I am looking for times and places where Mythos creeps in and takes over - Cthulhu adventure hooks. I have seen players face Old Ones and their influence in Orient and Occident, at great events and in the desolate wild, in caves, sea, ice, and space.Where do you play? Where would you like to play?You guys have been great at this in the past.Keep it simple. No pulp heroes. No tentacles. Act 1 stuff. Exposition. Era. Situation. Mystery and hints at horror.Cthulhu plot ideas + general...
Fishermen along the Massachusetts coast complain about freak black algae blooms destroying and contaminating their catch. A young research biologist from Miskatonic University in Arkham is dispatched to investigate. He sets up a small lab in an Innsmouth barn while going out on boats with the fishermen to gather samples. After a few weeks his reports start becoming erratic and disturbed. At the same time fishermen start to vanish and whole boats are lost or found adrift and empty.The PCs are gathered by their old professor/friend who is the head of biology at Miskatonic. They are asked to meet the researcher at Innsmouth, assess his mental state and his work, and report back within the day by telegram. The police has begun an investigation into the researcher's doings after local opinion has turned against him. The press has gotten interested and if there is a story out there that the university was somehow involved in deaths it could devastate the funding for essential research.That was before the Coast Guard got involved
>A grocery store only sells products one day from expiring, even the paper towels.>Your neighbor, old man Jenkins, has been acting strange lately. Wait, since when did I have a neighbor?>You lost your cat. No one remembers you had a cat. >It's three in the afternoon, you realize no one has shadows.>While walking home in the rain, you see a puddle. A young woman is reflected under the surface, pounding on the water as if it is solid. She looks around in panic, then swims out of view.>You got an F on your calculus final, you graduated highschool years ago. >Hands? Why are there so many hands?>Life has given you lemons, unfortunately the return desk is manned by some sort of crab creature with a taste for human flesh.>A strange new fad of yodeling is popular among teenagers, you live next to a highschool and in the dead of night their cries bleed together and create strange whispers through your window.>You wake up with your pillow covered in drool, you sleep on your back.>You open a book, it begins to shout and try to cover up its words.>You're waiting in line at the DMV, it goes rather quickly and your issue is handled in short order.>Lizards>Your car won't start, when opening up the engine a gremlin climbs inside your radiator. That's right, he hasn't payed rent this month.
>>31063397kek
The plane lost over the Indian ocean recently...
>>31063333
Ever played minecraft?Alone?At night?And it feels like someone's behind you...
>>31064562writing Minecraft into the cthulhu mythos is plebe tier shit, that'll be really hard to take seriously; I feel like it'd lead to some pretty bad tone issues, or just general groans.
>>31064562http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Jvk1166z.esp>The second thing you notice is that you're losing health. It's only a bit, but it keeps happening, a little bit at a time. The longer you stay in one place, the quicker it seems to occur. If you let this health loss kill you, you'll find the cause: a figure we came to call the Assassin, because he seems to wear a retextured version of the Dark Brotherhood armor from Tribunal, even though the expansions don't work in JVK. It's all black, completely untextured, like he's just a hole in space. The way he moves... he gave me quite a start, the first time I saw him scuttling around my dead body. He crawls inhumanly on his hands and feet, his arms and legs splayed out like a spider. You'd usually only see him after death, crawling around and over your body just before the reload box popped up. Occasionally, you could catch a glimpse of him darting around a corner or crawling on a wall or ceiling. It made the game very difficult to play at night!
>>31063278>ToCTales of Cthulhu? I'd never heard of it until I googled ToC RPG. Is it that different? Is it a more conventional, "PCs get to be awesome" sort of RPG?
>>31064562>I'm a huge faggot please rape my face
>>31064747Or does it mean Trail of Cthulhu?
>>31064694Maybe not MC. But I like the idea of software becoming more dangerous than you'd think possible. Just avoid pic related. In Moonspeakland it's a regular horror trope. Involve your mobile and people behaving as the app demands, and it could get interesting.
>>31064896pic related>>31064860Yes, ToC is the Gumshoe game that deals with the Mythos. Basically the GM strings clues up that the players will find no matter what, with additional information behind skill checks. Not what I would use for an atmospheric game.
>>31063278>Where do you play? Where would you like to play?1.) TSW mythos integration. Set in 2000s.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT5z3SifccA2.) i collect loads of spooky stuff from /x/, stuff that needs a campaign based on them.Now it doesnt seem right to me if your investigating the mythos and your a solicitor from Leeds. You have to be an agent of a secret society. Or atleast some players are.
>>31064932That pic seems a little silly. A huge, glowing screen with objectives like, "HEY WE NEED HELP KILLING THAT GUY", and "FRANKIE NEEDS YOUR HELP WITH SOME DOMESTIC TERRORISM" seems just a little bit too conspicuous for use on a public street in broad daylight.
>>31065446I would assume it's an ARG, and you're viewing dude's overlay. No actual terrorist cell would advertise itself so blatantly.
>>31063278I'm running a Pathfinder game with Cthulhu in the background. It's a fairly generic players-sucked-into-the-game plot, but with it being perpetuated by old ones.While they're in the game, their bodies are out in the real world, playing host to the Old Ones' will, however incomprehensible. The fluff is that in removing the human consciousness, the body is left a hollow shell suitable for occupation, as opposed to the usual 'it goes completely batshit' that usually happens.The players are going to get hints as to what's happening from glimpses they get out from in the game.They don't realise they're playing Call of Cthulhu yet.
>>31063333>A young research biologist from Miskatonic University in Arkham is dispatched to investigate.No. Modern times. Players from the CDC. Ones an ocean zoologist. Local sheriffs deputy. One a ships skipper. On land, a person from the board of health goes around Main checking the local restaurants for contaminated fish stock. The non-contaminated fish trawls are actually the clue that helps him determine the rough location of the seaweed. It moves.Before a formal report is made however. CNN comes out with a report saying that its actually to do with BP oil-spill!Before you can get to the bottom of it, Mainers in the coastal town where you are (Newsberry port) start coming down with simultaneous colour migraines & cluster headaches. Soon. BAM! theres your story.Story has to be run like "The Birds".
>>31065633sweet!
>>31065872Yeah! Im a better producer than writer. Im basically only good when i take others stories and re-shoot them.Though i do it in this style;>>31065380What else ya got fer me!
>>31066137Another villain id like to fit into the Lovecraft mythos is:The devil.I mean, hes basically the best villain ever. He should be used more. Lovecraft never directly seemed to rebuke the existence of the devil in the mythos. And the devil can bring in new concepts; he can infect technology and every disease is under his command. Hes basically the ultimate military strategist.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWIKQMBBTtk
>>31067268Lets not forget... if you ever heard hell... thered be some pretty wild music...
>>31067368Would it cause SAN-loss?
>>31063278>Guns don't affect Mythos creatures because they're, um, made of astral matter.I always thought that was a very clumsy copout.
>>31070572It is not.You don't see a creature. Maybe you see the shadow of one, and the image will haunt you for the rest of your life.If you actually face off against something from beyond time that is corporeal, chances are something that survives meteors and volcanoes won't mind a little hot metal thrown at it.But even if it would, you'll be too flabbergasted and shaken to the core, you'll be crying for your deceased mother's lap before you aim and fire a weapon in any useful way.Guns for cultists, san checks for things from beyond. But mostly it's gaining NPCs' trust without letting slip what you know already.
>>31070983The astral matter bit is a copout. You're talking about how they're too scary for you to shoot straight. But in the actual books it says that even if you land a shot, it just doesn't do anything to them because they're special. That's a copout.
>>31071120>that's a copoutHey anonWhen was the last time you were hurt by a 2 dimensional bulletCan I inflict damage on you with this image?
Try making a tv show that drops lots of references to the King in Yellow and Dim Carcosa, then just drop all of that at the end and turn it into a shallow thriller.
>>31071120>in the actual books it saysI don't see a consistent treatment of gun v creature in Mythos literature beyond that it never helps much. If that is because of a force field, a lack of corporeal cohesion, or really tough skin is up to the author. But being in a situation to aim and fire at something scary enough to inspire a story is an extreme situation and not a regular Mythos trope.
