Showing posts with label D&D. Show all posts
Showing posts with label D&D. Show all posts

Thursday, July 15, 2021

Tower of Ornelia in Savage Realms Monthly #5.

 My story Tower of Ornelia, is included in the latest Savage Realms Monthly:


Savage Realms Monthly: June 2021: A collection of dark fantasy sword and sorcery short adventure stories (Savage Realms Monthly Dark Fantasy Sword and Sorcery Adventure Magazine Book 5)





by Amazon.com Services LLC
Learn more: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099FJZLNX/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_NR1R5XC9265186H6GK0J


Wednesday, January 27, 2021

The Embrace of Masa-Mangtow

 

What follows is a fragment of an account of a sea voyage by Hippias of Syracuse. It currently exists only as a Latin translation of an older Greek source. 

I.

Aranthur, one of the various sea-warlords who have run roughshod across the world of late, had carved himself a small kingdom among the lands to the west. These included a chain of islands that lay beyond and south of Gades. Unable to explore these islands himself, he procured the services of the famed explorer and cartographer, Erastus of Argos. Erastus in turn called upon me, Hippias of Syracuse, to undertake the voyage with him. Holding Erastus in high esteem as a mentor, and hungering to venture once more to unknown regions, I accepted his invitation.

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Sigyn of Kindle





Get your e-book here.

I've rewritten Sigyn out of the Hyborian  Age and into a quasi-historical bronze age. Reaching the pinnacle of vanity, I've self published with Kindle. At least it's cheap.

Saturday, August 17, 2019

The Matrix of Khouzouhept


I
  Kaa-Vulth, deposed Emperor of Tazzozz, grinned as he surveyed the surreal vista laid out in the bowl-shaped valley beneath him.

Thursday, May 23, 2019

A Hiss from the Mound


PROLOGUE

 

   Kugar-Gaha slithered naked in his own blood to the obscene clay altar centered in the clearing he and his followers had hacked for the forest only a few moons agone. Without acknowledging his entrails spilling wetly from the wide gash in his belly, he turned to face his hulking, wolfhide-clad attacker.

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Cthulhu Mythos Obscurities

In the story "The Shadow out of Time" H.P. Lovecraft mentions "a general of the great-headed brown people who held South Africa in B.C. 50,000" as one the Yithian's mental abductees.
Perhaps HPL's inspiration for this was Boskop Man aka Homo Capensis, a separate species of ancient humans theorized to have a much greater brain capacity based on some big skulls found in South Africa in 1913 (the idea has since been discredited). Was HPL imagining them in his mythos as a prehistoric empire since they had a general smart enough to get mind switched with a Yithian cone creature?

Not much online about Boskop Man since it's now considered just some unusually big skulls and not a separate race of early man but here's an image and a couple of articles.

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Notes on Dagon and the Deep Ones

The first Deep Ones were created by the  Antarctic Elder Things millions of years ago as a byproduct of immortality experiments on terrestrial lifeforms, most were destroyed  but some escaped into the wild and multiplied. This explains the Deep Ones unnatural longevity and their genetically programmed aversion to the Elder Sign.
Dagon and Hydra were part of this "first batch" and so they are tens of millions of years old, huge, vastly intelligent, and have who knows what kinds of mutations. There may be others of the "first batch" in suspended animation in the undersea ruins of Elder Thing cities.
Deep Ones breed among themselves but it rarely produces viable offspring (otherwise the ocean would be teeming with immortal Deep Ones). Due to their unnatural nature they can breed with many other forms of life often producing the strange oceanic horrors of legend but their preferred breeding stock has always been humans because the offspring is intelligent and generally transforms into something very similar to to a pure Deep One. In eons past Deep Ones bred with various primitive hominids but the results were not acceptable to their ideas of racial aesthetics and generally destroyed, that said there are probably remote clans of apelike Deep Ones still out there somewhere.

Shortly after their escape from the Elder Things, Dagon and the other first batch Deep Ones fled to the area around sunken Rlyeh because the Elder Things avoided it, feral Shoggoths also dwelt in the area for the same reason and so an alliance was formed, over time the Deep Ones learned of the shoggoths vulnerability to hypnotic suggestion and began to exploit it. The shoggoths are not complete slaves to the Deep Ones but they generally are easily manipulated by hypnotic suggestions and a reverence for Dagon.
Dagon, the Deep Ones, and their allied shoggoths worship Cthulhu. Although Cthulhu's telepathic emanations are blocked by water being in close proximity to Cthulhu's tomb and the surrounding monuments holding theGreat Old Ones mental emanations allowed Dagon to make mental contact with him on some level. During the brief times when Rlyeh was temporarily thrust above the water Dagon spoke directly to his master gaining even more occult knowledge and becoming more devoted.
Over time the Elder Things died out and the Deep Ones could safely leave the Rlyeh "reservation" and they established cities based on the ruins of many of the Elder Thing cities. But Rlyeh is a holy place to the Deep Ones and they often make pilgrimages to the sunken city hoping to sense the presence of their lord and master.

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Ruminations of a Bronze Age Gamer part 1

Whenever I look at this box art I want to be that guy who's taking a reading with the scanner thing, I'm betting he's the only one who has a fucking clue.