1d7 Random Scared Martian Treasures of Vultoom Table For Your Old School Campaigns

 "Beneath the shifting red sands the ancient life stirs once again.The birth of an alien world right in Earth's back yard was both unexpected & horrific! Brand new life forms not seen in a thousand years once again roamed the red sands of ancient Mars! What treasures & horrors were unleashed? A new 'gold rush' has broken upon the fertile sands of Mars but this is no unguarded world. Old horrors & terrors have creeped back into the light of the red bloated sun of Earth! "

"At a time when your ancestors were still the blood-brothers of the ape, I fled from my own world to this intercosmic exile, banished by implacable foes. The Martians say that I fell from heaven like a fiery meteor; and the myth interprets the descent of my ether-ship. I found a matured civilization, immensely inferior, however, to that from which I came.

"The kings and hierarchs of the planet would have driven me away; but I gathered a few adherents, arming them with weapons superior to those of Martian science; and after a great war, I established myself firmly and gained other followers. I did not care to conquer Mars, but withdrew to this cavern-world in which I have dwelt ever since with my adherents. On these, for their faithfulness, I conferred a longevity that is almost equal to my own. To ensure this longevity, I have also given them the gift of a slumber corresponding to mine. They sleep and wake with me.

"We have maintained this order of existence for many ages. Seldom have I meddled in the doings of the surface-dwellers. They, however, have converted me into an evil god or spirit; though evil, to me, is a word without meaning.

"I am the possessor of many senses and faculties unknown to you or to the Martians. My perceptions, at will, can be extended over large areas of space, or even time. Thus I learned your predicament; and I have called you here with the hope of obtaining your consent to a certain plan. To be brief, I have grown weary of Mars, a senile world that draws near to death; and I wish to establish myself in a younger planet. The Earth would serve my purpose well. Even now, my followers are building the new ether-ship in which I propose to make the voyage."

Vulthoom

Clark Ashton Smith

 

The ancient war has started again, Vultoom has awoken and sent his treasures out into the solar system. Those who spread his 'word' scatter 'his' artifacts throughout the dimensions spreading his presence as they go. Scattered Martian priests & clerics have also awoken at the same time treading their way across the 'Old Solar' system warning of his coming armies. Outlaws & adventurers fools that they be pick up, use, spread, and convert to the ways of the ancient alien Martian 'god'. Here are only a sampling of some of the sacred & dangerous wares of the old god.

1d20 Random Scared Martian Treasures of Vultoom

1.  Shaped bark Paste  of the Loops Trees - This strange half fossilized bark can be broken down & ground into a paste of alchemical properties. The bark heals 1d8 points of damage & can restore 1d20 years of youth to a user. Worth 67,000 gold pieces 
2.  Amulet of Vultoom - A lead like metal amulet that glows with the scared life giving energies of the 'Old One' it will cause plants & animals to grow to three or four times their normal size. Worth 70,000 gold pieces. 
3. Seeds of the Ancient Ones - Grows 1d20 lost alien Martian species of plants with weird properties. Often used to mark the bounds of the cult of the Old Ones of Mars. These plants have the property of threading & creating neural networks through the minds of those that inhale their spores. Victims become followers of Vultoom and carry his word & gospel to the masses. These seeds can also yield 1d8 life bearing fruits that will restore 1d7 hit points to their users. 
4. Wrist bracer weapons of Vultoom - A living Martian plant cross bow like weapon system worn on the wrist that does 2d6 points of damage as it projects a ball of plasma within a 30 foot radius of the user. The thing has only five shot a day and anyone wearing them is identified as belonging to the plant god thing. 
5. Dog Seeds - These seeds will sprout 1d6 six legged dog things of Vultoom within sixty minutes. AC 5 Hit Points 7 Damage 1d6 +3 which are under the command of the owner for 1d6 months. These seeds are often found in the desert temples of Vultoom. Worth 60,000 gold pieces for one of these pieces
6.  Vases of Valus The Wise - These vases contain the distilled essence of one of the greatest of Vultooms Martian teachers Valus The Wise. They are sought out by druids & the like for they add 3 points of wisdom to the minds of those who inhale the 'sacred spores' gaining a portion of the alien mind of the ancient wise man in all matters of gardening, herbalism, and botany. 
7. Runner Shelters - These strange alien plant like biomechanical structures are contained in a weird plant like base that sprouts into a temporary shelter with 1d8 pieces of 'food', running water, & the place will protect the owner from adverse conditions, the elements, and provide 1d8 beds. Within 1d8 months after activation the 'Runner shelter' will grow into a fully formed temple of Vultoom. 

