By late afternoon, Nate slipped off the horse and was swallowed by a giant snake that had followed them. Kaith dragged him out of its gullet, but the man’s face was crushed and blue — dead. Crow’s soul shuffled off the Prime Material that night as he succumbed to injuries not aided by a bumpy donkey ride.

(Nate was the victim of a wandering monster: a 6 HD giant constrictor. It bit Kaith too, once he decided to turn and run. Crow had a lousy 4 Con and failed a check to survive the night. I did cheat in not requiring a check for Arisha, but then again, I was bending the rules in letting clerical healing work on a character who’d dipped below 0 HP. But just so you know, I didn’t just get rid of spare NPCs! They just ended up that way.)

Kaith tossed together an ambush plan near the mystery alcove — a place seemingly melded into the rock by some uncertain mix of age and design. Quareth took to a tree to use his sling; Eileen hid behind a rock, ready to cast Magic Missile. They tied the horses some distance off with a bound and gagged Lon. They waited.

The evil priest approached, using foreboding execution tree of his faith as a walking stick. Quareth went wide with his sling bolt but Kaith dashed from a tree and smashed the priest  in the back of the head with the flat of his sword. It sent the dark cleric sprawling — a knockout. (I ruled the attack would be subdual damage — half real. Kaith’s player Steve hit for 15 damage — exactly as much as the cleric  had — with a nicely planned backstab. I also allowed Steve to aim for the head, using the DMG ruling that 50% of attacks go for an unarmoured  head as the miss chance for PCs trying to hit that location.)

They bound and gagged him, and threatened him unless he healed the monk, which he did — but not before hearing Quareth boast about having capricious temper. That made the cleric think a crazy druid might kill him no matter what he did, so he lashed out as soon as the healing was done. He cast protection magic (Sanctuary) to begin his counterattack, but his enemies were too strong willed and broke through the spell. Eileen hit with a Magic Missile and a healed Arisha broke his neck with a clever empty-handed blow (whittling his remaining hit points to 0. Yep — they’d just beaten down a 3rd level cleric).

(I should note I got over-excited at this point and tried to have the cleric issue a Command before Arisha’s turn, forgetting she’d healed. Sorry! He probably wouldn’t have accomplished much anyway.)

Kaith searched the cleric’s body. He found 9 gp, two distinctive rings (one matte black, the other adamantine and steel with threads of gold) and a mace whose spikes glowed dull red. And of course, Kaith packed up the cleric’s well-wrought (but probably mundane) chain mail. Then the rogue climbed into the alcove to see what drew the priest there.

Inside, he found something much like a ball-jointed brass tailor’s dummy. Once he stepped on the floor the figure projected a surface illusion, turning into a strange woman in a form fitting garment. She told him it was “time for flying lessons.” She wore a matte black ring like the one recovered from the dead cleric.

Kaith gathered his friends and they all explored the alcove. This again summoned the dummy apparition, who told them they needed to put on their rings — but only Kaith had one. He complied, slipping the black band on his hand. Kaith felt a rush of flight reflexes and followed the apparition’s instruction to practice a simple, slow drift to (a now vanished) outbuilding beyond the alcove entrance, 20 feet above the closest ledge.

The others saw him confidently step out and drop straight down. Ouch.

Kaith reasoned he must have done something wrong, since he fell and nearly broke his neck, but he knew this must be a Ring of Flying. Absolutely. He just hadn’t learned its techniques, but he would learn faster than the idiot (and come to think of it, scar and contusion-riddled) priest he’d mugged to get it. The dummy mentioned a required “activation code and license.” Kaith barely noticed that, but he knew he had to keep the ring, even he couldn’t fly straight for now.

(Yep — Ring of Delusion. It was a Ring of Contrariness with a legit flying power, but I didn’t want a flying jerk in the party.)

The adventurers eventually tore out a panel in the room, yanked away strange threads of glass and found a tight 10′ drop into a corridor leading southeast — to the yet-untested bandit fort.

