OSR Commentary On The Sorcerers of Pan Tang For The Stormbringer rpg

 

"Pan Tang is a grim island of lurking evil. Wild jungles to the north resound to the roar of a thousand tigers - the animal sacred to Chardhros the Reaper. The Plain of Glass divides the island, a shining wasteland of ancient volcanic catastrophe The farmland to the south is a living hell to the slaves who worl the great plantations."

"The capital of Pan Tang is Hwamgaarl, the City of Screaming Statues. Tigers walk among men and feed when they please Sorcerers study dark knowledge and summon awesome horrors from other planes to do their bidding. The citizens of Hwamgaarl take their pleasure in the Gardens of Pain, gather their knowledge at the University of Lucid Perversity, and propitiate the Lords of Chaos at the Palace-Temple of the Theocrat."

"Jagreen Lern is the Theocrat of Pan Tang, presiding over this nightmare land. A new age is coming, and his armies are ready. Other nations of the Young Kingdoms already plot against Melnibone, and soon those plots bring war. Pan Tang hovers, vulture-like, awaiting the results of the first violent clash of Young Kingdom armies against the remaining might of Melnibone. Though Melnibone has ruled the world for 10,00( years, in only a small fraction of that time will it be destroyed".

  Sorcerers of Pan Tang for the Stormbringer rpg came out in 1991. Sorcerers of Pan Tang made me a 'fan' of the Pan Tangians and this supplement details the island of Pan Tang. According to the Sorcerers of Pan Tang wiki entry;"Shannon Appelcline noted how after the fourth edition of Stormbringer was published, "the best books to date for the line were produced first by Keith Herber, then by Mark Morrison. They consisted of thick, well-written books of background, such as Sorcerers of Pan Tang (1991) and colourful adventures, such as Rogue Mistress (1991)." This book delivers the Pan Tang island in colourful and dangerous detail. This supplement fits right into the Games Workshop 1991 edition of the  Stormbringer Rpg. Games Workshop also did Eternal Champion line of figures. 

Part of the Eternal Champion line of figures by Games Workshop that appealed to me was Pan Tangian army. They were my go to & still are if I can get my figures out of store 'go to' chaos army. There was something very oddly satisfying about playing & fielding the bad guys. 

  Sorcerers of Pan Tang supplement hits all of the Pan Tangian high points with thier Pan Tangian culture, thier twisted society, adventures & this fits the Stormbringer rpg  so well. I'm not the only one thinks this according to the wiki entry; "Matthew Gabbert reviewed Sorcerers of Pan Tang in White Wolf #31 (May/June, 1992), rating it a 5 out of 5 and stated that "Sorcerers of Pan Tang is well-organized and well-illustrated (thankfully, some of the more graphic descriptions of Pan Tangian recreation are left to the reader's imagination). It successfully presents an atmospheric descrption of Pan Tang and I strongly recommend it for any Stormbringer campaign."" The Pan Tangians could and did appear almost anywhere within the Million Spheres. There were stats for the Pan Tangians within various original Dungeons & Dragons games from Kuntz & Ward's Gods, Demigods, & Heroes. We used the Sorcerers of Pan Tang for original Dungeons & Dragons. 

 Within Stormbringer we crossed  the Theocrat Jagreen Lern having raided a Pan Tangian trade ship. This brought us to the Theocrat's attention and we had to flee the plane just to live to adventure another day. 

Commentary On Plane Hoping In The Stormbringer rpg - The Second Entropy Configuration, Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique, and The Pan Tangians

 Last night we our group got together for beers and to talk about Stormbringer and the Rogue Mistress campaign was brought up. And this also brought to the fore front Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique. The events here take place after our experiences at the Inne Between Worlds. 

We had already served aboard the Rogue Mistress by this time and our wizard patron wanted an Entropy congifuration. Why?! We weren't sure but the pay was good and so we were off. This takes place after my uncle's passing. We three DM 's were still working from his notes. 

Nineteen Ninety one saw our crew of retrobates back on Zothique as we faced off against a crew of Pan Tangians headed by a Chaos priest. There's a part of Zothique called the 'wastes of time' that my uncle made up and it's filled with the wreckage of scale ships. Why it was filled with this wreckage we never found out but we did find out it was a demon haunted place of horror. Skeletal crews still were at the helm of some of those ships. And the Pan Tangians were dressed in desert gear and light weight demon armor. We were after a brand new used entropy configuration for a scale ship we were working on. The entropy configuration powers a scale ship's drive systems. And why is it called a 'scale ship'? Well according  to the scale ship entry on Moorcock Multiverse Wiki; "Those who utilize Scale Ships are not reliant upon the Moonbeam Roads, and can travel anywhere in the Multiverse they are capable of navigating to. Scale ships utilize an IT (Intercontinua-Travelling) drive to manipulate mass. Folding/Contracting the ship's mass allows its passengers to "scale down", falling through the scales towards realities of ever higher density." "Unfolding/Dissipating the ship's mass allows it to scale up, rapidly ascending towards realities of ever lower density. Experienced pilots, such as The Rose Von Bek, can skim their ships across the billowing fractals of the Ether like a stone across water." DM Steve & DM Barry took over my uncle's game after this point and had his notes 

We made it into the wreckage of a scale ship & then found out the hardway that it was haunted by a small hoard of Chaos demons. And we also heard that the Pan Tangians had also found out the hard way as well. They lost one of thier number to said demons. The closer we got to one ship's wreckage the worse it got! We found a number of sun bleached corpses and these were actually the former crew of the scale ship that we were exploring. 
And when they animated not one of us was surprised. What were surprised about was that one or two of the skeleton warriors could hurl spells at our PC's!  What we were surprised about was the fact that these skeleton warriors also attacked the Pan Tangians as well! We were inbetween a hard place and Hell itself! 
Our party began to look around for some solution when we came across another scale ship. This scale ship had a huge number of glyphs of Law & we decided to go inside. Inside the interior was an unsusual set up almost entirely biological in nature. We went to remove the 'Entropy Configuration' and heard the following, "Oh if you do that you'll kill me! However you'll make a lovely meal" and that's when the phantoms came out! The guardians of Law or the ship's immune system were more then happy to feed on us. Needless to say that we were able grab the configuration and then leave quickly. The 'ship' lay dying but what it actually was was a minor noble lord of Law. Our theory is/was that the scale ships were part of some great battle at the 'end of time'. 

