Elric and the Cosmology of Fantasy Roleplaying Games
While Gary Gygax’s influences were many, something of course reflected in the most influential fantasy fiction recommended reading list of all time, Appendix N, certain authors and works stand out. Jack Vance’s magic-infused Dying Earth stories, Fritz Leiber’s roguish romps with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, the Weird Tales and pulp powerhouse mashup of Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales, and modern fantasy’s great urtext itself, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, all occupy the top shelf of inspiration for Gygax’s revolutionary game. Michael Moorcock’s sword-and-sorcery stories exerted no less a profound influence on the shape of D&D – most especially its cosmology – as did Vance’s spells, Leiber’s thieves, Howard’s barbarians, or Tolkien’s elves, dwarves, and hobbits (err . . . halflings).
Moorcock’s fantasy worlds are absolutely full of colorful characters, weird monsters, strange artifacts, and supernatural wonders to the point where they might serve as a veritable warehouse of fantasy ideas. From the world-shatteringly potent (and potentially cursed) artifacts like the vampiric hellsword Stormbringer, the reality-altering Runestaff, or the dreadful Eye of Rynn and Hand of Kwll, to the menagerie of monsters, Chaos creatures, races (lost or otherwise) devils, elementals, gods (dead or otherwise), and varied nations (human or otherwise) – there is enough material in the average three-act Moorcock sword-and-sorcery novel to furnish an RPG supplement.
In recently rereading the core books of Moorcock’s Elric Saga, I was struck by the many little details that could have perhaps settled in Gygax’s imagination and found their way into his game. There is the metal golem that Earl Aubec fights in the Fortress of Dawn, the black cat familiar of Drinij Bara, Elric’s numerous animal and elemental summonings, the use of a Common Tongue throughout the Young Kingdoms, or Moonglum’s flinging a jar of inflammable oil onto the undead King From Beneath the Hill. Certainly, my party always left town accompanied by the sound of oil flasks clinking against their iron rations – it was like having a first-level mage (or three) in your backpack!
Moonglum’s firebombing took place in “Kings in Darkness,” a very early Elric story that was reprinted in one of the Moorcock books Gygax specifically cites in Appendix N: The Stealer of Souls (before finding a more permanent home in The Bane of the Black Sword). Also in the same story, Elric prepares a potion that renders him and his companion immune to edged weapons for a short period of time – a very roleplaying game thing to do, and a reminder of just how much potion consuming is going on in the Elric tales. Elric, of course, is normally physically weak and enervated, and thus takes various concoctions of herbs merely to function, but he also occasionally whips up something special or quaffs a brew offered by another – such as the revivification potion Myshella gives him upon his return from the tower of Voiloidion Ghagnasdiak in The Vanishing Tower (alternate title, The Sleeping Sorceress). And speaking of enervation, how about earlier in the same book when the Cold Ghouls of Limbo suck the energy out of Elric and leave him helpless – it isn’t exactly XP-draining, but the latter concept seems like a rather elegant way to model the notion of being robbed of your life’s essence.
Continued in Nether Regionz Issue #158 HERE.
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