The Varnhold Vanishing - Tributes and Eggs [Spoilers]

[Auxmaulous]

Couple of very cool little things I noticed when I was reading through the AP

Tribute to HPL pg 21

Doom:

The Doom that Came to Varnhold.
A very nice touch and play on the title of HPL's "The Doom that Came to Sarnath."
Not the same story but very similar - a settlement from an expanding realm is destroyed by an ancient race which resided there before the settlers arrived.

Very cool

Harryhausen:

Got another perfect Harryhausen adaptation - again from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. What, no love for the Golden Voyage?
Adding in the Cyclops cults - which is very Golden Voyage was a cool bit of creature description.

Now I just need to figure out how to a quadruped/centaur up this monstrosity.

I hope that the Serpent's Skull continues the trend of excellent stop-motion monster tributes.

[James Jacobs]

7th Voyage of Sinbad is one of my favorite movies. I'm not as big a fan of the other Harryhausen Sinbad movies (as cool as they are—they simply aren't as good).

[Lilith]

There's a quadrapedal template in Advanced Bestiary, and Harryhausen tributes are always a good thing to include. :D

[Auxmaulous]

Lilith wrote:

There's a quadrapedal template in Advanced Bestiary, and Harryhausen tributes are always a good thing to include. :D

Thanks Lilith - I knew I remembered seeing that template somewhere in one of my books. Shouldn't be too hard to update to PF.

And yeah - you can't go wrong Harryhausen and Willis O'Brian influenced monsters.

[MrCharm]

I'm thinking that Howitt Gurney is a reference to Thufir Hawat and Gurney Halleck from Dune, but perhaps I am overly imaginative (or overly fond of that book!)

[Matthew Morris]

Auxmaulous wrote:

And yeah - you can't go wrong Harryhausen and Willis O'Brian influenced monsters.

Sure you can, see Clash of the Titans, Remake.

*ducks*

[Auxmaulous]

Matthew Morris wrote:

Auxmaulous wrote:

And yeah - you can't go wrong Harryhausen and Willis O'Brian influenced monsters.

Sure you can, see Clash of the Titans, Remake.

*ducks*

LOL.....

It's either laugh or cry, take your pick.

[Auxmaulous]

I think I found another one...in the Iobaria gazetteer

anagram:

The Nyvyrd freshwater lake in Iobaria for the Nyr Dyv freshwater lake in Greyhawk?

I guess Mr. Schend would have to answer that one...

[Greg A. Vaughan]

MrCharm wrote:

I'm thinking that Howitt Gurney is a reference to Thufir Hawat and Gurney Halleck from Dune, but perhaps I am overly imaginative (or overly fond of that book!)

Dang, MrCharm! You scored that in record time. Howitt Gurney is an NPC from an old Greyhawk game of mine a couple decades ago. He was modeled somewhat after the Patrick Stewart Gurney Halleck with the Thufir Hawat play on the name to mix it up a little bit (I always liked the name Hawat over Halleck). In my campaign he was the weapons master of a certain moathouse that was overrun by evil forces in another play off of another classic. Anyway, he was basically Gurney Halleck but borrowed some from Thufir's name.

So long story short, he is an old, old NPC of mine and definitely has some Dune pedigree though none of that really comes out in the AP beyond the fact that he is the sergeant of arms (though that seems perhaps a bit more Duncan Idaho, maybe, but he wasn't ever in my game ;-) )

[Greg A. Vaughan]

Auxmaulous wrote:

Couple of very cool little things I noticed when I was reading through the AP

Tribute to HPL pg 21
** spoiler omitted **

Glad you liked. :-)

[Tessius]

Greg A. Vaughan wrote:

So long story short, he is an old, old NPC of mine and definitely has some Dune pedigree though none of that really comes out in the AP beyond the fact that he is the sergeant of arms (though that seems perhaps a bit more Duncan Idaho, maybe, but he wasn't ever in my game ;-) )

When I was playing in a 1st ed game my roommate ran in college, I got a keep from the Deck of Many Things and my roomie based the castellan on Duncan Idaho :) Good times...

[Tessius]

Auxmaulous wrote:

I think I found another one...in the Iobaria gazetteer

** spoiler omitted **
I guess Mr. Schend would have to answer that one...

I immediately thought of this when I flipped through it this afternoon also.

[DM Wellard]

The Alfred Hitchcock tribute in the Varnhold Smithy.

I've mentioned elsewhere that I'm going to make the Smith one of the survivors and call him Heddren