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Tales from the Sanctum

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The Sanctum Secorum podcast plumbs the depths of Appendix N as it applies to DCC RPG. Each show reviews one piece of Appendix N media — be it literature or film — and then discusses how to bring aspects of it to the table for your DCC game. We explore how the selected piece might already easily fit into particular modules and DCC settings, and we highlight one specific DCC module that really ties into the Appendix N material.

Enter the Sanctum Secorum… and be inspired.

Sanctum Secorum #33 – The Powder of Hyperborea

Get the free Sanctum Secorum #33 Companion HERE!

Retired master-thief Satampra, Zerios of Uzuldaroum recounts an adventure from days gone by when he and his two companions (Vixeela and the dubious magician/alchemist Veezi Phenquor) endeavored to rob the temple of the moon god Leniqua, and steal away with the Thirty-Nine girdles of virginity by means of stealth, cunning, and a little bit of hyperborean chemistry. Originally published in the Saturn Science Fiction & Fantasy, it is the last of Clark’s Hyperborea cycle.

Welcome to the Sanctum Secorum podcast. Tonight we look at a work by Clark Ashton Smith, The Powder of Hyperborea and match it up with Edgar Johnson’s delightful Street Kids of Ur-Hadad.

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Sanctum Secorum #28 – The Raven (1963)

Get the free Sanctum Secorum #28 Companion HERE!

The magician Dr. Erasmus Craven, who does not belong to the brotherhood of magicians, grieves the loss of his beloved wife Lenore and lives in a castle with his daughter Estelle. One day, a raven knocks on his window and Dr. Craven learns that the bird is actually the magician Dr. Adolphus Bedlo that was turned into a raven after challenging the powerful magician Dr. Scarabus that was an enemy of his father. Dr. Craven makes a potion to turn Dr. Bedlo back to his human form and Dr. Bedlo tells that he has seen Lenore in the castle of Dr. Scarabus. Dr. Craven decides to go in his coach with Dr. Bedlo to visit Dr. Scarabus and Estella and Dr. Bedlo’s son Rexford decide to go with them. They find an amicable Dr. Scarabus that invite them to stay for the night. Was Dr. Craven’s father wrong about Dr. Scarabus?

Welcome to the Sanctum Secorum podcast. Tonight is movie night and we discuss Roger Corman’s adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, The Raven as well as Harley Stroh’s newest adventure Enter the Dagon.

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Sanctum Secorum #26 – Changeling Earth

Get the free Sanctum Secorum #26 Companion HERE!

The planet was Earth. The time was fifty thousand years from now. Magic and witchcraft worked and the Old Science didn’t. Why this was so, nobody knew – it had always been that way during the long tyranny of the Empire of the East. During that same period there had always been little bands of rebels using fragments of white magic against the demonic armies. Rolf was the latest of these rebels – and he had on his side the mysterious power known as Ardneh.
When Rolf finally finds Ardneh, he learns of the Change through which Ardneh forced technology to be replaced by magic in this alternate Earth of a far distant future. The discovery of Ardneh’s origin, the climactic showdown of fifty millennia of cosmic contention, and Rolf’s part in it, combine to make a thrilling adventure that concludes the struggle between the Old Technology and the New Demonology.

Welcome to the Sanctum Secorum podcast. Tonight we discuss Fred Saberhagen’s novel Changeling Earth (aka Ardneh’s World) as well as Daniel J. Bishop’s adventure Silent Nightfall.

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Sanctum Secorum #25 – The Fallible Fiend

Get the free Sanctum Secorum #25 Companion HERE!

He looked like a cross between a dragon and a catfish, and he could bend iron bars into pretzels with a flick of his hand. But what Zdim the mild-mannered demon really was, was a scholar of logic and philosophy. That’s why when Zdim was drafted for a year’s servitude on the mortal plane, he felt that a monumental administrative error had been made. And even though Zdim resolved to be absolutely obedient and to do exactly what he was told, the wizard who employed him (Dr. Maldivius) soon agreed…

Welcome to the Sanctum Secorum podcast. Tonight we discuss L Sprague de Camp’s satirical fantasy novel The Fallible Fiend as well as Terry Olson’s adventure Elzemon and the Blood-Drinking Box.

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Sanctum Secorum #24 – Three Hearts and Three Lions

Get the free Sanctum Secorum #24 Companion HERE!

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?

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Sanctum Secorum #21 – The Dying Earth

Get the free Sanctum Secorum #21 Companion HERE!

 “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!

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Sanctum Secorum #19 – Steel Magic

Get the free Sanctum Secorum #19 Companion HERE!

episode-19-covers     “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…

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Sanctum Secorum #18 – The People of the Pit

Get the free Sanctum Secorum #18 Companion HERE!

episode-18-covers“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!

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