The Temple of Yag-Kosha (adventure in Khitai)

[Supplement Four]

Here's an idea for when you get your grubby mits on the Khitai sourcebook.

Re-read Howard's The Tower of the Elephant, if you haven't read it in a while. Pay particular attention to the things Yag-Kosha says.

If you don't have Howard's story handy, click on this link: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600831h.html All of Howard's stories are in the public domain now (though the character of Conan is not).

Then, go out and buy the Khitai sourcebook when it hits the stands. I have no idea, really, what's in that book. But, the ideal location in the Hyborean Age is Khitai.

Next, get youself a copy of the old D&D module Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedition_to_the_Barrier_Peaks

Do some coversion on the scenario for your particular game and tastes, then re-title the adventure as The Temple of Yag-Kosha.

(Which is, of course, a crashed space ship from ages ago, not a temple at all...just like the Elephant's Hart is not what it seems....just like the Book of the Elephant is not quite what it seems.)

Viola, you have a pretty cool (and unusual) adventure to spring on your Conan players.

 

[Stygian Devout]

The premise sounds interesting at first, but as I recall that module had the PCs fighting robots and finding stuff like power armor that they could use. How much genre-crossing would your players settle for in Conan?

 

[Supplement Four]

The premise sounds interesting at first, but as I recall that module had the PCs fighting robots and finding stuff like power armor that they could use. How much genre-crossing would your players settle for in Conan?

Exactly. The "temple" is the crashed spaceship that Yag used to come to Earth. You wouldn't describe to your players that the sensors above the corridor made the doors open automatically. You would whispher to them, with wide eyes, that the doors opened by themselves and magic must be afoot!

 

[Hervé]

This might be nice for a standard D&D game, but I find the idea a bit off target for a Conan game. My players wouldn't buy this. Actually, neither do I.

I might be wrong for it's been a while since I last read the novel, but I seem to remember the Yaggites didn't use a spaceship to come to earth, but instead sprouted wings to cross the gulfs of space and lost them when they came down to earth.

Anyways, even if it's true, nothing prevents you to stay away a bit from the canon. Let us know how it went if you actually run the adventure.

 

[Supplement Four]

I might be wrong for it's been a while since I last read the novel, but I seem to remember the Yaggites didn't use a spaceship to come to earth, but instead sprouted wings to cross the gulfs of space and lost them when they came down to earth.

The story does say something like that. It also says something about moving faster than light.

I've always taken that to be the way the space man from another planet, Yag, spoke to Conan who probably wouldn't understand what a space ship is. He flew between the stars faster than light on mighty wings, or some such.

Anyways, even if it's true, nothing prevents you to stay away a bit from the canon. Let us know how it went if you actually run the adventure.

I'm not going to Khitai in my campaign. I think I'm going to stay around Zamroa (and possibly east to Turan, no farther than Hyrkania, and south, but no farther than Shem).

I just posted it here as an idea that might inspire somebody.

I've noticed that some of the more vocal people here on the forum would rather argue about minor details or non-game related stuff rather than actually discuss the game rules/story ideas/adventure thoughts.

I was just trying to contribute to the positive.

 

[Caz]

I think that's a damn fine idea for an adventure. I went and bought that adventure.
I like the Conan idea, but I think I'm going to alter it a bit and have the ship in the wild mountains of Wales in the 13th century.

Quite a bit like that movie "sphere," but since the ship was on land, they didn't have to wait for modern underwater technology to find it.

Probably not campaign material, but an interesting historical or fantasy sci-fi adventure.

 

[kintire]

I've noticed that some of the more vocal people here on the forum would rather argue about minor details or non-game related stuff rather than actually discuss the game rules/story ideas/adventure thoughts.

I was just trying to contribute to the positive.

If you are running a Conan game you pick adventures that fit the Conan background. Its a nice idea for an adventure in a world that mixes fantasy and sci fi, but Conan does not. Howard is in the Lovecraft mileu, where you travel between planets by summoning Byakhee or similar creatures to carry you, using magic to protect yourself from space, not by spaceships. Fine general idea, wouldn't fit into a standard Conan game.

 

[Vortigern]

I seem to recall some language at the end of that story depicting the 'free' Yag using his wings again, perhaps in some vision in the gem or some such. I'm far too lazy to go get my book right now, but... I'm fairly sure he was actually depicted with them in some way traversing space/time in a non-technological way.

Not that this should have any bearing whatsoever on telling a good story or running a good adventure... or indeed how one chooses to interpret Yag in one's own campaign.

