Convenient Explanations

Based on the comments and emails stemming from my latest Dwimmermount session recap, people seem really taken with my unabashedly Burroughsian portrayal of the Eld, the Red Elves of Areon. I must confess that, while I regularly extol the virtues of not planning too far ahead and making stuff up on the fly, I have been thinking about the Eld for quite some time now -- over two years, judging by the date of the post linked above. They have their origins in the fact that the LBBs are filled with references to Barsoom, which led me to believe that the tales of John Carter had a great deal more influence over OD&D than is generally acknowledged. So, as I was thinking about starting up an OD&D campaign of my own, I decided to find a place for "Barsoom," or at least a pastiche of it (Amtor's there too, as some perspicacious readers have already noted).

Since the PCs haven't yet stepped foot on the Red Planet, I have only very vague notions of what the place is like, but one thing I do know is that many of D&D's weirder monsters have their origins on Areon. A few examples:

• Carrion Crawler: The larval form of a weird moth-like creature native to Areon, whom the Eld regard as pests.
• Displacer Beast: A predator from the Red Planet, kept as pets and guard animals by many Eldritch aristocrats.
  
• Doppelganger: Shapeshifters with some strange relationship to the Eld, who routinely employ them as spies and assassins.
• Rust Monster: An Areonese (?) beastie used by the Eld as living azoth detectors; that they also destroy ferrous metals, including enchanted examples of such, is just a bonus.

As I've said before, I prefer to use only a very limited subset of the available stable of D&D monsters in most sessions in the interests of presenting something vaguely like a plausible ecology. But I can't deny that I miss the weirdo creatures and that's why I long ago established that, in the past, there was regular travel and commerce between the campaign setting and several other worlds, like Areon and Kythirea. These other worlds thus provide me with convenient explanations for where all this freakish stuff comes from. Plus, by varying the array of creatures on each world, they all feel different while still tapping into the same D&D "vibe."