The Prophecy of the Six and the Twelve

As retrieved at the behest of the Seventh Order of the Darkly Luminous from its Astral fastness in Zjelwyin Fall, the highest priests and priestesses of Celestian invoke the Mandate of Far Seering, and herald into Oerth and its sister-worlds, on this Godsday, the 11th of Goodmonth, in the 576th year of the reign of Celestial Aerdy, the nineteeth prophecy of the twins:  the Prophecy of the Six and the Twelve.

==



The Prophecy of the Six and the Twelve




Bleak communions: eldritch gardens, fallen shadows
encircle and conjure, name and bind our chorded woe.
All-Father lost amongst Fimbûl winters’ whispers—
wastelands of wishes, long-sought in mast’ries’ umbrage.
Twin daughters stand—resolute, against opening gates
as the sands’ tides rise in unchronicled secrets

found, lost, found again—the march of moments, secrets
seeking, seeking dusts drift and swallow all shadows.
Vain hope to halt the keying of myriad gates
without the Twins’ sacrosanct blessings—untold woe
will flow, filling seas, valleys, and skies with umbrage—
unbound cacophonies, loves’ unspoken whispers,

bloodlines unborn beyond Time’s unyielding whispers—
forever barred from unlocking tomorrows’ secrets.
The Twins times twice—each brightening in awed umbrage,
adroitly chime, ringed with wisdoms—chase the shadows,
unwind the Strands of Fate to reweave the worlds’ woe—
newly-spun, reborn in storms—scale the final gates.

A web of motes illumines planes, ley lines, and gates,
divines clear roots of quiet through the silences, whispers,
Susurrations, and branching forks—all paths of Woe.
To fight the future—decrypt its resounding secrets,
speak their wisdoms to the chiaroscuro shadows,
unveil the Prince of Raptors, find allies in Umbrage.

Beware!—winterlorn seekers, replete with umbrage,
assay to disjoin the Twins’ names, to fissure the gates,
rechime time, and wreath all worlds in ashen shadows.
Breach their unravelling wiles’ twisting whispers
lest—lured into Eclipse with chromatic secrets—
they unleash once more the long-sought, lost Isles of Woe!

Hearken!—black-iron wyrds weave arcs of worlds against Woe.
The Twins in issue must overcome the Twins’ umbrage—
undisputed their bedimmed, festering secrets
will spill across the spheres’ conjunctions, key the gates,
blind the Father in silence’s sibilant whispers
while the Stern Mother’s wisdoms fall into shadows.

Tides of Woe conjure and bind worlds in shadows.
Resplendent Umbrage sheathes tangs and tongues in whispers.
Gardens of secrets increase beyond the dim gates.

==

And so it begins.

Allan.

Kellri's 18 Module Challenge - Day 3: A Fabled City of Brass by Anthony Huso

Day 3 - A Module You Like with a Place in the Title: _A Fabled City of Brass_ by Anthony Huso

Unlike yesterday's choices, which felt very limited to me, today's selections very-much span a cornucopia of good adventuring options!  Choosing what place-based titles to eliminate meant making some tough choices:

• I decided to exclude Castle Greyhawk since I've not played it as a published adventure, and it's not really been published yet (although I have DM'd several of the levels extracted from it, and have designed my own version too)
• I also disqualified other unpublished module manuscripts that I've played or run, like Kuntz's Lost City of the Elders and Castle El Raja Key, Barker's Jakallan Underworld, Chainsaw's Foolsgrave, etc., since they've not yet been printed or made generally available
• Other favorite adventures unfortunately lack place names in their titles (or fit later categories better than this one, in some cases):  WG5 Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure (although I could squeak by using "Maure Castle" I imagine...), Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues, 

After much deliberation, I finally settled in on a more-recent OSRIC title for today's module---Anthony Huso's A Fabled City of Brass:

A Fabled City of Brass map - by Anthony Huso

Anthony's take on the storied home of the efreet returns to the origins of its mythology via Scheherazade's Tales of A Thousand and One Nights, and is a two-volume set:

• A Fabled City of Brass (softcover - and also available in PDF)
• City of Brass Appendicies (software - also available in PDF)
• The beautiful maps are freely available to download...:
• Player map - high-resolution version
• Player Map Compressed for Fantasy Grounds 
• DM map - high-resolution version 
• ...and You can also watch a time-lapse video on YouTube that showcases Anthony's work creating the map

A Fabled City of Brass -
the books, by Anthony Huso

Why I Love A Fabled City of Brass

There are many reasons why any gamer could love Huso's take on the City of Brass, given it's wonderful skill in leveraging the OSRIC/1e rules set, but here are mine:

• Huso's high-level (12th+), extra-planar version of the City of Brass offers a fitting capstone for any AD&D campaign 
• It evokes the feel of both the Arabian Nights stories as well as Dave Sutherland's iconic Dungeon Masters Guide cover illustration:
  

  

  David C. Sutherland III's 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide cover artwork

• Huso leverages AD&D's own lore like a pro---he even goes a step further, recommending Rob Kuntz's "(To the) City of Brass" 1987 RPGA tournament module as an introduction to the setting
•  The Appendicies book contains random encounter tables, new flora, 29 new monsters, 6 new spells, 40 new or expanded magic items (including artifacts like the Codex of the Infinite Planes, Ehlissa Amooyan's Bejeweled Nighingale, and the Jacinth of Inestimable Beauty), 5 pregen/playtest PCs, and a 4+ page comprehensive index

Three Runners Up

I'm limiting myself to three, otherwise I'll just end up recreating my favorites list with each entry, and in today's case, the limitation is imperative:  there are just too many good adventures with evocative place names in their titles!

So, my somewhat-angst-ridden, winnowed-down listing of merely three runners-up includes:

• The Original Bottle City by Robert J. Kuntz (Pied Piper Publishing 2008; Black Blade Publishing 2014):  the only true dungeon level published from Gygax and Kuntz's Castle Greyhawk
• Caverns of Thracia by Jennell Jaquays (Judges Guild 1978; Goodman Games, 2016):  Jaquay's classic mega-dungeon!
• D1 Tomb of Abysthor by Clark Peterson and Bill Webb (Necromancer Games, 2002):  an OOP and under-appreciated 3.0-era classic that, while not as large as a true mega-dungeon, offers a compellingly-designed and large dungeon environment, with ties back to Necromancer Games' best early products---Crucible of Freya, Bard's Gate, Demons & Devils, and Rappan Athuk

My other posts in Kellri's 18 Day Module Challenge:

1. Day 2: Masks of Nyarlathotep by Larry DiTillio
2. Day 1: Empire of the Ghouls by Wolfgang Baur
3. Day 0: These are a Few of My Favorite Things...