Old Mars Campaign Setting , The White Star Rpg, & The Cities Without Number Kickstarter

 Over the years there was a ton of writing that I've done on our Old Mars campaign. And actually quite a few notebooks filled with crossover points with various Public Domain Pulp writers & other resources. Echohawk (fuck you buddy & your thieving blog) decided to take my session reports, random tables, ecologies, campaign notes, & whatnot then convert everything over to the Numenera rpg ?!  WTH? While I don't have a problem with Numenera per say. 

The Numenera rpg doesn't fit the Sword & Planet or more appropriately the Sword & Sorcery asthetic of the 'Old Mars' campaign. So we were using a three part OSR  combination Warrriors of the Red Planet, AS&SH (now the Hyperborea rpg), & the White Star Rpg. We'd switch out to Stars Without Numbers rpg later on or a combination of the two Rpg's as we needed. Magic Pig Media gave us the Space Amazons the precursor race to our Hyperborea rpg Amazon tribes. I've been friends with Charles Thorin for years. 

The Amazons were a major source of contenion among our player's PC's. As the two Amazon PC we had in our party were often having to act as go between between NPC's & the Sisters of the Aquarian Order.
Mars was a major hotspot for Lovecraftian horrors and the point where the Order had gotten into heated battles with serpent men. The serpent men tribes felt that they were the rightful inheritors of our campaign's Mars. 
And these pitched battles became an issue when the PC's ran across thousands of red Martian warriors that had been entombed in the unworld thousands of years ago. This campaign plot point comes from Edgar Rice Burroughs Llana of Gathol. 
The  Sisters of the Aquarian Order found the warriors in statis & took over the monestary where the warriors were stored in the tunnels beneath.
This became a major plot point when hordes of Green Martians took over their old haunts. As they had returned from space to their "homeland' after serving in the Stellar Legions for over a thousand years as per their compact with the Galactic empire. 
This isn't Mars ala ERB's Barsoom ( copyrighted & trademarked to the Edgar Rice Burroughs inc. estate) nope this a Mars out around the Tau Ceti system. This Mars had originally been settled by the Serpent People who used one of their 'collapsing wormhole gate systems' to colonize it. This Mars is dying because the air & atmosphere processing stations & systems are breaking down after thousands of years. The Atlantians had found the gateways & transported their genemodified 'red martians' to the Tau Ceti system. Then they brought in their Green Martian warriors and with the destruction of Atlantis. The Green Martians revolted & overran the whole of Old Mars. 
Flash forward a 100,000 years & Old Earth gets buggered. The Hyperboreans begin migrating to Hyperborea bringing their own slave races with them. The Green Plague takes them out. The Lovecraftian races been resettling Old Mars from Hyperborea. 
The Terrans & the Earthmen discover the wormhole gateways then begin mass migrating as refugees trying to escape the 'bugs'. They bring with them both 'dark magick' & Sorcery as the gods of Mars begin to return after the death of the Martian goddess Issus. 
This ushers in the 'infinite Mars' where the old gateways of probability & time begin to reappear across Mars. The Terrans & the Earthmen from these gateways are dimensional pirates. They sport strange alien cybernetics & speak differently. These are the raiders from Kevin Crawford's Cities Without Number Kickstarter. Which I backed! The cybernetic raiders from one universe are ready to take on the colonists of another while a greater threat looms in the background. 

Free OSR Appendix 'S' Science Fantasy Download - Science Fiction Adventure Classics (1969 Ultimate) Pulp Mar 1974 For Your Old School Campaigns

 There was a time when I talked extensively about the classic Pulps on this blog & so here we go back down the Apendix S material. Ages ago it used to be hard to get a hold of classic Pulp goodness. And this blog post is going to follow up on this one from back in 2017 here.  And of course there's a reason for this which is I had a gamer at my table talk about the fact that it's hard within his mind to justify using OSR games such as Warriors of the Red Planet with intergalatic rpg's  such as Colonial Troopers or even Cepheus Engine. And here's where Science Fiction Adventure Classics (1969 Ultimate) Pulp Mar 1974 indeed actually comes in handy. 

Reprints such as Science Fiction Adventure Classics (1969 Ultimate) Pulp Mar 1974  brought home some of the best of the Pulp classic stories without the reader having to haunt second hand book shops all over Ameria & Europe. But it also brought home another little fact Edgar Rice Burrough's Mars was being colonized! Just look at the contents of this issue taken straight from the Mycomicshop entry: 
March 1974. Science fiction stories: "Warriors of Other Worlds" by Morris J. Steele, "Warriors of Mars" by Arthur Tofte, "The Underground City" by Bertrand L. Shurtleff, "The Missing Year" by Eando Binder, "Whirlpool in Space" by Miles Shelton, "The World That Dissolved" by Polton Cross, "Face in the Sky" by Thornton Ayre, and "Sydney, the Screwloose Robot" by William P. McGivern. 5.25-in. x 7.5-in.; black and white; 128 newsprint pages. Cover price $0.60.

