I'm creating a level 5-20 campaign based on R.W. Chambers The King in Yellow and it would be a great help to get some feedback on what I have so far. I am also taking inspiration from Bloodborne. This campaign was made for the Forgotten Realms, but it can be altered to be run in other settings.
I am using a WIP lore for Great Old Ones since the Forgotten Realms don’t have a direct adaptation of the Cthulhu Mythos. Their actual Lovecraft names will be their True Names (Feel free to suggest names, I’ll give you a credit on the finished pdf if I use it) The Outer Gods are the first Great Old Ones, the oldest, most powerful beings born straight from the strange psionic energies of the Far Realms. Nylarkan is an exception to this, as he was the first spawn of Azamrakoth but is still considered an Outer God. I realize that I’m not being completely faithful to the original material, but I believe some changes are necessary to make the lore fit better into an RPG. There are also some aspects of the lore that I’m not including here because they’re not relevant to the campaign, such as some ideas about the Dreamlands. I’ll make a separate post about that lore in the future.
Outer Gods: Azamrakoth: Azathoth Ghronembrath: Trunembra Hadar: The Cloud-Thing, anyone got a good True Name for it? Nylarkan: Nyarlathotep Shebrigarast: Shubniggurath Yergmathust: Yogsothoth
Great Old Ones: Asthurl: Hastur Cthygdulha: Cthulhu Findralors: Mhithrha Llymic: Ithaqua : Daoloth : Mother of Pus : Yidhra : Ubbosathla : Atlach-Nacha : Bokrug : Tsathoggua : Yig : Cyaegha : Nug and Yeb : Mordiggian
Timeline so far: 1386: Laerakond and Maztica switch places (Tell me if this is wrong) 1398 Mirtul 6: Kingdom of Carcosa founded 1487 Alturiak 19: Laerakond and Maztica return to their original worlds (Tell me if this is wrong) 1487 Flamerule 23: The Pallid Masquerade 1487 Eleasis 2: The Yellow Wedding 1487 Uktar: Virulent Orthodoxy founded 1488 Hammer 12: King Aldones dies 1488 Hammer 28: Asthurl's Coronation 1488 Flamerule: Carcosa finishes securing its borders 1488 Eleasis 13: Construction of the Grand Temple begins 1490 Kythorn 30: The Grand Temple is completed 1490 Marpenoth 7: The First Alar Uprising begins 1490 Uktar 26: The Night of the Phantom's Slaughter ends the First Alar Uprising 1492 Uktar 3: Asthurl Disappears 1492 Uktar 4: Hildred is born 1509: Blight of Carcosa
Characters Aldones: The third King of Carcosa Asthurl: Conquest, the fourth King of Carcosa, the King in Yellow, the Pestilent, “Yhtill” Camilla: Asthurl’s queen Cassilda: Aldones’ queen Hildred: The fifth King of Carcosa Naotalba: Regent and High Priest of the Virulent Orthodoxy (The Ulitharid pulling the strings behind the Orthodoxy) Nylarkan: The Black Pharaoh, the Crawling Chaos, the Dark One, the First Dream Thale: A noble, distantly related to the royal family Uoht: A noble, distantly related to the royal family Yhtill: The Phantom of Truth, an air Primordial of Abeir, formerly worshipped in Laerakond
The kingdom of Carcosa was founded by colonists from Laerakond in 1398, becoming a major trade power in the True World. However, in Alturiak of 1487, when the Second Sundering ended and Maztica returned, Carcosa’s trade industry was thrown into complete disarray. In Flamerule of 1487, King Aldones announced a masquerade ball in order to find a proper suitor for the Princess Camilla, as he had no sons to be his heir and as a way to bring morale back up. Many nobles were invited, but on the night of the ball, a mysterious stranger appeared. He wore fine yellow robes and strange jewelry, and had an air about him that captured the attention of many attendees, though there was something odd about him that nobody could quite pinpoint, something unnerving. When the time came, the King instructed all attendees to remove their masks but the stranger did not obey. The King asked him why, to which the stranger replied, “I wear no mask.” The stranger claimed to be Yhtill, the Phantom of Truth, and made King Aldones an offer: in exchange for Camilla’s hand, he would guarantee a bright future for Carcosa.
