Introduction to Planet Crasis: Bronze Blades

Introduction

Across the continent of Athanor, the mithril swords of Law clash against the blood-bronze axes of Chaos.

“Bronze Blades”, set in Athanor’s lands of Chaos, is a sister campaign to “Silver Swords” which I am running, set in the lands of Law.

Mithril occurs naturally in the rock of Athanor. A cosmic field stretches out from this Lawful substance into the space around Crasis, attracting meteorites of the Chaos substance azite over the planet’s geologic time scale. The war bands of Chaos capture and exploit this azite, creating the alloy “blood-bronze”, just as the Empire of Law alloys steel with mithril.

The power centre of Law in the north of Athanor is Castle Quicksilver - the seat of Emperor Nigel Ceresgard who commands the feudal kingdoms of Athanor and beyond.

The power centre of Chaos in the south of Athanor is the Moonspire from which the Sorceress-Queen Adastra directs the tribes, cults and covens of the south and allied nations.

The Wisterwal Ranges separate the arable and once peaceful Caryoptic Plains of the north from the majestic grasslands of the south - the Wild Hunting Grounds - teeming with herds that feed the tribes of the south. Border fighting has interrupted much of the food supply to each nation – risking escalation.

Bronze Blades kicks off with an azite meteorite landfall - attracting ambitious treasure seekers to one of the pockets of the Wild Hunting Grounds as yet untouched by conflict. Perhaps you are…

Core Ruleset

Bronze Blades shall be run using:

They are equivalent.

Backstory

I don’t require you to come up with a character backstory besides a moment of thought or an amusing gimmick. “Tweet length” will do. You may use it to inform your role-playing and decisions but I will not refer to it directly. The only backstory I am concerned with is things that have happened at our gaming table.

Character Classes

(Zerothly: your class is your desired career progression. Classic D&D provides “race as class” but I consider those “serving suggestions”. Read on for more options.)

Firstly I allow character classes from the core ruleset above, BECMI or D&D Rules Cyclopedia. Note, some tables in these books start to diverge from Moldvay/Cook and OSE, usually at higher level (saving throws, clerical turning, thief abilities), but it isn’t going to break the game. Use the book you have! I would. Magic items will be doing the heavy lifting by then anyway.

Secondly, I will allow extra classes, including separate race and class, and the “Multiple Classes” optional rule from Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy. IMPORTANT: I’m waiving demihuman race-as-race class level limits as per OSE Advanced Fantasy Players Tome page 78 and adding optional Human abilities as per page 86 including the hit points rolling rule - don’t miss that one! Some very cool options in OSE Advanced would suit the game. These include:

Given that this is a campaign set in Chaos lands, any character race is permissible and celebrated e.g. drow, duergar. It would be best for everyone if you avoided evil characters! Those races aren’t necessarily evil in this campaign.

Finally, I’ll definitely entertain classes from other sources, including making your own. I’m a strong believer in making a class to fulfill your desired character career path, or inventing your own spells, etc. (Even if no one ever takes me up on it!)

As a postscript, everything is mutable with a quest (even if it is hand-waved). For example: a character can adopt or renounce their fey ancestry (i.e. gain elfin abilities or become mortal, respectively) through in-game means.

General Rules Interpretations/Modifications in My Games

Please see the FAQs page for some houserules and rules interpretations I use in my game. These may affect your character creation process.

Ascending Armour Class

I’ll be using Ascending Armour Class (AAC). OSE has the conversion for AAC already e.g.:

Crits/fumbles

As per OSE, a natural 20 is always a hit and a 1 is always a miss. There are no special outcomes for crits/fumbles beyond that.

Rules NOT Being Used

For clarity, what is not being used in Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy is:

Nor will I be using RC’s Weapon Mastery.

Let’s decide on name-level mechanics if/when we get there.

Ability Scores

I’ll also be using Method 1 from AD&D for ability scores: 4d6 drop lowest, arrange to taste. Feel free to scrap a “useless character”.

Hit Points

Characters get max hit points at first level.

Alignment

Alignment is the three-point Law-Neutral-Chaos continuum.

Alignment is cosmological affinity not moral views on human rights.

Characters may learn one mystery in Law, Neutrality or Chaos (i.e. a mystery of a Law, Neutrality or Chaos god/demon/entity/philosophy) per level through ritual, boon or curse. This happens during play, for example, by joining a cult, spending time in a sacred place at a sacred time, reading a forbidden book or being visited by a cosmic entity.

A zeroth level character knows no mysteries unless they are a special NPC.

A first level character may know zero (i.e. choice deferred until later) or one mystery at character creation.

A character may swear an oath once per adventure to Law, Neutrality or Chaos via one of their known mysteries. The oath may be superceded by a new oath only in the next adventure or when a new mystery is accrued in the current adventure (remember - only possible once per level). A character’s alignment is therefore that of their active oath. A character is unaligned if there is no active oath.

Being aligned to Law allows you to exploit mithril weapons. Being aligned to Chaos allows you to exploit blood-bronze weapons.

The total number of mysteries known in your current alignment is your mystery level. Mystery level dictates the maximum bonus you can exploit when using mithril or blood-bronze weapons. A weapon forged in mithril or blood-bronze with normal skill is +1 (magical), with bonuses of +2 through +5 depending on the mastery and cost of extra-telluric metallurgy required. A mithril or blood-bronze weapon with a bonus higher than the character’s mystery level is inert in their hands.

