Victorian-era D&D

Towards the end of my second year at college, I got a hankering to run a Victorian occult investigators campaign. This was 1978. There wasn’t yet GURPS or Cthulhu by Gaslight, so I used white box D&D rules only with spells capped at 2nd level. 3rd level spells were possible too, but only if found on scrolls. That way it wouldn’t all get too munchkin.

That was the idea. It didn’t stop the PCs slapping charm spells on suspects and just asking if they committed the crime, so investigation took a back seat to the usual OSR donnybrook with demons. If I were running it today I'd use a variant of the Dagon Warriors rules with sorcerers as well as psionics but spell-casting capped at maybe 3rd rank (4th rank from scrolls).

We had three player-characters. Father Simon Arkayne (Steve Foster) was a Catholic priest. A.X.E. Knolsbet (Andy Booth) was a gentleman detective and magic-user. And Tufton Beamish, Lord Beauchamp (Chris Elston) was a nobleman with a penchant for derring-do.

In the absence of a lot of spell-casting, there was much use of revolvers (there were few legal restrictions on those in 1890s Britain), sword-sticks and fisticuffs. The characters investigated murder cases, usually with a cult connection like this, often embroiling them in battles with mummies, werewolves or Babylonian demons. Sexton Blake and the Demon God was on TV and I had been a devotee of Sherlock Holmes in my teens. Blend those influences with Doctor Strange's interdimensional forays and a dash of Carnacki and John Silence (and, though I hate to admit it, Jules de Grandin) and you have a sense of what the games were like.

In fact, talking of Jules de Grandin...

That scene is taken straight from one of our adventures -- which, since it spilled over into the summer vacation, we had to complete by post. Paper letters with stamps, I mean, email not being a thing in those benighted times. Here's part of the very write-up I sent to the players:

The following term we even recorded a session in Steve's college rooms. That was long before actual play was a thing, and I have no idea if the cassette tape (1978, remember) still exists, but if I should come across it in a box in the attic, I'll digitize it and put it online.

"The God in the Bowl" (a scenario of the Hyborian Age or the Selentine Empire)

“The God in the Bowl” is one of Robert E Howard’s classic early Conan adventures – a locked room murder mystery, no less, and with a baroquely fantastical flavour that makes it perfect for Weird Tales. Or so you’d think, but the notoriously erratic Farnworth Wright rejected it, along with the equally wonderful “The Frost Giant’s Daughter”, when REH sent him the first three Conan stories.

As Howard wrote to H P Lovecraft in April 1932: “I’ve been working on a new character, providing him with a new epoch — the Hyborian Age, which men have forgotten, but which remains in classical names, and distorted myths. Wright rejected most of the series, but I did sell him one, ‘The Phoenix on the Sword’, which deals with the adventures of King Conan the Cimmerian, in the kingdom of Aquilonia.”

HPL got to see the rejected stories and wrote back: “[Donald] Wandrei and I have read these tales with keen interest and appreciation. Best wishes for their ultimate publication! […] The climax of ‘The God in the Bowl’ is splendidly vivid.”

Sadly the world at large was to be denied any sight of “The God in the Bowl” for another twenty years, when it finally appeared in the September 1952 issue of Space Science Fiction (what?!). You can read it here – and so you should, if you haven’t done so before and you want to avoid the spoilers that lie ahead.

OK, so here’s the summary. Kallian Publico has a building, a sort of museum called “the Temple”, in which he shows off his private collection of artworks and antiquities to selected guests. Lately he took in a large metal bowl or jar from the realm of Stygia, in the far south, which he agreed to hold until its intended recipient, a priest called Kalanthes, could send for it. Kallian then reflected on the treasure the jar might contain, and decided to stage a break-in at the Temple and blame the theft on intruders.

Kallian goes to the Temple after dark and breaks the seals on the jar. Around midnight his watchman, patrolling the building, tries the door and finds the main lock has been opened. The door has two locks: the main one, openable only from outside, and a deadbolt that can be unlocked from either side. The watchman enters and find Kallian dead, apparently strangled with a thick cable. He also encounters an intruder (Conan) who may be the murderer. The jar is open and empty. The watchman summons the police, who also bring in Promero, Kallian’s clerk who lives in a house next-door to the Temple.

Conan says he entered the Temple from the roof only minutes before he ran into the watchman, who he expected would continue patrolling outside. Promero says that Kallian came to see him in the early evening but left soon afterwards. Enaro, Kallian’s charioteer, arrives and says that he was told to pick up Kallian at the Temple just after midnight. Under duress, Promero admits that Kallian stayed at his house till half an hour before midnight, when he left to go and open the jar.

The police realize that, as the deadbolt was on and only Kallian and the watchman had keys, if the murderer isn’t Conan then he must still be in the building. Kallian’s keys are still on his corpse, along with all his jewelled rings, so theft wasn’t the motive – or else the murderer was interrupted. There’s no way up to the trapdoor where Conan got in without piling things underneath to climb up, so the murderer cannot have escaped that way.

A policeman says he saw the thick rope used to strangle Kallian wound high up on a pillar in a hall of statues, but when they go to look there’s nothing there. Conan sees something move in an adjacent chamber. Promero, having looked at the symbols on the lid of the jar, becomes hysterical, claiming that it is one of “the children of Set” who was sent in the jar by the priest Thoth-Amon to kill Kalanthes. One of the policemen, scoffing at this, pushes Promero into the room to look.

At this point another policeman brings in a young nobleman he found loitering outside. This is Aztrias, whom Conan reveals hired him to steal a Zamorian goblet. As Aztrias tries to deny it, Promero staggers out of the other room, screams that “the god has a cursed long neck”, and collapses. Cue general panic apart from Conan, who gets in there and slays the so-called Child of Set, which turns out to be a huge serpent with a beautiful human head.