Yeah, Sixty cents went a lot further back in March of '74 but its the fact that ERB's Mars was seeing explorers and colonizers. Leigh Brackett made a career out of the colonized solar system with some dam fine writing. 
The fact is that Mars became another destination in the solar system. And in today's gaming another PC racial option. Mars was seen as a relic of the past of Science Fiction. But its comeback into vogue lately because of the old school & the OSR. 
But Mars remains both a point on the map of our solar system & a destination for adventure. The Science Fiction authors of yore used it a point for an adventure jump off. There are hundreds of Pulp stories where the Martian royal or outlaw is the victim or the villain. And the fact is that Science Fiction moved on. But they didn't lose sight of where they came from. 
Mars is point for our players to draw their PC's from and an anchor for which our party of adventurers can draw campaign adventures on. 
One of the OSR titles that we've used to draw various cycles of races rising & falling on Mars has been Dead Names by Kevin Crawford. 

Dead Names clicks right into the vibe of "The Underground City" by Bertrand L. Shurtleff, and we see the migration of the weird lost worlds of the Pulps migrating to the stars as time went on. Whirlpool in Space" by Miles Shelton, picks up on an interstellar phenomna that could be used with Cepheus Engine easily. "The World That Dissolved" by Polton Cross, could be a fodder for an alternative Earth adventure or as a point for a space game as an alien colony world. "Face in the Sky" by Thornton Ayre, is a possible Lovecraftian diety or a random NPC encounter for an old school or OSR game. "Sydney, the Screwloose Robot" by William P. McGivern might make an excellent  NPC. 

You can download Science Fiction Adventure Classics (1969 Ultimate) Pulp Mar 1974 Here 

Brackett & Moorcock - Leigh Brackett, Astonishing Swordmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, & Michael Moorcock's 'Kane of Old Mars'

 Today we're going to dive into a very different Mars then readers might be familar with. A Mars that sits in the sights of three very distinctive authors of Sword & Plantary fiction 

Its been a very busy couple of weeks & its only getting busier. So during this St.George's day it seems like the perfect opportunity to return to the shores of Mars. DM Ricky & DM Steve have been riding my behind now for some weeks & today's blog entry picks up with Michael Moorcock's Kane of Old Mars saga. Yes we've covered this saga in these two blog entries here & here. Michael Moorcock's Kane contrasts utterly with other Martian or Barsoomian heroes. Why?!  The Kane series is a homage to Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom stories; "Michael Kane is the principal character, a Vietnam veteran that goes into physics and ends up on Mars during one of his experiments. He tells the author of the book his tales of adventure and the life he made on Mars. Typical of Moorcock's Eternal Champion stories, Moorcock's hero is a philosophical man who hates war (except Elric), but is good at it when he needs to be. Through Kane, Moorcock speaks of how fear affects us and causes us to do the wrong thing (kill, hate, etc.). Kane tries his best to remedy that with logic and compassion." All of the above comes from Michael H. Weekley Amazon review on Kane of Old Mars. We've read all of this before. What you haven't read is the fact that recently Sea Kings of Mars and Otherwordly Stories By Leigh Brackett  (Fantasy Masterworks) has come back into my collection. Why back because an ex friend of mine stole my copy. 

Everything about Leigh Brackett's Mars & even her solar system is completely in line but opposite with Michael Moorcock's Kane stories. The reason for this simple Kane solves his problems with his brain,brawn, & heart. Brackett's heroes & anti heroes solve their problems with ultra violence, fists, honor, determination, & despration. And before we go further yes the Kane stories are homages to Edar Rice Burroughs, Leigh Brackett, & the Pulp stories of Moorcock's youth. 

But what strikes me are the contrasts of C.L. Moore's North West Smith Stories & Leigh Brackett's  Sword & Planet  stories in Sea Kings of Mars and Otherwordly Stories  along side Michael Moorcock's Kane of Old Mars. The meta take away from these stories is the fact that our solar system had other tenants & land lords in long forgotten ages ago. And the neighborhood didn't always get along. Lovecraftian gods & alien races carved out their own niches in this solar system landscape. At some point in the far future millions of years Ragnorok happens & the old gods of Mars return. But are they all that old!? 

