard's & Edgar Rice Burroughs. But its that touch of the forbidden wastelands of Mars that sends it home for me into the field of the Lovecraft circle of writers. There is another twist in which the hero becomes involved with the Terran agents and a little brush fire war going in background of the wastelands of Mars.
The story telling is rapid fire & the material reads like partly between a normal sword & planet mixed with a banana republic revolution set against the dying embers of a world that is half forgotten. In other words a perfect venue for a sword & sorcery style game.
The "Giants of the Earth" articles in old issues of The Dragon gave the D&D stats for Stark( Issue #28, p. 35.) and as I remember he was a total bad ass. This story can be dovetailed right into the C.L. Moore North West Smith tales. This is a Mars on the edge of a boil and almost but not quite brought to its decedent head by internal forces. Here is the perfect Mars to marry to both Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea & Warriors of the Red Planet. I'll never forget running into the cover for Volume three The Reavers of Skaith. Brackett's Mars has the space ports and Earth's interests clearly marked out, settlements drawn, but this is a world where Clark Aston Smith's Lovecraftian horrors clearly hide out in the desert sands.


Once again the idea here of the power of the Martian desert world set with the PC's dealing with its ancient realities mixed with the modern Imperialism & Earth Colonialism is a powerful combination. Take the basics of the AS&SH as the back bone system mix it in with the Warriors of the Red Planet retroclone and your ready to go. But there's far more to this combination then simply meets the eye. If we start looking a bit further a field into Gulliver of Mars, by Edwin L. Arnold then we begin to see a very different area of Old Mars. The swampy & highly dangerous temperate polar regions of the Hither & Thither peoples.

Give the expansiveness of Old Mars this isn't a surprise & there are hints throughout several novels of classic pulp and Victorian authors of connections between lost Hyperborea & Mars as a possible colony. Brackett & Moore take this implied connection and expand on it until we have solid Lovecraftian leads and in roads especially in 

Queen of the Martian Catacombs

by Leigh Brackett

Here's where the PC's could easily get caught up in the politics of the Terran Empire & the system crap stirring its engaged in on Mars. This is the same sort of interference & tactics that we see the wizards of Thundarr's era engaged in back on Old Earth. There's far more that's implied here & the connections to some of the politics that we see in C.L. Moore's North West Smith stories can't be mere coincidence. In fact if I was to speculate I'd say that the Sol system pot of Old Earth's system with its bloated suns had been messed with before. This feeling of a trodden upon Mars gives the planet a 'lived in' & on ancient decadence that we don't get with some of Burroughs books.

1d20 Random Ancient Martian Minor Treasures Table 

1. 1d4 ancient Martian mind jewels worth 60 gold pieces to the right collector, they contain weird & half remembered alien dreams 
2. Short sword jeweled for a small alien hand more of a +2 dagger in a human hand or larger. 
3. A small soul mirror worth 70 gold pieces to the right buyer. 
4. An ancient map of the dead sea bottoms  worth 700 gold pieces 
5. Twin jeweled mind needles capable of delicate surgery 1000 gold pieces to a medical collector 
6. An ancient hand of jet and onyx that points the way to an ancient treasure vault deep in the Martian desert .600 gold pieces
7. Weird Martian jewel made from a preserved alien brain. There is still a psychic trace of the former owner 70 gold pieces as a curiosity 
8.  Pathan warrior harness plain 70 gold pieces with the names of two hundred tribal warriors of renowned names carved into it 
9. A long sword carved with 15 names of protection from ancient demons of the Martian nights 
10. A clawed gauntlet of red Martian iron spiked +3 damage worth 700 gold pieces in the Southern markets 
11. An ancient seed of Tu worth 700 gold pieces 
12. A water crystal with the Southern beam marked clearly and in solid working order at least 100 gold pieces 
13. The dark heart of a Martian dead god now a curiosity of morbid aspect  300 gold pieces to a black magician 
14. Weird  crystal face mask of the ancients  worth 700 gold pieces and able to block telepathy and mind probes  
15. The globe of Tous A Hither people artifact that allows its owner to gaze into certain parts of the Martian underworld. Worth 8000 gold pieces 
16. Plain silver dagger with a gem set in the handle. 70 gold pieces 
17. A cut jeweled statue of a Martian night angel  200 gold pieces 
18. Strangely wrought statues made of a solid ruby from the ancient sea bottoms with several White Ape claw marks 300 gold pieces 
19. Green Martian horn of sounding 700 gold pieces because of the fine workmanship. 
20. The black gem of Far 'ru This gem allows the owner to see into the hearts of those preserved on the sea of death. Its worth 1000 gold pieces for the workmanship

How could we  handle Queen of the Martian Catacombs? We'd really need to use this novella as a part of campaign jump off point. Given the events of this story there's going to be lots of fall out. And where did the forbidden knowledge for this stories events come from?! This is going to lead back into the Martian underworld & possibly the Black Circle of sorcerers moving events on Mars from behind the scenes. There's lots to consider here because the fall out here is going to be intense possibly even leading to a Martian civil war. And that's where the PC trouble shooters are going to have to come in to deflate the situation. 