But we want to turn this into a scenario, so it can’t all be about Conan. Instead, if you’re running a one shot, I suggest six pre-generated player-characters:

• Two PCs are thieves hired by Aztrias
• Two are watchmen hired to guard the Temple – they are the ones who discover Kallian’s body
• One is Kallian’s charioteer
• The sixth PC is the chief of the Inquisitorial Council of the city of Numalia (Demetrio in the story) who arrives with a patrol of six NPC policemen. 

The stats for these six are given under Pre-gen player characters below. The thieves and the charioteer are 6th rank; the watchmen and the inquisitor are 5th rank; and the NPC police are 1st rank. If you need to fit in more player-characters they can be police of 5th rank, but in that case there are no NPC police.

Timeline

This is the order of events if they proceed exactly as in the REH story – though naturally the player-characters’ actions will change details, especially after midnight.

Early Evening (approximately 6:00-8:00 PM) 

• Watchmen (PCs): Begin their shift at the museum entrance 
• Promero (chief clerk): Goes home (next door to the museum) after cataloguing work in the main hall 
• Aztrias Petanius (nobleman): Secretly meets with the thieves, whom he is sending to steal a Zamorian goblet from the museum. 
• Kallian Publico (museum owner): Locks up the museum, travels partway home, then decides to steal the contents of the bowl so returns to Promero’s house, telling his charioteer to fetch him at midnight. 
• Charioteer (PC): Delivers Kallian to Promero's house, then at leisure till midnight
• Thieves (PCs): Casing the museum from afar, planning the break-in 
• The Child of Set (in the bowl): Dormant within the sealed Stygian artifact in the storage room

Mid-Evening (8:00-10:00 PM) 

• Watchmen (PCs): Patrolling the perimeter 
• Promero: Entertains Kallian at his home next to the museum 
• Kallian: Talks to Promero, revealing his plan to plunder the contents of the bowl and swearing Promero to secrecy 
• Aztrias: Returns home to prepare for retrieving his purchase later 
• Thieves (PCs): Wait in shadows nearby, watching for the right moment to enter

Late Evening (10:00 PM-Midnight) 

• Watchmen (PCs): Conduct periodic patrols 
• Inquisitor (PC): Decides to spend the evening accompanying a police patrol
• Kallian: Returns to the museum intending to break open the bowl and steal its contents; his plan is to blame it on thieves; he breaks the seals on the bowl, releases the Child of Set, and is killed by it around 11:30 PM 
• The Child of Set: Released from the bowl by Kallian, whom it kills 
• Thieves (PCs): Enter the museum through a trapdoor from the roof around 11:45 PM 
• Aztrias: Approaches the museum near midnight to collect his spoils from the thieves

After Midnight 

• Watchmen (PCs): Discover the body; sound the alarm bell 
• Thieves (PCs): Spotted by the watchmen after sounding the alarm bell 
• Inquisitor (PC): Arrives with six guardsmen having heard the bell 
• Aztrias: Lurks outside, sees the commotion, and decides to wait 
• The Child of Set: Moving unseen through the museum's shadowy halls 
• Promero: Summoned back to the museum to identify items and assist investigation 
• Charioteer (PC): Returns to the museum to pick up Kallian as instructed.

Witness statements

For each character, I've included their initial statements, any revisions to their stories, and what they actually know or observed. 

1. Changing Stories:

• Promero gives three different versions, each revealing more truth as pressure is applied 
• Aztrias will change his story if his reputation is threatened 
• Several NPCs maintain "official" positions while harbouring private doubts 

2. Motivations for Lying: 

• Promero fears implication in Kallian’s attempted fraud 
• Aztrias protects his reputation and avoids scandal 

3. Truth Extraction Methods: 

• Promero requires intimidation 
• Aztrias is nearly impossible to get the full truth from, and his status makes harsh interrogation impossible

Promero (Chief Clerk)

Initial Account 

• Claims he left the Temple at normal time (this is true) 
• Says Kallian was in his office working on accounts 
• Insists nothing unusual happened during the day 
• Suggests Kallian had no enemies 
• States that nothing seems to be missing from the Temple

Second Account (under duress) 

• Admits he saw Kallian after the Temple was locked for the day 
• Reveals Kallian was planning to sell something valuable “off the books” 
• Still omits knowledge of Kallian's plans to steal from the jar

Final Account (After Posthumo's "third degree") 

• Confesses to knowing about Kallian’s plan to open the jar:

“It arrived in a caravan from the south, at dawn. The men of the caravan knew nothing of it, except that it had been placed with them by the men of a caravan from Stygia, and was meant for Kalanthes of Hanumar, priest of Ibis. The master of the caravan had been paid by these other men to deliver it directly to Kalanthes, but he's a rascal by nature, and wished to proceed directly to Aquilonia, on the road to which Hanumar does not lie. So he asked if he might leave it in the Temple until Kalanthes could send for it.

“Kallian agreed, and told him he himself would send a runner to inform Kalanthes. But after the men had gone, and I spoke of the runner, Kallian forbade me to send him. He sat brooding over what the men had left – a sort of sarcophagus, such as is found in ancient Stygian tombs, but this one was round, like a covered metal bowl or jar. Its composition was something like copper, but much harder, and it was carved with hieroglyphics, like those found on the more ancient menhirs in southern Stygia. The lid was made fast to the body by carven copper-like bands.