If we do a cross comparison between the gods or aliens of Kane's Mars & say Elric's Old Kingdom are we simply looking at old celestial masks for the forces Law & Chaos?!  Gods of Law in the Young Kingdoms (written by Charles Green- with large contributions from Richard Watts)  has some excellent references for the cults of Law for the fifth edition Stormbringer rpg. These along with the CHAOS CULTS OF THE YOUNG KINGDOMS BY CHARLES GREEN stand in sharp focus to some of the stories in all three of the cited sources in this blog post. 

But already the OSR & the Stormbringer fifth edition crowd is howling for my blood & souls. Calm down this is a mental excercise. Since the fact is that mankind is on a colonial expansion kick in Leigh Brackett & C.L. Moore's stories. Then we have to turn to Clark Ashton Smith's tales especially The Seedling From Mars.  This entity along with CAS's Mars cycle give us a seemless background for the peperation of the Mars life forms on a 'dead mars' of the far future:

• 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]

These tales contain the Martian Lovecraftian Satan which means that Vulthoom might be in point of fact 'old Reg' from Michael Moorcock's Von Bek tales. A being whose closely connected with the Black Sword & might be connected with several artifact swords of Mars itself. 
This revelation is nothing new & has been put forth in several Barsoom & Brackett fanzines over the years. After the gods of Earth die in Ragnorok then the Martian races & gods retake Mars in a nasty event. Humanity on Mars might well be in the very smallest minority. The forces of the balance shift the pendulum again. This could help to explain some of the forces & entities that we see in the Kane of Old Mars series. 
But Kane's position as an eternal champion is an interesting one. He's more of a figure of balance in these stories then one of Law or Chaos. His use of his mind instead of ultraviolence contrasts sharply with the situations he finds himself in. 
The legacy of Kane compared to the tone of AS&SH is both an interesting one & one could work well to pull the PC's into the eye of a storm that a Mars that a campaign that  uses all three authors as source material offers. 

Commentary On The Hyperborean Legacy Of Atlantis On The 'Old Mars' Campaign Setting

"Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars"
Robert Howard's Conan
Upon Hyperborea there are remnants & ruins of Old Earth's Atlantis but these are pale reflections of the glory and power of ancient empire. Scattered across space & time are the echoes of this once mighty nation. Now only the Deep Ones remain to claim the glory & power of this once great legacy or do they?


Throughout Hyperborea there are pockets & fully integrated populations of Deep Ones. They walk among mankind unnoticed and unchallenged. But there are rumors of older races of fish like men and aquatic peoples with gills who do not have the taint of the Deep Ones running through their veins nor hear the song of Tulu. Atlantis faced destruction & its colonies on 'Old Venus' & 'Old Mars' were their only hope of survival. Clark Aston Smith wrote about this in the Poseidonis cycle of stories. Poseidonis is the last remaining island of doomed Atlantis and there are hints in those stories that perhaps the Atlanteans adapted themselves to their watery environment.

• Atlantis (1912)
• Death of Malygris, The (1933)
• Double Shadow, The (1933)
• Last Incantation, The (1930)
• Muse of Atlantis, The (1922)
• Tolometh (1958)
• Vintage from Atlantis, A (1933)
• Voyage to Sfanomoe, A (1931)

Throughout Lovecraft's Mythos stories there are hints about the Cthulhu cult & its world spanning organization that goes all the way back to the days of Atlantis perhaps even before. The Deep One's influence was felt all the way back to before the fall of Atlantis destroyed the mighty empire totally. The technologically advanced empire had pockets of mystery cults operating within various temples & woven into fabric of the worship of Dagon & Mother Hydra The Great Old Ones. Throughout the Atlantean empire there were renegade temples, mystery cults, proto-cults operating within the shadows of the technological achievements of the once mighty empire then turned decedent. Echoes of these can be seen within the Church of Starry Wisdom  & many of its later pre-mutations 

The thread of the Clthuhu cult continues well into the twentieth century & beyond if we except that Hyprborea is the far future of Earth. Dagon, Mother Hydra & the Great Old Ones continue their corruption well beyond the foundations laid down in Lovecraft's writing;
"men—at least, a certain sort of men; though the creatures were shown disporting like fishes in the waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic shrine which appeared to be under the waves as well... [T]hey were damnably human in general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to have been chiseled badly out of proportion with their scenic background; for one of the creatures was shown in the act of killing a whale represented as but little larger than himself"
Dagon"  by H. P. Lovecraft,  July 1910

But what about the Atlanteans themselves there were pockets of other Old Ones & Outer Gods worshiped throughout the empire and there is evidence that lots these entities preserved their little corners of Atlantis on the sea bottom.

