The exhilaration of our latest triumph seems to be confined to me and perhaps Snowdog, who was stoic as ever, so who knows?  The rest of the party are lugubrious and sluggish, moving about aimlessly.  For some reason, none wanted to examine the remains of the annihilated settlement at the end of the dim passage, and none converse with Birgir, who moves aimlessly clutching his blood-caked axe.  This episode has been an educational one for him, no doubt.

The wide hallway to our left has arrow slits on both sides, and we haven’t explored the area behind the wall on the south side, but a hallway behind another column beckons.  Snowdog takes the lead, and shortly we assemble before another door.  Quickly we burst in, and find it deserted.  The rank odor of a ball of overheated serpents greets us. There are two empty pallets in the room but a quick search finds nothing else.  Out in the hall, another door is found.  Again, we burst in, and are met with a rush of yet more of the seemingly inexhaustible supply of cannibals.  Snowdog spears the first, and then the second, and eventually all of them as they fight past each other in transports of ill-advised ferocity.  Snowdog skewers them one by one, looking almost bored as they throw themselves on his weapon.  Again, a quick survey finds little of worth, save a collection of bent and notched shortswords.

There are no other exits off the hall, and the halls are dead ends, so we return to the vaulted chamber.  The stairs upward, as I have said, were choked with old dried vines massed around a lone skeleton.  Using a rope with a hook on the end, we pulled the vines loose and found the body unresponsive with not a glimmer of unlife. It wore a tarnished suit of mail of archaic design, a sword spotted with rust, a quiver with some remarkably well-preserved and straight arrows, and a ring.  Ruark took the arrows for his collection, and as we bent over the other finds, suddenly a shadow blocked the ruby rays shinin

[size=100]Beyond the door lay an abandoned stable, rotted and stinking.  Whatever fine mounts of the Overlord’s cavalry were long gone. Moldering mounds of fodder spilled out of ramshackle stalls. In one lay the disarticulated skeleton of a camel splayed out in forlorn repose.  The rest were deserted. Snowdog went into the noisome stalls, probing with his spear after the glorious treasure that surely lurked under the piles of ordure. Maybe a couple coppers lost in a drunken carousal, or a lost horseshoe, if that.  This incessant scrambling after lucre was not to my taste, but at least the stable wasn’t filled with file-toothed savages cramming their maws with the barely roasted haunch of some potboy abducted from town, which had been our previous experience.  Frankly I was surprised there wasn’t at least one shaggy idiot loitering about with a basting brush or carving knife to be seen anywhere. Snowdog was welcome to whatever pittance he found. The rest of us carefully moved to the doorway to the north, a high arched opening blocked by a double door just ajar.  A soft indirect glow of light appeared, as if from a room partially lit beyond.

​Carefully peeking around the door revealed an immense circular chamber surrounded by thick pillars and surmounted by a dome high above riven by some ancient catastrophe.  Lambent rays of Helios shone through the rough oculus high above, illuminating a ruined scene of pagan pageantry. Tattered banners hung from the walls, which when not covered were indited with strange hieroglyphs and scenes of carnage.  Over all of it, a giant comet streaked across the dome, its tail cracked and sundered by the great gap in the stonework that had fallen to the floor. To our right, a wide vine-choked stairway ascended to some platform above. Tangled in the vines was the skeleton of some hapless explorer, still clutching a tarnished sword. To the left a wide passageway exited the chamber, presumably to the entry gates we bypassed.�

Some years back, I did a few conversions of the original myself, but they were just updates. They pale in comparison to this.  Nice work!

Maybe you have found a part of the game needing expansion: as far I can tell. there is no madness/insanity mechanic like in CoC (see horror, lose grip on reality, etc...) but as far as a setting goes that would be REALLY amenable to one, it would be this one. 

Then again, horror induced insanity might be a rare thing in the game setting, considering a Shoggoth popping out of your fireplace and eating your nanny is way more plausible in Hyperborea as opposed to 1930's Chicago. People can get used to anything.

I'm really enjoying your write-up!  I am even more impressed with your dedication to keeping it up and reasonably current. Trying to write a recap in an evocative prose style like you are doing is WAY more work than the "Entered the room, killed 4 orcs and a giant rat" style.  Keep it up!

The PoA elements were pretty awesome, I agree.  Can't wait to encounter a Phoong/Phung.

Of all the monsters in the Bestiary, the most Vancian IMHO is the Thew Waggon, which is just plain weird, but I can't place it.  I HAS to be Vance-inspired: the guy had a great way of inventing bizarre modes of travel, and this is nearly an archetype.

South we went, cutting along the marge of the desert between the sparse sandy fields around Xambaala and the encroaching dunes.  We made good time for a change, and shortly we came upon a large hut perched on a rise overlooking the sea and town both. The roughly thatched dwelling was made of driftwood and old planks scavenged from the strand.  The door was a tattered hide scraped thin. Our inquiring hails were met by a muttering old man who, with hesitant but welcoming gestures, invited us inside.

The interior of the hut was gloomy and cluttered with the detritus of the ages: worn clothing and shoes, broken tools and discarded bones. Ancient furniture loomed just beyond the fitful light of a single fish-oil lamp. Scraps of ragged netting and tattered cloth hung from lines strung between the driftwood poles supporting the roof. With a grand sweep of his spindly arm, our host offered us a light repast consisting of a portion of the glutinous stew that was burping ominously in a battered kettle. We exchanged dubious glances. He proclaimed himself “The Theosophist”, and the stew contained fish.  Both utterances inspired little confidence, but Lycos accepted his offer with enthusiasm.
As a place to rest, the hut was ideal.  It was remote from Xambaala, but I thought it would be improved immeasurably by the removal of both its current desiccated inhabitant and his noisome stew.  Portentous looks passed between us. Snowdog sat in the doorway and honed his already razor-sharp knife. However, oblivious to our silent plotting, Lycos squatted next to the pot, ladled a hefty portion into a dusty earthenware bowl, and with his lips smacking set to with gusto.  The doom-laden moment passed.

