Clark Ashton Smith TTRPG & Music and NIN-Inspired Bite the Hand

Plus Olga Kahn's Echoes from the Barrow-Downs

Marzio Muscedere has launched a crowdfunding campaign for a tabletop roleplaying game for Clark Ashton Smith’s legendary Zothique cycle. The game is officially licensed and is available in versions for D&D 5E, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and Shadowdark. Here is a description of the project:

At long last — and published with permission of CASiana Enterprises, the Literary Estate of Clark Ashton Smith — step into Zothique, the last continent beneath a dying sun. Here, necromancers weave their dominion from charnel thrones, forgotten gods whisper in crumbling temples, and adventurers tread paths of inevitable doom.

This Kickstarter brings Clark Ashton Smith’s legendary Zothique cycle — a cornerstone of sword & sorcery and dying-earth fantasy — faithfully to life through two unprecedented projects — The Complete Illustrated Omnibus and The Zothique RPG Collection.

As part of the crowdfunding campaign, Marzio Muscedere shared a painting he created that he said was “inspired by the final shot of a 1990s music video - a song and video that, to me, captures the mood of Zothique.”

Marzio ran a contest to guess the video and shared the following details when announcing the winner:

The painting was inspired by the final shot of Slayer - Seasons in the Abyss, a 1990 music video that radiates pure Zothique energy…

Released in 1990, the music video was filmed in Egypt, including at the Pyramids of Giza and inside the Great Sphinx burial sites. The song’s themes revolve around ritual, fate, eternity, dust, and cyclical decay — straight-up Zothique energy. This was one of the last music videos ever allowed to film directly at the Giza plateau before access restrictions tightened.

Watch the Slayer video here:

I have several of Marzio’s products and had the opportunity to play in a couple of con games he has run. He is an excellent designer and judge. Pledge your support for the Clark Ashton Smith Zothique RPG and Deluxe Illustrated Omnibus here.

For additional Clark Ashton Smith-inspired music, check out Atlantean Twilight: Vaporous Vignettes Inspired By Clark Ashton Smith by the dark ambient dungeon synth project Psyclopean.

Here is a description of the album:

A plethora of musical vignettes written as soundtracks for a collection of prose pieces written by Clark Ashton Smith and narrated by Matthew Schmitz - many of which you can listen to at altrusiangrace.bandcamp.com/album/the-prose-of-clark-ashton-smith-full-audiobook

Some of the sounds are more meditative and dream-inducing, but the intent is to evoke a strange nostalgia - something that pricks the worn edges of memory like a half-forgotten fever dream, a mist-enshrouded fantasy being both familiar and unsettling at the same time. It’s a place one would love to visit but might unknowingly drift into forgetfulness, becoming lost in the twilight landscape for all eternity.

You can preview and purchase the album from the Altrusian Grace Media Bandcamp page:

NIN-Inspired Bite the Hand

Bite the Hand is a new Cyberpunk TTRPG built on Mothership’s engine that has recently begun crowdfunding.

Here is a short description from the crowdfunding page for the game’s setting and tone:

The city is harsh and unforgiving. This isn’t a power fantasy where armies of grunts are cut down with ease. No, it’s a brutal game where victories will be suspenseful, bloody, and not guaranteed.

In a Thaumavoria interview, Bite the Hand creator Alex from Spellbook Gaming stated that the Nine Inch Nails song “The Hand That Feeds” helped lead to the birth of the game.

Pledge your support for Bite the Hand here.

Tolkien-Inspired Folk Song

Belarusian musician Olga Kahn recently released a video for an instrumental song called “Echoes from the Barrow-Downs.” Here is a description from a Chaoszine article:

Composer, multi-instrumentalist Olga Kann released her new music video “Echoes from the Barrow-Downs” on October 24. It’s Tolkien-inspired folk song from upcoming ethnic metal album for connoisseurs of authentic music and ethereal fantasy atmosphere. Everything was recorded live using ethnic instruments (kantele, tagelharpa, flutes, percussion) and vocals. Olga received help with the sound from Astaroth Mercurius from Raventale band.

Watch the video for the song here: