The music in my games

Music is an important inspirational tool in my gaming. I listen to music when i write stuff, i listen to music when i play games and when i listen to music my drifts into those imaginary realms that are such a big part of my life.

Following is a selection of music that connects me to the realms of my imagination. Feel free to supplement with your own in the comments section.

Steeleye Span - Seven Hundred Elves

Play D&D for a long time and you are bound to become ambivalent towards the tolkienesque elves of the vanilla settings. British folk rock band Steeleye Span hearkens back the elves of mythology, "(...) foul and grim they were", in this song lending them some much needed authenticity. 

Blood Ceremony - The Great God Pan

I can never get enough of heavy brooding metal, mythological references and stunning female vocals.

Blood Ceremony was actually recommended to me by Jefferey Talanian of North Wind Adventures who has created Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea the retro-clone that really opened my eyes to the OSR. Encounters with dark satyrs are bound to crop up in my games.

(This live video contains a bit of "concert atmosphere" before the song starts)

Ozzy Osbourne - Old LA tonight

This song was sort of special to me back in my teens when we played Kult and swedish cyberpunk/euro tech-thriller game Neotech (the 1st edition, 2nd was crap).

It was a great time. Our characters were typically based on Predator comics character Detective Schafer and some of them looked like Lorenzo Lamas on Renegade.

The combination of melancholy and action-movie aesthetics was very moving to my angsty teenage self and it still gets me every time.

Frederick Curzon - Robin Hood Suite

Not everything needs to be rock and roll. Curzon's Robin Hood Suite feels like that Robin Hood movie with Errol Flynn, a movie that took my mind to other places long before i even knew what fantasy was. (I've always wanted a PC that looks like Errol Flynn, why haven't done that?). Enjoy!

Hawkwind - Chronicle of the Black Sword

I don't think i need to explain this. Hawkwind and Moorcock's collaboration on giving the saga of Elric the Melniboné a musical expression is just awesome. It is the audio expression of so much of the inner landscape I've been playing in since childhood.

My personal favorite on the album is probably "Needle Gun" though which always makes me think of fletchette-gun toting original razor girl Molly Millions from William Gibson's Neuromancer. (Although I'm aware that it is supposed to reference Moorcock's character Jerry Cornelius).

There is a live concert movie with the songs from Chronicle of the Black Sword available on YouTube. Including, if I'm not mistaken, Michael Moorcock himself.

p.s I usually use Spotify for listening to music so i added the albums where these songs can be found and few other treats of Norwegian fantasy inspired prog to a public spotify playlist.

Kvitstein

Between the coastland of Central Norway and across the border with Sweden there are large remote areas of wide forested valleys, mountains and highlands.

These are borderlands, undefined and lawless. The people make the law themselves here. Any central authority holds little relevance here.

It is here that the Witchunter arrived in the Year of Our Lord 1601. A grim and somber man leading a pack of dirty disheveled mercenaries. No one knew why he came. What god could lead him here?

At a small farm called Kvitstein the Witchunter and his men make a stop. The farmer and his wife makes them some food. The men are quiet. The couple's young daugther is curious but afraid.

Suddenly the sky fill with dark clouds.

By Daniel Thilas (1712-1772)

Suddenly the Witchunter claims that the mark of the Underworld on the little girl. He points to his powers as a servant of God and the King. He wants to kill the girl. The parents, desperate, protest but are overpowered by the Witchunter's men. The girl, all of nine years old, tries to run but is caught.

Black smoke twirls towards the dark sky. A mother wails for her lost child. The father is unable to utter a sound. The Witchunter and his men leave.

A dark year passes.

A woman now lives alone at Kvitstein. She is the wife of a man condemned to die for attacking a servant of the Crown. A woman who lost his daugther in a witches pyre.

By Rama CC BY-SA 2.0 fr, via Wikimedia Commons

The woman works hard to keep the farm going. She tills the earth, feeds the animals and maintains the houses. She is happy, but lonely. Only the ghost of her daughter to keep her company. The ghost, the Devil and the creatures of the Underworld.

Then one day a man arrives. A grim man carrying a large sword and a haunted sad look in his eyes. He is traveling to execute a man imprisoned. He is going to kill her husband. Travelling with the executioner is his ten year-old daugther.

Inspired by the lonely places where i grew up and Hammer Horror-films.