Lovecraftian Arthuriana?

[Ringan]

After hearing that the new Malleus Monstrorum was finalizing, the wheels started turning in my head about adding some Lovecraft to Logres.  I was digging around, and found this thread of interesting ideas.  Some highlights:

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Lancelot's lapses into long bouts of madness take on a whole new, even freakier edge, and the fact that such lapses come when he thinks of Guinevere? One dreads to think what the Queen did to inspire such fierce reaction.

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The Holy Grail is instead an ancient cauldron forged of strange metal in ages beyond memory. They say that that if you place the bodies of the dead within the cauldron and boil away their flesh till only bones remain, they will rise again to fight.

Best part: this is based on the Celtic cauldron myth (the skeleton part less so, but the resurrection bit) that may actually be connected with the myth of the Holy Grail.

 

Anyone have any other dark thoughts? 🐙

[Tizun Thane]

You could do a crossover of course, but it will drastically alter the arthurian setting.
I don't think it's wise in an KAP game, but it's a good twist for a Call of Cthulhu game

[Ian Absentia]

3 hours ago, Ringan said:

Anyone have any other dark thoughts? 🐙

Sure.  See Pagan Publishing's The Golden Dawn.  Finding a copy may be a bit of a task, but there's a scenario dealing with Arthur via the Mythos that's more than a little dark.

!i!

 

[Edit:  Perhaps more helpfully, Arthur is re-imagined as a secret worshiper of one of the old gods of the land, Sheela-na-gig, another name for Shub-Niggurath.  Still a champion of the Britons, but not the paragon of Christian and chivalric virtue he's generally known as.  The Grail described in the scenarios has more in common with the Cauldron of Rebirth from the Mabinogion than the Holy Chalice of Jesus.]

Edited June 4, 2020 by Ian Absentia

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, Ringan said:

Anyone have any other dark thoughts? 🐙

Yes and lots of dark questions.

• First off read up on the Attacoti tribe of Picts. They could easily be Mythos cultists of some type. 
• Secondly, take a close look at the Druids. One interesting thing about them is that the Romans really went out of thier way to wipe out the Druids. They didn't do that with the religions of any other peoples they conquered- generally it was pay your taxes, obey the empire, and pay lip service tot he Roman gods, but otherwise keep your own faiths. So why was Druidism signed out for extermination? What was so bad about it? Mythos?
• Then there are the Ladies of the Lake who seem to live in dwellings underwater. They do not seem to be entirely human, something true with most of the remaining Celtic figures in the story. Just what is the Sword they give to Arthur and why?
• Almost all of the mosters in Arthurian lore could in fact be some type of Mythos creature. 
• Then there is Merlin. Just who does he follow and what is he up to. His "son of a incubus" origin certainly ties in with various Lovecraftian villains. 

But, as Tizun Thane has already pointed out,  this sort of stuff doesn't really work well within the standard Pendragon campaign. It's great for a Cthuhlu Dark Ages type of campaign, but that is a  very different type of game. For standard Pendragon a GM can put a couple of odd things on the fringes of the campaign without disrupting things but anything more pronounced will warp the game.

Edited June 4, 2020 by Atgxtg

[BioKeith]

Cthulhu Dark Ages is basically this. I rip off a lot of their adventures and modify them to use in my Pendragon.

[Loïc]

You'll find a good example of introducing the Mythos in such a background with Mythic Iceland. It allows to play realistic, mythic, or mythic with Mythos beyond the nordic pantheon... When I was running Mythic Iceland, I chose the third option... but never reveal my players they were in a Mythos mini-campaign! I think it would be a good way to manage this. You can even use Mythic Iceland (melted with Land of Giants) to make your Northmen a culture strongly infiltrated by the Mythos (Loki/Nyarlathotep, Hella/Shub-Niggurath... - whose cultists could be war chieves or priests of other cults).