Swords & Stitchery

I saw a city in a lonely land:Foursquare, it fronted upon gulfs of fire;Behind, the night of Erebus hung entire;And deserts gloomed or glimmered on each hand.The City of the Titans  (1915) by Clark Ashton SmithLo did the heavens shake & mysterious hellish forces were unleashed beyond the Boreas winds. The very gods themselves perished in battles beyond the ken of human knowledge. They're Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

O Life, thou harlot who beguilest all!Beautiful in thy house, the golden world.Abidest thou, where Powers pinion-furledAnd flying Splendors follow to thy call.Innumerous like the stars or like the dust,Nations and monarchs were thy thralls of yore:Unto the grave's old womb forevermoreHast thou betrayed the passion and the lust.Fair as the moon of summer is thy face,And mystical with cloudiness Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Why is the release of  S1-4 Realms of Horror by Gary Gygax, &  Lawrence Schick significant by Wizbros erm Wizards of the Coast?! Well, now the wilds of the RPG market place are flooded with all kinds of OSR product.But one of the only places to get such a collector's item was from Ebay at horrid prices. Now at least the PDF is available for a collection of some of the classic modules of AD&D Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Time & again I see reminders today that the Kickstarter for Jeffrey Talanian's Hyperborea Otherworldly Tales modules is winding down with only four days to go. So if you wanna get in on the action then by all means dive into that Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea rpg second rpg kickstarter goodness edition action. These various blog posts & whatnot don't actually get into the Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

If there is one monster that I love to use as a cross point in my games its trolls from Dungeons & Dragons, this goes all the way back to original Dungeons & Dragons. For me 'the troll' as monster are the perfect cross point  between the Arthurian legends & Swords & Sorcery style games.Maybe because I read Three Hearts & Three Lions at an early age along with many of the Arthurian romances Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Well last night I was speaking with Steve & we began speaking about our trial by fire through the 'S' series of modules for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The 'S' series stands for special and these were some of the most memorable of the adventures we played;"other adventures in the S series include S1 Tomb of Horrors, S2 White Plume Mountain, and S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth." But it was 'Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

There are things that survive the killing of a major undead horror such as a vampire especially around Christmas time. The true nature of these horrors is revealed in this world & the alien negative material plane. Parasites, alien things, and worse that live within the bodies of the lords of the undead reveal themselves. PC's should be aware of task that they take on for themselves when one of Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

The two barbarian warriors crossed the wilderness as well as the  wastelands just to get to these strange & sick looking bio mechanical towers that hovered over them. They hurt the eyes of the warriors just to look upon.'I was expecting more Crum, the architectural aesthetic for those towers is so two thousand years ago.''Look we need his help if we're going to get to star port temple, you knewNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

I've been doing a lot of rereading of the Adventurer, Conqueror, King rpg over the last couple of days. And its gonna be a couple of days before I get back to DM Steve's game again. As a long haul trucker he's got a full schedule & lots going on. But I've been thinking about Kort'thalis Publishing's mega dungeon Cha'alt by Venger Satanis. Now this seems like an unlikely pairing but its Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

The Outer Void allows many spirits to bridge the shores of reality. They travel on the Winds of Darkness moving across the bows & breaks of the currents of the Astral to come to foreign shores. These spirits often take over corpses of warriors, strange wanderers, & the fallen. These spirits count as wights or even minor demons, they have often been in the void for centuries. Spirits Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

There are echoes of ancient lost souls & civilizations that exist on the fringes of the world, places that no man can or should visit but adventurers & outlaws frequently trespass. These are alien places left over from from things & beings who have passed beyond the turn of the wheel. These beings have lost themselves to the darkness of time. Those who dally with such sites risk the anger of Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Its eleven thirty  in the morning & over the weekend the latest OSR stuff is now dying as people get back to work.This was one of the successor reprint pulp magazines to the original runs. There were a number of these magazines after the original pulps houses closed down or evolved into animals on the wilds of the news stands. Many of these issues had a bit of the HP Lovecraft circle of writersNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

So I've been thinking about running PC's through some basic adventures for Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea but I need some old school options to get the player's juices going. Fortunately I've got several real world friends who have run several player groups through classic TSR era adventures and modules.  I've been talking with some folks in the real world about Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

" A2: Secret of the Slavers Stockade: The heroes  battle against the slavers continues! You and your fellow adventurers have defeated the slavers of Highport, but you have learned of the existence of another slaver stronghold, and you have decided to continue the attack. But beware! Only the most fearless of adventurers could challenge the slavers on their own ground, and live to tell of it!Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Deep in the heart of certain Hyperborean ruins are ancient spirits of malevolent intent and dangerous aspect. These horrors are created from those who sucked down the fumes of the black lotus that grew from the corpse farms of Atlantis. These spirits are part of the family of specters created not through violence but the corpse born curse of the Black Lotus corpse flowers. They Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

"The heroes have entered the dungeons & ruins of The  Temple of Elemental Evil. Great deeds of valor & heroism were accomplished, & riches were taken from the belly of the beast. The greatest evil that Greyhawk has known has been vanquished back to the darkness of the Underworld & Abyss! ""The horror & depravity has ended. Now the PC's can retire to a life of barbarian pleasure & Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

"Thousands of humanoid tribes of orcs, ill spawned things of chaos have come from out of the hills! They've laid waste to hundreds of villages, farms, & set fire to ancient groves. There are whispers of demons, wizards, & worse commanding them! But the worst of it was when the raiders came! "Lets face facts war breeds opportunity & the barbarian tribes of Greyhawk are not going to sitNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

What foul forces have been unleashed upon Greyhawk from a source of evil fouler then the imaginations of man? Where does the corruption of chaos & depravity come from? Whose let loose  foul secrets that man was not mean to know come from? Today we'll take a look in this quick interlude!  Alright I got an email asking me what could possibly shatter the time/space continuum of Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

"Once far from any important activity, the Village of Hommlet became embroiled in the struggle between gods and demons when the Temple of Elemental Evil arose but a few leagues away. Luckily for its inhabitants, the Temple and its evil hordes were destroyed a decade ago, but Hommlet still suffers from incursions of bandits and strange monsters." Grab your sword, your shield Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Note that a couple of days ago I did a post on using Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Gary Gygax's Greyhawk . Anyhow back in 2017 I ran a hypothetical Adventurer, Conqeuror, King campaign using The Heroic Fantasy  Handbook from Adventurer, Conqeuror, King Kickstarter. Here's the first of a series of notes from that timeSo a couple of days ago I Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0