Got a special delivery the other day!
Our NIGHT SHIFT Twilight's Queen mead from Apis mead and wine is in.
I have three bottles and I am saving them for Halloween night. Certainly a great night for it!
You can order yours from Vino Shipper.
Saturday, October 15, 2022
100 Days of Halloween: The Baleful Coven (5E)
.jpg "The Baleful Coven (5E)")
Print and PDF. 24 pages. Color cover and interior art.
For five to seven characters of 6th to 7th level.
It is described as bringing standard fantasy characters into contact with threats of the "Far East." Which is cool, to be honest. Not sure if it will fit into my game just yet, but I like the promise of it so far. It does have one of my favorite archetypes, the white-haired witch, and there is a coven made up of a hag and two warlocks.
I am going to pause here to note that this was originally a Pathfinder adventure. I bought the PDF of it a while back but I now notice it is gone from both DriveThru's and Paizo's websites. I mention this because I feel some of the fingerprints of Pathfinder, and in particular how they handled witches and hags, can be seen in the 5e version here. For example, while a warlock here, Masami Onishi is very much a "White Haired Witch" from Pathfinder. This is not a complaint mind you. Save in only I wish the Pathfinder version was still available. Granted it was released 10 years ago.
The bulk of the adventure takes place on the demi-plane of The Dream of Vengeful Reckoning. Ok, I do rather like that too. The adventure then becomes a search for how to leave this demi-plane. Naturally defeating this coven of "witches" is one of the ways to do it.
The adventure is actually rather well put together and I can see it being run over a long afternoon-evening or a could of smaller sessions. This is exactly what it was designed for. There are memorable NPCs which is the real hook for me.
So yeah a fun adventure with some great ideas.
Use with my War of the Witch Queens
There is a solid idea here, but not the one I think Legendary Games wants me to hook into. I mentioned the NPCs were memorable, and they are interesting, but you know what would be better? If I took three witches from three different adventures the characters had "defeated" and used them. I have seen enough movies this month where witches come back to some form of life to get vengeance on those who killed them. Set them up into a demi-plane, or for my purposes, a Liminal Plane, where the dead witches can get their vengeance on the still-living PCs.
This is for 6th to 7th level so it would need to be part of an earlier adventure. My top choices right now are Trilena (Rahasia), Llorona (The Witch of the Tarriswoods), Kyleth (Saga of the Witch Queen), and Morfa (The Witch Queen of Cair Urnahc). I just need to pick three. Though Morfa and Trilena have both come back from the dead once already. I do admit that Kyleth on the top of the list to replace Masami Onishi. While I know a couple are supposed to be hags I feel that is a hold-over from the Pathfinder adventure where only witches with hags can make covens. Also no need for me to add more winter witches, my cup is over flowing with them!
But what good is killing a villain if you can't bring them back from the dead to terrorize your players? I mean characters. Yeah. Characters.
Friday, October 14, 2022
October Horror Movie Challenge: Night of The Necromancers
.png "The Necromancer (2018)")
The Necromancer (2018)
A group of British soldiers gathers after a particularly bloody battle where they learn they are being sent to Waterloo where they will certainly be killed. So they all decide to become deserters and leave for England. To do so they have to cross into Germany and through the BlackForest.
Along the way the tensions rise and get higher as they all begin to think about what they had left behind in England. Logan for example thinks about his wife on his estate. As they move through the forest though Logan begins to hear voices and sometimes the voices sound like his wife. While searching he sees a naked woman with horns running through the forest. He follows her but can't find her.
They stumble on another British soldier who appears to be shell-shocked. Unsure what to do with him they take him along. Deeper in Logan hears the woman more. We learn in flashbacks that he argued with his wife before leaving. He accused her of cheating on him with another man. As he gets deeper and deeper into the forest he sees more and more of this mystery woman. As we learn more about Logan and how he beat and eventually killed his wife before he left for war. He encounters the woman who calls herself a "dark elf" or a "Moriquendi" (ok more on that later). She convinces him to eat berries, which are really stones, and this kills him. We soon see two other dark elves who also tempt the other men, but they don't get the same level of detail that Logan did. But basically, all of them have dark secrets. One had sex with a woman he was not supposed to (couldn't tell why), and one had a prostitute kill herself, things like that.
