The Purple Lovecraftian Faction of The Fishermen of Ti Sung For Your Old School Campaigns

The seas around The Islands of Purple Haunted Putrence in my campaign needs another sea going faction. So while I've been down with the Flu I've been thinking about & I came up with something old that's new again.

So way back in '87 I had a faction in my Gamma World game that I decided to dust off & update since I've been down with the crawling crud aka the Flu. Ti Sung is a quiet little fishing village with secrets & I decided to move them over to Hyperborea.

Ti Sung is an island  fishing village off the Hyperborean coast about three hundred & change miles from 'The Isle of Dread' & 'The Islands of Purple Haunted Putrescence. Ti Sung appears to be a typical fishing village community of about three hundred people who do a brisk trade in fish, their famous giant lobster dishes, & the rare island jade. And a very nice healthy trade in relics and artifacts that come into their nets.

The people of Ti Sung are not at all what they appear to be! The original village fishermen had been completely taken over by a small but determined population of Deep Ones, 'The Favored of Dagon'. The 'Favored' are a clandestine group of Deep Ones who have a very different mode of operation. They murder & then polymorph themselves into the their prey's bodies and identities, only the light of the moons reveals their true shape.
"I remarked, as I say, their grotesqueness and strange size; but in a moment decided that they were merely the imaginary gods of some primitive fishing or seafaring tribe; some tribe whose last descendant had perished eras before the first ancestor of the Piltdown or Neanderthal Man was born. Awestruck at this unexpected glimpse into a past beyond the conception of the most daring anthropologist, I stood musing whilst the moon cast queer reflections on the silent channel before me."
HP Lovecraft Dagon

'The Favored of Dagon' came down from the stars with their god eons ago during the time of Atlantis but they were too small a population to completely subvert the area surrounding La Sing. Instead they've used the village to quietly take over several spawning areas in the surrounding waters and establish a temple on a distant rocky outpost which is actually the top of their underwater city built on the remains of Atlantian ruins. They use a combination of relic technology & magic to hide the extent of their under water city but rumors have started among certain adventurer's guilds.
The village of La Sing has deep ties with the Fishmongers’ Guild & several thieves guilds but none suspect the extent of their corruption. They are a Matriarchal society ruled by the spawning queen a deep one who gives herself over completely to Mother Hydra. Her body guard  brood are often 3rd level or better fighters. The Spawning Queen is a 7 or 8th level black wizard or necromancer
So what have the Favored of Dagon been doing near the islands of Purple Haunted Putrescence besides sacrificing  the occasional adventurer to their giant crab demon gods? They've been building a small fleet of under water capable craft to get them to their interests on Old Venus. They have three of these craft that they've managed to build in secret hangers. They're interested in trading more of the purple crystals for certain favors but the island's powers have its own interests to think about. So the situation is at a bit of stand still for the moment unless the people of La Sing grab an adventurer from another dimension with such knowledge.

The demon crabs of La Sing are the favorites of Dagon & crawl across the god's body picking off bits &  pieces of  other dimensional junk  & jetsam in the Outer Darkness. They are notorious gossips, gatherers of  forbidden knowledge, & eaters of men. They have all of the abilities of a giant crab but are malevolently intelligent, highly dangerous, & have some traits common to demonic races of the Outer Darkness.  They have following demonic traits:

Immunity to electricity and poison.
Resistance to acid , cold , & normal fires
They have the ability gate in 1d4 others of their kind with a 30% of success 
Telepathy.

Except where otherwise noted the demon crabs  speak any language

They have a set of human arms and hands on one of the lower claws & are capable of wielding enchanted weapons
The Demon Crabs of Dagon see the alien crab men as prey animals & rivals to their chaotic place in the unnatural order of things. They will destroy them on sight and fight to the death when they encounter these beings.

The Estoreric Order of Dagon's church is dimly aware of  the village of La. Sing but there is a split in doctrine when it comes to both Mother Hydra & Dagon. Neither god cares for the petty concerns of their children. 'The Favored of Dagon' are worshipers of the other Lovecraftian gods but their primary focus is upon the furthering of the worship of Dagon & Mother Hydra.
For now the waves lap peacefully along the coast of Ti Sung and the songs are sung for the catch of the day. Pray that you don't fall into these people's hands



1d15 Random Encounters Around The Waters of Ti Sung Table 

1. A group of locals with nets, hooks, etc who are looking for additional catches 2nd level fighters 
2. Fishermen with 1d4 relics that they've picked up willing to sell for 600 gold pieces to make a fast buck or two 
3. A saucer taking off for old Venus! 
4. Two corpses whose internal organs have been taken out for occult significance! Liver, eyes, heart, & tongue 
5. A fully formed deep one of lovecraftian aspect sporting 1d6 mutations. 
6. The floating remains of space craft that has been ransacked recently 
7. A Deep One eel mermaid on the hunt for her spawn. AC 6 HT 10 Damage 1d6/1d6/ Tail slap 1d8 capable of capsizing a small vessel 
8. The corpse of some sea monster gutted and with the vital organs gone. The whole thing stinks of some alien unwholesome influence. 
9. A Deep One hunting party of 1d8 monsters 
10. Spawning party of 1d20 Deep One in a blood frenzy looking to consume whom or whatever they come across. 
11. The corpse of a fighter with weird whirling burns across its body. You can't tell the sex, age or anything now. 
12. A sea zombie! 
13. Massive giant mutant crab monster attacks! 
14. A group of peaceful Ti Sung fishermen selling their wares! 
15. A sea going Shoggoth!
    
