Red Death - Worlds Without Number Session One

 Note that this is DM Peter's Worlds Without Number rpg has been in play for the past two years. So my character the wizard Anteres is a part of a party of explorers who are adventuring to find out what is doing the extinction of the lands surrounding the campaign world.  

Tonight's World's Without Number rpg session saw me in DM Peter's game & us fighting a swarm Xiticix!  Tonight's game adventure saw us going to toe to toe with these insectal horrors. They fought with freakish violence and abandoned. Our Ranger PC Rann Alriddge identified the Xiticix warriors and three young queens! 
We then took a six day journey across the sea to the Xiticix lands and found abandoned hives! Thousands upon thousands of abandoned hives! Why?! 

We knew something was radically wrong with the Xiticix Lands! We sent scouts to the edge of the lands which were three days ride and received telepathic assurances that the insect ravagers were gone. And that's when the scouts saw the rising wall of Red Tide! That's right the Red Tide of  Labyrinth Lord fame has come to call. This is a call back to our Red Tide campaign two years ago. The tide is a manifestation of Chaos that exists between the planes. It's also the debris from the engines of Creation 

Our scouts came face to face with 'tide corrupt' and two of our player's PC's died rather badly. We broke rank and began running. Thus made our way to our ship and the tide corrupt come out of the sea. The party fireballs the tide warriors. We made it but this is where we ended. 

The Crimson Wave - The Crimson Pandect A Handbook of Eldritch Lore - Thoughts On , X1 The Isle of Dread, Points of Blood and Unleashed Sorcery

 

"Unlock the Secrets of Dark Sorcery...

"Open the Crimson Pandect to reveal the hidden arts of the arcane world and the grim obsessions that snare the minds of their adepts. This book is for both players and Labyrinth Lords alike, providing tools for weaving grim tales of blood and unleashed sorcery!"

"Use new classes, new spells, and new guidelines for magical research. plunder ancient troves of occult lore to fuel your arcane ascension. Use the new guide for sanctum construction and the tools for cult and cabal creation to fashion sorcerous towers and malevolent foes. While built for the Red Tide Campaign Setting and Sandbox Toolkit , the contents are all designed to be easily and swiftly transferred into your own old-school campaign world."

Wayback in 2012 Kevin Crawford wrote the Red Tide Campaign Setting and Sandbox Toolkit. And  we pick back up from the blog post found here. And this brings up magick within our version of the world of Red Tide. This world was awash in the energies magick. Energies that impacted & were twisted by the forces of the red tide itself. And this is reflected within The Crimson Pandect A Handbook of Eldritch Lore. 
Red Tide is campaign setting that is reflective of a near East Asian style campaign with bits of European & other Asian cultural influences. And this includes the magicks of  The Crimson Pandect . The Astromancy is solidly done & it relates to the arts of divination, fate, fortune, and the stars. These & the magicks of 'The High Path' which reflect the legacy of the Ninefold Celestial Empire a group of arcane engineers whose occult power have brought prosperity to their speciality class & thier empire. Red Tide is completely affected by the presence of the bleed through of the tide. Within our campaign the red tide is an effect of the breaking down of a Celestial engine. And this brings up the Kuan Amelatu the avengers of the unquiet dead. Death is the gateway to perfect enlightment and this class impacts the undead in very weird sorcerous ways. The Kuan Amelatu the perfect counter point to necromancers. 
The Makerite Theurgy Speakers of the Holy Law are the divine instruments of the Maker whose spells are potent & effective, capable of sensing impurities, and capable of blasting the unworthy with the holy force of the words of the Iron Prophet. And these stand in start contrast to the Adepts of the Mountain Way who are devotees of the natural world. 
All of the above are going to be great counterpoints the classic X1 Isle of Dread module. 

And we included X1 Isle of Dread being another sub realm near the Red Tide islands but tied into the plane of Elemental Water. The elemental plane of water being one of the power sources for the Red Tide's Celestial Engine. And one of the classes that understood the mechanisms of the Red Tide's Celestial Engine is 'The Nine Immortal Art' are alchemists who specialize in rites of purifying, transformation, etc. And these PC's & NPC's are perfect for dealing with the alien radiations of the battles from two extremely alien gods or aliens ala LoFP's Qelong adventure by Kennith Hite. 
The alien horrors are not even aware of the humans around them. And  LoFP's Qelong adventure by Kennith Hite brings home the importance of the schools of sorcery found within  The Crimson Pandect A Handbook of Eldritch Lore.  Because of the fact that the infrastructure of the magicks of  the Red Tide Ca/mpaign is going to be needed to deal with the disaster of Qelong 

But there's more to the The Crimson Pandect  then just this & we're just scratching the surface of this campaign. Next time The Crimson Pandect , Dark Albion, & Caravan & Sword! 

A World Bathed In A Red Tide - Thoughts on Red Tide, X1 The Isle of Dread, & More

 "For three hundred years, the last remnants of humanity have clung to the wild green jungles of the Sunset Isles. They have watched the red mist that consumed their world roil a hundred miles off the coast, waiting, a beast at bay. But now the crimson dreams are becoming stronger, and the wild Shou tribes of the west howl their hate at the human invaders. Who shall rise to save a world quenched in blood"''


It's been a long while since the spine of Red Tide: Campaign Sourcebook and Sandbox Toolkit'. But tonight a phone call has me wondering if there's time to dive back into a two year old campaign that's been sitting on the side lines. Ages ago Red Tide was one of our catch all campaigns where the lost & damned ended up from other OSR campaigns of ours. We had characters & PC's from Dark Albion, Hyperborea, & various other LoFP games end up here.  Even though Red Tide was created for the Labyrinth Lord Rpg. It was an easy shift to bring over the various OSR games. 
There were two big changes that we made to the Red Tide setting. First of all magick spells became rituals & two there were peace between various Shou tribes. This was a major sticking point with the PC's two years ago when we last played. 
And the setting of Red Tide played an important role in one of our Godbound games earlier in the year
The question that came up was simple. One is the Red Tide setting actually one of Godbound's Celestial Engine universes where said Celestial Engine is breaking down?! Are the red tides actually Celestial Engine energies leaking into the setting & causing many of the mutations & horrors?!

And we included X1 Isle of Dread being another sub realm near the Red Tide islands but tied into the plane of Elemental Water. The elemental plane of water being one of the power sources for the Red Tide's Celestial Engine. 

The real problem came from the fact that the leaking energies were a result of the battles from two extremely alien gods or aliens ala LoFP's Qelong adventure by Kennith Hite. 
And here's where things got very dangerous as one of the PC's got infected with the weird radiations from the artifact left on the battle field of Qelong. 

This infection rquired an extensive journey into the interior of the isle of Dread to find the correct healer to help our PC and then the whole game came to a stop. Due too scheduling conflicts & what not we never returned to this campaign. Now the players want to change that coming up!