More Free Sword and Science Fantasy Fiction - 'The Tree of Life ' by C. L. Moore From October 1936 issue of Weird Tales magazine

 

"A gripping tale of the planet Mars and the terrible monstrosity that called its victims to it from afar -- a tale of interplanetary space hero Northwest Smith."
Grab it right here. 

Most of you might be thinking that this blog entry is going to be where we dive deep into C.L. Moore's Northwest Smith  Mars.   If we look at 'The Tree of Life ' by C. L. Moore more closely there's a lot going on below the surface. 
 The actual danger comes to PC's who don't understand that the Lovecraftian Martian plant described in the story is actually a part of a much greater danger on Mars & elswhere. The plant life described in the story is similar to plant deities of Mars decribed by both Leigh Brackett & Clark Aston Smith. For CAS it was his story, 'The Dweller in the Gulf' is one where one of the ancient gods of Mars shows the upstart humans that not everything is gone on Mars. This entity might be similar to the occult cosmic entity found in Seedling of Mars and Vulthoom .  And as Boyd Pearson says in his article on Eldritch Darkness 'Cycles of Clark Ashton Smith'; "While The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis and The Dweller in the Gulf would of been equally effective stories had they been set on earth Seedling of Mars and Vulthoom utilised the 'alien invasion' motif popular in the pulps at the time However, theses did not contain your typical alien invasion scenarios Vulthoom was an alien 'god' (plant like) who came to mars when humans "were still the blood-brothers of the ape," and now wishes to move to Earth Vulthoom's plot is only temporarily foiled by being put back to sleep for a thousand years The plant thing in Seedling of Mars has better luck in that it does get to take over the earth" 

• Dweller in the Gulf, The (1933)
• Mnemoka (1955) Fragment
• Vaults of Yoh-Vombis, The (1931)
• Vulthoom (1935)

Seedling of Mars or The Planet Entity [plot by - E M Johnson] (1931)[An alternative background to the proceeding 4 stories] 

So what does any of this have to do with 'The Tree of Life ' by C. L. Moore? Everything there are very dangerous occult forces on Mars. Divine forces that work in various cycles of life & death just as some Earth life forms do according to the weather. And this plant entity encountered by Northwest Smith might simply be an extension of the former pantheon of Mars. And in point of fact these alien entities might be tied to Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoomian plantmen. And in point in of fact these plantmen could be extensions of the Lovecraftian plant gods on Mars. 
But these types of entities are not just found on Mars. There are a literal ton of these plant monsters scattered throughout the Pulps. So it would be quite easy to add these monsters to your favorite OSR games! 
These plant gods & alien entities are the great survivors & are able to survive just about any disaster that might befall Mars and this includes a small nuclear war. 

The plantmen below is from Michael Whalen's Barsoom covers & used without permission. 

Free Appendix N Vintage Science Fiction Download - "The Beast-Jewel of Mars" By Leigh Brackett From Spring 1955 issue of Planet Stories Magazine For Your Old School Space Opera

  "The city was strange, fantastic, beautiful. He'd never been there before, yet already he was a fabulous legend ... a dire, hateful legend."

You can download it

right over

HERE

 A great tale from the heyday of 'Planet Stories' and a good solid resource for a vintage Mars campaign. I've used it as part of a 'lost city of the past' on Mars as part of my Post Apocalyptic Stars Without Numbers campaign. So far as I can see it's one of this author's only efforts for the magazine.

 


Planet Stories is one pulp magazine with a rich and checkered past. You can read more right HERE
 According to Wiki : 

Planet Stories was an American pulp science fiction magazine, published by Fiction House between 1939 and 1955. It featured interplanetary adventures, both in space and on other planets, and was initially focused on a young readership. Malcolm Reiss was editor or editor-in-chief for all of its 71 issues. Planet Stories was launched at the same time as Planet Comics, the success of which probably helped to fund the early issues of Planet Stories. Planet did not pay well enough to regularly attract the leading science fiction writers of the day, but did manage to obtain work from well-known names on occasion, including Isaac Asimov and Clifford Simak. In 1952 Planet published Philip K. Dick's first sale, and went on to print four more of his stories over the next three years.