>>31071211You didn't catch the clues?Watch it again.
>>31064562You'd be better off with Ben Drowned or Red, even though that would still be gay as fuck.
>>31071191>When was the last time you were hurt by a 2 dimensional bulletPapercuts still hurt, nigga.
>>31071357Lovecraft-fags pls go.That was just a meaningless hallucination. The fact that he had the vision the instant he came upon the Yellow Altar, and he seems to see what are literally black stars drifting around a gaping maw in space, is pure coincidence. There was never anything supernatural about the show. You just can't handle that there was no monster at the end.
>>31071443>You just can't handleI'm not complaining.
>>31063278Is that bitch using magic?
>>31071498I think she just found Waldo
>>31070983That image is exactly what I've been looking for the pas week.Thanks anon!
The PCs are all attending a gala party at some high class estate/mansion. The host is premiering a new artistic movie that is set to be released to theaters at the end of the month. When the movie starts, the players are dragged into a trance like state, and a violent riot/orgy breaks out. The awake to find themselves at their respective homes, with no knowledge of what the movie was about or how they got home after the party. They then find that the party was over a week ago, several other people from the gala are missing. As they try to piece together information about what happened they slowly discover they were caught up in a horrifying ritual, unwillingly taking the part of cultists and preforming depraved acts to satisfy the whims of some terrible ancient force. The movie hits national release in one week.
>>31072043It's a bit of a power scale of things man has seen in different realities of Mythos. It is NOT a hierarchy, order, or organization of any kind.
>>31072043Take this, too.
>>31072066That is fantastic.
>>31071433Paper is still a 3 dimensional object since it has a thickness albeit not much but its still there when's the last time you where cut by a drawing on a piece of paper
>>31072548A drawing also has a thickness.
>>31072066Imma steal this shit
>>31072548>where cut by a drawing on a piece of paperClearly you've never read Iron Age comics
>>31073305It's copypasta. Go nuts.
>>31063397>You're waiting in line at the DMV, it goes rather quickly and your issue is handled in short order.Clearly the world is ending
>>31070983>50 million years ago Australia was covered in Flying Polyps.I see its only gone downhill since then
>>31073766Nonsense, it's simply very rare.It happened to me on Monday. in and out in 6 minutes.
>>31071120The way I've always understood it is that you aren't actually shooting at the creature, you are shooting at its 3D shadow. We exist as 3D creatures, old ones exist in 5 and upwards dimensions and therefore don't even technically interact with our plane. Imagine an animate drawing on a piece of paper, and you are standing above it. You cast a shadow on the piece of paper, and some of the drawings start worshiping it, and others show up and try to shoot it with their 2 dimensional guns. They aren't actually shooting you. They are shooting what they think is you because its all they can see.
>>31073882It was nice knowing you.
>>31073956
The PCs are all aboard some transcontinental train, a four or five day journey, and happen to be sharing a car/sleeping compartment. Give them some strange encounters or see some odd things happening, or strange people. One night, they are rudely awoken when the train grinds to a shuddering halt. They are stopped halfway into a mountain tunnel. The conductor gets off the train to walk the length and check for problems, and is dragged away screaming into the woods by strange figures. Something has stopped the train and is set on taking everyone on board for some nefarious purpose. Some of them might already be on the train disguised as passengers.
>>31073956I always used to think "what's so damn scary about these things and why are they so invulnerable?" I never knew they were 5th dimensional creatures. I also never understood why they cause insanity just from seeing them or being nearby; what's actually happening to your brain in those cases?
>>31076490>One's brain can't handle seeing something that doesn't match our 3D perception of the universe>The creature might simply be terrifying in appearance - one sees it and it's just so horrible they get instant trauma>The creature could be exuding some horrible psychic force>Or maybe it's the classic idea that it gives the viewer too much knowledge - they suddenly become witness to clear evidence of the mythos, and the effect of this knowledge cripples their mind.I always figure it's up to the individual players/gm to decide, especially since agreeing on a definite reason makes it less scary.
>Local community theory decides to put up The King in Yellow
>>31076523I just can't imagine this stuff. I always read things like that and think "like what?"
>>31063278You're bound to find something in this.
>>31076548Have you ever had one of those moments where something scares or surprises you, and you just can't think straight for a minute? It's like that just, multiplied by a whole fuckload.Maybe it's just something that's harder to imagine if you've never experienced anything like it. I've had a few moments where I've had small panic attacks over weird shit I've seen, and for a few seconds my brain was just scrambled as my body panicked and went into what I guess was a fight or flight thing.
>>31076548you must have a limited imagination.
>>31076586I've never had that.>>31076588Apparently. Thanks for the comment, and good luck with feeling superior.
>>31076490Imagine HP's reaction upon seeing a white woman happily married to a black man. It's that sort of thing.
>>31076586One time, in high school, I was out jogging down my road, and I was going past my neighbors property. I had just got out of my woods (which is always scary at night, even before slenderman [nyarlothep] was a thing), and I was on the other side of a small fenced-in field from his polebarn (which had a big light over the roll-up door). Anyway, I spooked a horse, which immediately rose up from the ground where it was sleeping, and then ran off. For the split second where it was rising off the ground, I had no idea what it was; just some big shapeless thing dark thing.I guess it's like that, but for a longer period of time? Which is even scarier, because usually you can figure something out within seconds, but when it goes on for longer than that, it must be something truly otherworldly.
>>31076709All fear of the unknown is ultimately the fear of death.>When the jar of the joined iron ran up Syme's arm, all the fantastic fears that have been the subject of this story fell from him like dreams from a man waking up in bed. He remembered them clearly and in order as mere delusions of the nerves -- how the fear of the Professor had been the fear of the tyrannic accidents of nightmare, and how the fear of the Doctor had been the fear of the airless vacuum of science. The first was the old fear that any miracle might happen, the second the more hopeless modern fear that no miracle can ever happen. But he saw that these fears were fancies, for he found himself in the presence of the great fact of the fear of death, with its coarse and pitiless common sense. He felt like a man who had dreamed all night of falling over precipes, and had woke up on the morning when he was to be hanged.>For as soon as he had seen the sunlight run down the channel of his foe's foreshortened blade, and as soon as he had felt the two tongues of steel touch, vibrating like two living things, he knew that his enemy was a terrible fighter, and that probably his last hour had come.
>>31076658>Apparently. Thanks for the comment, and good luck with feeling superiorNo, that's true. Role playing is about imagination - if you can't imagine something, you have limited imagination. This is same situation as, say, someone is olympic medalist in marathon and you are not.Also:The trapped miners who uncovered a cthonian egg-chamber and tunnel far down into the earth who weren't driven insane and mind-controlled by the ultra-low frequency noise being generated by the cthonian mother below were being prepared to be fed to the hatchlings.Which would involve them being cocooned in cthonian goop, and gradually turned (deleted-scene-from-Alien-style) into large squirming, helpless grubs with human faces which would then be devoured by the hatchlings. This would already have happened to some kids who wondered off from a field-trip several decades ago, and were lost in a previous cthonian-caused cave-in. There would probably have been some pretty gruesome mercy-killing involved, to spare them from the suffering, or being devoured by the hatching cthonians. Fun stuff!And then, when the hatchlings were killed, there would have been a lot of intense running through mineshafts while pursued by the mother, burrowed back up from the Earth's mantle, before running down a pier to jump onto the helicopter at the last second, leaving the enormous cthonian to collapse the pier and land in the lake, where it would perish.
>>31076816>cthonian>cthonian>cthonian I don't think it means what you think it means.
The french Sans-Detour edition has a little plot hook for every monster. i can try to translate some if you want, just tell me what monster you're interested in. For example, there is one where PJ plays Mi-Gos, trying to stop humans from landing on Yuggoth
>>31076847It's copypasta bro, I've seen it in last few Cthulhu threads.
>>31076861>i can try to translate some if you wantDeep Ones? Shoggoths?