“The men of the caravan did not know what it contained. They only said that the men who gave it to them told them that it was a priceless relic, found among the tombs far beneath the pyramids and sent to Kalanthes ‘because of the love the sender bore the priest of Ibis’. Kallian Publico believed that it contained the diadem of the giant-kings, of the people who dwelt in that dark land before the ancestors of the Stygians came there. He showed me a design carved on the lid, which he swore was the shape of the diadem which legend tells us the monster-kings wore.”

Aztrias Petanius (nobleman)

Initial Account

• Denies any involvement with Kallian 
• Claims he was passing by when he saw commotion 
• Offers to help authorities as a civic duty 
• If questioned about the thieves he suggests they must have killed Kallian as he assumes there’s no chance of getting the goblet now and doesn’t want them alive to testify against him

If threatened with exposure 

• Admits to agreeing to buy the Zamorian goblet 
• Claims he didn't know it was being sold illegally 
• Offers bribes to keep his name out of the investigation

Truth (nearly impossible to extract) 

• Hired the thieves to steal the Zamorian goblet for him 
• Planned to frame the thieves for any complications 
• Was waiting outside to collect the goblet when the police arrived 
• Has extensive gambling debts

Clues

Some highlights that could make for interesting gameplay moments are: 

• Environmental Changes: Temperature drops (noticed only by sensitive characters) and strange echoes could create atmosphere while also serving as hints at the presence of something uncanny. 
• Forensic Details: The unusual bruising pattern and (on closer inspection) the grooved impressions on Kallian's body show that he was strangled with a very thick cable. 
• Scholarly Connections: The Stygian hieroglyphs can be read by Promero (see below). 
• Trail of Evidence: The disturbances – a torn drape, an overturned vase – create a physical trail that show that Kallian was attacked in the chamber where the bowl is and staggered to the hallway where he died.

Physical Evidence and Clues

REH provided no map of Kallian's Temple. This is as good as any:

The body

The corpse is lying in a wide corridor, lighted by huge candles in niches along the walls. These walls are hung with black velvet tapestries, and between the tapestries hang shields and crossed weapons of fantastic make. Here and there stand figures of curious gods—images carved of stone or rare wood, or cast of bronze, iron or silver—mirrored in the gleaming black mahogany floor.

Kallian’s face is blackened, his eyes almost starting from his head, and his tongue lolls from his gaping mouth. His throat has been crushed to a pulp of purplish flesh. The head sags awry on splintered vertebrae. It appears he was strangled with a cable thicker than a man's arm, and with enough force to break his spine. On his thick fingers gems glitter – whoever killed him did not want his rings, nor his keys. The keys for the deadbolt (openable from either side of the main door) and the master lock (openable only from the outside) are on him, along with keys to other doors from the Temple and his home.

Near the body, an archway leads through into a chamber. Beside it a bust has been knocked off its stand. The polished floor is scratched and the hangings in the archway are pulled awry as if a clutching hand had grasped them for support. Characters may deduce that Kallian Publico was attacked in that room, broke away from his assailant, and ran out into the corridor where the murderer must have followed and finished him.

The storage room

The room where it seems Kallian met his murderer is more dimly lit than the corridor. Doors on each side give into other chambers, and the walls are lined with fantastic images, gods of strange lands and far peoples. 

In the centre of the room is the jar, a container of black stone nearly four feet in height and bulging to three feet in diameter at its broadest. The heavy carven lid lies on the floor, and beside it a hammer and a chisel.

“The copper bands that sealed the lid were cut with this chisel, and clumsily. There are marks where mis-strokes of the hammer dented the metal. We may assume that Kallian opened the bowl. Someone was hiding nearby—possibly in the hangings in the doorway. When Kallian had the bowl open, the murderer sprang on him—or he might have killed Kallian and opened the bowl himself.”

The bowl

It is sort of amphora-shaped sarcophagus, such as is found in ancient Stygian tombs. Its composition is something like copper, but much harder, and it is carved with hieroglyphs, like those found on the ancient menhirs in southern Stygia. The lid has been removed and it is empty.

Promero says: “It is a grisly thing. Too ancient to be holy. Whoever saw metal like it in a sane world? It seems less destructible than Aquilonian steel, yet see how it is corroded and eaten away in spots. Look at the bits of black mold clinging in the grooves of the hieroglyphs; they smell as earth smells from far below the surface. And look—here on the lid. I warned Kallian, but he would not believe me. It is a scaled serpent coiled with its tail in its mouth. It is the sign of Set, the Old Serpent, the god of the Stygians. This bowl is too old for a human world—it is a relic of the time when Set walked the earth in the form of a man. The race which sprang from his loins laid the bones of their kings away in such cases as these, perhaps.”

On the bottom of the bowl, if the characters think to look, a symbol is carved – not an ancient hieroglyph, but the recently incised mark of Thoth-Amon, the Stygian sorcerer, which Promero recognizes. He can also tell them that Thoth-Amon is known to be a worshipper of Set, and thus deadly foe of Kalanthes, the priest of Ibis.

The hall of statues

This chamber is close to the storage room on the other side of the main corridor. It is a tall room with a balustraded gallery, supported by marble pillars, running around the upper storey (like all the ground floor rooms, this is double-height). Steps at the end of the hall lead up to the gallery, where busts are displayed in niches along the walls.

“I've found the cable the murderer used,” one of the guardsmen announced. “A black cable, thicker than a man's arm, and curiously splotched.”

“Then where is it, fool?” exclaimed the Inquisitor.

“In the chamber adjoining this one. It’s wrapped about a pillar, where no doubt the murderer thought it would be safe from detection. I couldn't reach it.”