 The reason why I think that the magazine is still important to OSR rpg's is the following from Wiki:

"The two writers most identified with Planet Stories are Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury, both of whom set many of their stories on a romanticized version of Mars that owed much to the depiction of Barsoom in the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Bradbury's work for Planet included an early story in his Martian Chronicles sequence. Brackett's best-known work for the magazine was a series of adventures featuring Eric John Stark, which began in the summer of 1949. Brackett and Bradbury collaborated on one story, "Lorelei of the Red Mist", which appeared in 1946; it was generally well-received, although one letter to the magazine complained that the story's treatment of sex, though mild by modern standards, was too explicit." The artwork also emphasized attractive women, with scantily clad damsels in distress or alien princesses on almost every cover.

You've got two of the most important science fiction and science fantasy writers in one magazine and under one roof writing about their own versions of  Bar errm ' A Romanticized version of Mars' Is it any wonder that it's stories are still beloved by science fiction fans even today

 According to wiki

A derivative anthology, The Best of Planet Stories #1, appeared in 1975 from Ballantine Books, edited by Leigh Brackett, containing seven stories reprinted from between 1942 and 1952.   It was intended to be the first of a series, but no further volumes appeared
Too bad it would have been nice to have gotten my hands on more of these tales. If it seems that many of these Martian tales seem to be deriative of each other starting in the 1920's and working their way all the way through the late 60's. Mars has been and still remains ingrained in the public's imagination. Folks want the planet to be exactly what they always thought it was one the canals were first seen through telescopes at , the dawn of the age of rockets. Heck, ever since HG Well's published War Of The   World.
Stars Without Numbers lends itself easily to a tale such as this and adapting to a group of PC's is quite easy. The city of legend lost in the desert is a trope that has been around since the 'Arabian Nights' and even further back. Believe it or not each and every time I've used it players still fall for it hook, line, and sinker. The old tricks are still some of the best. This tale has some pretty large blank fill in the map areas to it and that makes it pretty desirable for use in adventure and campaign design. This is pretty much a drop in and go Mars tale like so many at the time. That's not a bad thing at all.
 While Paizo can claim 'Planet Stories' as an exclusive. The real 'Planet Stories' ran between 1939 and 1952 with an unforgettable inheritance that has never been equaled only copied to some extent over the decades.
Grab the the tales HERE but just remember who the original trail blazers were. Folks like Isaac Asimov, Clifford Simak,Leigh Brackett,Ray Bradbury, and V. E. Thiessen.
As for me I've got a date on Mars, A Post Apocalyptic hellhole waiting to devour some players!
Happy Adventuring and don't forget your ray gun! 

New Wasteland 1d10 Random Minor Lovecraftian Finds Table For Your Old School Post Apocalyptic Campaigns

Because the energies release by the apocalypse were so devastating and incredible, holes within the fabric of space time attract the attention of the Great Old Ones and their minions. As they pass through the wastelands leaving madness and insanity within their wake. These horrors often leave behind minor bits of relics and artifacts  that leave little doubt of the horror that often follows in their passage.

Here's a list of some of the minor items that can be found by adventurers and relic hunters in the deeper wastelands and death lands.

1d10 Random Minor Lovecraftian Finds Table

1. A small copper skinning knife that is covered by a thick syrupy icor. This cultist's blade is etched with the name of a minor great old one whose got a 5% chance of appearing should its name be pronounced from the blade. Treat as a highly intelligent shoggoth with very dangerous and unpredictable attacks, he will try to carry off the offender to a vast unseen Outer Darkness realm. 
2. A glowing piece of fish like flesh that actually belongs to a high priest of Dagon. The thing will heal any wound it is pressed to but within 1d8 days the 'healed one' will begin to turn into a Deep One and hear the song of Dagon. 
3. A minor map of the Dreamlands of HP Lovecraft, this map will serve to get the owner out of the worst lands of Nightmare and parts of the Underworld. 
4. This is a radioactive gold coin emblazoned with the image of Hasur upon one coin face. The coin is actually a fortune telling device capable of divining the appearance of the next resurrection of one of the Gods. Exposure to this coin for more then 1d10 hours will result in a hazard check and because of the strange alien radiations this thing gives out. .This coin has become a minor item of myth and legend. Its appearance is rumored to signal the reappearance of Hastur or worse. 
5. This partially barbed arrow is actually a deep one hunting device capable of taking down larger prey and it has bits of alien flesh on one end. Any consumption of this meat will result in a horrid mutational check. The arrow is made from what seems like an alien gold like substance. 
6. A small cube containing an alien essence and mind. The two linked together form a dangerous time traveling essence that is looking for a way back to its time period. Fortune smiles upon those who are looking for those who came down when with this criminal. 
7. This strange like cross device when picked up will cause strange 'holy visions' to infect the mind and soul of the PC. These victims may be subjected to possession by a Lovecraftian demonic creature. 
8. A set of bloody surgical tools in a black doctor's bag. The bag actually belongs to a Mi Go surgeon whose traveling across space and time slicing and dicing various specimens.
9. A staff made from a humanoid femur, and spine that is able to call 1d10 alien ghosts from beyond the Pale. These horrors may try to devour the victim 20% of the time. The staff acts as +2 weapon because of its connection to the negative material plane. 
10. A small piece of amber like material that is actually a telepathic lens that has been sinked up with a Star Spawn of Cthulhu who will begin tracking the PC in an effort to destroy the PC. The amber like substance shows images and illusions of distant and forbidden lands. There is a 2% chance of any minor  Lovecraftian god or demon who may be tracking the where about of the lens. 

Wars of the Red Planet - Brett Slocum's Warrior's of the Lost Planets & A Post Apocalyptic Mars

'The distant red sands blow across the works of a reign of red kings who have turned to dust. Warriors of many tribes fight in the hollow remains of pyramids & stalk among the streets of a long dead empire fighting among themselves with sword & radium pistols!'

My family is fine & all but work has had me on the ropes for the last three days or so. Last night after getting back from the work shop I had an opportunity to take a look into an old friend in this case my Empire of the Petal Throne box set. M.A.R. Barker's Tekumel is one of those box sets that I look on with a fondness bordering obsession. Maybe it was peaking through Wayne's books site on Tekumel or skimming the Tekumel foundation's website?
Over the course of weeks I've been re looking into the Sword & Planet end of the OSR  gaming spectrum especially with Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea rpg system. 


Now I've been following Tim Brannan's Otherside of the Blog Zothique & his Mars posts. None of his Green Martians are even close to ERB's or even Warriors  of the Red Planet Rpg for that matter. That's fine because this simply my opinion for my own Mars game campaigns. Personally I'd go in a completely different direction. Instead over the years I find myself turning back to another OSR free product inspired by the  Warriors  of the Red Planet Rpg system & some of M.A.R. Barker's  Tekumel. I'm speaking of  Brett Slocum's Warrior's of the Lost Planets  Warriors of the Red Planet rpg add on book.
Its free its easy to use & very open to customization at the table top level.


Now me being the dungeon master that I'm I'd take it further then this & then bring the alien sands into focus more by using Warrior's of the Lost Planets with Adventurer,Conqueror,King's Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu for an overarching complete campaign. Why? Because Brett Slocum has got all of the familiar races, notes on playing them, the technologies of the Tekumel & their Warriors equivalents. This pairs very well with  Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu & even Warriors of the Red Planet.



This mix would be far closer to Leigh Brackett's Eric John Stark then say Edgar Rice Burroughs  John Carter. A tribal & dangerous Mars where the glory of Empire has long faded & the Human Space Empires are only a distant memory. 


Its here that I would pull in Venger Satanis's Cha'alt for an added bit of weirdness. This Mars would be a post interstellar mess & relic of empire. A place where the space craft & mecha of a million worlds were once constructed but its relapsed into barbarianism. Only now are some of the Jeddak gaining the secrets once again to mecha & beyond. Wizards are offering their master's the secrets of a forgotten universe.

Beast Jewels Under A Cracked Hypreborean Moon Commentary On The Free Novella Leigh Brackett's The Beast Jewel of Mars For The 'Old Mars' Campaign Setting

Jack Kirby Thundarr artwork
 

The temperatures plunged into the teens last night here in Connecticut & after shutting down social media once again I dived back into a bit of Leigh Brackett & C.L. Moore especially the Martian stories. Leigh Brackett's The Beast Jewel of Mars is a classic & it appeared in Planet Stories, Winter 1948. I happen to have a treasured copy of this issue. The entire story centers around the secret of Shanga which basically is a crystal that devolves whomever baths in its rays for 1d20 hours & does make their saving throw vs wands or devices. Victims will travel down an alternative evolutionary path of d30 thousand years for every twelve hours exposed.
The experience seems to be very addictive some who are exposed must make another save vs wands or device again or want to repeat the experience.