[color=#000000]To the accompaniment of Lycos’ contented grunts and slurps, the old man regaled us with tales of Xambaala’s storied past.  I had never been so bored. It was as if a mouldering tome achieved som

After we recovered from the horrific aftermath of our primitive Bacchanalia, we took stock of our situation.  I argued that we couldn’t go back to town without coming to the attention of Aramis and his henchmen, the slaves complicit in his design to feed the unholy lusts of the anthropophagi.  Arriving with our rescued henchmen in tow would of course set him on his guard. What arrangements did he have with the man-eaters? What promises did he make in exchange for their quivering flesh?  Were there other factions in town in cahoots with him? I thought that since we would have to go back into Xambaala at some point, we could avoid all these machinations by simply seizing Aramis in an ambuscade, questioning him in a vigorous way, and then putting him down.  

[color=#000000]Oh no, my companions cried, we do not know Aramis was truly in league with the cannibals, we can’t be sure! Tenderhearted fools they are, I was outvoted.  Snowdog however wasn’t mollified. It wasn’t their soft flesh on the spit as his was. I could see his frustration and disdain in his eyes, as he turned about walked off into the palm grove, no doubt to mutter imprecations and incant curses to his black idol. Still we had a need for supplies, and without the option of going directly to the bazaar ourselves, we decided to enlist our newfound allies, the villagers, as our purchasing agents.

This shameful episode I shall relate in brief: we trusted the villagers with our gold and a shopping list, not once but twice, each time receiving nothing in return but blank looks and empty hands.  Appeals to their gratitude for their salvation were greeted with stares. Threats and intimidation were likewise ineffective. Short of executing the entire village, we were at a loss. We decided to leave, cutting our losses.  As we trudged away, I heard a snicker and looked back to see if Snowdog was making mock of his betters, but his mien indicated supreme boredom and detachment.

A lambent beam of crimson searing my eyelids woke me from uneasy dreams. I was chased by red demons belaboring me over the head with giant spiky fruit, whilst gibbering in abominably accented street Ixian amateurly composed Hyperborean love poetry. Waking was not an improvement.  I groaned and tried to roll over, but my clothing was tangled about my clammy limbs, and I fell back. My limbs were stiff, my muscles ached, and my skull pounded like the drums we had heard throbbing across the night. Considering the vast quantity of liquor I had bibbed the past evening, the condition of my mouth does not bear relating. 

I squinted against the glare, and saw I was abed on some rotting rushes strewn on the floor of a dilapidated hut.   I was surrounded by the detritus of the feasting and quaffing that had gone far into the night.  Birgir, our hero, was laying on his back up against a palm tree, snoring loudly while a piebald jackal broke his fast lapping up the pool of vomit spreading across his beard and jerkin.  The fruits of his victory were indeed grand. The edda boasting of his triumph he kept murmuring about would likely elide this coda to his evening. 

Emaciated children with distended bellies poked at the fire and ran screaming about the village waving burning sticks and palm fronds.  Aged crones moved about with slow purpose, presumably to prepare nutriment from whatever squalid ingredients they could scavenge. My stomach rebelled at the thought of food, but groaning with the effort I hoisted my abused body from the floor and straightened my robes.  I could not project the aura of gravitas appropriate to my station looking like some rumpled street fakir. 

[color=#000000]We had entered the village in less a victory parade than a halting trudge.  The deep sand dragged at our feet, and the fatigue of yet another night awake numbed our minds.  Birgir slouched forward, blood splashed lib

I came across an interesting article yesterday at Gizmodo and I've been thinking about it since.  My upbringing in fiction and gaming was Tolkien and Gygax respectively. The books I read now and the games I play now are sprung from those antecedents, and are what I'm most comfortable with.  Of course, I've varied my tastes in the decades since, going from the narrow and deep to broad and well, not as maniacally deep as when I was a teen.  I've gained some perspective and shall I say discernment, and maybe even some taste.  But I still know what I like.  And what I like is Sword & Sorcery fiction and the games inspired by it.

For the tl;dr crowd, the article describes how modern fantasy fiction by younger authors has been inspired by the jrpg's (electronic Japanese RPG's like Zelda etc...) of the 90's and later.  I know there is a synergistic effect between the gaming community and people who read books, since there is a good bit of overlap in a community that tends to like the same things at the same time (i.e. Nerds).  For me, I started firmly in the analog camp, pen & paper rpg and the books that inspired them, but fantasy fiction had a firm head start of many decades before tabletop rpg's showed up in the 70's. The role playing gamers of that period were steeped in Conan, Fafhrd,& the GM, Elric, Hobbits and such, and their games looked like it.  Fast-forward, and now the games are influencing the fiction and the kids growing up with those games are now writing the books we read. 

It's this reversal in direction of influence that for me marks a generational difference between how I see gaming and what I feel is the get-off-mah-lawn proper way to do it, vs new school gaming that, go figure, is more closely based on cooperative tactics and a narrative structure that is less sand-boxy than old-school gaming. The jrpg's basically chucked the Euro-centric mode