He led the way into a room filled with marble statuary, and pointed to a tall column, one of several which served a purpose more of ornament to set off the statues, than of utility. And then he halted and stared.

“It's gone!”

“It never was there!” snorted the Prefect.

“By Mitra, it was!” swore the guardsman. “Coiled about the pillar just above those carven leaves. It's so shadowy up there near the ceiling I couldn't tell much about it—but it was there.”

The hall of screens

This hall leads off the hall of statues, connecting both at ground level and off the upper tiers of the two rooms. Displayed here are ornate screens, both furnishings and iconostases. The centrepiece is a tall gilded screen in an ivory frame with a subtly worked tremblage effect to create matte panels in the shape of stylized palm fronds contrasting with the polished gold surface of the rest of the screen.

Careful examination reveals that several of the screens between the hall of statues and the large centrepiece screen have been jostled out of position, leaving scrapes on the polished floor. This seems to have happened quite recently.

The hall of vases

This is where the Zamorian diamond goblet is hidden that the thieves were sent to steal. It is in a concealed compartment in the floor under a copper idol of a Shemitish god. Retrieving it would take 2-3 minutes, so if the thieves can contrive to be alone in here for that long they could still complete their mission.

The hall of arms

On the upper floor, this houses a collection of shields, weapons and armour of antiquity. Most are ceremonial and would not last long in a fight. There are two extremely primeval-looking falchions labelled as used by warrior-priests of Ibis that count as magical shortswords (well, it was good enough for Beowulf) if the characters notice them and think to use them against the Child of Set.

Sending for backup

The Inquisitor could send for more policemen, but no patrols are within hearing of the alarm bell so he or she would need to send one or more of his/her own men to fetch them. The Inquisitor can summon dozens of 1st rank NPC police if necessary, but they will take thirty minutes to arrive – or twenty minutes if the charioteer drives one of the patrol back to fetch them.

Running the adventure

If the whole thing isn’t to be over in an hour, you need to play up first the investigative phase and then the search through the museum for the killer. The characters know that whoever or whatever killed Killian is still locked in there with them, so there’s opportunity for a tensely managed hunt as they have to use their limited manpower while deciding who to trust.

Of course, they could just go outside, lock the place up, and wait for reinforcements, but in that case the Child of Set will have found a way out (breaking a window if necessary) and be long gone by the time they venture back inside.

The Child of Set

This ancient Stygian horror appears as a massive serpent with a human head of unearthly beauty. Its scales shimmer with an oily iridescence in the torchlight. The creature moves with uncanny silence despite its size, able to flow through shadows and scale vertical surfaces with disturbing ease.

The Child of Set prefers to attack from ambush, using its stealth abilities to position itself above victims before dropping down to attack. It typically targets isolated individuals first, using its constriction to silence them quickly before others can respond.

If confronted by multiple opponents, it will attempt to use its hypnotic gaze on the most dangerous-looking foe before retreating into shadows to separate the group. It shows cunning intelligence in its tactics, extinguishing light sources when possible and creating confusion.

ATTACK 26                           Tail lash (d10, 6) and constriction and gaze (see below)
DEFENSE 17                         Armour Factor 4 (and see below)
MAGICAL DEFENSE 18
EVASION 8
STEALTH 27
PERCEPTION 17
Health Points 45                      Movement 12m (ground), 9m (climbing)
Rank Equivalent: 8th

Vision 

• Panoptical: Perfect vision in bright light, gloom or complete darkness. 
• Heat Sensitivity: Can detect living creatures by their body heat within 10m even through thin barriers 
• Mystical Awareness: Can sense magical auras and enchanted items within 5m

Special Abilities

Constriction: If the Child of Set hits with its primary attack, it automatically constricts its victim on subsequent rounds, inflicting 1d6+4 damage each round (no armour) without requiring an attack roll. If the victim can roll Reflexes or less on d20 when first hit, they keep their sword arm free and can fight back. It can constrict one victim at a time while continuing to lash with its tail at other opponents. The trapped victim must make a successful Strength check (Difficulty 14, +1/round trapped) to break free.

Silent Hunter: The Child of Set gains automatic surprise if a character failed to spot it before it attacks.

Wall Climber: Can scale any surface, including smooth stone and ceilings, without requiring a climbing check.

Unnatural Dread: The Child of Set gets a 2d10 fright attack on characters when first encountering them, which if successful causes the characters to be frozen in terror (unable to act) for 1-3 rounds.

Divine Resilience: The Child of Set takes only half damage from non-magical weapons. Magical weapons or those blessed by Ibis deal normal damage.

Beguiling Gaze: As an additional action, it can attempt to hypnotize one target within 5m using its supernal beauty. Roll 4d6 for the strength of hypnosis, deduct the target’s rank, and the Child of Set must roll that or less on d20. A hypnotised target is unable to attack the Child of Set for 1d4 rounds, though they can still defend.

Vulnerabilities 

• Very bright light (such as powerful magical illumination) reduces its Stealth score by 5 
• Ancient Stygian prayers to Ibis (rival of Set) can temporarily drive it off if properly recited

'The face had a cold classic beauty. Neither weakness nor mercy nor cruelty nor kindness, nor any other human emotion was in those features. They might have been the marble mask of a god, carved by a master hand, except for the unmistakable life in them—life cold and strange. The face was inhumanly beautiful. The full lips opened and spoke a single word in a rich vibrant tone that was like the golden chimes that ring in the jungle-lost temples of Khitai.'

Pre-gen player-characters

Players can pick their own names. Note that not all of the characters are able to read.