>>31076959>Deep OnesA group of pale , blind deep ones has to leave their undergroud sea where they lived for thousand of years, due to man's pollution. They "hire" the PCs to serve them as guides through the desert and jungle. They need to stop by the Temple of Dagon, an then go to a secret city at the bottom of a large river where they will pay the PCs with a "great treasure". Of course, other people have heard of this, and the Deep Ones may have old enemies seeking an opportunity to strike.>Shoggoth (it's not very good, a human sacrifice is need to calm the "god of the mountain", so I put an old one of mine instead)In a little suburb, a Jimmy has an imaginary friend. Adults find that adorable, but other kids knows that it is dangerous to cross Jimmy. His imaginary friend is a tiny Shoggoth, undevelloped in his toychest, that Jimmy father brought back frozen from Antartica. It is weak in will and power, but still strong enough. The PC plays kids trying to save their teacher, a friend, or maybe the whole neighborhood if the shoggoth escapes and go Pennywise.
>>31077014Mr. Trashbags!
>>31077014Awesome, thanks!Dark Young and/or Shub-Niggurath next, please?
>>31077071>Dark YoungAt the end of the 18th century, a group of slaves joins Indians in a desperate atempt to fight back the whites. they summoned an old "walking tree" to help them, but at a great price. Since then, a group of 30 people have to stare non-stop at the beast, to keep it from waking up. But the generations passed and now, only 5 men are available to keep up the tradition. A The PC, a group of young men and women of the tribe, are sent to the whites city to find replacement, or a more durable solution to this problem.Sorry, no hooks for gods in the book. Anything drug related is good with Shubby, Delta Green made a terrific work out of this, describing a company selling mutated tobacco and cocain, using the Milk of the Mother to grow more and more stuff.
>>31077127This shit is gold, man.I don't know, Byakhee and Hastur maybe?
Some catholic school is over 100 years old. There is a basement under the gym that'sused for storage. During one of exercises one of the students kick ball down the stairs. Little girls, standing at the top of the stairs starts yelling 'throw it up to me'. Asked who she was talking to she replied 'that big man, sister told us not to talk to him'. There were no nuns at the school for 40 years.>everyone go and check shorpy.com
>>31077141>ByahkeeAt the Miskatonic University, back in the days, a fraternity was dedicated to the occult and the Mythos, giving the Univ its reputation. The manage to collect and summons great things, but their most impressive and useful feat was to gain the allegiance of a Byahkee. They used it to travel, scare and send it to steal or find old books. But last month, some Harvard occult frat stole the Byakee !!! Motherfuckers have to pay, right ? We got to get old Ugly back !
>>31077197>>31077197Lold hard.How about a campaign where you do very tongue-in-cheek references in an investigation of some malevolent Eastern origin horror cult with strange heathen gods from beyond mortal ken?And it turns out it's just a bunch of Chinese people in Chinatown being ethnic, and that the investigation clues were all just Lovecraft's contemporary racial views/fears.But then you do a Shamalamadingdong tweest and introduce Professor Fu Manchu and the Yellow Terror as an actual BBEG.
>>31077197Mi-go, Ygolonac, great race of Yith, Flying Polyp, hound of Tindalos?
>>31077425Okay, but it may take a while, I'm also cooking.
>>31077468I can wait :3
>>31077425>HoundIn a sealed chamber, an experiment : in a diving suit, a man opens the lost sarcophagus of a cursed king. At the instant he opens the caskeet, a strange blue gas forms at a corner of the sealed room. A scientist press a button, another gas, highly toxic and corrosive, is poured. In the mist, something goes wrong...Weeks later, PCs arrive in the ghost town to investigate? There are survivors of the "gas leak", driven mad but the incident. There is a beast roaming the street, dangerous, but hurt and dying, unable to escape through the angles of time. And there is the man in the diving suit, hiding, but responsible for all of this.