The movie doesn't really get going till about the last 20 minutes. The soldiers, once they see the dark elves and remember their horrible deeds, begin to kill themselves in horrible, but imaginative ways. We learn that the injured soldier is in fact The Necromancer. He had been a child living in the Black Forrest when he and his family were all killed by Vikings a 1,000 years before. He claims he came back by drinking the blood of unicorns (sounds oddly familiar) and now he feeds on the pain of people that come into the forest.
There are some issues with this movie. I love the idea of strange forgotten creatures living in dark places like the Black Forest. And I love the idea of karmic payback. Even the dark elves looked cool. The biggest issues with this film are they spent too long to get to the interesting bits and too long on just Logan's backstory and so little on everyone else's. Honestly, they were all mostly interchangeable.
I mean really all really old forests should have something like this in them. Reminded me of driving through the Appalachian mountains last year.
So, Moriquendi. I knew I knew the word but could not recall where. So I looked it up. Yes, it means "Dark Elf" but in Sindarin in Tolkien's Legendarium. I am pretty sure they Googled "Dark Elf" and they got "Moriquendi."
It was an early night so I popped this one on. I remember it from the late 80s and thought, hey let's do a a Necromancer night.
So this is a Rape-and-Revenge movie with a supernatural twist. College student Julie (Elizabeth Kaitan/Clayton) is working late in her professor/lover's office when some dudes break in to steal a test. They find her and one of the dudes, Paul, rapes her.
Naturally upset she tells her friend (but not her boyfriend because is a self-absorbed prick) who convinces her to see a psychic who is advertised in the local campus paper. They see her, the weird magic/psychic chick Linda, (though sometimes the actors screw up and call her by her real name, Lisa) casts a spell raising the Demon of Vengence. They think it is a joke until the special effects department gets their say and Julie and her friend run out.
Soon the guys that rapped Julie begin seeing her naked form (coming out of water for some reason) trying to seduce them (they are college guys, this is not a lot of work) in their embrace the form turns into a demon and kills them. Julie seems to be somewhat aware of what the demon is doing, seeing it in her dreams. Oh and much like poor old Susan from Mausoleum, her eyes glow green before she goes all evil. Must be an 80s thing.
Though soon the demon begins to go after other men in her life. Like her boyfriend (though her professing her love for him stops the attack before it happens) and creepy professor (played by usually better than this Russ Tamblyn) a murder the real Julie gets to witness and we get our first good look at the demon in its true form.
Waide Aaron Riddle plays Earnest who...well, I am not sure what he adds to this other than keep calling Linda Lisa and looking like Patrick Wilson ordered from Wish. I guess he keeps trying to cast protection spells on Julie himself. He does try to give her an athame but it turns out to be the demon/Linda/Lisa again. She gets him to kill himself.
Julie has another "fight" with her boyfriend Eric. Well, she is trying to explain herself and ask for help and he is being a dick. And the demon shows up in his room. At this point, I am rooting for the demon. Though Lisa/Linda seems to be somewhere else summoning something from the "bowels of Diva" and the demon is in Eric's room. But then she turns from Demon Julie to Linda/Lisa again. So Julie and Demon Julie are wrestling each other with a knife. And one of them gets killed with a knife to the eye. We assume it is real Julie, but we later see Linda/Lisa laughing in her home.
Yeah this one was not good.
While both movies share a name, Necromancer, they also share a theme; vengeance on men that have wronged women. Which of course next to nothing to do with a Necromancer.
BUT I do love the idea of a vengeful spirit that a witch in particular can call on. I did this a bit with The Dirae, but a demon of vengeance would also be nice. The idea from this movie was later "used" in the Buffy series, but I think I could do better than either, to be honest. The Erinyes are a good choice, but they have a lot of baggage of their own.
What ever I decide the demon needs to have glowing green eyes.
October Horror Movie Challenge 2022
Viewed: 19
First Time Views: 14
Kickstart Your Weekend: Last Call for Gateway To Adventure
With just a little over 20 hours left on this I am reposting.
Gateway To Adventure Trilogy For Old-School Essentials
Appendix N is kickstarting a trio of books for Old-School Essentials. So the "Gateway to Adventure" is quite appropriate.