First Thief (6th rank assassin)

Strength 8  Reflexes 13  Intelligence 13  Psychic Talent 15  Looks 11

ATTACK 17                      Shortsword (d8+1,3) and six throwing spikes (d2+1,2)
DEFENSE 11                    Armour Factor 1
MAGICAL DEFENSE 9
EVASION 7
STEALTH 23
PERCEPTION 13
Health Points 14

You’ve worked for Lord Aztrias before. He’s no worse than most nobles – arrogant, preening, capricious, but he pays well for the items you steal for him. You have never worked with tonight’s partner before, but Aztrias thinks that the copper idol of Bel that sits over the compartment holding the Zamorian diamond goblet may be difficult for you to move on your own. (You are able to read and write.)

Second Thief (6th rank assassin)

Strength 13  Reflexes 13  Intelligence 13  Psychic Talent 8  Looks 17

ATTACK 19                        Shortsword (d8+1,3) and sling (d6,3)
DEFENSE 11                      Armour Factor 1
MAGICAL DEFENSE 7
EVASION 7
STEALTH 23
PERCEPTION 13
Health Points 12

You only recently arrived in Numalia and you don’t know your employer, Lord Aztrias, very well. Come to that, you never met your colleague on tonight’s exploit until today, though they seem quite thick with Aztrias. Your job is to get a Zamorian diamond goblet, concealed in a niche under a copper idol of Bel, the Shemitish god of thieves. Well, that’s appropriate enough. (You are able to read and write.)

First Watchman (5th rank “knight”)

Strength 14  Reflexes 6  Intelligence 9  Psychic Talent 15  Looks 14

ATTACK 18                        Shortsword (d8,3) and crossbow (d10,4)
DEFENSE 10                      Armour Factor 2
MAGICAL DEFENSE 8
EVASION 4
STEALTH 14
PERCEPTION 8
Health Points 17

Lotrs of people hate Kallian Publico, and he can be a right bastard. You’ve seen that with your own eyes. He’ll ruin a man’s business, turn his family into the street, have a careless slave whipped, and then sit down to a lavish banquet. On the other hand, he must have a soft spot for you as he’s always treated you more than fairly. And where would you get a better job than patrolling the outside of his “Temple of curiosities” from dusk till dawn? No one’s going to steal from there, anyway -- even if they could get in there are police patrols every hour or so. (You are illiterate.)

Second Watchman (5th rank “knight”)

Strength 9  Reflexes 14  Intelligence 15  Psychic Talent 12  Looks 7

ATTACK 17                        Shortsword (d8,3) and crossbow (d10,4)
DEFENSE 12                      Armour Factor 2
MAGICAL DEFENSE 7
EVASION 6
STEALTH 14
PERCEPTION 8
Health Points 16

You haven’t had this job long. Guarding a building full of useless art and relics, what a drag. Oh well, you’ve had worse. A pity your colleague hasn’t got more interesting conversation. A lifer for sure, unlike you – you’ll just earn a bit in this job and move on. You didn’t even think it was going to be eventful till you tried the main door tonight and found the main lock open. So you used your key to the deadbolt and went inside to investigate. Maybe tonight will be less boring than most. (You can read and write.)

Charioteer (6th rank barbarian)

Strength 16  Reflexes 14  Intelligence 10  Psychic Talent 9  Looks 9

ATTACK 21                        Mace (d6+1,5)
DEFENSE 13                      Armour Factor 0
MAGICAL DEFENSE 8
EVASION 7
STEALTH 14
PERCEPTION 8
Health Points 20

Kallian Publico is your master. Many’s the time you’ve wished him dead, the fat pig – but as a slave you’re lucky to have the prestigious post of a charioteer. If anything happens to Kallian you might be sold to the mines. Even if you’re just placed in another household, you’d need to work your way up from scratch. Unless… if you could impress a high official or noble, it’s possible you could find a plum role in their retinue of servants. Probably a better bet than running away – the Nemedian authorities treat runaways to a brutal death. (You cannot read or write.)

Inquisitor (5th rank mystic)

Strength 11  Reflexes 9  Intelligence 17  Psychic Talent 10  Looks 10

ATTACK 15                          Sword (d8,4)
DEFENSE 9                          Armour Factor 4 (+1 ringmail)
MAGICAL ATTACK 19
MAGICAL DEFENSE 9
EVASION 4
STEALTH 12 (adjusted for ringmail)
PERCEPTION 9
Health Points 11

You didn’t get to be Chief of the Inquisitorial Council of Numalia, and consequently wield unlimited authority over the city police force, by jumping to conclusions. Every story looks different from another angle, so you like to take your time and sift the clues. Similarly you do not reveal your psychic powers unless absolutely necessary. Let people believe that devils whisper secrets to you, or that you have some piercing insight into others’ souls. Your intelligence is a power in its on right, so that you only use your psychic gifts as a last resort. (You are literate, of course, and so can read all the labels on exhibits in the Temple.)

6 NPC guardsmen (1st rank "knights")

ATTACK 13                          Sword (d8,4) 
DEFENSE 7                          Armour Factor 2
MAGICAL DEFENSE 3
EVASION 4
STEALTH 13
PERCEPTION 5
Health Points 11                    Each has: lantern, manacles, dagger (d4,3);
                                               one guardsman also has a bow (d6,4)

Final notes

Just so you know, I was tempted to title this post "Irritable Bowl Syndrome", but the search engines wouldn't have been able to do anything with that. Having extracted Conan from the adventure, a few words about him might be appropriate. I favour Barry Windsor-Smith's depiction of him from 1970s Marvel comics -- muscled, but not ridiculously so; the guy's a fighter, not a bodybuilder. I did take a look at some more recent Dark Horse comics, but although Conan had regained normal proportions he'd come over all emo. "Two-Gun" would have had some things to say about that.