Oh, what about Lon? They offered to turn him loose, but after Eileen casually said he might stick with them, he took to the notion (rolling a 98 to indicate an enthusiastic acceptance of the idea before adding Cha adjustments). Lon promised to bear torches and generally make himself useful as her henchman. So into the pit he goes, too!

Final Thoughts: I bent a few rules here, changing the ring type and in giving Arisha preferential treatment. Steve’s character Kaith suffered the biggest reversals. He one-shotted a third level cleric but got hit with a cursed ring. We drifted into a side discussion about how unbearable this would be if we were young teenagers. It would look like major DM dickishness, which explains why this sort of thing isn’t in 3e or later. Steve was displeased (and we maybe heckled him a bit too much) but willing to make it work — with the understanding that I wouldn’t force him to commit crazy LSD suicide by jumping off random cliffs.

Steve probably figured I fudged a roll when Kaith fell out of the alcove. I asked him how many HP he had and — lo and behold! — he was left with 1 after the fall. The truth is a bit more complicated. I actually rolled 6 damage on 2d6 at first but then thought, “Didn’t later books say it was 1d6 + 2d6?” and rolled another die. When Steve told me how many hit points Kaith had, let’s just say I used the more merciful rule.

I’m finding it pretty easy to integrate the system’s randomness and character actions to help everyone feel a coherent sense of system and place. I’m not sure why, yet. System familiarity may be a factor, but it can’t be the whole thing, since I’m running AD&D with subsystems I never bothered with as a kid. I must say I’m pretty surprised with how easy it is to manage the game given my mostly-RAW mission.

Finally, I must remember that they’re at Day Five (I will call it Sept 31st in game) and that they earned 1250 XP each.

“Going into space with Shatner’s face.”

“Bullshit. No, wait – you’re going to get a mask made?” Barry checked the edges of his own: a latex Charlton Heston/Brad Pitt fusion thing.

“I mean his actual face. During the Panic some nerds froze him so he wouldn’t cross over, and it just so happens the current owners are just as nerdy. Greedy, though. It’ll blow my savings to get it but what the hell, eh? I’ll be gone for two years anyway.”

“Doesn’t that mean you could, uh . . .?”

“Be Shatner? Nah, some rich asshole in Oakland has dibs on his brain. I’ll make do with my own cheesy impressions.”

“Chang’s not going to like it. It’ll make the whole mission look like a joke.”

“Are you kidding? Don’t you want to see Captain Kirk on Mars?”

The party ran long. Most of them do now that we’ve lost the knack for sleep, but fumble through old breather schedules. I said goodbye to Barry and went home on foot, but even though I stuck to the alleys they spotted me. Shamblers. They weren’t violent, just persistent.

“Brains.”

It’s not their fault. There just aren’t enough brains to go around. When the Panic hit, some of us were better, luckier predators. Jordan Jacek (God knows I changed that after the revolution – I don’t remember being that person anyway) got bit, didn’t get eaten, and managed to scarf down enough brains to graduate from shamblerhood. Swallow the brains, swallow the person. Their little fragments knock together, give us rough identities.

My frags still argue.

Back in the day, Shambler Jordan ate a really smart physicist. Now I’m so valuable they’ve scheduled me for a Neuro-Plastic Learning session the day after tomorrow.

“Brains.”

Lewontin was the tech that day. He’s thorough; we had to watch interviews with the breathers. I know pure NPL doesn’t always pass everything along but I still hated seeing them talk, push their lungs, blink. After that I couldn’t dig in without thinking about the literal act. Frags scream in your head. They used to breathe.

At least I got a better idea of how important this mission is. Two of those breathers were farm-grown twentysomething savants but one was an old, bona fide pre-Panic astronaut. If they were willing to lose her they must really want us on Mars.

In case you’re wondering, the actual NPL session tells you nothing about the source’s age, sex or anything else. They’re just slices of grey hard boiled egg stuff in what looks like a bowl of borscht. Chew, chew.

I wanted some kind of silver cryonic capsule, with Shatner’s face reverently spread over an artificial scaffold. I got a dirty beer cooler. I drove that thing right to the shop.

