#danday

for the anon that asked about some sunheng <3

high school au that’s been bouncing around in my brain for a whileeee now but i won’t do much with it probs

Black Sword (1985) is the finale of the events begun in Stealer of Souls. The merchants who hired Elric are dead, so now Freyda’s vengeance turns toward the man who actually murdered her father.

I like this one a bit less than its predecessor. Both are rather on rails and make the players secondary to an NPC, but there is more wiggle room in Souls. This one has the added complication of having characters from Moorcock’s stories to navigate around, though well done setting it during the period of time Elric swore to not use Stormbringer, making him slightly less deadly a character to cross. Not that Elric’s oaths are anything to rely on.

The first half explores the fallout of the events of “Kings in Darkness,” a story that admittedly left less of an impression on me than “Stealer of Souls” (Theleb K’aarna is a really excellent villain, I guess — his soul was so rotten even Stormbringer couldn’t bring itself to drink it). The stuff in Org, which tends toward the creepy, is the highlight. Once the group catches up with Elric, though, everything falls apart. There are all sorts of possibilities, but the most likely is that the players watch Freyda and Elric duel. The whole point is to convince Freyda to agree to terms of first fall or first blood rather than a fight to the death, so this is rather…anticlimactic (a fight to the death means that Elric is going to cheat and win no matter what oaths he swears, so that will likely involve murdering all the players, which is not great).

feeding the dandaylings… ew that sounds so weird I like dansun or sunheng better

Stealer of Souls (1985) is the first part of a two-part adventure for the Stormbringer RPG. Unusually, the events of the adventure are woven around the aftermath of the Michael Moorcock story of the same name.

In the story, Elric reluctantly takes a contract on a merchant issued by four of his competitors. Normally, not Elric’s thing, but the merchant in question hired Theleb K’aarna, sorcerer of Pan Tang, to do security. Elric and Theleb have old beef, so Elric uses the contract as a means to settle it. And settle it he does, but not before some hijinx and maybe a broken oath or two that leaves the merchant dead. The adventure sees the merchant’s daughter, Freyda Nikorn, on a quest for vengeance. In this part, her targets are the merchants who hired Elric and the players are going to help her.

100% honest truth: Dan and David Day’s cover for Demon Magic (1985) is one of my all time favorite pieces of RPG art. I love everything about it. How it sticks to classic reptilian demon traits, how stylized it is (verging on cartoonish), the posture (you can almost hear its wheezing cackle), the flames in the background, the symbol of Chaos on the bracer. I love it all so much. It feels dangerous (it is called Demon Magic for Pete’s sake!) but also not scary at all. This dude should be the mascot for a second rate heavy metal band.