I've used Dragon Warriors for this conversion because it's the game's 40th anniversary, but there are plenty of other options. GURPS Conan would be my go-to choice, not least for the fine Ditko-inspired artwork by Butch Burcham and because it contains ready-made stats for the Child of Set (called a Naga in the book). There's also Conan: The Roleplaying Game, which has contributions by many of the team responsible for 2nd edition DW, Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, and the forthcoming Conan: The Hyborian Age.

If you stick with DW, you might want to move the adventure from the Hyborian Age to Legend. A logical location would be one of the cities of the New Selentine Empire. It fits, and you won't have to change the names too much. Set and Ibis won't feature, but the bowl has been sent from Cardinal Scriberi Nascosto in Selentium to Great Schema Kalanthes in Tamor, rivalries across the schism of the Church being much more heartfelt than between wholly different religions. Scriberi, a noted collector, obtained the bowl via trading agents in Amsa'im. The creature in the bowl is consecrated to the Kaikuhuran serpent god Aphoph, though that's irrelevant to Scriberi; he's simply been assured that opening the bowl will release a curse of some kind.

The world of Dragon Warriors

The Dragon Warriors RPG is set in a place called Legend*. But what is the world of Legend like? That was a question a new player in our campaign posed recently. One of the veteran gamers said, ‘All you need is to read the Vance short story “Liane the Wayfarer” and you have the whole thing – the humour, the vibe, the chances of success.’ That surprised me, flattering though the comparison is, as the Legend in my head (which is no more valid than any other, of course) is utterly unlike the Dying Earth. Blood Sword features a higher fantasy variant of DW's Legend, but it still doesn't come close to the flamboyantly fantastical world of Mazirian, Rhialto, Cugel and co. Much as I love Vance’s work, even the relatively restrained Lyonesse** is much more magic-drenched than most of Legend.

Pressed to come up with some sources to convey the flavour of Legend to a newcomer, I started out with movies like The Seventh Seal (Bergman), Dragon’s Return (Grečner), The Hour of the Pig (Megahey), and The Black Death (Smith). None of those looks exactly like Legend but there are elements I recognize. Richard Carpenter's Robin of Sherwood actively inspired me when writing DW, to the extent that Clannad’s ‘The Hooded Man’ was part of our Legend gaming soundtrack in the ‘80s. The show depicted the level of magic that I think people in Legend would believe in, as do Dragonslayer (Robbins) and The Northman (Eggers).

Not quite like Legend but still worth plundering for ideas are Hero (Platts-Mills), which is especially good for the malice and craftiness of the fays, Jabberwocky (Gilliam) for all the mud and shit, Flesh & Blood (Verhoeven) which is set three centuries too late for Legend but reminds us that it’s a time when for many life is nasty, brutish and short, and a claymation film called H (Simpson) to which Ian Livingstone introduced me and which is great for the hallucinatory madness of medieval religion and superstition; it's where the image at the top of the post comes from.

Further out still are a few movies I feel share some common ancestors with Legend. Excalibur (Boorman) and The Singing Ringing Tree (Stefani) are both absolutely shot through with epic fantasy but with a subtle core of folklore. Every time a DW mystic works their magic, you feel the Dragon’s tail give a twitch. Viy (Yershov & Kropachyov) is brimming with febrile fantasy and gloriously rough and dreamlike '60s special effects. I like King Lear (Brook) and Macbeth (Polanski) for flavour. And, surprising though it is to say it, Pillars of the Earth (Mimica-Gezzan) has something to offer to the Legend referee even if it’s only Ian McShane’s performance.

That’s movies. In other media I recommend Kingdom Come: Deliverance (Warhorse Studios) and Crécy (Ellis), both a century or two too late to really reflect Legend. And when it comes to novels, the Legend take on elves was definitely influenced by Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword and Michael Moorcock’s Silver Hand trilogy. They swiped it all from Scandinavian and Celtic myth, of course.

Talking of Celtic myth brings me at long last to the main point of this month’s post, which is to tell you about David H Keller’s Tales From Cornwall. Some of these were serialized in Weird Tales in 1929-1930 and again in the 1970s by Robert ‘Doc’ Lowndes in his Magazine of Horror, which is where I came across them. They’re in the genre of new folktales, establishing a fantasy history for Keller’s own Cornish ancestors. Here’s a taste:

The stories are slight, at times not quite making sense (they’re very authentically like a lot of Celtic myths in that way), but what I like are the atmosphere and the tone, especially in the Cecil stories that start with ‘The Battle of the Toads’. There’s a subtlety missing from most pulp fantasy too. At a time when most heroines have to be Bêlit the she-pirate, carousing and mixing it up just like the men, Keller’s strong women are clever enough to achieve their goals despite the constraints put on them by their society.

We don’t have the last five stories. If anyone happens to have access to Syracuse University library, they could pop in and read them, but it seems unlikely that they’ll get into wider circulation until at least 2036 (when Dr Keller’s work enters public domain). I just hope Syracuse University keeps the manuscript safe till then.

Still, we have the first ten stories and in them there’s a little bit of the DNA of Legend. Try them -- you’ll find that for century-old yarns they are surprisingly fresh in places, and despite lashings of fantasy it feels like they’re still on the ‘realist’ edge of that long misty border into Elfland.***

*But not by its inhabitants. That is, Legend is a non-diegetic term for the setting. If you ask a DW character they'll call it "the world" or "the middle world".

