Castle Rat's "Wizard" & Heartseeker TTRPG & Playlist

Plus Conan

The “Medieval Fantasy Heavy Metal” band Castle Rat have released a new single called “Wizard.” It is from their forthcoming album The Bestiary. I covered the band in previous newsletters, and their 2024 album Into the Realm got a lot of attention from sword & sorcery loving music fans. If you’re not familiar, here is a band description from their latest press materials:

Since their formation in 2019, CASTLE RAT have created a vivid labyrinth of fantasy lore led by "The Rat Queen" aka Riley Pinkerton. Together with "The Count," "The Plague Doctor" and "The All-Seeing Druid", the group has carried out countless battles against "The Rat Reaperess" with riffs, swords and spells on stages across the country.

Check out the new song in the official video below:

If you think the album title The Bestiary suggests a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game resource, you won’t be disappointed with the band’s description of the album’s concept:

Recorded by Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Wolves in the Throne Room, Björk) and mixed by Jonathan Nuñez (Torche, Restless Spirit), the band's latest odyssey features 13 spellbinding tracks of epic carnage and mystical metal. Commenting on the album, The Rat Queen states: “‘The Bestiary’ is a conceptual book of beasts containing a collection of mystical creatures from a world forgotten. The last remaining souls of each have been gathered and preserved by ‘The Wizard.’ Cautionary tales of each beast and The Wizard himself are woven through the power of traditional heavy metal song and spell.”

You can pre-order The Bestiary in a variety of formats from the Castle Rat Bandcamp page.

Heartseeker - TTRPG & Soundtrack Playlist

Scott Malthouse from Trollish Delver Games has released an updated version of his Heartseeker game. Scott is a music enthusiast as well as a creative and prolific game designer, so I always enjoy seeing what new things he is producing. Here are some details about Heartseeker:

Welcome to Heartseeker, a complete fantasy adventure game on two sides of A4 paper. Whether you want to dive into haunted ruins as a dwarf warrior, walk the halls of cloud palaces as a catfolk wizard, or track monsters through an emerald forest as a ratkin pathfinder, this small ruleset packs a big punch.

The latest version has a new cover, neatened up rules and more content including gear lists, random encounter tables, more monsters, and bloodline qualities.

Inspired by games like OSE, Searchers of the Unknown and Holmes' blue book, Heartseeker has everything you need to play a classic fantasy campaign in just two pages.

Scott has put together a Heartseeker soundtrack playlist to inspire your game sessions, and it includes songs by Critical Hit Parader favorites such as Rainbow, Savatage, Warlock, Queensryche, and Dream Theater. Listen to the soundtrack here:

Scott was a previous guest on my Appendix LP Podcast, and you can download Heartseeker from the Trollish Delver itch site as a name-your-own-price purchase.

Conan

To make this an all metal newsletter issue, I have another recent release to share. No band name could be more on the nose for Appendix N inspiration than British metal band Conan. They describe their music as ““Caveman Battle Doom,” and they released their latest album Violence Dimension in April. Song titles include “Frozen Edges Of The Wound,” “Warpsword,” and “Total Bicep” (really!). You can preview the whole album in the following video and purchase it from Heavy Psych Sounds Records:

Potential TTRPG pairings include the Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of from Modiphius, Hyperborea by North Wind Adventures, and TSR's Conan Role-Playing Game.