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Beyond Appendix N - J.G. Ballard & Vacation Spots On The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence From Kort'thalis Publishing

 The summer of 1985 introduced me to the hustlers, conmen,women, and lovers of Vermillion Sands by J.G.Ballard. Who is J.G Ballard well according to Wiki;"James Graham "J. G." Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009)^[2] was an English novelist, short story writer, and essayist. He came to be associated with the New Wave of science fiction early in his career with apocalyptic (or post-apocalyptic) novels such as The Drowned World (1962) and The Crystal World (1966). In the late 1960s, Ballard produced a variety of experimental short stories (or "condensed novels"), such as those collected in The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), which drew comparisons with the work of postmodernist writers such as William S. Burroughs. In the mid 1970s, he published several novels, among them the highly controversial Crash (1973), a story about symphorophilia and car crash fetishism, and High-Rise (1975), a depiction of a luxury apartment building's descent into tribal warfare."  So there is plenty of fodder here for the post apocalyptic D.Y.I.  dungeon master especially for Gamma World
Set Up and Background
So lately I've been mainlining a lot of J.G. Ballard, John Brunner, and other classic new wave science fiction authors. Let's stick with J.G. Ballard for the moment and how I got into him. I can tell you the exact moment in a little used book store in Torrington,Connecticut. I was with my best friend and at the time he had scooped up every single Sword & Sorcery title in the place. Sigh. He was my co -dungeon master at the time and knew I was running out of ideas at the time. I needed a literary hit and fast, neither of us ever believed the Dragon magazine article whatever it was called books are books and all that nonsense. I had devoured everything even remotely connected with Michael Moorcock's works and Jerry Cornelius was on my radar at the moment then. It was the year when adult themes and such were entering the picture.  And that's when I spotted this cover and I knew my fate was sealed. So I paid my 1.00 and the corruption started when I got home. At the time I was running an AD&D/Gamma World mash up and this title blew me away. What is Vermillion Sands? It is  vacation colony spot drawn from a post modern hell molded with technology from someplace via a Sears catalog  from the depths of an alternative Earth. According to Ballard,"

Where is Vermilion Sands? I suppose its spiritual home lies somewhere between Arizona and Ipanema Beach, but in recent years I have been delighted to see it popping up elsewhere — above all, in sections of the 3,000-mile-long linear city that stretches from Gibraltar to Glyfada Beach along the northern shores of the Mediterranean, and where each summer Europe lies on its back in the sun. That posture, of course, is the hallmark of Vermilion Sands and, I hope, of the future — not merely that no-one has to work, but that work is the ultimate play, and play the ultimate work.”
J.G. Ballard. Preface to Vermilion Sands, 1975."

In other words its the perfect place to draw from for a rather bizarre and down right weird Gamma World location with far more subtle dangers then the more usual run of the mill mutant menaces. Ballard's characters are damaged folks;" the characters themselves often exhibit the same obsession, anomie and psychological disintegration typical of Ballard's characters, the emphasis on elaborate and sometimes humorously imagined art forms gives these stories a playfulness unusual in his other stories."
Why was this such a good source to pull from? The decedent and technologies of the Vermillion Sands stories which were downright dangerous. I hate to use Wiki again but they have a damn nice break down of these stories:

• "Prima Belladonna" focuses on music, especially singing, via singing plants and a 'mutant' voice.
• "The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista" focuses on architecture, via mobile, mood-sensitive houses.
• "Cry Hope, Cry Fury" focuses on painting, through paints that respond to the presence of light/objects (an example of decadence through the evaporation of skill).
• "Venus Smiles" focuses on sculpture, through the creation of a (strangely growing) sound sculpture.
• "Studio 5, The Stars" focuses on poetry, through automated poetry machines (another example of skill vanishing, this time into automation).
• "The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D" focuses on a peculiar kind of sculpture made by carving clouds - painting also appears in this story.
• "Say Goodbye to the Wind" focuses on fashion via living fashion and sound jewelry (non-aural music and erotic food are also mentioned in passing).
• "The Screen Game" has no unusual technologies, but an unusual aesthetic - jewels and screens dominate.
• "The Singing Statues" returns to sound sculpture (which may have been why it was removed from the American Berkley Medallion edition of 1971).

So at the time I was also running Lords of Creation with my friend but we were substituting the AD&D 1st edition rules for some of the broken parts of that game. The Omegatron adventure became another Gamma World timeline and the game campaign was a blast. The cloud sculptors became another faction for this campaign.


So what does this have to do with the The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence? Well quite a bit actually, one of the players stumbled across the wreckage of a cloud sculptor vehicle and looked out into the Other Dimensional Stream ( a roaring ocean of other dimensional space time) and saw an island covered with sound sculptures. There were two players with whom I've known for a very long time and they weren't amused at all remarking about a mutant wizard with whom they have no wish to cross swords with another. You know your doing something right when your player's memory dregs that up. Years later in the 90's Vermillion Sands would return as a part of an Over The Edge campaign adventure.