Where we continue to build on our partnership with Axe Cop co-creator Ethan Nicolle in an effort to warn of the impending bearmageddon as well as bring nightmarish inspiration to your DCC table.
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Category: Monsters
Sanctum Secorum #24 – Three Hearts and Three Lions
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Holger Carlsen is an American-trained Danish engineer who joins the Danish Resistance to the Nazis. At the shore near Elsinore he is among the group of resistance fighters trying to cover the escape to Sweden of an important scientist (evidently, the nuclear physicist Niels Bohr). With a German force closing in, Carlsen is shot – and suddenly finds himself carried to a parallel universe, a world where Northern European legend concerning Charlemagne (“The Matter of France”) is real. This world is divided between the forces of Chaos inhabiting “Middle World” (which includes Faerie) and forces of Law based in the human world, which is in turn divided between the Holy Roman Empire and the Saracens. He finds the equipment and horse of a medieval knight waiting for him. The shield is emblazoned with three hearts and three lions.
Welcome to the Sanctum Secorum podcast. Tonight we discuss Poul Anderson’s seminal work Three Hearts and Three Lions as well as Terry Olson’s new adventure Escape from the Shrouded Fen. We like one of these far more than the other…can you guess which?
Sanctum Secorum #21 – The Dying Earth
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“The six stories that make up the the first volume of the Dying Earth are all set in an undefined far future Earth, when the sun is nearing the end of its life. The sky ranges from pink to deep blue, lit by a dim red sun, and many strange plants and animals exist. Much of the story is set within the forested country of Ascolais*, and in the ruined cities that dot the landscape. Seekers of wisdom and beauty include lovely lost women, eccentric wizards and man-eating melancholy deodands. Twk-men ride dragonflies and trade information for salt. There are monsters and demons. It is a world where each being is morally ambiguous: the evil are charming, the good are dangerous.”
Welcome to the Sanctum Secorum podcast. Tonight’s episode takes you across the Dying Earth of Jack Vance, introduces you to the new Keeper of Mysteries, and announces the winners of our Tarzan content contest!
Online Inspiration: Bearboons (x2)
Where we continue to build on our partnership with Axe Cop co-creator Ethan Nicolle in an effort to warn of the impending bearmageddon as well as bring nightmarish inspiration to your DCC table.
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Sanctum Secorum #20 – Tarzan of the Apes
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“Tarzan of the Apes, the story tells of an infant — the son of an aristocratic English couple — abandoned when his parents die in the jungles of Africa. Rescued and reared by apes, he learns to speak their language and imitate their ability to travel swiftly through the treetops. Eventually, his courage, immense strength and exceptional intelligence earn him the respect and admiration not only of the apes, but of all the creatures of the jungle. The ape-man’s story is classic and fast-paced, packed with riveting adventures as Tarzan avenges the killing of Kala, his ape-mother, subdues man-eating beasts of the jungle, meets and falls in love with the beautiful Jane Porter, vanquishes greedy pirate-adventurers, and deals with assorted other threats.”
Welcome to the Sanctum Secorum podcast. Tonight’s episode takes you into the wilds of the Africa of Edgar Rice Burroughs with Tarzan of the Apes!
Online Inspiration: The Bearantula
Where we continue to build on our partnership with Axe Cop co-creator Ethan Nicolle in an effort to warn of the impending bearmageddon as well as bring nightmarish inspiration to your DCC table.
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Sanctum Secorum #19 – Steel Magic
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“A girl and her two brothers are transported across time to the Avalon of King Arthur, where they must return three magic talismans to their rightful owners or remain trapped forever in the distant past. The adventure begins when Sara Lowry wins a picnic basket at the Firemen’s Strawberry Festival. She and her brothers, Greg and Eric, are staying with their uncle at his Hudson Valley estate while their parents are in Japan. Fascinated by the haunting history of the old manor, they pack a picnic lunch and begin their search for the legendary lost lake. They discover a medieval castle – and suddenly they’re enveloped by a gray mist that transports them back to the time of King Arthur! There, they are given an urgent mission to recover three lost talismans: Arthur’s sword, Excalibur; Merlin’s ring; and the horn of Huon, Warden of the West. Can Sara, Greg, and Eric fulfill their quest and save Avalon – the only place that stands between the Powers of Darkness and the mortal realm – and return to their own time?”
Welcome to the Sanctum Secorum podcast…
Online Inspiration: The Grizzly Boar
Often one may stumble across an online image that is wholly inspiring for game purposes. Ethan Nicolle (co-creator of Axe Cop) posted a story to the Bearmageddon News Network website and it was so fantastic that we simply had to reach out to him for permission to share our inspiration. Ethan has graciously allowed to use the image commissioned by BNN so that we can bring you the horror that is the Grizzly Boar.
Companion #18 released!
The delayed free companion for the People of the Pit has been released. Fear Lao T’zai and the spiders of Leng!
Sanctum Secorum #18 – The People of the Pit
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“People of the Pit features a pair of prospectors, Starr Anderson and the narrator, Frank, who are exploring the North, looking for gold. There are hints of a backstory between the two men, painting them as more than mere prospectors and it creates an anticipation for oddness to come. We are then introduced to a secondary narrator. A man who, in classic fashion, crawls (near-dead) into the men’s camp. And the manner of his crawling is horrific in itself. This is no collapsing half-stagger, no dragging himself along the floor, but as the narrator says, ‘it was like a baby crawling upstairs. The forepaws lifted themselves in grotesquely infantile fashion’ . On top of this, he wears a band of gold round his waist, and a chain. Gold, of course, is what has brought the explorers to this place, but when they remove it, ‘it was like no gold I had ever handled. […] it had an unclean, viscid life of its own. It clung to the file. […] It was – loathsome’ . Something is clearly not right when a man in search of gold actively throws it away.
The story then turns to the tale of the narrator, telling a story of a lost civilisation in the bottom of a ravine. Not any old ravine, however, but ‘Imagine the Grand Canyon five times as wide and with the bottom dropped out’. As one can expect, it gets a lot weirder from there…”
Welcome to the Sanctum Secorum podcast where even attending a convention cannot disrupt things. While the Keepers of Mysteries attend Gamehole Con I, the Gatekeeper of the Sanctum, bring you the latest episode. Tonight the Keepers discuss a story by Abraham Merritt and bring it to your DCC table!