Read it Right Over
HERE
Clark Ashton Smith was a master fantasist and writer of tales of the darkest fiction with sardonic wit that has yet to be equaled.
It was said ," Smith was one of "the big three of Weird Tales, along with Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft",[1] where some readers objected to his morbidness and violation of pulp traditions. It has been said of him that "nobody since Poe has so loved a well-rotted corpse."You can read more about him right over HERE
Smith is well known to DM's and players of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons because many of his works appeared in the so called Appendix N in Advanced Dungeons and Dragon's Dungeon Master's Guide by Gary Gygax.
Wiki has this to say about his most famous works :
Clark Ashton Smith was a master fantasist and writer of tales of the darkest fiction with sardonic wit that has yet to be equaled.
It was said ," Smith was one of "the big three of Weird Tales, along with Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft",[1] where some readers objected to his morbidness and violation of pulp traditions. It has been said of him that "nobody since Poe has so loved a well-rotted corpse."You can read more about him right over HERE
Smith is well known to DM's and players of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons because many of his works appeared in the so called Appendix N in Advanced Dungeons and Dragon's Dungeon Master's Guide by Gary Gygax.
Wiki has this to say about his most famous works :
Most of Smith's weird fiction falls into four series set variously in Hyperborea, Poseidonis, Averoigne and Zothique. Hyperborea, which is a lost continent of the Miocene period, and Poseidonis, which is a remnant of Atlantis, are much the same, with a magical culture characterized by bizarreness, cruelty, death and postmortem horrors. Averoigne is Smith's version of pre-modern France, comparable toJames Branch Cabell's Poictesme. Zothique exists millions of years in the future. It is "the last continent of earth, when the sun is dim and tarnished". These tales have been compared to the Dying Earth sequence of Jack Vance.
Today I want to speak of a tale of a particular flower. A very rare and somewhat dangerous orchid or possibly a parasitic flower of a genius never found outside of the Venezuelan jungles.I've used this flower many times in my outdoor encounters and various sword and sorcery adventures.
Each and every time a party member was infected by this dangerous bloom. Read the short tale that appeared in the 1933 issue of Weird Tales and you'll understand why. I believe that what we're seeing in this tale is a survivor from before the cataclysm that reshaped the world.
This guardian of the ancient past lives on in the deepest jungles and blooms only to reproduce in its rather unique way.
I'm not writing stats up because many of the retroclone games or classic AD&D source book already have such a plant or score of them. There is only an additional bit of advice. Place such plants on their own and not among the various 'Lotus' families that also seem to also be quite common now a days in the various retroclones.
These flowers are unique and quite deadly. They should be passive guardians for only the most rare treasures within your Sword and Sorcery campaigns.
This guardian of the ancient past lives on in the deepest jungles and blooms only to reproduce in its rather unique way.
I'm not writing stats up because many of the retroclone games or classic AD&D source book already have such a plant or score of them. There is only an additional bit of advice. Place such plants on their own and not among the various 'Lotus' families that also seem to also be quite common now a days in the various retroclones.
These flowers are unique and quite deadly. They should be passive guardians for only the most rare treasures within your Sword and Sorcery campaigns.
I hope you enjoy the 'The Seed from the Sepulchre' by Clark Aston Smith. The Dark Corner Blog would like to thank the Eldritch dark website for making this master storyteller's work available to the general public.
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