From the campaign page,
Within the Gateway To Adventure trilogy you will receive optional rules and classes based on the Mid-Realm campaigns of R.J. Thompson, as well as lore for the various kin and classes. All of this information will be presented in a way that will be easily transferable into any campaign setting! These books are meant to be cherry picked by referees and players alike to create the campaign that they want to have! Similarly to how we present our adventures, so that every table's experience is different, so too with our rules variants, we want everyone to have their own unique game! All of this in an A5 format so these books fit on your shelf right next to the core Old-School Essentials line!
Sounds like a lot of fun and OSE is my current OSR clone of choice.
100 Days of Halloween: Adventure Module V3 - Toil and Trouble (and the V Series)
Tonight I am going to cover the "V Series" of modules by Joseph Bloch and BRW Games. While I will review all three it is likely that only the last one, Adventure Module V3 - Toil and Trouble, will be used in my campaign. The reasons will be rather obvious.
This is, essentially from my point of view, an alternate reality Oerth. This is good since the game they are designed for is Adventures Dark and Deep RPG which is an alternate reality AD&D 2nd Edition. Though can easily be used with AD&D 1, 2, Basic D&D, or any clone.
They are low-level enough that they can be easily used with just about any form of D&D including 5e.
Each module is done in what I would call the middle phase of modules or ones from the early 80s. Not quite the rough around the edges of the earliest ones from the 1970s nor the more polished Dragonlance/Ravenlofts of the near mid 80s. No, these are solid 1982-1983 in feel and form.
Designed for 4 to 6 characters of 1st to 3rd level.
This is where we get our "V" in the V series; the Hamlet of Volage (not to be confused with the Village of Hommlet a few miles over). This adventure introduces the players (and characters) to Volage which in the middle of a battleground between two warring covens of witches. The Cloven Hoof Coven (Diabolic) and the Dark Star Coven (Demonic).
Though the adventure does not start that big. It begins rather with a rivalry between local families and accusations of witchcraft.
Much like the adventures this is an homage too, we get a nice selection of memorable NPCs. Tables of rumors (some true, some false) and a village.
In this first adventure, you have to deal with the witches (here a subclass of Cleric) of the Cloven Hoof coven. Their patron is Dispater. Nice, great choice. Though there is a note that if you have BRW Games product Darker Paths 2 - The Witch you can use that for these NPCs.
There are some new spells and two new magic items.
It feels like it can be played in an afternoon or longer setting, maybe 6 hours. Faster if the PCs figure out what is going on.
PDF. 12 pages. Color cover, black & white interior art.
Designed for 4 to 6 characters of 2nd to 3rd level.
This one takes place six months after the first adventure in the series. Following the pattern laid down at the time of the earliest adventures this one now includes some hex-crawling with some random encounters. These are encountered before the party returns to Volage. Indeed this module is very explicitly a hex crawl to investigate the area around the Hamlet of Volage. So there is no true purpose or "victory condition" nor should there be. The purpose is the exploration of the surrounding area. Though there is the threat of the Dark Star Coven. Details have to be uncovered before the next adventure can take place. There is a nice little teaser about the "Queen of Witches."
I will admit I not 100% sure why it has to be 6 months later except to allow a season to pass.
The most fun here are the werewolves in the woods.
PDF and softcover book. 20 pages. Color cover, black & white interior art.
Designed for 4 to 6 characters of 3rd to 5th level.
For this one I have both the PDF and softcover versions. Also, we are given our first real and proper introduction to the "Witch Queen" none other than Natasha. It has everything a good adventure should have. Plots and intrigue, a ruined tower, cultists, caves, giant bugs, new monsters and new spells.
In this one, you have to stop the Dark Star coven dedicated to Natasha.
Again the witches of Natasha are presented as clerics or you can use the BRW Witch class.
I also admit I find the modules colored in Red, Blue, and Green to be very esthetically pleasing.
Use with my War of the Witch Queens
Given the events here I think I would combine this all into one "Super-module." They can be easily combined and it would work well. For me I would need to decide if I needed another Iggwilv stand-in or not. I love that the first adventure uses Dispater. In my own games there is something of an open war between Dispater and Orcus. I could convert these Natashian witches into Mara or Demonic witches following Orcus. I would need to up the undead, but that is never a bad idea. Of course, I bought these BECAUSE they featured Natasha/Iggwilv. I could insert a Witch Queen as a proxy for Orcus, much like Natasha is an intermediary for the demons worshiped by the Dark Star Coven.