 

[flatscan]

I seem to recall some language at the end of that story depicting the 'free' Yag using his wings again, perhaps in some vision in the gem or some such. I'm far too lazy to go get my book right now, but... I'm fairly sure he was actually depicted with them in some way traversing space/time in a non-technological way.

You are correct. Yag-Kosha had wings. This is not open for interpretation as Howard explicitly spells this out in the story:

"I am very old, oh man of the waste countries; long and long ago I came to this planet with others of my world, from the green planet Yag, which circles for ever in the outer fringe of this universe. We swept through space on mighty wings that drove us through the cosmos quicker than light, because we had warred with the kings of Yag and were defeated and outcast. But we could never return, for on earth our wings withered from our shoulders."

And later at the end of the story:

"And into the heart came a green, shining winged figure with the body of a man and the head of an elephant--no longer blind or crippled. Yara threw up his arms and fled as a madman flees, and on his heels came the avenger. Then, like the bursting of a bubble, the great jewel vanished in a rainbow burst of iridescent gleams, and the ebony table-top lay bare and deserted--as bare, Conan somehow knew, as the marble couch in the chamber above, where the body of that strange transcosmic being called Yag-kosha and Yogah had lain."

 

[Supplement Four]

I seem to recall some language at the end of that story depicting the 'free' Yag using his wings again, perhaps in some vision in the gem or some such.

Yag does. Once his body dies, Conan sees him flying around on wings again.

I'm far too lazy to go get my book right now, but... I'm fairly sure he was actually depicted with them in some way traversing space/time in a non-technological way.

I think it depends on how you read it.

Literally, Yag speaks of his faster-than-light journey on his wings.

Some people read it that way.

I took it to mean the way an ancient-old-but-wise alien to earth spoke to the post-cataclysmic pre-historic Conan.

The same thing happened, in my mind's eye, when I read the adventure Book of the Elephant in S&P. The book is a gem with knowledge in it. I see it as a data storage crystal, probably with digital characters conforming to different languages, used by a highly advanced technological civilization (Yag and his peeps).

There's enough ambiguity there to read it both ways, I would think.

Akin to the legends of aliens helping the Egyptians build the pyramids and visiting early civilizations on Earth, I actualy think this fits well with the Conan version of the universe, and the crashed spaceship idea would fit in with Conan brilliantly.

Those that see Yag as a more mystical being, travelling the planes on his "wings", I'm sure wouldn't agree.

 

[sgstyrsky]

If you are running a Conan game you pick adventures that fit the Conan background. Its a nice idea for an adventure in a world that mixes fantasy and sci fi, but Conan does not. Howard is in the Lovecraft mileu, where you travel between planets by summoning Byakhee or similar creatures to carry you, using magic to protect yourself from space, not by spaceships. Fine general idea, wouldn't fit into a standard Conan game.

Lovecraft did mix technology and magic quite often. The Fungi from Yuggoth flew through space (using magic?) but possessed technological devices such as brain boxes.

Advanced mathematics in Lovecraft was always way to access other planes and dimensions the same way witches and dread beings did.

The race of Yith traveled through time using technology and employed "lightning guns".

I think if you were to use Barrier Peaks in Conan you would have to up the dread factor surrounding the ship and its inhabitants, since high technology of that sort almost always tainted the humans coming in contact with it, as well as alter the items discovered in the ship. They wouldn't be easily used by characters because of their advanced nature and the fact they were designed for non-humanoid beings.

 

[flatscan]

I took it to mean the way an ancient-old-but-wise alien to earth spoke to the post-cataclysmic pre-historic Conan.

You are assuming REH, a pulp writer in the 1920s had a concept of a space ship (in a Jules Verne sort of way) when his much respected contemporary H.P. Lovecraft was writing about space travel in a much more "weird" manner. Not only that, REH's one space fantasy story 'Almuric' does not involve space ships as a mode of travel between worlds but more of an individual quickly flying through space, mode of transportation:

"The Transition was so swift and brief, that it seemed less than a
tick of time lay between the moment I placed myself in Professor
Hildebrand's strange machine, and the instant when I found myself
standing upright in the clear sunlight that flooded a broad plain. I
could not doubt that I had indeed been transported to another world.
The landscape was not so grotesque and fantastic as I might have
supposed, but it was indisputably alien to anything existing on the
Earth.

But before I gave much heed to my surroundings, I examined my own
person to learn if I had survived that awful flight without injury.
Apparently I had. My various parts functioned with their accustomed
vigor. But I was naked. Hildebrand had told me that inorganic
substance could not survive the transmutation. Only vibrant, living
matter could pass unchanged through the unthinkable gulfs which lie
between the planets. I was grateful that I had not fallen into a land
of ice and snow. The plain seemed filled with a lazy summerlike heat.
The warmth of the sun was pleasant on my bare limbs."