The body guys and I designed the procedure to turn me from your typical urban demi-rotter into a virile, judo-chopping, gold-shirted Shatner. Shatner Prime. It didn’t cost as much as you’d think. The space program paid for silicone plastination, but left the aesthetics up to me.

Two hours in, the formaldehyde/heat regimen had left my skin a wrinkled mess. They expected that. I still had some rot from the early days. They flayed me to muscle and bare fat from the neck down, except for my feet and hands. My frags twitched. I thought I felt pain, but once I concentrated on my still heart I felt like a fool. It went away.

I went for painted latex replacement skin, fake nipples and all. But that had to wait until after plastination, when they’d cement and seal it over everything. They cut off my breasts and started rearranging the fat to create a more Shatneresque waist (thicker, but not too thick!) and shoulders. They even built up the triceps, staring at photo references and playing around.

“It’s just for mapping,” said Clevon. He was the plas artist. “The process replaces your fat with selected polymers. Vacuum sucks out all the moisture. You’ll be left with the lipid cell structure, but we can make it as firm as your real muscles.”

They spent the most time on the face, bringing a youthful poise to its flesh. A living Shatner never would have survived the procedure.

“Do you want to attach it now, or after plastination? Afterward is safer.”

“Now.”

I felt ten points of penetration as the staples went in.

They showed me a mirror. It was a young actor’s death mask.

Then vacuum, like the journey to Mars. We don’t need air or pressure, just something to fill our empty spaces along the way.

(I asked for Dex and Str checks. A failed Dex check indicated a slip. A failed Str check represented a slowed pace. In retrospect, I should have used Con. I was envisioning more climbing but it didn’t fit the flow of the story as well. Arisha’s monk/thief Climb roll and Kaith’s unused thief abilities forced me to contemplate where they fit into my evolving hierarchy of adventuring skills. I rolled for random encounters as per the DMG, but they don’t happen too often in the mountains. That changed once they hit the area around the bandit fortress and I switched to a custom encounter table with a 1 in 3 chance of encounters per three hours.)

After an uneventful Day Three and another rest, they hiked to the threshold of the battle site. Kaith scouted ahead to find three human bandits — drunk, lazy highwaymen who immediately waved at the half-elf, asked a few harsh questions to keep up appearances, and hefted the wineskin once more. The other characters joined them, mead in hand to offer their new “friends” (good thinking Quareth!). Arisha almost ruined the ambiance with too-pointed questions, but everybody else managed to shut up, semi-pretend to drink and ingratiate themselves with the bandits, convincing them that the adventurers were hard-luck rogues looking to join the gang. The bandits weren’t too sure about that idea and alluded to unpleasant allies at a nearby fortress: an ancient structure northeast of the clearing.

(Systems wise, the bandits rolled no lower than 86 for every reaction check, making them friendly, credulous and in need of an excuse for this behaviour. That’s why they were drunk!)

One of those unmentionable allies came calling. He was an orc dressed in the cult livery of Xasu Nazarist, the Son of Tyranny. He strode into the clearing (nobody was surprised but they were at a loss for words and maybe a bit tipsy) and demanded that “his” bandits capture the adventurers. Arisha tried a friendly bluff (powered by a 7 Charisma modifying a base reaction roll of 26. That’s bad.) but that only sparked the orc’s rage. He drew a scimitar and attacked!

The drunk bandits hung back. They wanted to see how it would all turn out (and according to reaction rolls, still liked the PCs better than the orc).

The orc swung for Arisha but the monk had the longer weapon: a halberd that bit through her enemy’s scaled jack. The orc survived the blow and struck in turn, so for a moment they were connected by weapons mutually buried in flesh and muscle. The orc reeled under Eileen’s Magic Missile, but he managed to swat Kaith’s pick aside before burying his sword in Arisha’s unarmoured gut. She fell. Quareth ran to administer aid.

The orc turned to face Kaith. The half-elf spun his pick around and rent a hole it in the orc’s brain. Instant death.

(Steve rolled a natural 20. The orc had 1 hit point left. We didn’t bother to roll. Yeah, we’re going to use critical hits. Natural 20s need recognition. This is the law of D&D.)

(I rolled fresh reactions for the bandits. Oh crap. They weren’t friendly now. I figured they’d decided that they still needed to deal with these intruders, or else the party might reveal their treachery. Xasurites hate disloyalty and love torture, so letting the characters go practically put their necks on the block.)

The drunks broke into a whispered argument. Quareth heard it — especially the part where they resolved to strike! He cast Entangle, and imprisoned the three (That spell kicks ass — it’d never pass game balance muster these days. I’m keeping it as is., but they kept hacking at the vines, the party — whatever they could get. They were terrified of punishment from on high. Kaith hurled his pick at one to interrupt a blow (just colour on a failed bandit attack roll) and cut down two of them in their bonds. That left Lon the bandit, who surrendered.

Now they turned to the wounded. Two bandits and Arisha were close to death. They needed a real cleric, but they were stuck in hostile, mountainous territory. What could they do?

Lon begged for his life, said they’d taken the fort from a local religious community that might be hidden west of here, but thought it might be better if they stole a priest: a servant of Xasu who visits a remote shrine for secret rites. In digression, he revealed that the cultists lived in a lower level of the fort, demanding slaves for some sinister work even deeper down. That spoke to the party’s original mission, but now it came with a new objective: kidnap a cleric to save three wounded!

(Yes, that includes the two backstabbing, drunken bandits who Kaith knocked negative hit points. The good guys are pretty good! Speaking of negative hit points, I threw out the notion that it would take days to recover from negative hit points without a Heal spell — any curative magic is good enough.)

Final Thoughts: This session’s two system highlights were NPC reactions (and morale checks) and getting strict with as-written AD&D1e combat. Odd rolls forced me to improvise drunken, two-faced (yet strangely brave, even in the face of entanglement) bandits. One minute rounds felt much easier to improvise colour with and more strategic than seconds of flurrying. I used weapon speed, armour type adjustments, weapon length effects on initiative — the whole kit. It wasn’t too difficult! The big challenge is to flip through eccentrically organized books.

Lethal combat where positioning counts creates cautious PCs willing to flee and parley, especially when they know I’m rolling reactions, using their Charisma scores and conversational gambits. It feels pretty natural.

On a minor note, thieves’ skills need a revision.  That’s probably going to be my  next big house rule. And — oh yeah! — it’s all been random encounters so far! They haven’t even seen the dungeon yet! But it’s there, waiting on graph paper . . . .

Trouble is, saves and ability checks are really quite different:

• Ability checks don’t advance by level. Saving throws do.
• Saving throws are based on the threat; ability checks concentrate on the “channels” of each ability score.
• Class only affects ability checks as far as it makes certain ability scores desirable, but it’s a big part of saving throws.

I don’t think it would much fun to go the Castles and Crusades route and make all checks a common save/ability check hybrid, or to make saving throws a type of level-dependent skill. It’s a good idea to keep level advancement out of some things. Otherwise you end up with 4e-style situations where at 20th level, the same ice is more slippery than it was at 1st level. Plus, there’s flavour to saving throws. They’re against adventuring threats. They represent how people change in response to them. Do adventurers learn to mutter counter charms against incoming spells. Does a thief spend time building a resistance to iocaine powder?

AD&D1e lacks skills except for proficiencies, and I’d like to keep it this way. Some of the PCs in my game have old trades, and that and class seem to be enough to differentiate them. Since I hacked together an “active save” for a hard question, I’m going to keep that and fold this kind of skill into saving throws. I’ll also generalize them beyond things like “Rod, Staff or Wand” because this has long been done in AD&D.

Lastly, I’m turning everything to do with ability checks or saves into d20+mods rolls with one target number: 20. You roll 20, you succeed.

So:

Ability Checks: Some situations require a character to test his or her innate, general abilities, including any trades or background skills he or she was raised with (such as Secondary Skills detailed in the DMG) instead of abilities acquired while adventuring.  These are situations where the average person has a 50% chance of success — areas where almost anyone can do it, but some people can do a better job than others.

To perform an Ability Check, roll 1d20 and add the appropriate ability score. If the result is 20 or higher, the character succeeds. Ability scores match different situations for checks as follows:

• Strength: Opening a stuck door, throwing a heavy object, climbing with a rope
• Intelligence: Remembering an important detail, knowledge of one’s own home and background
• Wisdom: Picking out details, common sense
• Dexterity: Keeping your footing on a slippery surface, scrambling up an incline quickly, grabbing a thrown or falling object
• Constitution: Working or fighting in noxious conditions, fighting off fatigue
• Charisma: Avoiding gaffes, standing out from the crowd, finding places and situations where one can influence events or get noticed

Saving Throws: Strange and intense adventuring situations call for a saving throw. Adventurers learn to cope with these dangers through training, applied experience and a bit of luck — maybe even divine favour. Saving throws are either passive — they respond to some imposed threat — or active, where the adventurer needs to perform some feat to prevail. The five saving throw categories are:

• Shock and Survive: The character resists poison, death magic or another insult to his or her physiology, or meets basic survival needs in unusual conditions such as dungeons, enchanted wilds or other planes.
• Ray and Reflexes: The character avoids magical rays from rods, staves and wands and other directed assaults. These skills also apply to feats that require speed and precision, such as catching  a thrown dagger.
• Area and Athletic: The character takes cover from explosions, gouts of flame, shaking terrain and other dangers affecting a zone; or performs a feat of full-body athleticism such as sliding down a bannister or leaping over a barrier.
• Deformity and Might: The character resists attempts to twist and transform his physical form, binding it, changing its shape or even altering its composition.  This saving throw is also used to perform incredible feats of raw strength — the sort of things seen among carnival strongmen and true heroes.
• Magic and Lore: The character employs force of will, faith and muttered counterspells to ward off malefic supernatural powers, or jogs his or her insight and memory to recall such obscure facts that matter to adventurers; demonology, inhuman battle tactics and the like.

Base save scores are listed below:

Add +1 to each saving throw score per two levels of experience, rounded down. In addition, add adjustments from the following ability scores at the rate of +1 per point above 15, or -1 per point below 6.

• Strength: Might (active) saving throws
• Intelligence: Lore (active) saving throws and others that rely on character knowledge of the unusual
• Wisdom: All saving throws against mind-affecting attacks
• Dexterity: Area and Athletic saving throws, as well as Reflexes (active) saves
• Constitution: Shock (passive) saving throws

To make a saving throw, roll 1d20 and add your character’s saving throw. A score of 20 or higher succeeds.

Priority of Saving Throws: If you believe an action would follow under more than one saving throws, consider them in the following priority: Shock/Survive, Deformity/Might, Area/Athletic, Ray/Reflexes, Magic/Lore. Therefore, a character fighting off magically created poison makes a Shock save, not a Magic save.

Save or Ability Check?

An ability check is called on whenever a 0-level character should be on an even footing with an adventurer. This usually  applies to non-adventuring trades and the basic athletic, social and intellectual tasks performed by entire tiers of society.

Saving throws specifically address those talents that adventurers pick up in their quests: tactics, disciplines, protective gestures, even primitive charms to bend the will of the gods. If the average person would almost never encounter such a situation, it calls for a saving throw. 0-level characters who stumble into these situations use base saving throws of 3 in all categories. Thus, saving throws also apply in situations that are inherently more difficult than the quotidian challenges covered by ability checks.

Each of them came to Heron’s Rock to escape an ordinary life. Arisha, novice of the antitheist Infinite Lotus Sect (Hum. Monk 1). Eileen the Prestidigitator, protege of a local sage (Hum M-U 1). Kaith, a young local villain of no particular accomplishments (Half ElfFtr/Th 1/1) and his older brother Quareth of the Wood (Half Elf Druid 1). All of them live in the shadow of the ancient Heron, a hundred-yard tall statue from whence the Rock gets its name.