**There's a Lyonesse RPG of which I happen to be one of the writers.

***This entire post is an abbreviated version of one from my Patreon page. Come and join the fun, even if its only as a free member, and get the complete article and a lot more besides.

How to make things stranger

This article originally appeared on my Patreon page for 5 January 2022 -- there with a little extra content -- and I'm reprising it here in hopes of enticing a few more of you to come and back me. 

“The chimera was beginning to bore people. Rather than imagining it they turned it into something else. As a beast it was too incoherent; the lion, the goat and the snake do not readily make up a single animal.”

Borges there, writing in The Book of Imaginary Beings, and he’s dead right. I never quite embraced the Greek myths as a kid because of all those monsters with the forelimbs of animal X and the hindquarters of animal Y. Even as a kid I thought they should have tried harder. The Norse myths came steeped in really dark and dreamlike elements, which I loved and that’s probably why Legend turned out the way it did.

This came up in a recent episode of The Good Friends of Jackson Elias, my second favourite fantasy gaming podcast. The chaps were talking about Robert E Howard’s short story “The Tower of the Elephant”, and I got to thinking about how almost every illustration of Yag-Kosha just plonks an elephant’s head onto a man’s body. You can almost hear the scratch of the pen as the artist carefully copied a picture from a zoology book.

But here’s how Yag-Kosha is described in the story:

“Conan stared at the wide flaring ears, the curling proboscis, on either side of which stood white tusks tipped with round golden balls. [...] This then, was the reason for the name, the Tower of the Elephant, for the head of the thing was much like that of the beasts described by the Shemitish wanderer.”

Yag-Kosha is an extraterrestrial. While REH was no doubt inspired by the mythology of Ganesha, I think he had something stranger and more original in mind. A body with two arms and two legs, and head that has protuberant teeth or horns and a long, prehensile snout – of course to Conan it looks like an elephant-headed man, but that’s no excuse for artists to be so literal.

One of the worst offenders is the illustration by J M Wilcox from the March 1933 edition of Weird Tales:

No better is Ernie Chan’s depiction from The Savage Sword of Conan. Somewhere there’s a photo of an elephant’s head that looks exactly like this:

Likewise this uninspired mix-n-match. The artist evidently just couldn't be bothered:

On the other hand, Cary Nord put some real thought into his version (the header for this post). And here’s a properly alien one I found online (artist unknown):

The takeaway is that we all find our inspiration in the familiar, but when transmuting that lead into fantasy gold it pays off to hide your sources. And, along with that, always to look for a new angle on familiar material. For instance, vampires that seem to have been whisked off the set of a Hammer horror movie will probably not give your players a genuine shudder, but investing a little work in dirtying them up, or adding an outré spin on the concept, can yield a very memorable encounter.

Incidentally Scott is right on the money about both Conan’s physique and the need for realism to ground fantasy fiction -- but those are subjects for another post.

Weird indeed

If you were interested in recent posts (here and here) on AI artwork, I've been tinkering with it to complete my Mirabilis comic book and you can also hop over to the Wrong blog for some unsettling machine-made images in the tradition of Weird Tales. Which is a sort of segue into tomorrow's post. See you then.

A madeleine cake moment

 

When I was a teenager discovering the works of H P Lovecraft, Robert E Howard, August Derleth and all those old boys, I became obsessed with the dream of collecting Weird Tales (it had to be a complete set, obviously; dreams cost nothing) which then seemed about as hoarily remote as an Akkadian epic on unearthed pottery fragments.

Weird Tales in fact folded only a few years before I was born. Those classic authors who now seemed so far off that they brushed shoulders with Homer? They died less than four decades before I read them. Derleth in fact was still batting.

Four decades. To a teen that's like the lifecycle of Asimov's Foundation, so it was with a slight shock that I realized it's been just as long since Jamie and I first got drawn into the orbit of White Dwarf and Games Workshop. For a while Jamie was writing The Dice Men, a book about that era, for Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson. (I think he's off the project now, but you can still read an excerpt by him on the crowdfunding page till Unbound remember to delete it.)

I'm back on the Grognard Files this month talking about those far-off days. All the secrets, all the dreams. As Dirk remarks on the podcast, it's basically Games Workshop: the rock & roll years.

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!

"The only flaw in this stuff is R.E.H.'s incurable tendency to devise names too closely resembling actual names of ancient history -- names which, for us, have a very different set of associations. In many cases he does this designedly- on the theory that familiar names descend from the fabulous realms he describes -- but such a design is invalidated by the fact that we clearly know the etymology of many of the historic terms, hence cannot accept the pedigree he suggests. E. Hoffman Price and I have both argued with Two-Gun on this point, but we make no headway whatsoever. The only thing to do is to accept the nomenclature as he gives it, wink at the weak spots, and be damned thankful that we can get such vivid artificial legendry."

That's Lovecraft himself, sui generis creator of an entire mythology, talking in a 1935 letter to my old penpal Donald Wollheim about the work of Robert E Howard (specifically, his invented history of "The Hyborian Age").

I have to agree with HPL. Fantasy novels full of names culled from the author's vague memory of bits of history and myth are the main reason I don't read much fantasy. We can allow Howard to get away with it, as HPL did, because, firstly, he was an exceptional writer and, secondly, he did at least understand the derivation of the names he was using. He would put Aesir in a northern clime, have swarthy barbarian mercenaries waiting for their pay outside the walls of Carthage, and so on. It helped to paint a picture. It was a conscious choice by the writer, it wasn't laziness or ignorance.

But most fantasy writers are not blessed with Bob Howard's vivid imagination or natural storyteller's instincts, and cities called Vishnu in a medieval-ish Western-y setting just come across as witless. Likewise confusing the function and even gender of historical Greek or Roman gods - just make up your own, for Zeus's sake.