One thing I noticed right away is the parallels between these crystals & certain pulp setting elements from classic post apocalyptic Seventies & Eighties science fantasy classics both Thundarr The Barbarian & The Logan's Run television show not to mention some of Clark Aston Smith's cycles. This Shanga is the sort of stuff that we'd see run between colonies by Northwest Smith you know those same colonies that were implied by other writers including Leigh Brackett, her husband Henry Kuttner, & Clark Aston Smith.

Planet Stories, Winter 1948 is now in the public domain and you can download the whole thing with some great pulpy artwork
"The wise men of Caer Dhu were not so wise. They found the secret of Shanga, and they escaped their wars and their troubles by fleeing backward along the path of evolution."  Another thing is the level of Martian on Martian tribal violence & harm that the Martians do to one another there is tribal codes and such but they'll sell out one another in a heart beat.
YOU CAN DOWNLOAD
THE WHOLE ISSUE FROM HERE

Now I mentioned Thundarr The Barbarian & The Logan's Run television show because
the secret of Shanga is just the sort of thing to keep the populations of degenerate tribesmen in line and productive along with a healthy dose of the 'death flowers'. It well could be that the Caroc lizard men are the product of an Earthly variation of Shanga.



This is just the sort of retro technology that would be available to some deep wasteland colony in the Logan's Run tv show, in fact a variation of the whole sale manipulation of the human mind is something we see in the episode 'Half Life' in which Jessica is split into two beings one of a good temperament & one evil.


This is also the sort of 'perfect' population control that would be used by wizards & even wasteland Forbidden Zone underdweller colonies in Apes Victorious & Mutant Future. We could also see the same methods of population control in Adventurer, Conqueror, King as an additional add on device for population selection for guards, guard beasts, and other desirable monsters. In Mutant Future this well could be the origin point for some of the prehistoric tribes & beasts. But where did this technology originate on 'Old Mars'? We know that there many examples of lost technologies in the Martian underworld but in Clark Ashton Smith’s tale “Ubbo-Sathla.” we see a different sort of transfer of mind. This is linked into the Elder Things from HP Lovecraft's at the Mountains of Madness & the Yithians from Lovecraft’s The Shadow Out of Time.




This basically means that one's consciousness might with the help of a wizard or other super scientist travel through parallel  worlds & gates ala both the Eighties film Altered States or HP Lovecraft's Through The Gates of the Silver Key. 

Where did these techniques originate? Who knows but one thing is that Lovecraft circle writers picked up on one another literary devices & often had Mythos races cherry picking forbidden technologies, magics, & relics from one another. So these mind altering crystals would be found on Hyperborea of AS&SH fame quite easily. There might be magics & super science there to reverse the effects of Shanga. This stuff clearly fits right into a sword & sorcery background
But the threat of the crystals is far more insidious then simply forbidden super science.In Old Mars Shanga addiction, trafficking, smuggling, etc. is one of the lowest crimes being fought. Why? Because it might lead to the extinction of the human & near human races including & especially the Martians. This is something that
I've used in Star Ships & Spacemen second edition games.


 


When it comes to the Adventurer, Conqueror, King Rpg system then the real damage can be seen as the addiction spreads through the underworld of thieves guilds, wizard's colleges, and the like. This stuff might be used in this game system as hidden tool of conquest with the right applications. 

A friend postulated that there are other crystalline gate systems deep in the wastelands of 'Old Mars' that can lead to other alternative Martian settings. Could these crystaline gateways be a variation the jewels strange radiation? This looks like the case for a Warriors of the Red Planet scientist.





Deep within the wastelands of 'Old Mars' time & physics can get very weird & dangerous. Here there are ancient things that bleed into our time as the Boreas winds blow strangely across the wrought red sands. Adventurers must tread carefully or they might become lost in time & as well as the spaces around the ruins that blanket the dead sea bottoms.