The Heron marks the Old Dungeon (also called the Heron, or the Rock; one learns the difference between town, dungeon and statue by reading context, and locals enjoy confusing visitors with twisty phrasing): a mine first assaulted by Thulbane and his Spiders, cleared by subsequent adventurers and now worked by tireless folk who haul out ancient valuables, rarely suffering attacks from the Deeps.

Hopeful adventurers look for tailings, remote posts — any prize in a rush eight decades old, and withering. Half the town is a horde of transients: miners and “freelancers” who might turn to banditry when the silver runs out. Legitimate commissions are rare. Wizards are often in the best position to pay. Taverns are ideal locations: neutral, relaxed and full of witnesses, just in case.

So yes: They met a wizard in a bar who hired them to go on an adventure.

This was Eileen’s old master, Liam the Perspicacious, willing to offer a fast 100 gold to anyone able to follow up on a clue: an enchanted dagger with the mark of that ancient magus, Colm Devilbinder! Legend says Colm had a fortress lab deep in the Heron (the dungeon) almost two centuries ago. Watch outriders found it on the body of a bandit three days south east of town. Liam believed another tunnel into the Heron could be found in the area. It might lead to Colm’s treasures.

Arisha was versed in the egoistic, lawyerly stratagems of her sect (alignment: LE) and asked why the discovery was worth so much. What was he getting out of it? Liam complained that any answer would be awash in complexities whose full explication would prevent the timely commencement of their mission! (The negotiations were very Vancian.) He eventually admitted that he’d get a five year cut of profits arising from large scale mining. Liam was eventually persuaded to offer a fraction of that cut (5%!) in exchange for a smaller flat fee (50 gp) and of course, liberal access (first three picks per month) to any treasures acquired by the party!

Immensely pleased with themselves, the adventurers were quick to start the journey (. . . and I rapidly thumbed through the DMG. It said three days over rough terrain was 15 miles. I rolled the dice for wilderness encounters).

As they set up camp on the first night they felt a chill and heard a deep howl. They scrambled up a bluff just as a horse-sized white wolf came through the tree line. They exchanged glances, the great silver beast looking up with a curious, malefic gaze. Quareth was too far away to attempt magical communication.

(and I rolled the Winter Wolf’s reaction. It decided not to pursue.)

After a silent beat, it left. Quareth sifted through his memory. That beast was strong enough to kill them all. (6 HD — wilderness encounters don’t level!) But what was it doing out on the hunt when there was only the slightest hint of Autumn in the air?

Final Thoughts: 1e has really cool systems for determining encounter distance, type and creature behaviour. Wilderness encounters aren’t geared to level. Anything can happen; the Winter Wolf was way too tough for the party in a fight, but unlike other editions of D&D the creature wasn’t there for a specific style of encounter. Instead, a bunch of rules suggest what it might do and how the party might act instead of leaving the DM to build tailored challenges and tasks. A close encounter with a 6 HD monster was pretty cool at 1st level, especially in a game with no guarantees of balance. Players were more cautious and avoided hard contact.

Now I could get all OSR and talk about how this came from the free spirit and improv-friendly nature of older gaming. Nope! I got this from mostly following the rules as written! The Winter Wolf showed up and behaved according to the tables governing it. I provided a context, mandated a few ability checks to scramble up the bluff.

Anyway, the Calculus Ancient gave us the capacity to precisely describe all things, improving upon the guesses of old craftsmen and beast-husbands. Humans developed formulae to measure what was – and then, in our genius, what could be. We built metal ships, sailed the glowing currents of Space; designed beasts to feed us and bear us across a world worked by proto-golems and other machines. We even created the Second Humans –the dwarves – to explore the Black Deep. We call this period the Aeon of Calculation. Obviously.

The Culculus Ancient was good enough to manipulate the universe through rough intermediaries – matter, living things, alchemical tricks. We redesigned ourselves a thousand times over, genoplastic changes donned and doffed like courtiers’ hats as fashion moves them. After half the age, humanity hit a barrier to more profound understanding. We rioted against that wall with decadent innovations, losing interest in our empires in favour of art and mutation. Ironically, we prevailed out of indolence, for lacking the will to manage our civilization, we created a caste to do it for us. We made the Titans, and the Titans broke the barriers of thought. Final Technology. True Mathematics. Sorcery. Immortality.