To this day we have no idea what happened to that group of Pan Tangian reveavers. Our wizard patron who sent us to Zothique wanted his entropy configuration. The 'wizard' wasn't actually a wizard but Balo the Jester of Chaos in disguise. What he actually got was the 'heart of a minor lord of Law'. This artifact would cause us no end of problems later on. And this is one of the reasons why we had to aquire our own scale ship coming up. 

One of the the things that set my uncle's Stormbringer rpg campaigns apart was his frequent use of the 'plane hopping' motif. And this was normal in his view because of the mythic & epic nature of the Stormbringer rpg line of products. We as a party couldn't go jaunting out into the planes per say unless it was through the use of some artifact or patron. So our games never got out of hand per say. Sure we journeyed across the planes but it was through artifacts and sorcery. Or through the machinations of some wizard or powerful patron. We're talking about using a combination of third edition Avalon Hill Rune Quest and Fifth edition Stormbringer rpg systems. Scheduling and timing is going to be the key to getting this off the ground. 

Under The Theocrat - Experiences With The Pan Tangians from Original Dungeons & Dragons To The Stormbringer rpg First Edition

 Last night one of the things that I did was to grab my copy of Kuntz & Ward's original Dungeons & Dragons Gods, Demigods, and Heroes. Why?! Beacause for me OD&D is like coming home in a way. According to Brett Christensen's comments on original Dungeons & Dragons on Rpg Geek site from 2012; "Glorious, beautiful, unpolished gem, made complete and amazing by simply adding a creative dungeon master to polish the edges."

"Even poor organization, bad art and inconsistent terminology couldn't hold it back. It's still magic putty in a referee's hands. In many ways it is a vastly superior rpg to all its descendants. It is light enough on rules that you can bolt on anything you want without breaking it and truly make it your own. That being said, there is a lot you DO have to fill in on your own."

"I waver back and forth between what I think is actually better between OD&D (core books) and B/X. They are both great with minimal fluff. Moldvay added a lot of clarity and organization and Mentzer added the 'even a 12 year old can learn this on his own' factor. As great as the three LBB's are, they require a good bit of ruling, deciphering and molding (fun for me, maybe not so much for someone coming to it fresh)." And these I think also apply to Gods, Demi Gods, & Heroes to a certain extent as well. 

When it comes to the Elric Mythos in Kuntz & Ward's original Dungeons & Dragons Gods, Demigods, and Heroes this was where many of us first got exposed to Elric & Moorcock as young kids. And yes there's going to be plenty of the Grognards out there who were exposed to Moorcock during the Sixties. For us back in the early 70's it was getting a TPKed by a group of Pan Tang Warriors that sealed it. Within OD&D's Elric Mythos section this version of the Warriors of Pan Tang appeared; "PAN TANG WARRIORS Move etc. as men An army of fighters all able to fight with the ability of a 10th level fighter. These humans never check moral and ride a 6 legged reptile which stands 15 feet tall and moves 20" per turn. FIGHTING TIGERS OF TANG Armor Class — 4 Fighter Ability: As Tigers Move: 19" Psionic Ability: Class 6 Hit Points These are 10 feet tall tigers able to bite for 4 (8-sided) dice of damage" 
Now this version of the Pan Tangian army has appeared numerous times as is in various old school &  OSR game encounters. And the Chaotic weirdness of the Pan Tangians carried over into the Stormbringer first through fifth edition games that we've run over the years. Even to the point that back in the 90's I fielded a Pan Tangian Chaos army for Old Hammer at one point (don't ask what happened to the army as it became slag in an appartment firee during the Nineties). This form of the Pan Tangian infantry filtered into Stormbringer first through fifth edition. Even making its way into the Sorcerers of Pan Tang sourcebook. 

Overseers on Devil Lizards patrol the Field of Pan Tang (Alain Gassner, Sorcerers of Pan Tang, a Stormbringer adventure, Chaosium, 1991)

 In Nineteen Ninety One, we got a fantastic sourcebook for the  Stormbringer first edition rpg with Sorcerers of Pan Tang. Sorcerers really up sold the Pan Tangian villain aspect. And as a player one could run into these dengerates almost anywhere in the planes. We were one of those groups of players whose PC s got sent to Pan Tang from Sorcerers of Pan Tang. And these adventures are grim dark for sure. I believe our PC's  escaped the island nation eventually. But it was another one of those Scourge of the Slave Lords (A1–4) situations. And in point of fact the DM had converted the Scourage series over into Stormbringer first edition. We made it out of Pan Tang but several of our party had A. Chaos mutations or B. Had some form of insanity. 

Sorcerers of Pan Tang are not someone with which to tangle (adventure for the Stormbringer RPG, Alain Gassner cover, Chaosium, 1991)

The truth is that the Pan Tangians were not to be messed with. Later on we would incorporate several of the degenerates into our mist as mercenary characters. Our party's normal operating proceedure during those years was to bail anytime we a heard Elric or Moonglum was in the area or that the Theocrat's forces were around.