Example: Bor-Ax the Slayer knows two Chaos mysteries and one Law mystery. This is how he got there:

Character Level Mystery alignment Mystery learned
1, beginning of play - None yet (deferred)
1, in first game Chaos Internalised Chaos Mandala, Kaleidos, Demon of Phantasmagoria
2 Chaos Grotto Ritual, Mare Fecunditatis, Demoness of Blooms
3 Law Earth Lore, St. Toxteth, Patron Saint of Harvest

Bor-Ax swears an oath to Mare Fecunditatis (a Chaos Demoness) at the beginning of the adventure which he can do because he knows one of her mysteries. He is therefore aligned to Chaos with a mystery level of 2 for this adventure.

Bor-Ax has a +2 blood-bronze dagger, a +1 mithril longsword and a +3 blood-bronze warhammer. The dagger functions at +2 because he is currently aligned to Chaos with a mystery level of 2. The longsword is inert because he is currently aligned to Chaos. The warhammer is inert because he is of insufficient mystery level.

Gods and Demons

The people of Athanor worship (exploit) a multitude of spiritual, ancestral, cosmic and extraplanar entities. It is believed that demons live on Crasis’ moon Oculus, which has a crater from which ruby red light shines, regarding the planet below.

This list is a work in progress!

Law

Name Drawn from Description Mysteries (known of so far)
1 Asmodeus MM Contracts
2 Mitra Dark Tower, Judges Guild Judgement, teaching, instruction
3 Modron Hierarch: Primus MM2 Logic
4 Modron Hierarchs: The Four Secundi MM2 Mathematics
5 Modron Hierarchs: The Nine Tertians MM2 Classical physics
6 Null - Darkness, underworld
7 Polarix - Constellations, navigation
8 St. Ceinwen - a Lioness of Mitra, champion of Kilhir Cloister The Forbearance of St. Ceinwen
9 St. Toxteth - Harvest The Solar Font, We Sow the Seed…
10 Trismegistus - Magic, arcane knowledge
11 Vitus - Life, healing, anatomy, heredity Root Chakra, Sacral Chakra, Solar Plexus Chakra, Heart Chakra, Throat Chakra, Third Eye Chakra, Crown Chakra, Blood Humor, Yellow Bile Humor, Black Bile Humor, Phlegm Humor

Neutral

Name Drawn from Description Mysteries (known of so far)
1 Artemix Greek myth Hunters
2 Cat Lord MM2 Animal Lord of Cats
3 Elemental Prince/ss: Cryonax FF Elemental Cold
4 Elemental Prince/ss: Imix FF Elemental Fire
5 Elemental Prince/ss: Ogremoch FF Elemental Earth
6 Elemental Prince/ss: Olhydra FF Elemental Water
7 Elemental Prince/ss: Yan-C-Bin FF Elemental Air
8 Grey Mary (Mari Lwyd) Welsh folk custom Luck Hearth Wassail, Health Wassail, Coin Wassail, Cider Wassail
9 Lienus - Merchants, business
10 Petrichor - Nature, rain
11 Volxan Roman myth Steel, forging, crafting
12 Ouranos (Thanks Mitch for the name) Cosmos, theory of relativity

Chaos

Name Drawn from Description Mysteries (known of so far)
1 Cthulhu HPL Cosmic chaos
2 Helios - Sun, light, energy, life Source of All Possibilities
3 Ix - Ocean
4 Kaleidos - Phantasmagoria Internalised Chaos Mandala, Vision of Deep Time
5 Karna Dak - Barbarian ancestor worship
6 Mare Fecunditatis TOEE Goddess of fecundity, queen of blooms, known elsewhere as demoness Zuggtmoy The Mycorrhizal Mind
7 Nerolz - Chaos, dynamics, quantum mechanics
8 Orcus MM Undead The Forbidden Flesh
9 Set Dark Tower, Judges Guild Serpents, secrets, lies
10 Th’ssok - A Son of Set

Henchmen/Retainers

Players are enthusiastically encouraged to keep henchmen (AD&D parlance)/retainers (OSE parlance).

I’m using the OSE SRD rules for retainers (link) but I am waiving the Wages and Upkeep and Loyalty Checks rules so long as you give them some treasure and treat them at least as well as your main PC.

So in short, they’re a secondary PC who earns a half share of XP, and can fulfill some useful roles like:

Postscript

I’ve tried here to find a middle ground between several specific player preferences. Please feel free to fire back with any questions or to highlight any notable omissions!

--

Date Notes
2 Oct 2023 First version
12 Oct 2023 Max HP at first level
27 Nov 2023 Added a note about henchmen
6 Dec 2023 Combined three Bronze Blades pages into one
17 Dec 2023 Added mysteries
17 Jan 2024 A note on backstory
6 Feb 2024 Added two mysteries
6 Mar 2024 Fixed typo, added a mystery, tidied up Alignment explanation a little
11 Apr 2024 Added note on human racial benefits optional rule from OSE Advanced
16 May 2024 Added link to FAQs
21 May 2024 Added St Ceinwen and Th’ssok from BB3: Kilhir Cloister