Following in the footsteps of Rook over at Foreign Planets, I have delved into the mists of pulp fantasy history to cobble together even more lost books of Appendix N. The picture that's taken form by now is one of a polyvocal document that evolved in stages during the early rpg period. Gygax wielded (I swear every time this word should be "welt") considerable influence over the later stages of the list, and so many of the works listed below were cut because they no longer fit with the game's developing themes and aesthetics.
The Dinkie Rizzle cut of the Appendix remains at large.
- Hark! A Swyver!
- The Pit Beneath the World
- A Midsummer’s Eve in Carcosa
- Lady Tsan
- The Jewels of Qarzat
- The Last Zodiac
- Dragonsoul Warrior Part II
- Accounting for Beasts
- The House at Calurad
- Achilles Unconquerable
- Swords of Evening Fire
- The Empire of Bells
- The Queen’s Veil
- The Golden Chamber
- Folktales of the Kinnakawmet
- They Called Us Dogs
- The Mines of Yar’Zan
- Nun with the Devil’s Gun
- A Feast for Randuthax
- Master of Monstrous Ceremony
- The Self-Creating King
- Oshaggan the Orc
- The Oubliette Decameron
- Return to the Labyrinth
- Mark of the Mannangal
- The Seventh Lion
- The Ghoul
- Onward to the Antipode!
- Nothing Beside Remains
- Death and the Widow Ammat
- Dangerous Ladies of Ill Repute
- The Bloody Pearl
- The Otter’s Dance
- Antarctic Spring
- Neck of the World
- Wives of the Azure Empress
- By Odin’s Hoary Beard!
- Nine Angels Dancing
- Wyrd Traversal
- Ignominious Deaths
- The Gunpowder Duchess
- The Night Parades
- Wulfstan Haggar, Exorcist for Hire
- Third Eye of Horus
- Arch-Heretic
- Semblance of Decency
- Trenchfoot Theater
- New Goetics
- The Vault of Tchrok-Hla
- The Nasshen Masters
- The Atlantis Trap
- Those Mocking Sparrows
- Ymir Dohl and the Cadaver Synod
- A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of Ashurbanipal
- The Screaming Idol of Zaam
- The Round Table Murders
- The Commissioner
- Stone Venus
- The Calico Bobtail
- Black Auction
- Giant’s Dice
- The Mineshaft 9 Expedition
- Dragon-Scaled Justice
- The Redwood Witches
- Decree of the Brazen Head
- Clown Hunting
- Hand of Glory
- When Kasal-Kan Fell
- Five of Pentacles
- The Bullet to Kill the Last Elephant
- Sir Quail and the Panther
- Artifact Storage Unit 12
- Underworld Seven
- Knights of Terrible Grace
- The Ghost Dance Letters
- Wizards of Jove
- Chronicle of the Deep Forest
- Mushroom Kings
- The Caves of Akkronath
- Canticle for the Moon-Maids
- The Missing Zoa
- The Cockatrice Club
- Lord Lakh
- Spiders in Amber
- The Seminary
- Parliament of Birds
- Last Voyage of the Flying Dutchman
- The Sannikov Land Expedition
- A Long, Bloody War over a Worthless Patch of Dirt
- City of Old Gods
- Totality of Being
- The Rainbow Footpath
- The Dryad’s Garden
- Stalin 's Revenge: the Crab-Men Attack!
- Sword of a Thousand Stars
- National Geographic Anthropological Survey of Aolai
- The Catacomb-People
- Bones of my Grandfather
- The Red Piper
- Eudaemon: A New Gospel
Some parascholars have put forth the theory that Appendix N represents some kind of multiuniversal gestalt with effectively infinite variation, but this has not yet been proven through experimentation.
ReplyDeleteI swear half of these read like Dorothy Sayers mystery novel titles.
ReplyDeleteDang I should read more Dorothy Sayers
DeleteThough very much of their time they are both solid mysteries and solid comedies of manners.
DeleteYour academic approach has yielded (yelt?) results of greater quantity and intrigue than my own 'heavy-handed' methodology. Perhaps I was not heavy-handed enough?
ReplyDeleteI'm gonna roll a die and try to describe what the title is referring to
ReplyDeleteRolled a 60
Black Auction
The Shrouded Hand Cabal are some of the world's most greedy occultists, investing in various unsavory enterprises and using dark rituals to ensure large returns, no matter who it hurts (Unless it is themselves and or eachother, not out of care, but cause of magical binding oaths and such)
Occasionally some fools get in the way, a found family of heroes, a investigator with a long history of interesting cases, a rival in the dark arts
Once those get dealt with brutally and quickly, whatever is left of their property is seized for potential use, and even then the Shrouded Hand has gotta make gold, they hold auctions for other unscrupulous characters, selling off what remains of the heroes that failed to stop them
Family weapons
Magical animal companions
Their screaming souls in flasks
The deed to their homebase
One knows they're invited when a severed hand wearing a velvet glove comes to your door with a black envelope, open it and you'll arrive at the misty grand halls of a forgotten afterlife the cabal use for gatherings, and the auction of course
Hell yeah.
DeleteImma do it again
DeleteRolled a 8
Accounting For Beasts
Baron Vüskermot, a local noble who manages the yearly funds of the southern frontier of The Kingdom (due to his skill and love for the job), lives in a heavily fortified manor in a dark and dreary forest devoid of any local animals, jumping at every sudden movement or sound
His servants are forced to wear nothing that closely resembles a wild animal, even family heirlooms
And their schedules always involve enigmatic tasks such as setting up traps despite there no longer being any beasts in the forest, putting bindings on the maws, claws, and eyes of all his father's taxidermy critters locked in the basement, making only scentless gruel for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, alongside accounting for every possible method a creature could sneak into the house
And even leaving small offerings bought with embezzled gold in the maws of wolf skulls kept in the attic
The Baron always loved his father (Despite never sharing a passion for the hunt with him), his dad built a fortune for their family all alone, by becoming such a infamously skilled poacher that the kingdom had to bribe the man with the status of nobility and tons of gold to make him stop before he made a 10th species go extinct
But Vüskermot lost his father & mother a month after moving into the manor, the couple having disappeared into the darknes with enigmatic howls
Then, over the years, each of his older siblings who took on the title of Baron/Baroness also went missing, until only he remained, now he tries his best to appease and keep at bay what he assumes to be spirits of the animals his father poached,
Using every method he could find to avoid hauntings and attracting animals, and attempting to placate the spirits with offerings, to stop them from tormenting his family in the beyond
But he sometimes hears it, a great horde, a menagerie of vengeful souls getting closer, waiting for one little mistake to get inside the manor
Now he is getting desperate, and he may even resort to drastic measures to free his family's souls...
Like offering nearby villages a small tax break, as long they send over a healthy young fellow or two that knows how to catch animals
If the other offerings didn't please them, maybe the blood of a hunter would
A Feast for Randuthax
ReplyDeleteWhen Vilmar accidentally freezes his master in crystal, it's only the beginning of the list of troubles the young wizard's apprentice has to face! The grand archmage, Randuthax, is coming over for a visit and he expects only the finest food, drink, and entertainment! With only a belligerent intergalactic kitchen, a larder stocked with food from all ages, and the fast talking frying pan Zacharias, Vilmar is going to face his biggest test yet!
Modern readers might be shocked by the novel's unrelenting misogyny, despite the complete lack of female characters.