>>31077518>Great RaceClassical Ythian business. PC wakes up as Ythians in a great library, half-destroyed. They staty there for a while, then wakes up as human again. The missed a few month, and find themselves leading an expedition to the Andes, to uncover the same library they explored. But it is intact, the Cthonians are yet to come. Will the try to wake the strange "statue" they know to be Ythians, or will the seal the library. If they do, they wake up as Ythian again, trapped for good this time.
>>31077425>PolypsSorry, this one is really hard to translate because it tells of many traditionnal Turkish stuff. It deals with a box containing a curse mirror. If you look in the mirror, a form appears in your eyes, and only you can see the Polyp in the Sky. But if you stare long enough at it, it appear and well, kill everything and stuff. The box is covered with scripture, leading you to books, old tribes of nomads and spells to get free of the curse.
>>31077606>Mi Go (this is a tricky one, since it is written from the Mi Go perspective)In a distant future, a group of human is kidnapped by the Fungi and are given a "neuro-graft". they are able to think like Mi Gos, and are asked to help them think like humans.Meanwhile, a rescue team is sent to Pluto to find the poor fellas (who are like, the best scientist or the world).Two groups of PC, do they want to stay, or leave ? How to tell the humans that MiGo are OK once you understand what is a "theor"...I will now eat, then post more.
So here's an idea for those who play Cthulhu Now/Delta Green that I've been thinking about.You know that biohazard sign you see in hospitals and places where you can get infection from something? That's also the symbol of Shub-Niggurath, right? So I've been thinking what if there was a cult that would be doing medical experiments on people, like trying to create new disease or using Dark Young dna to create humanhybrids to serve their god. I've watched Fringe (the cult would be like ZFT but more heavy on Mythos) and got some ideas for my future DG scenarios. Anybody else have ideas for this?Also, I have Targets of Opportunity and I know about the Disciples of Worm. Not exactly what I had in my mind, but it has some good stuff.
>>31077606Cursed turkish box with scuptrue and cursed mirror inside the box - rad as fuck, will use.
>>31077658Do you have Countdown ? Tiger Transit is kinda what you are looking for, except they're in it for the money, and control.
>>31077674Yeah I got on my computer. Never really cared for Tiger Transit, but I will l read it now.
Man finds a door to Azathoth in the refrigerator at a local bakery. Hilarity ensues.Man discovers a new brand of miracle elixir comes from Mother Hydra's teats. Hilarity ensues.Man discovers that a new brand of silly putty comes from the flesh of a pacified shoggoth. The pacification is only temporary. Hilarity ensues.A man who works as a pest controller is called to handle a Spider of Leng infestation. Hilarity ensues.An artist discovers his latest geometrical sculpture has opened an enormous corridor in spacetime through which the hounds of tindalos can swarm through. Hilarity ensues.A man discovers that The Voynich Manuscript is actually a yithian cookbook. Hilarity ensues.
A recent archaeological find in rural France has confirmed the existence of ancient settlers in the region predating any evidence of proto-humans in the region by a quite large margin. The find was uncovered in what appeared to a perfectly spherical (and perfectly sealed) geode-like structure of several kilometers across, broken apart by recent blast-mining in the area. The crystalline structures of the geode are also a subject of intense scrutiny, forming in a regular pattern that seems to suggest the natives were somehow 'farming' or molding the growth of the crystals. How they did this, and to what end, is the hot topic of debate among contemporary European anthropologists and geologists alike. In the recent academic uproar the finding has provoked, no-one has been paying much attention to the recent serial child abduction cases in the village of Ornes.
Okay french translation fag back here.>Spiders of Leng>start reading>"we built a hospital">oh god...In the hospital, patiens have weird dreams. Each night, they go a little farther in the Dreamlands, guided by the laments of men trapped in the white ceiling, Spiders weaving their blasphemous webs.The doctors at the Hospitals are possessed by the spiders, their minds trapped in the webs? They keep the patiens drugged so they keep goind to Leng and get trapped themselves. PC are patiens, nurse, maybe so dreamer lost in the dreamlands...
