Zothique is a collection of short stories by pulp maestro Clark Ashton Smith. It covers a far-future Earth where most of the continents have fallen under the ocean, some lands have risen again to be reforged into new landmasses, and magic and fantastical creatures live again.
It’s one of the foundational series of stories for the Dying Earth genre, supposedly inspiring Jack Vance to write his take on the genre years later. While it is not one of the works that appears on Appendix N many people consider Smith’s exclusion as a major oversight, or due to some amount of distaste for Smith’s more racy subject matter.
As an amazing work of fantasy, lets use some of the occurrences from these stories as an inspirational encounter table for old school fantasy gaming:
Zothique-influenced Encounters:
- A group of travelers, escorting a young bride for a king.
- Severed body parts, crawling around in the wilderness.
- Gargantuan skeletons, wearing turbans of snakes.
- Necromancers-in-exile, riding skeletal steeds with undead servants in tow.
- A eerie glowing orb, floating in the air, disintegrating dead flesh on contact.
- A vampiric ferret, the familiar of a grim wizard.
- A prince on the hunt of a rare quarry.
- Jackal-faced ghouls.
- A world-weary poet, seeking excitement that will bring them to the brink of death.
- A crestfallen lamia, guarding a tomb.
- An astrologer, being guided on a quest by a mythical creature.
- A massive swirling darkness surrounding the party, with the sounds of cackling demons within.
- Massive plants with human parts spliced onto them.
- The statue of a dark god, wielding a massive weapon, whispering pacts.
- Sentient bird nobles.
- A deep sea current, abducting ships to a grim isle.
- Swarming mass of crabs.
- Cultists of the charnel god, pursuing grave robbers.
- A rival adventuring party, looking for the relics in tombs.
- A city-state participating in the funeral of a noble by participating in city-wide debauchery.