Lovecraft was a man who stuck to his guns even more than Two-Gun. Whatever the cost (and it seems to have been huge, in terms of health, finances and happiness) he steered a straight course by the principles of his craft. In his lifetime he enjoyed nothing like Howard's popularity among the readers of Weird Tales, despite the proselytizing efforts of a small and devoted band of followers.

But look, here we are seventy-five years later and the Cthulhu Mythos is one of the great modern IPs. I'm not sure Guillermo del Toro and Mike Mignola would have careers without it. (That's a joke, by the way, but only just.) The reason it has such power is because it is a pure and complete sub-creation, as Tolkien called it. When Lovecraft needed a name for an invented god, he didn't do the easy thing and reach for Bulfinch's.

The lesson, I guess, is that if you want to create great fantasy (and fantasy, when it is done well, can be great indeed) then take the path less travelled. Dig down into your own imagination. Invent places we've never seen outside of dreams and give them names that resonate on a deeper level than just "Kishapur" or "Ragnarberg". You may die a pauper's death, but your existence will have brought to the world something of true and incomparable value: originality.

Agreeably scary

It's almost Halloween, and if you're stoking up the fire (or even just upping the brightness on your PC's fireplace screensaver) you may be casting around for delicious fictive chills to run a teasing finger of fright along your spine.

Fans of John Whitbourn's classic Binscombe Tales stories will know that few experiences can be quite so disturbing and at the same time strangely comforting as dropping in at the Duke of Argyll in the company of Mr Oakley, our hapless narrator, and the mysterious Mr Disvan. It's what autumn, imagination, log fires and real ale were created for.

The Binscombe Tales are hard to describe. Possessed of great human warmth and yet often coldly heartless. Sometimes scary but just as often more in the way of startling and thought-provoking. Science fictional except where they're fabulous, fantastic, whimsical, spooky or simply bizarre. Thrilling yet often delightfully leisurely. Terrifying or mind-bending - but always funny with it.

In short, they're the very best of English weird fiction, and if you haven't encountered them yet then you're missing a treat. Fortunately, Jamie and I think ahead so that stuff like the equinox, tax demands and the release of Witcher sequels don't take us by surprise, and this year we had the foresight to prepare an omnibus paperback edition of the complete Binscombe Tales from our Spark Furnace imprint.

Herein you will learn about: the man who spent a lifetime waiting for a bus; the suburban kitchen cupboard that is a gateway to another world; the whispering voices that force a nightclub owner to keep the music turned up loud; the incredible reminiscences of an antique writing desk; and all about the mythic threat lurking under Binscombe's electricity substation. I have previously blogged about the first of those stories, which gave me an authentic shudder as John read it out at a ghost story evening chez Morris, and if you want to try "Waiting for a Bus" then it's available as a free PDF - but only until Halloween.

As well as all twenty-six tales, many of which have garnered awards such as the Year's Best Fantasy, Binscombe Tales: The Complete Series includes a long essay by John Whitbourn in which he reveals that oft-asked authorial secret - to wit, where he gets his ideas from. The whole book is 660 pages so there's no danger of running out of gruesome entertainment before the days start getting longer. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's the perfect present for those long dark evenings ahead.

Strange tales from another world

A cross-post from the Mirabilis blog today which is likely to be of interest to only a few Fabled Lands readers, I guess, but if you occasionally yearn for something else to while away your leisure hours other than blasting shotgun holes in waves of marauding zombies, here's something completely different...

I've blogged before about A J Alan, radio raconteur of '20s and '30s Britain. Think of an English Rod Serling, only on the wireless instead of the TV and with considerably less formulaic a cast to his storytelling.

That era was the Burgess Shale of broadcasting, when interesting ideas and a willingness to experiment trumped such things beloved of marketing as genre, ratings and tribally narrow tastes. A J Alan's tales of the odd, the quirky, the (mildly) racy and the (sometimes) supernatural were definitely perfect for long winter evenings by the fireside with tendrils of grimy London fog pressing up against the window panes. Not "the Twilight Zone" so much as "the Velvet Hour" - which, I know, some say is dawn, not dusk, but I think of it as the time when cocktails may be respectably mixed and drunk and one might start to think about dressing for dinner - at least, in the world that Mr Alan and his listeners inhabited.

I mention this now because Spark Furnace Books have just published a paperback edition of But That's A Detail, my collection of A J Alan stories. So if you want something different, and really rather good, I'd say it's an absolute snip at £3.99.

Drenched in blood

This may be of interest only to the most ardent gamebook collectors or lovers of trivia (hmm, possibly two completely overlapping sets...) but, after all, what's a blog for if not to show off the most obscure of curiosities?

These were the original covers for the Blood Sword gamebooks, which later became the basis for my kids' fantasy series The Chronicles of the Magi. There was a general feeling at the publisher, and Oliver and I agreed, that these covers just didn't have "it". New paintings were duly commissioned. We weren't complaining. It was nice to know our publisher cared.

My only regret: when I had finally been persuaded that the series should be called Blood Sword, I said, "Okay, but what I'd really, really hate is if the logo has blood dripping off it." You see, in the '70s there had been a great little periodical called The Magazine of Horror, which reprinted stories from Weird Tales and other pulps of the '30s and '40s, and the editor, Robert A W Lowndes, and most of his readers were forever lamenting MOH's crass, gore-drenched masthead. Thankfully for Lowndes, he finally managed to get his art director to see sense.

When the new Blood Sword covers arrived, the art director had added a new logo. With, of course, lashings of bright red blood. Arrrrrgh.