"It is well that the reader accept nothing which follows as objective truth, for since the events transcend natural law, they are necessarily the subjective and unreal creations of my overtaxed mind. When I attained the conning tower I found the sea in general far less luminous than I had expected. There was no animal or vegetable phosphorescence about, and the city that sloped down to the river was invisible in blackness. What I did see was not spectacular, not grotesque or terrifying, yet it removed my last vestige of trust in my consciousness. For the door and windows of the undersea temple hewn from the rocky hill were vividly aglow with a flickering radiance, as from a mighty altar-flame far within."
The Temple HP Lovecraft 1920


Lovecraft wasn't the only writer who chronicled the survival of Atlanteans, in 1929 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote The Marcot Deep but you might know it by its Nineteen Seven Eight title Warlords of Atlantis.

In The Marcot Deep we have all of the classic elements of Warlords of Atlantis & more;

"The novel begins with preparations for the dive, off the coast of Africa. Prof. Maracot claims to have located the deepest trench in the Atlantic and is vehement that he shall go down in the specially prepared submersible actually a bathysphere along with Headley and Scanlan. On reaching the edge of the trench, a description of the undersea world is presented. The team comes face to face with a giant crustacean who cuts off their line and hurls them down into the trench. Down in the trench, the team is rescued by the Atlanteans who are the last survivors of the land that was Atlantis.

Although the description of Atlantis may not sound quite futuristic and may seem fantastic, the fact that the novel was written in 1929 should be taken into account. One device in particular is often made use of. This is a thought projector which visualizes the thoughts of a person for others to see. This helps the team and the Atlanteans to communicate.

Descriptions of work habits, culture and various sea creatures are provided. The Atlanteans forage for their food from the sea bed and their slaves, Greeks who are the descendants of the original slaves of the kingdom of Atlantis work in undersea mines. This is made possible thanks to an exceptionally strong and light transparent material which is fashioned into helmets to enable people to work underwater.

The team eventually uses the levity of these spheres to escape to the surface. Headley elopes with the daughter of Manda, leader of the Atlanteans.

In the later part of the novel, Headley describes the encounter with the Lord of the Dark Face, a supernatural being who led the Atlanteans to their doom and was the cause of untold miseries to humanity ever since. This being is likened to the Phoenician god Baal who was demonized by later religions and cultures.


The being is defeated by Prof. Maracot who becomes possessed by the spirit of Warda, the man who managed to convince a handful of Atlanteans to prepare for the worst and thus built an Ark which saved them from the cataclysm which destroyed their land."
You Can Download The Maracot Deep By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Here

We know that some of the Atlanteans escaped their doomed world and fled into the solar system some even settled on 'Old Mars'. They brought with them some of  their guardian animals, prehistoric monsters, & other life forms.  This was chronicled in Aelita, or The Decline of Mars is a 1923 science fiction novel by Russian author Aleksey Tolstoy. It was later filmed as a classic silent film in 1924. It is one of the first science fiction films from Russia but what does it have to do with Atlantis? There's a fantastic article by Den Valdron that places our  Russian Princess on Burroughs Mars. Originally Aelita's Martian colony is a survival of Atlantis.

We know that the Atlanteans & the Deep Ones were competing for the same natural resources, materials, & land areas  this made competition & infiltration inevitable.  This collision course would once again rear itself when on 'Old Earth' when in  3994 a group of Deep One tainted river pirates under the control of Captain Kordon, Queen of the River Pirates attempted to steal the treasure of the Moks the fire lances of the ancients. This happened near Norfolk Virginia in the Treasure of the Moks episode of Thundarr The Barbarian. Later near Mount Rushmore, South Dakota Thundarr & co. would tackle a group of  Atlanteans Amazons who had used Great Race time travel technology to cast their minds ahead in time. Their queen had her rule taken over by Stryia, a Deep One tainted evil witch. These forces appeared in the
Attack of the Amazon Women of Thundarr The excellent The World of Thundarr The Barbarian Sourcebook -- Final Version For Mutant Future contains a great version of Stryia and her underwater Amazons.
Both C.L. Moore & Leigh Brackett would use similar artifacts to connect their work with both Edgar Rice Burroughs & Robert Howard's King Kull of Atlantis. When in The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune King Kull's consciousness is almost drawn away into an alternative world someplace in the time stream.

