"Foreign Legion sci fi, horror or fantasy" Topic

Looking for films, books, stories whatever featuring the Foreign Legion and Arabs summoning evil desert djinni, Lovecraftian stories featuring the FFL, lost city stories, whatever.

Anything I can use as inspiration and plot elements for my soon to he realized FFL DnD campaign.

This, I imagine might have been halfway common during the pulp era, though I've never seen anything.

Isn't there at least one Tarzan story featuring a villainous FFL deserter?

And desertion has to be a feature of this campaign. Every FFL film has some guy deserting, who is about to be executed, but instead gets decorated and promoted as the Arabs choose just that moment to attack the fort, and he saves the captain's life.

Also, though I've never heard of any such, FFL being shot to Venus in a cannonball, or with other VSF elements would be great too.

I'm half expecting to hear the crickets chirp on this one, and half expecting to be buried in stories I knew nothing about.

Well the only one that springs to mind is the opening scenes of the 1999 film the Mummy where hero Rick O'Connell is part of a detachment of FFL who abandon their post and march to the city of the dead looking for gold but are attacked and wiped out by the Medjay.

youtu.be/vPPiHCkDNNI

The French Foreign Legion and the supernatural seem like a great fit.

It is surprising that, apparently, there is almost nothing. Considering the FFL's role in pulp fiction, its unique composition, the fact that it is thrown into all types of no win situations in the farthest reaches of Human occupation and beyond, how could this have been overlooked.

It is a fantastic idea. I include the FFL in my VSF setting, but the type of other dimensional or supernatural aspect I have not explored.

No horror etc…but this is a neat inspirational page:

warflag.com/shadow

Some good suggestions here in the "Books" section…

link

I cannot think of any, although I have a niggle that I read at least one FFL story with a dark god years ago in a short story collection.
Georges Surdez wrote a number of Pulp stories about the FFL. The sci-fi writer E.C. Tubb wrote Sands of Destiny a FFL tale set in 1935, maybe a possibility worth looking at?
Possibly Jack Williamson's Legion of Space series may be of some interest?
This maybe of interest too, especially acting as the security detail for the European Space Agency's launch facility at Kourou, French Guyana link

The Fifth Foreign Legion was a good series. Set in far future, 30th Century, it's more Sci-Fi than VSF.

link

Legionnaire by Simon Murray is an autobiography and a good read.
Some random ideas:
Your setting could be almost anywhere exotic, because that's where the legion would be sent.
You definitely need need characters from various nations who are running from the law, ex-lovers or over-bearing parents or who are seeking adventure and fortune. Or friends who joined on a lark.

Not sure how you would implement this, but "le cafard" = depression in the ranks, usually cured by hard work or battle. See: link

Opposing forces could include: wild beasts, monsters, other nations, aliens or the environment (for a more RPG style game, ie: quicksand, poisonous vines, steam geysers)

Missions might include: escort the professor, punitive attack, defend to the last man (Camaron), support the 'proper' army (ie be used as canon fodder for an assault), exploration, escort a caravan (which might end up being more of a rob the caravan and desert mission), "hearts and minds" type civilian works (build a bridge, dig a well, clear a tunnel; any of which could lead to nefarious shin-digs). Don't forget being betrayed by allied forces, just to add a bit of tension.

Oh, and there was the Van Damme movie: YouTube link

I'd have to do some digging, but there's a fair bit of SF pulp with interplanetary settings and a "Solar Legion" or some such. Sadly, while the hostiles are sometimes horrific, they are rarely Lovecraftian.

Is there any reason you can't steal "Predator" outright? Just put Arnold & Co in FFL uniforms?

Plenty of old cavalry movies have potential. For the deserter, put the cast of Sgt Rutledge in FFL (or Spahis d'Afrique) uniforms, and have the real murderer be a cultist or a shape-shifting monster? For that matter, that gun-runner in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is almost surely a cultist, while the tribal medicine men are hoping to conjure up a Cthulhoid creature.

Ever read Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo? It's off-stage, but in an alternate 1920's, US Marines in Haiti are dealing with Voodoo priests. Have the French rather than the Americans take over Haiti and there you are. (Actually, I think Haiti may have owed the French more money than they owed the US anyway. And that bit about the locals impaling their President on a spiked fence and drinking his blood might not even be true.)

As many of you have pointed out, there's a lot of material that is "almost FFL vs Azathoth, Martians, undead Egyptians, whatever" but nothing that exactly fits the bill.

I personally think that the FFL was colorful in a way that no other Victorian force, and very few of other periods, can match.

I wonder if there might someday be a resurgence of FFL literature/movies? If there was, much of it would surely be fantasy/SF/horror. What's more, with steampunk being so popular, how can everyone fail to see the connection.

In fact, I'd love to put together an OGL version of my campaign, and put it on drivethrurpg. Wouldn't sell much, but it would be a lot of fun.

You might want to check with Bob Murch of Crucible Crush.If anybody would know about what you want he would.He has a fantastic range of Pulp,Horror,supernatural figures.Here's his FFL figures link
link
Mark