The King agreed and Camilla was wed the next month. Yhtill was taken on as the King’s new advisor and the city began to rise again. Soon after the wedding, the worship of Yhtill was revived by the founding of the Phantom Orthodoxy, who zealously, and sometimes militantly, spread his word. Behind the scenes however, the King was slowly being driven mad. For five months the King’s condition declined until one night he erupted in a fit of madness, screaming of terrible things, scribbling on the walls, and burning many scrolls, before collapsing unconscious. The King died in his fitful coma before dawn. Thus, in Hammer of 1488, began the terrible four year reign of Yhtill, the King in Yellow.
The day of Yhtill’s coronation, most of the nobility was put under house arrest and the royal court was dissolved, its functions taken over by the Orthodoxy. The Orthodoxy hired bands of orcs, goblins, and sahuagin to create a secret police force known as the Yellow Fists in addition to their inquisitorial force known as the Pallid Masks and the traditional Carcosan military, which they now had control over. Over the next seven months, Carcosa was rapidly changed into a police state, with only a handful of people managing to escape before the borders were secured. The Orthodoxy began imprisoning and executing dissidents and heretics.
Once the borders were secure, construction began on the grand temple of the Orthodoxy, for which many civilians were drafted under threat of imprisonment. The temple was built at the entrance to the bridge that connected the main island of the capital city of Castell to the noble isle, essentially cutting off access. Once construction was underway, people began disappearing, mostly construction workers, and rumors began about terrible, maddening sounds coming from the noble island as well as unimaginable horrors stalking the streets at night. The temple was completed in Kythorn of 1490, though the disappearances did not stop.
Four months later, a rebellion broke out in the city of Alar. The Pallid Masks and Yellow Fists in the city were taken by surprise and were forced to retreat to the Alaran Orthodoxy temple and wait for reinforcements. While the rebels lay siege to the temple, a massive force of soldiers was sent to put down the uprising with extreme prejudice. The fighting lasted two weeks and nearly half of the rebel forces had been eliminated when they made their final, desperate move. The rebels finally managed to take the Orthodoxy temple right as the Carcosan soldiers were making their way to finish them off. They would soon wish they hadn’t. After eliminating the besieged Pallid Masks and Yellow Fists, who refused to surrender and zealously fought to the last breath, they swiftly bunkered down, preparing to be besieged in turn by the Carcosan soldiers. For two nights, the rebels held out against the siege, but on the third night, the Carcosan soldiers heard screams of terror and agony from within the temple. The entire night was filled with their maddening wails right up until dawn. The soldiers broke through the barricades without any resistance and found that the rebels had been gruesomely slaughtered.
Now, that's all the concrete stuff but I also have some notes
Asthurl, who is actually one of the original creators of the Illithid, created a colony to do his bidding. This colony used thralls to found the Phantom Orthodoxy and established themselves beneath the Grand Temple. They have also been experimenting on the trapped nobility, causing the noble isle to become a nightmarish hell infested with experimental abominations.
Hildred is the son of Asthurl and Camilla. He was raised by the Orthodoxy who worship him as a demigod. The Orthodoxy, at Hildred's order, reached out to other beings in an effort to find their missing god and keep their power. These beings have taken up residence on six of the seven islands of the kingdom and serve as Hildred’s lieutenants. Hildred invited an aboleth, an adult green dragon, a beholder, a devourer emissary of Orcus, a hag coven, and a necromancer. The aboleth and beholder are loyal to Hildred while the others are planning to take advantage of him, however they fear his power and are biding their time. Naotalba is wise to their intentions and has plans in place to keep them in line.