1d20 Random Deep Martian
Wasteland Encounters Table

1.  A group of 1d8 Hyperborean monks & sorcerers on their way to some long forgotten dead bottom sea city to worship at a temple of one of the forgotten Martian gods who has recently awakened. They are carrying several golden and blue gold Martian weapons filled with 1d200 jeweled microdrones capable of ripping a man apart within 1d6 rounds doing 1d3 points of damage each. They wear the insect masks of their patron. They are friendly but guarded about their business. 
2. A black gate sorcerer in the guise of a low lander pilgrim who is smuggling some delicate ancient texts he's found in the underworld. He's willing to talk but there are 1d4 white Martian android body guards with him. 
3. 1d10 Green Martian warriors 2nd level on the backs of their throats looking for an easy mark or two. 
4. A giant Martian sand lion on the hunt for its young. A dangerous and wily predator who hunts with telepathic powers. 
5. 1d6 ancient Martian ghosts looking for souls to devour 
6. 1d8 evil human bounty hunters looking for marks to bring to market for slaving. They have heavy stunners, hover bike's & sleep poison guns. 
7. 1d6 Martian wights on the hunt for flesh and spirits!! 
8. A single sand rat scouting for its 1d20 pack of giant sand rat brothers and sisters. 
9. An ancient robotoid from a nearby dead city out exploring. 
10. A flyer with 1d10 warriors on the hunt for slaves for the nearby auction! 
11. 1d20 Mutant waste landers on move for anyone they can capture for their cooking pot! These used to be Red men whose tribes were subject to the secret of Shanga
12. Giant drone craft on an attack pattern 1d8 of these insane things. 
13. 1d8 ancient Amazon warrior women out for raiding on throats. 
14. A delicate Ancient's sail barge from another age passes by. 
15. 1d20 Green Martian warriors on a raid will you be caught?
16. 2d6 Black Martian pilgrims on an alien holy pilgrimage deep into the desert. 
17. 1d6 deep raiders on jet bikes out for prey armed with short bows, poisoned arrows & cavalry  blades they fight as second level fighters
18. A black magician on a quest for an ancient artifact willing to pay five hundred gold pieces for your help
19. An ancient temple has been uncovered by a recent sand storm 
20. A fleet of flyers from a rogue Martian nation speeds over head and will kill anyone they can who witnesses their passing!

This post is not an attempt to violate the copyrights or trademarks of any of the films nor properties named in this post. All ideas are for a private table top rpg campaign. None of the ideas or opinions expressed in this post are meant to violate the trademarks nor copy rights of any of the table top rpgs discussed nor are they in away responsible for the thoughts or opinions of the author. The writing, ideas, and opinions are copyrighted and trade marked to the author and Dark Corner productions. This post is for entertainment & educational purposes only.

Lovecraftian Ecology Of The Serpent Men of Old Mars

Deep in the jungles of Old Mars the cold & evil alien eyes of an old enemy of mankind stirs. Where strikes the serpent men few can say. But their plague of evil once again comes for they have become a plague upon Old Mars! For Serpent Men are awesome monsters of the Lovecraftian Mythos. 

 Going all of the way back to 2012 I did a piece on Serpent Men on this blog. Since that time I've used these protagonists a lot going through OSR campaigns, one off adventures, and more. Serpent Men are very easy to use and at their height in both Howard, Lovecraft, & Merritt's work they had a sorcerous & technological empire that rivaled many human civilizations of history. So it makes sense they they'd have reached the stars and beyond.

Simon Burchell (Own work)

Now dealing with some of the works of these old school enemies of man kind can be interesting to say the least. Years ago I placed several colonies of Serpent Men on Mars as the main protagonists of an adventure storyline. The reason is that deep in the Kaolian forest clustered around Tharsis are lots of hidden swamp lands. Here three pyramids of the serpent men could remain hidden for eons in the shadow of Therns. They take the occasional sacrifice to their dark gods & move on into the wastelands of Mars.


Reaper miniatures 06208: Nagendra Warriors by Jason Wiebe

And what pray tell would these serpent men be doing on Old Mars? Spreading their chaos & corruption across the face of the wasteland & selling their own brand of that old time religion among the Martians. They'd have been there for centuries operating as Vivimancers, shape shifting assassins, mercenaries, & infiltrating the Therns from within. These serpent men are Lovecraftian bad guys of the highest order, and to get a really good look at some of the interior workings of the their religion I turn to two OSR publications. Now the first is from Mr. Rafael Chandler Obscene Serpent Religion is an Adult title from Neoplastic Press ( a little while back their titles & lines were put on 'pay what you want') which was very generous of him. Now suddenly the dungeon master has the inner workings & mysteries of the serpent men's religion & heinous rites. Want to know what the party of adventurers finds in the ruin location that the serpents have been operating out of? Its all there in gory details, but be careful because this is an Adult title & I don't say that lightly consider yourselves warned.


