Grimoire
Cthulhu
Dracula
Abraham Lincoln
Ken
Grimoire

Episode 379: Stealth Out and Touch the Egg Wrong

January 24th, 2020 | Robin

That knife you smuggled into the Gaming Hut will finally pay off as we provide tips on playing the secret assassin character.

Patreon backer Tom Abella provides us a story Ripped From the Headlines, in which a baffling GPS-spoofing technology deployed on the Yangtze at Shanghai might be a cover for sand thieves. Or, you know, something weird.

In the Horror Hut backer Thomas Wolfe asks us to mull the works of weird fiction stalwart Clark Ashton Smith.

If it weren’t for Ken’s Time Machine, the megalosaurus might be known by another, entirely embarrassing name. Now he reveals what other interventions he staged, or is thinking about staging, in order to erase history’s insignificant but annoying details.

Want to pose a question to the show? Get your priority question asking access with your support for the KARTAS Patreon!

Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.


Your survival depends on separating heisting criminals from undercover cops in Never Bring a Knife, the action-packed new social deduction game from our ever-sneaky friends at Atlas Games. Available from Jan 17th at your friendly local game store or online.

What’s worse—yet even more pulse-poundingly exciting—than being a burned spy on the run from an international vampire conspiracy? Going it alone, as you do in Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan’s brilliant adaptation of GUMSHOE One-2-One to the shadowy world of Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops, from Pelgrane Press.

The treasures of Askfageln can be found at DriveThruRPG. Get all issues of FENIX since 2013 available in special English editions. Score metric oodles of Ken Hite gaming goodness, along with equally stellar pieces by Graeme Davis and Pete Nash. Warning: in English, not in Swedish. In English, not Swedish. While you’re at it, grab DICE and Freeway Warrior!

Arc Dream Publishing presents a gorgeous new edition of Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow, a deluxe hardback in delightful faux snakeskin, with a foreword by John Scott Tynes, annotations by our own Kenneth Hite, and stunning full-pate color  illustrations by Samuel Araya. Grab it while it lasts in the Arc Dream store.

4 Responses to “Episode 379: Stealth Out and Touch the Egg Wrong”

  1. Tim Emrick says:

    My first exposure to Smith was at second hand, through the Expert D&D module “Castle Amber.” The first part of the adventure is essentially an Edgar Allan Poe-themed funhouse dungeon, but later on the PCs travel to Averoigne for a maguffin hunt that requires them to fight the most spectacular monsters from those stories. (The cover depicts the Colossus of Ylourgne.) Eventually I tracked down some of the stories listed in the Suggested Reading pist. (And

  2. gdave says:

    @Tim Emrick:

    I was going to comment on that module myself.

    The first part of it isn’t “Edgar Allen Poe-themed”, though (or if it is, it’s indirect). It’s based on Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber series (which is cited in Appendix N).

  3. Some comments inspired by the discussion of Clark Ashton Smith.

    1. I try to make an effort to refer to the *four* major writers of WEIRD TALES–Howard, Lovecraft, CAS, and C.L. Moore. She did much of her major work there and was greatly admired by Howard (and, if memory serves, HPL).

    2. If I recall correctly, Jack Vance once commented that everything he knew about style he had learned from “”The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” ” and “The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles”.

    3. Attempts to reprint the entire Clark Ashton Smith corpus doomed 2 major publishing endeavors–Betty Ballantine and Lin Carter’s “Ballantine Adult Fantasy” line, which published 4 out of a projected 6 thematic volumes; and David G. Hartwell’s Timescape imprint, which managed only 2 volumes before folding. And Night Shade Press ran into some serious financial difficulty before managing to finish Scott Conners’s 5 volume COMPLETE FANTASY TALES, but they did all get published eventually. CAS is almost the textbook example of an anti-commercial success.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Film Cannister
Cartoon Rocket
d8
Flying Clock
Robin
Film Cannister