 

[kintire]

There's enough ambiguity there to read it both ways, I would think.

There is nothing else in the entire Howard corpus that mentions any sort of high technology ever having existed anywhere. I don't think its that ambiguous... although you may well be right that Yag kosha did not fly through space on literal wings, the reality is more likely to be spiritual than technical.

Still, if it works for your campaign, go for it.

Lovecraft did mix technology and magic quite often. The Fungi from Yuggoth flew through space (using magic?) but possessed technological devices such as brain boxes.

Advanced mathematics in Lovecraft was always way to access other planes and dimensions the same way witches and dread beings did.

The race of Yith traveled through time using technology and employed "lightning guns".

Lovecraft makes no distinction between technology and magic. The Great race of Yith travel by projecting their minds into other bodies, and the Mi Go and Old Ones fly using natural ability and magic. Only in collaborative works do anything like spaceships appear.

 

[flatscan]

although you may well be right that Yag kosha did not fly through space on literal wings, the reality is more likely to be spiritual than technical.

There is no evidence at all to support this from the story or in Howard's entire body of work. The story explicitly says "wings" (to the point where Conan sees Yag-kosha flying after Yara with his wings in the Heart). Howard did not live during the space age, so it's arguable whether even he as the writer had any concept of a space ship. Again, look at 'Almuric' and it's not hard to imagine when REH wrote that Yag-kosha flew faster than light with 'wings', REH literally meant 'wings'.

Still, if it works for your campaign, go for it.

Agreed. I'm a total REH fanboy, as such I pose my argument for scholastic debate. Heed it or ignore it for gaming purposes. Doesn't bother me.

 

[Malcadon]

The whole flying Elephant-men in space is a mix of Asian-mythology and Cthulhu-mythos.

An S3: EttBP game mixed with a swords & sorcery setting is not a bad thing, but its not something for a purest Conan game (not to mention how much of a campaign breaker the module is). Otherwise, I'm just as big a fan of classic Gamma World as I'm a fan of Conan. I'm even playing an online game of Expedition to the Barrier Peaks that uses the Mutant Future rules (basically a retro-clone of GW 2nd Ed using the basic D&D mechanics, and its a free download). I like the idea of playing in an age of swords, sorcery, & superscience, and I'm working on a setting that has such a feel. I'm working on a system that would add D&D (but I'm trying more for Conan) classes to such a game (in GW & MF, you only have races, your HP is based on CON, and each level/rank only add a bonus to something), but its still a work in progress. I hope someone is interested in checking out the Mutant Future game, as it holds well the the spirit of the classic GW games, and the art is exceptional (even the ones I did not do )!

 

[Supplement Four]

Howard did not live during the space age, so it's arguable whether even he as the writer had any concept of a space ship.

?

There was plenty of scifi in the 30's. H.G. Wells had The Shape of Things To Come published in 1933, which was turned into a movie in 1936, the same year Howard died. That year also saw the first Flash Gordon serials.

Wells' The War of the Worlds was published in 1898.

Buck Rogers first appeared in 1928.

Edgar Rice Burroughs first published John Carter of Mars in 1912.

E.E. Smith publishes Spacehounds in 1931.

Eienstein starting making predictions in 1907.

And, Howard mentions in the story, specifically, travellering faster than light (not just travelling through space).

I would think he would well know about a spaceship.

 

[Hervé]

Malcadon, I love your links!...

 

[Malcadon]

Malcadon, I love your links!...

Thanks!

 

[flatscan]

And, Howard mentions in the story, specifically, travellering faster than light (not just travelling through space).

I would think he would well know about a spaceship.

As I said, arguable. Yes he does mention traveling faster than light, with WINGS. You of course ignore Almuric (where the protagonist traveled faster than light without a space ship and faced off against winged foes called "Yagas" in the land of "Yagg".) and assume he read the stories you mention. You ignore Lovecraft, who we KNOW he read.

 

[Krushnak]

I also dont see why an acient alien who is a master of powerful magics would need a ship to fly through space faster than light. It kind of ruins the whole atmosphere and flavour of the character and setting if you add in something so cheap as "technology".

There is one actual mention of something that may be technology in the Conan stories by Howard and that is the fire wand from Red Nails. It shoots a focused beam of fire(laser) at target aslong as they have metal behind them to conduct the beam. It's a relic of the strange creators of the city and is just as likely to be magic as it is a piece of technology.