"Then came a day when Kull seemed to catch glimpses of strange lands; there flitted across his consciousness dim thoughts and recognitions. Day by day he had seemed to lose touch with the world; all things had seemed each succeeding day more ghostly and unreal; only the man in the mirror seemed like reality. Now Kull seemed to be close to the doors of some mightier worlds; giant vistas gleamed fleetingly; the fogs of unreality thinned; “form is shadow, substance is illusion; they are but shadows” sounded as if from some far country of his consciousness. He remembered the wizard’s words and it seemed to him that now he almost understood — form and substance, could not he change himself at will, if he knew the master key that opened this door? What worlds within what worlds awaited the bold explorer?
The man in the mirror seemed smiling at him closer, closer — a fog enwrapped all and the reflection dimmed suddenly — Kull knew a sensation of fading, of change, of merging...
“Kull!” the yell split the silence into a million vibratory fragments!
Mountains crashed and worlds tottered as Kull, hurled back by the frantic shout, made a superhuman effort, how or why he did not know.

A crash, and Kull stood in the room of Tuzun Thune before a shattered mirror, mazed and half blind with bewilderment. There before him lay the body of Tuzun Thune, whose time had come at last, and above him stood Brule the Spear-slayer, sword dripping red and eyes wide with a kind of horror."

Does this mean that in fact the Barsoomians of 'Old Mars' are actually Atlanteans? Could the Deep Ones of Venus from ERB's Escape on Venus & numerous other 'Old Venus' science fantasy stories hint at a symbolic relationship between the humans & near humanoid races of the old solar system? I think so.


Leigh Brackett & C.L. Moore map out the relationship between the god like alien races that have their roots in HP Lovecraft & the Lovecraft circle's Mythos based mythology. Otis Albert Kline's Venus follows the same type of vein & there are Atlantean roots & ruins within his Planet Of Peril series.



The legacy of Atlantis can be seen throughout the Old Solar System & the influence of Atlantis echoes through out tradition of weird fiction and old school science fantasy gaming.

More To Come

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. 

OSR Commentary - Martian Echoes Of S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks By Gary Gygax

"The Grand Duchy of Geoff has recently been plagued by a rash of unusually weird and terrible monsters of an unknown sort. This western area, particularly the mountain fastness which separates the Grand Duchy from the Dry Steppes, has long been renowned for the generation of the most fearsome beasts, and it has been shunned accordingly -- save a handful of hardy souls with exceptional abilities. Within the last few months, however, a walled town not far distant from the area, and four small fortresses as well, have been destroyed by mysterious attacks! "



Last night I worked late into the night, I needed something breezy & quick to read. I turned to 'S3 Expedition the Barrier Peaks' Let's get this module's history out of the way quick;"Expedition to the Barrier Peaks was first played at the Origins II convention in 1976, where it was used to introduce Dungeons & Dragons players to the science fiction game Metamorphosis Alpha. In 1980, TSR published the adventure, updated for first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules. The adventure was not updated for later rules systems, but a Wizards.com article did provide a conversion to Future Tech. It included a separate booklet of illustrations, in both color and black and white." Now I've been lately rereading a lot of pulp magazine sci fi & science fantasy stories which I've been incorporating into my 'Old Solar Solar' system setting. But bizarrely it was rereading  the Killraven mini series from Marvel comics about '03 when I noticed some parallels between the two series & Edgar Rice Burroughs. Killraven first appeared in Amazing Adventures 30 (1970) & I literally grew up with him. He's a gladiator stuck in a Martian area who escapes with fellow gladiators who wander a Martian wasteland that was once our Earth. This invasion was the second or third wave of HG Wells War of the Worlds semi set in the Earth of the alternative Earth-691 that happened in 2001.

This series has always sort of shared the Marvel super heroes world with Earth's mightiest heroes dying badly & repeatedly over the years trying to prevent Killraven's world from coming about. Its only now when I reread the '03 updated mini series that I started seeing the subplot of the Martians trying to terra form the Earth into something resembling Edgar Rice Burroughs & Albert Otis Kline's Mars?! Killraven has always had some really weird & funky concepts from Logan Run style gladiator areas, psychic & telepathic Martian soldiers, Martian gene modified beast men, to the Martians themselves. The series history has been interesting & problematic at times;"Co-creator Neal Adams' early ideas for Killraven involved the character being the son of a Doc Savage archetype.^[1] This conception had been reworked by the first issue, a multiple-creator goulash in which the two originators and co-plotters turned the scripting over to another writer, and in which artist co-creator Adams penciled only the first 11 pages and Howard Chaykin the remaining nine. The second issue was fully written by the debut's scripter, Gerry Conway, followed in the third by Marv Wolfman.



After this, the book became the province of writer Don McGregor for an acclaimed run^[2] from #21 (Nov. 1973) to the final issue, #39 (Nov. 1976). Pencillers were Herb Trimpe, Rich Buckler, Gene Colan, and, most prominently, P. Craig Russell from issue #27 on."

