Following on the heels (flippers?) of Cthulhu’s appearance as a patron in issue #1, Tales from the Smoking Wyrm issue #2 brings you another patron: The King of Beasts!
The King of Beasts is at once a noble lion and a nimble hare, a fearsome serpent and a flighty crow. He watches over all animals of flesh and bone that
… the nightmare plastic column of foetid black iridescence oozed tightly onward through its fifteen-foot sinus; gathering unholy speed and driving before it a spiral, re-thickening cloud of the pallid abyss-vapour. It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and unforming as pustules
In issue #1 of Tales from the Smoking Wyrm, our Rites & Rituals article provided a few ways in which your players could use rituals to build specialized magic items in the form of phylacteries to portion off your soul, and dowsing rods to help find magical sources of power.
In issue #2, we will delve into rituals that
Dungeon Crawl Classics has a distinctively built-out spell casting ruleset. But spells as wizards and clerics “normally” cast them are not the only way that magic works in the world of DCC—we are outright told that there are more powerful magics in the world: rites and rituals.
While the core rulebook describes various conditions that might apply to an
Cthulhu—Great Old One, The Sleeper of R’lyeh, The Great Dreamer—all names which can inspire dread in the most seasoned adventurer and/or role-playing gamer. His awakening is preceded by madness, and followed by the destruction of life as we know it—and he’s now available to you as a PATRON!!!
Cthulhu as a subject for exploration in gaming dates back to the