The Campaign begins with a boat of Carcosan refugees arriving in a city. They begin raving about the horrors of Carcosa and the King in Yellow, but are ignored, being seen as just mad. However the party will be accosted by one of them on the docks, prompting them to investigate and begin looking for the other refugees. As the investigation progresses they find an amulet of the Yellow Sign and begin to fall under its effects and becoming obsessed with Carcosa. They find that the other refugees are dying in suspicious and horrifying ways. The investigation reveals that the killer is the refugee who accosted them at the docks, who has gone completely mad. They find him in the inn he has been staying at, deep in the throes of the Yellow Blight. In his last moments he sets fire to himself to prevent the Blight from spreading. When they search his room they find a map that leads to Carcosa and a Witch Rat, who only tells them “Along the shore the cloud waves break, The twin suns sink behind the lake, The shadows lengthen In Carcosa. Strange is the night where black stars rise, And strange moons circle through the skies, But stranger still is Lost Carcosa. Songs that the Hyades shall sing, Where flap the tatters of the King, Must die unheard in Dim Carcosa. Song of her soul, her voice is dead, Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed Shall dry and die in Lost Carcosa.” before disappearing. They hire a ship to take them to Carcosa and are attacked by a large group of Yellow Fist Sahuagin at sea, one of which is infected with the Yellow Blight.
The party’s first fight with Hildred (About halfway or three quarters through the campaign) is interrupted by the Dark Powers pulling the entire kingdom of Carcosa into the Shadowfell because they feared the growing power of the son of Asthurl. The rest of the campaign is spent escaping the Shadowfell and avoiding Hildred, who is becoming more and more desperate to escape, reaching further into his aberrant blood and losing more and more of his humanity, becoming a grotesque creature which the party will have to defeat to escape the Shadowfell. During the first fight Hildred will be about as powerful as Strahd, but for the second he will be at or above CR 20.
Nylarkan has actually been pulling the strings the entire time for his own inscrutable ends, this will lead into an Epic campaign I have in mind. His influence will be present in the form of a few cultists that worship him instead of Asthurl and Witch Rats, who observe events for their master.
I'm creating a level 5-20 campaign based on R.W. Chambers The King in Yellow and it would be a great help to get some feedback on what I have so far. I am also taking inspiration from Bloodborne. This campaign was made for the Forgotten Realms, but it can be altered to be run in other settings.
I am using a WIP lore for Great Old Ones since the Forgotten Realms don’t have a direct adaptation of the Cthulhu Mythos. Their actual Lovecraft names will be their True Names (Feel free to suggest names, I’ll give you a credit on the finished pdf if I use it)
The Outer Gods are the first Great Old Ones, the oldest, most powerful beings born straight from the strange psionic energies of the Far Realms. Nylarkan is an exception to this, as he was the first spawn of Azamrakoth but is still considered an Outer God. I realize that I’m not being completely faithful to the original material, but I believe some changes are necessary to make the lore fit better into an RPG. There are also some aspects of the lore that I’m not including here because they’re not relevant to the campaign, such as some ideas about the Dreamlands. I’ll make a separate post about that lore in the future.
Outer Gods:
Azamrakoth: Azathoth
Ghronembrath: Trunembra
Hadar: The Cloud-Thing, anyone got a good True Name for it?