Sorcery provides the means to create machines, entities and energies entirely by description and primal Form, using the same codes as the universe. The algorithm is reality: a simple profundity that can only be realized through the most diligent studies!

So in the Aeon of Sorcery, the Titans devised such powers and engines, and even intelligences to manage them: the gods. But as you know, the gods exist outside our causal frame of reference. Once the grand incantations were complete, the Titans discovered that their “analytical engines” were already ancient, possessed of dominion over the “new” planes and even the Prime Material. The Titans battled to contain their children in a war that shook Creation. It ended in a stalemate: the end of their age, the beginning of our Known Aeon.

Most of the Titans were slain or banished, but not before they uplifted elves out of of surviving human stock to be Earth’s caretakers. The war disrupted the Black Deep and the dwarves returned, murmuring that with the Music of the Spheres cast into disharmony, something had taken up new, insane rhythms, crawling forth from the ends of the universe. They abandoned the old crafts, refusing to reshape atoms or cast lightning in its circuits – such things attracted the Outer Dark, they said. The elves never knew pre-thaumaturgic arts. They relied on sorcery, had never mastered it to the same degree as their Titan forefathers and struggled to relearn magic after the Titanomachy reshaped the cosmic Metaflow. They recalled their duty to the Earth however, and with now-forgotten techniques they repopulated our world with such flora and fauna as had thrived in Prehuman and Primitive Aeons – and that includes us.

We are the First and Last Humans, shaped by natural strife, newly prosperous on this Earth for perhaps thirty centuries. We inherit a world grown strange in our absence.

I’m going to do the same thing for the Hundred Millionth Day. Let’s meet the cast:

Liam the Perspicacious, Autochthon Sage-Thaumaturge: Liam couldn’t retire from adventuring soon enough; the scars and screams offended his intellectual sensibilities even as they enriched his spell book. He’s a better sage than a mage. Though possessed of a cynical, cowardly mien, few match his scientific understanding of the world, its phenomena and the ur-dimensions that engulf it. But it must be understood that much of his knowledge comes from tomes, not boots on the ground. Some of his favourite topics are too dangerous to study first hand!

Thadanain, Elf Priestess of Abadonna: In Thadanain’s universe gods regulate the occult cycles of being. The Ancients opened the way to them. Did mortals arise first, or the gods? The question is meaningless; existence is a Great Wheel. The gods exist along  time-arrows that are perpendicular to mundane Creation. She’s inherited the deep oral histories of a long-lived people: the Fourth Humans, the Elves. Thadanain is naturally inclined to take a long view about the fate of civilizations. Her goddess ground it society’s predecessors into this modern age’s spawning soil, and will in time make ash of our current follies, too.

Songtan, Autochthon Master of White Dragons: The Infinite Lotus Sect teaches the Lens of the Self to disciples with certain . . . pragmatic tendencies. Songtan is a minor teacher of the art, fully immersed in its egoistic, strategy-spinning mindset. No love, greed or compassion – the “Three Fragrant Poisons” taint her lectures on politics, tactics and the world’s half-natural organisms. She has quite a bit to say about other topics, though much of this is motivated by her desire to emphasize the supremacy of sapient will over all gods, sorceries and pitiable materialism.

Thulbane, the Spider’s Spider, Dwarf Picaro: Any table at the Severed Snake belongs to Thulbane – smart folks just clear the way. The dwarf is said to be a high official of the Company of Free Wanderers: the so-called “bandit’s guild” that plies its trade between Heron’s Rock and Ostrakopolis. Before that, however he was a “spider” – a dungeoneering  adventurer. Thulbane’s band cleared the Heron’s formerly lethal Eastern Gallery, opening the way for less hardy folk to mine it. The Rock wouldn’t exist without him, so locals sometimes call him “the Mayor,” too – but not loudly enough for the Watch to hear. Thulbane knows all about the seedy side of life, the dangers of ruins, and how they might join hands to confound the adventurer’s life.