The second OSR resource that I'd use is  Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos. Because of the social classes of Barsoom, & many of the old science fantasy novels such as Leigh Brackett & C.L. Moore. Cults of Chaos gives not only structure but adventure hooks to use at every level of the social strata making such a cult very dangerous & creditable. Here's a review to kinda drive home the point.

When it comes to using serpent men they make an unexpected twist to throw into an old school game & they might pop up anywhere. They were extremely dangerous & one of the powers behind quite a few power structures in Robert Howard's Kull saga. According to HP Lovecraft's Shadow Out of Time they were one of the minds that the Great Race of Yith used to grab quite regularly.
"There was a mind from the planet we know as Venus, which would live incalculable epochs to come, and one from an outer moon of Jupiter six million years in the past. Of earthly minds there were some from the winged, star-headed, half-vegetable race of palaeogean Antarctica; one from the reptile people of fabled Valusia; three from the furry pre-human Hyperborean worshippers of Tsathoggua; one from the wholly abominable Tcho-Tchos; two from the arachnid denizens of earth’s last age; five from the hardy coleopterous species immediately following mankind, to which the Great Race was some day to transfer its keenest minds en masse in the face of horrible peril; and several from different branches of humanity."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Out Of Time

The stats for serpent men are available for Astonishing Swordsmen Sorcerers of Hyperborea Referee's Manual or for other OSR games Realms of Crawling Chaos from Goblinoid Games


There are several references to serpent men or reptile men in the stories of  Leigh Brackett especially the Sea-Kings of Mars (more commonly known as The Sword of Rhiannon) &" Clark Aston Smith's  adapted the race for inclusion in the Cthulhu Mythos, inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's short story "The Nameless City", which refers to an Arabian city built by a pre-human reptilian race. Lovecraft's story "The Haunter of the Dark" explicitly mentions the "serpent men of Valusia" as being one-time possessors of the Shining Trapezohedron. " 

However they were already in the Cthulhu Mythos via Robert Howard's Work;"However, the Cthulhu Mythos was already connected to the works of Robert E. Howard (a contemporary and correspondent of H. P. Lovecraft as well as a direct contributor to the Mythos itself). In this case, the Serpent Men were created for the very first Kull story, the character of Kull later made an appearance in a Bran Mak Morn story, Kings of the Night, while in another such story, Worms of the Earth, Bran Mak Morn explicitly refers to Cthulhu and R'lyeh. Many Conan stories by Howard are also part of the Mythos." Now given this it only makes sense to have them appear on Old Mars & Old Venus because of their connections with the writings of the other Lovecraft Circle writers.

 

Are there other hidden enclaves of these ancient horrors waiting in the Martian underworld for some foolish adventurers to stumble upon their lairs and activate their sleep chambers? Could these ancient horrors carve out their own sections of the wastes of Old Mars? They will be in my campaigns.
Note that this is for personal use only and is not an attempt to violate the copyright or trademark of The Dark Albion Rpg, Realms of Crawling Chaos, The Warriors of the Red Planet rpg or The Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea rpg system. 
All material herein comes under the heading of fair use. This blog post is for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Ideas, items, names, adventure ideas, opinions to follow are the copyright & trademark of the author & Dark Corner Production

Free Sword And Planet Download ~ Planet Of Peril By Otis Albert Kline For Your Old School Sword and Sorcery Campaign

Down load it right over
Here! 

I was going over my 1963 copy of Planet of Peril by Otis Adelbert Kline and doing a cross compare with Edgar Rice Burroughs Atmor(Venus) books. Mr. Kline was a rather interesting fellow and preceeded his famous friend to Venus a couple of years earlier. Kline while known as a literary agent of Robert Howard was in fact a pulp writer in his own right. 
 According to wiki: 

Otis Adelbert Kline (1891–1946) born in Chicago, Illinois, USA, was an adventure novelist and literary agent during the pulp era. Much of his work first appeared in the magazineWeird Tales. Kline was an amateur orientalist and a student of Arabic, like his friend and sometime collaborator, E. Hoffmann Price.

 

You can read more about him right over
HERE 
Kline wrote a number of Venus based novels that appeared as a seriel in Weird Tales. His venus was a rough and ready planet of sword and Lovecraftian weirdness. A place were his soul switching protagonists rubbed elbows with his Martain heroes as well. There were six tales of his that appeared in both Argosy and Weird tales. The Mars novels and Venus books respectively.
According to Wiki :

Kline's novels normally received serial publication in magazines before their release in book form. The Mars novels appeared in Argosy, and Port of Peril in Weird Tales (as Buccaneers of Venus).