Nylarkan: Nyarlathotep
Shebrigarast: Shubniggurath
Yergmathust: Yogsothoth
Great Old Ones:
Asthurl: Hastur
Cthygdulha: Cthulhu
Findralors: Mhithrha
Llymic: Ithaqua
: Daoloth
: Mother of Pus
: Yidhra
: Ubbosathla
: Atlach-Nacha
: Bokrug
: Tsathoggua
: Yig
: Cyaegha
: Nug and Yeb
: Mordiggian
Timeline so far:
1386: Laerakond and Maztica switch places (Tell me if this is wrong)
1398 Mirtul 6: Kingdom of Carcosa founded
1487 Alturiak 19: Laerakond and Maztica return to their original worlds (Tell me if this is wrong)
1487 Flamerule 23: The Pallid Masquerade
1487 Eleasis 2: The Yellow Wedding
1487 Uktar: Virulent Orthodoxy founded
1488 Hammer 12: King Aldones dies
1488 Hammer 28: Asthurl's Coronation
1488 Flamerule: Carcosa finishes securing its borders
1488 Eleasis 13: Construction of the Grand Temple begins
1490 Kythorn 30: The Grand Temple is completed
1490 Marpenoth 7: The First Alar Uprising begins
1490 Uktar 26: The Night of the Phantom's Slaughter ends the First Alar Uprising
1492 Uktar 3: Asthurl Disappears
1492 Uktar 4: Hildred is born
1509: Blight of Carcosa
Characters
Aldones: The third King of Carcosa
Asthurl: Conquest, the fourth King of Carcosa, the King in Yellow, the Pestilent, “Yhtill”
Camilla: Asthurl’s queen
Cassilda: Aldones’ queen
Hildred: The fifth King of Carcosa
Naotalba: Regent and High Priest of the Virulent Orthodoxy (The Ulitharid pulling the strings behind the Orthodoxy)
Nylarkan: The Black Pharaoh, the Crawling Chaos, the Dark One, the First Dream
Thale: A noble, distantly related to the royal family
Uoht: A noble, distantly related to the royal family
Yhtill: The Phantom of Truth, an air Primordial of Abeir, formerly worshipped in Laerakond
The kingdom of Carcosa was founded by colonists from Laerakond in 1398, becoming a major trade power in the True World. However, in Alturiak of 1487, when the Second Sundering ended and Maztica returned, Carcosa’s trade industry was thrown into complete disarray. In Flamerule of 1487, King Aldones announced a masquerade ball in order to find a proper suitor for the Princess Camilla, as he had no sons to be his heir and as a way to bring morale back up. Many nobles were invited, but on the night of the ball, a mysterious stranger appeared. He wore fine yellow robes and strange jewelry, and had an air about him that captured the attention of many attendees, though there was something odd about him that nobody could quite pinpoint, something unnerving. When the time came, the King instructed all attendees to remove their masks but the stranger did not obey. The King asked him why, to which the stranger replied, “I wear no mask.” The stranger claimed to be Yhtill, the Phantom of Truth, and made King Aldones an offer: in exchange for Camilla’s hand, he would guarantee a bright future for Carcosa.
The King agreed and Camilla was wed the next month. Yhtill was taken on as the King’s new advisor and the city began to rise again. Soon after the wedding, the worship of Yhtill was revived by the founding of the Phantom Orthodoxy, who zealously, and sometimes militantly, spread his word. Behind the scenes however, the King was slowly being driven mad. For five months the King’s condition declined until one night he erupted in a fit of madness, screaming of terrible things, scribbling on the walls, and burning many scrolls, before collapsing unconscious. The King died in his fitful coma before dawn. Thus, in Hammer of 1488, began the terrible four year reign of Yhtill, the King in Yellow.
The day of Yhtill’s coronation, most of the nobility was put under house arrest and the royal court was dissolved, its functions taken over by the Orthodoxy. The Orthodoxy hired bands of orcs, goblins, and sahuagin to create a secret police force known as the Yellow Fists in addition to their inquisitorial force known as the Pallid Masks and the traditional Carcosan military, which they now had control over. Over the next seven months, Carcosa was rapidly changed into a police state, with only a handful of people managing to escape before the borders were secured. The Orthodoxy began imprisoning and executing dissidents and heretics.
Once the borders were secure, construction began on the grand temple of the Orthodoxy, for which many civilians were drafted under threat of imprisonment. The temple was built at the entrance to the bridge that connected the main island of the capital city of Castell to the noble isle, essentially cutting off access. Once construction was underway, people began disappearing, mostly construction workers, and rumors began about terrible, maddening sounds coming from the noble island as well as unimaginable horrors stalking the streets at night. The temple was completed in Kythorn of 1490, though the disappearances did not stop.
