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OSR and good yarns

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Now if it's yarns you're longin' for, I can tell you of two, maybe three - even me, I can read 'em with the pictures. *** The first one's Lovecraft, The Colour Out of Space . Here's Virgil Finlays' picture - there you see 'em - first hand witnesses of the 'gleaming, eruptive cataclysm" that shot-up from old Nahum's well! [illustration by Virgil Finlay (1941), reprinted in the Annotated H.P. Lovecraft] Folks say it was aliens. Before he died, old Nahum had said: ...it comes from some place whar things ain't as they is here...one of them professors said so...he was right. Look out Ammi, it'll do suthin more...sucks the life out... *** Now, a mellower light glows in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island . Look here at Newell Wyeth's painting of Bill Bones, a buccaneer, hangin' 'round the cove, or upon the cliffs, with his brass telescope.'   [painting by N.C. Wyeth (1911), copied from Treasure Island , Antheneum B...
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OSR, a solo game, and a sea-trog

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Along the Mistral Sea wanderers tell of 'sea-trogs.' Not hateful creatures, most say, but unpredictable. In a solo game, I met one... [close-up, Khumai ( Ral Partha Miniatures, sculpted by John Robertson] *** North from OneKeep, an elven acolyte named Vol carried an empty bag and poked for cockles. He wanted enough for board at the rangers' place. Around a cove, he sited a giant crab (AC2, HD3, 2 x pincer (2d6). Vol ran for life.  Finally away, he poured two thimbles of elvish whiskey, each like torches burning. Later that afternoon, Vol had a bagful of cockles. That's when he saw the sea-trog, shin deep in the surf, its knobby, green tail uncurled to his face.  [a 'Khumai' ( Ral Partha Miniatures, sculpted by John Robertson] What's more, Vol saw that the sea-trog saw him. [Initiative: Vol 6 vs. sea-trog 7] It raised an arm. It pointed a finger. Under the sea-trog's sway, Vol dreamed of tides and the rollicking sea.   An hour or so later, he woke-up ...
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OSR and Clark Ashton Smith

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Awaiting the acolyte Orderic, the young veteran Frembas handled packages for tower mages along a fading coast. The year had gotten late, flapping helplessly like creatures in Jules Massenet's 2 Pièces pour piano: No. 1. Papillons noirs . The visits there were fine. A ntiquaries in their towers shared sometimes sublime, sometimes 'execrable' texts and tomes!  [fragment from Rodolphe Bresdin's lithograph The Comedy of Death (1854) ] Like this one - Bresdin's lithographic dream. 'Who was this Bresdin,' Frembas' host exclaimed. 'How was it, Bresdin saw these Lazari dance? What made them rise?'  *** Clark Ashton Smith knows what makes some shadows rise! In his The Maker of Gargoyles (1932), spurned Blaise Reynard's rage infused two murderous gargoyles: [Blaise] would not have said, perhaps would not have even known, that in one of the gargoyles, he had imprisoned all his festering rancor, all his answering spleen and hatred..." And in the o...
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