"Alan Davis' 2002 miniseries Killraven depicted an alternate-future variation of the original series, set on the parallel universe Marvel Comics designates "Earth-2120"." This mini series comic version of the original saga pays homage to the original series but takes the action in another direction. Mainly we see Killraven & his freemen dealing with the transformation of Earth, its people, and the high cost of peace between Martians & humanity. Its a well done mini series & I highly recommend it.


What strikes me is the artificial nature of the Martian subjugation & transformation of Earth in the original series. This is a very invasive species.  McGregor's writing on the original series has parallels with the nature of concepts laid down in Gary Gygax's writing in S3. According to "McGregor and Russell, however, remain the series' signature creative team; more than two decades after the original series' end, comics historian Peter Sanderson wrote that,It was writer Don McGregor who transformed the Killraven saga ... into a classic. Of all of Marvel's writers, McGregor has the most romantic view of heroism. Killraven and his warrior band were also a community of friends and lovers motivated by a poetic vision of freedom and of humanity's potential greatness. McGregor's finest artistic collaborator on the series was P. Craig Russell, whose sensitive, elaborate artwork, evocative of Art Nouveau illustration, gave the landscape of Killraven's America a nostalgic, pastoral feel, and the Martian architecture the look of futuristic castles"
This same feel in many ways comes across in S3 where the definitions of what D&D is and could be are challenged, bent, & in some places broken. Something that Killraven for me would go on to do with comic books. But back to the monster ecology. The Warden of S3 comes into & transforms the world of Greyhawk introducing an alien ecology that continues to plague that world for centuries. The lessons of both Killraven & 'Expedition To The Barrier Peaks' can be applied easily to the current OSR. Invasive ecologies can serve as the prime motivator for a campaign quite easily. Take as an example many of the monsters of  Clark Ashton Smith or Lovecraft which fit the stereo typical 'outsider' or alien ecologies.


This is something we see time and again in adventures from Lamentations of the Flame Princess & Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. It was also something that Robert Kuntz saw using many of the well established principals of science fiction and science fantasy to challenge many of the original players of this hobby of ours. Again the same thing happens in Killraven where species continue to plague the world over & over again. We become the monsters under the tendrils of the Martians something that gets repeated again & again as they continue to transform Earth into their new home. All of these themes are something we see again & again in pulp magazines going back to the childhood of both Gygax and McGregor.  The dungeon isn't a static organism or adventure location, instead its a point fixed by both circumstance & opportunity of creation.


Both S3 'Expedition To The Barrier Peaks' & Killraven are products of their time. They work to create what we know as the modern wasteland dungeon in pop culture. Killraven was/is one of my all time favorite comics, over the years its been a well written and incredible foot note in the incredible pop culture landscape. Both of these products are part of the  legacy of Marvel comics & Dungeons Dragons. Mainly due to the incredible writers and artists of Marvel comics & Gary Gygax.
Without Killraven we would not get the awesomeness of Ape Slayer but that's another blog entry for another time! For now keep those dice rolling.

Cosmic Calamity, Ultra Weird Violence, & The Return of the Gonzo OSR Dungeon

So I'm not sure when this happened exactly but apparently the stars aligned in a cosmic OSR display again as three things quietly happened at the same time this past week. The first of which is the fact that James Mishler has quietly been building his own gonzo campaign setting based on the Labyrinth Lord retro clone system; 

"This is the first in a series of posts dedicated to building a library of races, classes, spells, magic items, technological devices, and various charts and tables dedicated to building and exploring a new LABYRINTH LORD campaign setting – LEGENDARIA."

This isn't Mishler's first time dealing with these elements within his table top system but its the first time I'm seeing this

I'm no stranger to the gonzo  style of gaming as any reader of this blog knows. The fact is that there are other indications that this style of Gonzo dungeon crawling. Venger Satanis has his latest Kickstarter out which seems to be another gonzo post apocalpytic Dungeons & Dragons fusion setting;

"The world of Cha'alt started as a fairly typical medieval land with elves, dwarves, snake-men, clerics, and magic-users; steeped in superstition along with antediluvian traditions, before the Old Gods went mad.  

Three-thousand years passed. The surface dwellers split from the malevolent creatures who slithered below. Those who remained on the surface lost the understanding of magic, but their civilization became a highly developed, technological empire of domed cities welcoming interstellar travelers, their massive starships hovering high above in blue skies.

But in the deep crevasses of the world, a power older than time stirred from its deathless slumber. The Ancient Gods, long forgot, had not died but continued to dream... growing chaotic and full of darkness.  And those living underground hastened the Old Ones' rising because they yearned to reclaim Cha'alt for themselves.