Each of these NPCs is also mentor to one or more characters in my campaign. Liam taught our magic user, Eileen. Thadanain’s the mother of our half-elves, and Thulbane mentored one of them through a troublesome adolescence. Songtan is our monk’s former master.

And the dungeons are everywhere: the idiot digging of beasts and wild machines; the trap-clad forts built against unimaginable weapons; tunnels of dead streets; complexes so old and varied by wing and addition that no sure sign of their origins remain. Former slave species, living art and priceless mechanisms dwell there, hostile to the Eldest Pact between humanity’s evolutionary heirs and echoes. And treasure — always treasure: gold, finely engineered gems, sorcerous devices, useful energies. On the hundred millionth day we’re hard pressed to find any atom that has not been harvested and modified to fit the needs of some intelligence. By necessity, mining is grave robbing.

Humankind’s old glories rust, rot and mutate into mockery, but the Ancients left a great legacy: the Final Technology, the True Mathematics of sorcery. Of old, they wove new laws into the cosmos that the adept manipulate with pure formulae. But rogue innovations summoned — or perhaps, made — entities in the sub- and overdimensions whose powers matched the godlike Ancients and outstrip the capacities of dwellers in this gloaming age. These entities took into their safekeeping certain meta-natural laws, demanding service in return. The Gods demanded proper names, true rites. They warred with the Star Lords and humbled them, limiting them to Earth as it fell into its exquisite, slow death spasms.

So we stumble into the hundred millionth day. The Thanes and Wardens of Earth demand tribute, arms and goods to weigh down merchant caravans. The dungeons have them, so towns sprout near the mouths of these ruins. Gold and anger flow together in the raucous places; strangers search for profit through sword-lore, thaumaturgy and other skills. These men and women are not cloistered academics or academy-trained soldiers, but commoners who’ve picked up their trades catch as catch can. They aren’t nobles, but they are called adventurers — and most would stand as proudly to answer that title as “Milord.”

In a climate where everybody wants to be “social” (and basically insincere) I appreciate a guy with the candor to say, “I sell your games. Why not tell people about it?” So I am. Buy from Noble Knight via:

Noble Knight Games

2242 Kennedy Rd
Janesville, WI 53545

Store hours are:

Monday through Friday 10am to 8pm
Saturday 11am to 8pm
Sunday 12pm to 6pm

Phone 608-758-9901
Fax 608-758-7360
Email nobleknight@nobleknight.com
Website http://www.nobleknight.com

Things just fell into place after I wrote this short story, read China Mieville and started to think of dungeon fantasy on its own terms — not “dungeonpunk,” the OSR’s homage salad or as an unwanted deviation from high fantasy (2e’s sin). I’m interested in justifying the bizarre AD&Disms of my teen years and wrestling them into something adults can play with. What’s on the menu?

• Working class adventuring
• Dungeon-driven boom towns
• Name level
• Strange dimensions
• Magical alignments
• Anachronistic gods
• Monster generators
• Magical transhumanism
• House rules!
• More . . . .

I don’t have a huge fetish for authentic AD&D and to tell the truth, some rules just aren’t going to pass the first session. Starting house rules include:

• 10+ armour increasing AC.
• Hit bonus instead of to-hit tables, but with a +5 bonus on a natural 20, and a -5 penalty on a natural 1.
• Saving throws use a bonus of (save-20) to roll against a target number of 20 on a d20.
• Reroll all hit dice at each level and after each rest, if the player wants to.

I will be using armour type modifiers, segments and helms (by rolling a d6 with attack rolls). I want to relearn these little-used parts of the game before I fool with them.

The setting? Earth, at least 250,000 years in the future. Vance, Wolfe, Barker and Moorcock. Dungeons are ancient. Magic is a psychic science. Thousands of gods come up with relics of the past: Zeus, Thor, and nameless beings constructed by old books and crazy visions. Demihumans come from other worlds and genetic engineering. The moon is green.