Venus series[edit]

1. Planet of Peril (1929)
2. The Prince of Peril (1930)
3. The Port of Peril (1932)

Mars series[edit]

1. The Swordsman of Mars (1933)

The Outlaws of Mars (1933)

The thing about Kline's writing is that there is strange sort of sardonic quality to his fetid Venus. As if there's some hidden menace lurk over the hero's shoulder and that the planet is far older then the inhabitants guess. The other fact about Kline is that his characters are all a part of his greater shared universe. The first of his books Planet Of Peril is the one for download. All though his Venus shares many similarities with his friend Edgar Rice Burrough's Venus books and they could take place on the same planet there is a bit of a distinctive feel to Kline's books. They have a very  sword and sorcery vibe to them even though there aren't any sorcery in them at all. They have a lot going on in them with battles, kidnapping, lost races, encounters, weird creatures and more. 

 Using Kline's Venus As Fodder For Your Sword and Sorcery Campaign

Kline's Venus is the fetid hot house planet of the old pulps with a pirate twist and heavier then air ships moving through them. These are ancient declining cultures with the best of them far behind their societies. These are places of adventure, sword play, and occasionally weird technology in the offering.
 I've used Kline's Venus numerous times as a pocket universe planet where adventurers have had to go to retrieve ingredients for one spell or another. A place where ancient ruins rub shoulders with Deep One style fishmen of incredible violence and insane horror. Let's be honest here though the name Edgar Rice Burroughs carries far more fame with it then Kline's and I've combined their Venuses into one pulptastic hot house planet filled with Lovecraftian ruins, ancient treasures, and horrors beyond the pale of mankind just waiting to be sprung on players. Edgar Rice Burroughs Magazine even had a very well done article on Kline's Venus that addressed these concerns.
Right over
HERE

For many of the retroclone game systems out there Kline's Venus might be just the sort of place for an expedition and not an extended campaign. I have found that players enjoy Venus as a diversion rather then an extended world for a campaign. The exotic nature of the planet and its tribes makes it very different experience then say a Barsoomian Mars or a Lunar excursion.

Keep the relic technology from games like Carcosa, Astonishing Swordsmen of Hyperborea, and Arduin very, very rare. The atmosphere of Venus will play marry havoc with delicate instruments. For AS&SH bards are a nice way of getting from one world to another. They're reliability is questionable at best however. 

For a game like Stars Without Number this version of Venus might simply be yet another pocket universe pulp location. Given the nature of psychics in SWN this might be just the place for a quick mission or diversion. Psychics are going to be in for a bit of a shock when the nature of Venusian psychic powers reveal themselves. Many of the native population display some form of psychic power themselves.

 This planet could display some very valuable biological specimens as well for genetic engineering possibilities.

Buccaneers of Venus was serialized in Weird Tales with some really odd and striking covers.

 You can see more of Kline's books and cover art right over at the Edgar Rice Burroughs Magazine page HERE

 Burroughs and Kline 

 I remember first hearing the name Otis Adelbert Kline.back in the early 80's in a used book shop and the conversation with a friend about how he was a friend and rival of Edgar Rice Burroughs. It is true that they were friends but not rivals at all.

Once again according toWiki: 

Kline is best known for an apocryphal literary feud with fellow author Edgar Rice Burroughs, in which he supposedly raised the latter's ire by producing close imitations (Planet of Peril(1929) and two sequels) of Burroughs's Martian novels, though set on Venus; Burroughs, the story goes, then retaliated by writing his own Venus novels, whereupon Kline responded with an even more direct intrusion on Burroughs's territory by boldly setting two novels on Mars. Kline's jungle adventure stories, reminiscent of Burroughs's Tarzan tales, have also been cited as evidence of the conflict.[1] While the two authors did write the works in question, the theory that they did so in contention with each other is supported only circumstantially, by the resemblance and publication dates of the works themselves. The feud theory was originally set forth in a fan press article, "The Kline-Burroughs War," by Donald A. Wollheim (Science Fiction News, November, 1936), and afterward given wider circulation by Sam Moskowitz in his book Explorers of the Infinite. Richard A. Lupoff debunked the case in his book Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure. Among the evidence cited by Lupoff discounting the feud: (1) no comment from either writer acknowledging the feud is documented, and (2) family members of the two authors have no recollection of ever hearing them mention it. In response to Lupoff's investigations Moskowitz identified his original source as Wollheim's article, while Wollheim stated, when questioned on the source of his own information: "I made it up!"

Kline's Mars is only now being recognized for its classic nature as well. I'll cover this in another post at some point in the future.