When the Great Old Ones awakened, they were angered by the lack of worship, sacrifices, or even casual acknowledgement that they had fashioned the world and all life upon it. 

Soon enough, Cha'alt was all but destroyed by those vengeful Gods, jealous of their creations' achievements and bitter that they had been forgotten.  Civilization in ruins, the surface-dwellers of Cha'alt turned to barbarism as sorcery reappeared, dragons appeared in the now-magenta sky, and demons took hold once more.

Cha'alt is a mysterious world where you're likely to encounter mutant bikers with laser rifles, tentacled sandworms in the deep desert, tribal warfare as blood-splotched shamans ululate at the crimson rock, and alien pirates on anti-grav skiffs looking to steal relics of a bygone age."

The more I read about this adventure setting the more it reminds me of a trend that I've seen in the past & Venger's always been about bending & molding his campaign settings into his own. I totally get that & understand the 'hows' & 'whys' of the author's desires & gaming adventure goals.

But today has been one of those days when I was sitting down with two of my friends & speaking about the growing desire to get back to playing in this style of campaign play with traditional original Dungeons & Dragons adventurers. This isn't rocket science, you simply take a set of old school D&D or retroclone rules & go play. But the fact is that as a dungeon master there's an odd mis balance that has to be achieved with players. Its not simply enough to throw player's PC's on to some far flung corner of the planes.

For me the gonzo OSR dungeon goes all the way back to 2011 with the Black Ziggurat project from the Planet Algol blog. Man, I miss the Planet Algol blog there were so many cool OSR ideas that came from that blog & Blair's twisted mind. Even the Wyrmspittle setting had its own Black Ziggurat dungeon from the Hereticworks folks. 

Before my complete party wipe in my recent Mars 9889 setting I was planning on introducing my own version of the Ebonite Ziggurat which lies deep within the Martian badlands. The structure was part of the launching facility of the invaders to the Earth in 1898.  We don't know that much about the structure at all. The superstitious Red Martians avoid the structure  like the plague & there are rumors that strange lights have been seen at night when Phobos crosses the sky.

 If the rumors are to be believed then the structure may be related to the 'Originators' the insect race that terraformed  & engineered the original life forms of Mars. Transcosmic radiation has been detected on the areas surrounding the structure & many psychics as well as mentalists will black out when trying to penetrate the deeper aural levels of reality that surround the Ebonite Ziggurat. There is a vast sea of bones & shattered skulls that surround the red sands of the ziggurat all of which have varying degrees of violence about them. The ziggurat itself gives off strange sub etheric vibrations that cause any who sleep within a 3 mile radius of it terrible dreams.Main canal routes are very ancient around the structure & no modern ones connect with it. The local kilt wearing Red Martian tribes have many strange legends surround it but it is considered taboo by most right thinking people. The ziggurat borders the small human nation state of  Igarth & one of its Martian post colony neighbor nations. Both societies avoid any mention of the place but certain tribes of savage Green Martians use the lands surround it for 'rites of passage' for their young. There have been sparks of violence between Greys & the Green Martians over the ziggurat lands & court yards. Strange alien monsters have been seen destroying any interlopers who come to close to the buildings of the ziggurat & its structures. Few Martians will speak of the rumors of underground structures & the connections to the Martian invaders cities that surround the Ebonite Ziggurat. There are the remains of hundreds of different sky ships & space craft around the place some wreckage has been found from as  far away as Calidar. But once again these are merely rumors & could be considered the stuff of adventurers whose tongues wag from the strange strong Martian drink that they seem to consume in the space taverns of Igarth.

So not only have I began to notice gonzo dungeons entering back into the OSR consciousness but locally a friend is taking about running Faster Monkey Games Realm of the Technomancer. This is because lots of folks have gotten their copies of the combined Advanced Labyrinth Lord retroclone book which has been hitting shelves because of last year's kickstarter. Suddenly, interest in both Mutant Future & Labryth Lord have started again.  Faster Monkey Games Realm of the Technomancer is a 'pay what you want' adventure that combines the games just like the first edition Gamma World/Advance Dungeons & Dragons first edition into one campaign. This adventure makes a great intro for a campaign setting such as ASE1: Anomalous Subsurface Environment by Patrick Wetmore. 

Only time will tell if we continue to see this return to Gonzo dungeon crawling  trend continue in 2019. As for my own tastes in the realm of the OSR Gonzo adventuring or misadventuring only time will tell. The holidays are just starting to wind down now & so well see the where the gaming takes me over the course of the next year.