Ok...so this adventure is located in the Vesve Forest, sorry the Sesve Forest. That is near the Yatil MountainsYahdel Mountains where part of the third adventure takes place. Hmm.
Ok here is what I am doing. Everything is largely the same, but I am swapping out Natasha for Xaltana, the Vampire Witch Queen. She combines elements of Iggwilv and Drelzna. Though I currently have her as a Hyperborean Witch Queen. Well, that is not a problem since I still have The Witch-Queen of Yithorium and Methyn Sarr and they are too busy fighting each other to worry about others.
Xaltana is a dead/undead Witch Queen. When the High Witch Queen is murdered she stirs enough to be able to gather followers again. She is this Oerth's Natasha (see note about an alternate reality) instead of Graz'zt/Grash’t as her paramour it will be Orcus.
This all gives me:
- A chance to use Xaltana and a reworked Lost Caverns of Acheron later on.
- A chance to play out my rivalry between Dispater and Orcus, something I will detail later.
- Frees up Iggwilv/Natasha to do other things.
- Helps differentiate Xaltana from Darlessa another Vampire Witch Queen.
- Gives me an excuse to add more demonic powers to Xaltana.
Given this is going to be an "Alternate Universe" I might even make Adventures Dark and Deep characters for my group that are the alternates of their OSE characters. Not too difficult really. The purpose would be to make the players also feel a bit out of sorts. The rules are close enough to use for this and yet different enough.
Thursday, October 13, 2022
October Horror Movie Challenge: Mausoleum (1983)
.jpg "Mausoleum (1983)")
Mausoleum (1983)
We start with the funereal of Susan Walker's (played quite memorably to my 14-year-old mind by Julie Christy Murray) mother. She can't take and runs off to a...you guessed it, a mausoleum. Here she hears the voice of a demon and she uses her powers to kill a homeless guy.
Fast forward 20 years Susan Walker Farrell (now played by Bobbie Bresee) is now married and seeing a psychiatrist. The 20th anniversary of her mother's death is coming and her friends are worried. She goes out with her husband, but while alone she is accosted by a drunk. He leaves, but she causes him to burst into flames in his car. And the killings start in earnest. She seduces the gardener and then kills him. They get a new gardener and she kills him too.
She starts to levitate, get all weird looking, and her eyes glow green. A lot.
Turns out Susan and members of her matrilineal line are all possessed by this demon. They learn how to expel the demon from her Grandmother's journal but not before she kills her husband Oliver and remembers she killed her own aunt.
So this one was much better in my memory than it was in my rewatch. I always liked the idea of a family demon, one attached to a particular family of witches. We saw this in the Anne Rice Witching Hour books and again in my post-Buffy campaign "Season of the Witch."
I remembered Julie Christy Murray well. She would have been about the same age I was at the time and I am certain that she was one of the influences of my earliest witches. By this time I had already created Marissia and more blonde witches would follow.
I had good memories of this movie, but it didn't quite live up to them. That's too bad, but not a big surprise. Still. It was a fun trip down memory lane.
October Horror Movie Challenge 2022
Viewed: 17
First Time Views: 13
This Old Dragon: Issue #75
Anyone familiar with this issue will know why I am doing a One-Two punch of issues #75 and #76. Yes, it is because of the fantastic Devil and Nine Hells information included by the prolific Ed Greenwood.
But let's do this issue right.
A day at the beach is this whimsical cover celebrating Summer. Looks like it was made by Jack Crane. I am not familiar with the name, but the style is familiar.
Kim Mohan's Editorial covers just that, Summer.
Letters get into the problems with play-by-mail games and some observations about a recent review of Champions. There is praise for the Piercer article (praise I agree with) and some concerns about the Cavalier class. I am sure that will all be sorted out before long.
Nice big ad for the James Bond 007 game. I was at a game auction recently and there was a lot of James Bond material going for some really high prices. I have always enjoyed the Bond movies and consider myself a fan, but I have never played this.
Our first article from our issue MVP. Ecology of the Mimic covers these irritating creatures. It is just a page, but Ed manages to pack a punch into few words. Since I have (had) multiple copies of this issue, the water-damaged one gets sacrificed and added to my Monstrous Compendium.