Four months later, a rebellion broke out in the city of Alar. The Pallid Masks and Yellow Fists in the city were taken by surprise and were forced to retreat to the Alaran Orthodoxy temple and wait for reinforcements. While the rebels lay siege to the temple, a massive force of soldiers was sent to put down the uprising with extreme prejudice. The fighting lasted two weeks and nearly half of the rebel forces had been eliminated when they made their final, desperate move. The rebels finally managed to take the Orthodoxy temple right as the Carcosan soldiers were making their way to finish them off. They would soon wish they hadn’t. After eliminating the besieged Pallid Masks and Yellow Fists, who refused to surrender and zealously fought to the last breath, they swiftly bunkered down, preparing to be besieged in turn by the Carcosan soldiers. For two nights, the rebels held out against the siege, but on the third night, the Carcosan soldiers heard screams of terror and agony from within the temple. The entire night was filled with their maddening wails right up until dawn. The soldiers broke through the barricades without any resistance and found that the rebels had been gruesomely slaughtered.
Now, that's all the concrete stuff but I also have some notes
Asthurl, who is actually one of the original creators of the Illithid, created a colony to do his bidding. This colony used thralls to found the Phantom Orthodoxy and established themselves beneath the Grand Temple. They have also been experimenting on the trapped nobility, causing the noble isle to become a nightmarish hell infested with experimental abominations.
Hildred is the son of Asthurl and Camilla. He was raised by the Orthodoxy who worship him as a demigod. The Orthodoxy, at Hildred's order, reached out to other beings in an effort to find their missing god and keep their power. These beings have taken up residence on six of the seven islands of the kingdom and serve as Hildred’s lieutenants. Hildred invited an aboleth, an adult green dragon, a beholder, a devourer emissary of Orcus, a hag coven, and a necromancer. The aboleth and beholder are loyal to Hildred while the others are planning to take advantage of him, however they fear his power and are biding their time. Naotalba is wise to their intentions and has plans in place to keep them in line.
The Campaign begins with a boat of Carcosan refugees arriving in a city. They begin raving about the horrors of Carcosa and the King in Yellow, but are ignored, being seen as just mad. However the party will be accosted by one of them on the docks, prompting them to investigate and begin looking for the other refugees. As the investigation progresses they find an amulet of the Yellow Sign and begin to fall under its effects and becoming obsessed with Carcosa. They find that the other refugees are dying in suspicious and horrifying ways. The investigation reveals that the killer is the refugee who accosted them at the docks, who has gone completely mad. They find him in the inn he has been staying at, deep in the throes of the Yellow Blight. In his last moments he sets fire to himself to prevent the Blight from spreading. When they search his room they find a map that leads to Carcosa and a Witch Rat, who only tells them “Along the shore the cloud waves break, The twin suns sink behind the lake, The shadows lengthen In Carcosa. Strange is the night where black stars rise, And strange moons circle through the skies, But stranger still is Lost Carcosa. Songs that the Hyades shall sing, Where flap the tatters of the King, Must die unheard in Dim Carcosa. Song of her soul, her voice is dead, Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed Shall dry and die in Lost Carcosa.” before disappearing. They hire a ship to take them to Carcosa and are attacked by a large group of Yellow Fist Sahuagin at sea, one of which is infected with the Yellow Blight.
The party’s first fight with Hildred (About halfway or three quarters through the campaign) is interrupted by the Dark Powers pulling the entire kingdom of Carcosa into the Shadowfell because they feared the growing power of the son of Asthurl. The rest of the campaign is spent escaping the Shadowfell and avoiding Hildred, who is becoming more and more desperate to escape, reaching further into his aberrant blood and losing more and more of his humanity, becoming a grotesque creature which the party will have to defeat to escape the Shadowfell. During the first fight Hildred will be about as powerful as Strahd, but for the second he will be at or above CR 20.
Nylarkan has actually been pulling the strings the entire time for his own inscrutable ends, this will lead into an Epic campaign I have in mind. His influence will be present in the form of a few cultists that worship him instead of Asthurl and Witch Rats, who observe events for their master.
Abeir, Anchorome, Kara-Tur, Katashaka, Maztica, Zakhara, and Laerakond need some 5E love
Is there a PDF to download?
Love this, we need more king in yellow arcs.