We get right to the meat here with Gary Gygax in the odd role of "opening act" to Ed Greenwood. New Denizens of Devildom is this month's From the Sorcerer's Scroll and it gives us a look into what sort of devils we will get for the Monster Manual II. Six pages with 13 new devils. These will all appear in the MMII, but having this as some sort of Monster Manual 1.5 is still pleasing to me.
Up next is one of my all-time favorites. The Nine Hells, Part 1 by Ed Greenwood. It left such an impact on me that I have always set up my worlds with Demons more interested in Oerthand Greyhawk with devils more interested in Toril and the Forgotten Realms. I mean I am on the first page and Ed is hitting me with so much here. What are the Realms? How can I get a copy of Dragon #64 on a paperboy's pay? Even today they pact a punch. How much? I went right to the text just now and completely failed to mention the fantastic Larry Elmore art for this! So do we get? Fifteen pages. Five layers of Hell, Avernus to Stygia. And a total of 23 new devils are listed by layer. Ed did his homework and there are many names familiar to anyone that has read old medieval demonologies. The trick as always is figuring out who is a demon, who is a devil and who is a god. Bist for example seems to be related to Bast. Nergal was a Babylonian god, Lilis is a riff on Lilith, and others are names that appear in demonologies. There are things written here that you can still find in D&D books printed in the last couple of years for the latest system.
After that everything will seem a bit tame. Or will it?
Roger Moore gives us some new Gamma World monsters in Mutants, Men(?), and Machines. Gamma World 1st Ed monsters were close enough to Basic D&D to make conversion easy. Though the only one I ever recall using is the Hydragen, or the mutant diamond-backed rattlesnake, and the Nitrodjinn (cute).
Lew Pulsipher is up with Beyond the Rule Book which has style tips for good GMing. 10 Procedure tips (things you can do) and 10 style tips (how you do them). The advice is solid and can still be used today.
Nice ad for Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan miniatures. I would have freaked out to have seen today's 3D printers then.
Before Dungeon Magazine Dragon would have adventures and sometimes adventure contests. Here is one that won first place by Bob Waldbauer. Can Seapoint Be Saved? is an adventure for 4 to 8 characters of 4th to 7th level. It is a sea port and ocean/sea based adventure. Which is cool because I lack adventures of this type. I never read it because it was a potential adventure to be used for a possible ocean-based adventure we were going to do but never got to 4th level. I still think about it every so often.
Clyde Heaton is up with an article that always fills me with all sorts of curiosity and wonder. Even Orcish is Logical covers how to create an orcish language. Ever since I read Lord of the Rings I have be fascinated with ConLangs or constructed languages. I have toyed with the idea in theory, but never in practice. I don't have those kinds of skills. This article makes me think I could at least do the basics. I remember reading this one and some of the words were familiar.
The prolific Katherine Kerr is up next with our next language lesson, All Games Need Names. Hers is a much longer overview of languages and how they are made. Hers comes from the point of view of a novelist and storyteller, the same as Tolkien in purpose, but not exactly in practice. Could I make a language with both of these articles? Maybe. I don't know enough about the process to even know what I don't know. But I would like to try.
Great ad for some Atari 400/800 software. I always liked the Atari 400/800 computers, but it was the 1200 series that I really wanted.
Figure Feature: Humanoids covers humans in words and pictures.
A bunch of reviews are up. Ken Rolston is back with a review on the Runequest Companion in Companion Fill the Glorantha Gap. Visit The Solomani Rim a review by Tony Watson covers Traveller supplement 10.
Mike Lowery treats us with Tales Stranger than Fantasy or reviews of Mazes and Monsters and Hobgoblin, two fairly notorious fiction books about the dangerous world of Fantasy Roleplaying games. I have been meaning to read them both someday but there is always something else, something better on my pile to read.
UK Revisited: Games Fair 83 is a report from Gary Gygax.
SF/Gaming Convention Calendar covers the game convention scene of the summer of 1983 including a nice big ad for Gen Con XVI.
Two page ad for Asgard miniatures.
Three pages of What's New! with Phil and Dixie. Three pages of Wormy.
And tucked away, hiding in the back is five pages of Snarf Quest #1.
Pardon the pun, but this is a HELL of an issue. Even ignoring the new content from Gary. And the material from Ed. We still have two fun sections on languages, an adventure, AND the very first Snarf Quest.
I mean really. This was PRIME Dragon Magazine years.
Next week we go back to Hell.
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