>>31077886>Spectral HunterAn Elder Thing is hidden inside a jade statue. Shaman and mediums are able to hear its voice, telling then it is a ancient sorcerer hiding here from the Shoggoth. It lives a pleasant live, guiding and teaching the shamans in a hidden temple for decades. But now, the gov'ment want to take the statue away, to the museum. At the instant the statue leave the temple, its guardian wakes up, a Spectral hunter killing everyone related to the expedition. PC will have to communicate with the "sorcerer", protect the statue, and take it to a portal where the Elder Thing will escape from its jade prison.
>>31077929>Rat ThingThe ice-breaker "the kiev Star" have a problem. A rat problem. Trpped in ice, away from everything, the crew is getting tired and angry as more and more rat get on the ship from nowhere, eating the food, shitting everywhere, the noise, the smell...The PC are sent to free the boat and take it back to the nearest port., but they'll have to take care of the rat problem, which is getting worse by the day...Now, it's like the are working as a unique entity...
>>31077977>Elder ThingsSomething really weird happens , east of the Phillipines. A giant gap opened in the earth, the sea , a small island even fell in it. Accordingly, tons of believers, sects, scientists and journalists gather there. Some chinese want to dive to find there god calling them (the Elder, trying to flee Earth through this portal). But the US want to blow up the trench to close it. As the go deeper, the find strange marking of the wall, and glass door. To some, on the first footage of the doors, you can clearly see eyes. Giant moving eyes, waiting to get free...
Yellow Brick Road is a great mythos movie if you're looking for inspiration. (Not really any spoilers below, just the setup.)The hook is that there is a town out in the hills that one day everyone just went missing from. The whole town got up and left and no one has been able to find them. They do know that they went up a path into the hills labeled yellow brick road, so decades later an author is going up there for inspiration to write about the incident as part of an expedition.Things go...poorly.
>>31078021I always felt kind of bad for the Elder Things, like the universe was bent over dicking them up every chance it got.
For lazy bastards.
>>31078021Ok I'm back, had to do a few things.>CthonianInside forgotten Mosque of an old islamic sect, below years and years of traitional giant carpets are the first ones, depcting scenes of battles with wormish demons, and strange incantations. below that last layer of tapestry, the beast is kept. Terrorist, archeologist, russian merchant, all want to get their hands of these...>Color out of spaceDeep in the Amazonian forest, something is wrong. Some scientist witnessed Aurora Australis, one even described it as a "completely new color range". using special equipment, a team is sent there to study the phenomenon, revealing the true colors of things...
Great thread guys!I'm working on a paranormal investigation campaign set in early 00's Houston (I live there) and I have a few plot threads that include the Santa Muerte cult, the rather infamous Homeless Serial Killer (who actually existed), and a more lulzy subculture war between a vampire coven and 'gypsy' clan. These events are being spurred on by a race of beings the ancient aztecs called Tzitzimimeh, who were star goddesses that would descend and attack the sun, causing solar eclipses. It was said that during the eclipses, the Tzitzimimeh would also descend to Earth and devour humans.My idea is that there is an impending solar eclipse and the players need to put the clues together and somehow stop these beings from causing too much worship/bloodshed before the eclipse otherwise the Tzitzimimeh will be summoned.A few questions:How do you think the players can solve these issues? The serial killer is fairly obvious: Kill or imprison him.A gang that worship Santa Muerte is not as easily stopped.Secondly:I'm going to be running this in Fate Accelerated. Any tips on adapting a lovecraftian horror campaign to this system?
>>31078963>Cthonian>Deep hidden chamber in the temple.>Door with hieroglyphics warns of "returning to the sand" if opened>When the door is opened a very stale smell is released>Pile of salt in the room>Another door, same warning>Piles of salt beyond that door>Final door won't budge >It contains three statues that must be blessed with blood to break the curse, which turns those it affects to salt piles.>Door in that room that leads to a slumbering imprisoned Cthonian that can be killed by flooding the room with water from a nearby oasis>draining the oasis dooms a village near the oasisCthonian give zero fucks about it tho.
>>31078963>Dhole (i love this one)Astronomer notes weird eruptions from the Moon. Acidic magma balls are falling everyday in the Gobi desert ! They think it's a weird gravity earth/moon/sun alignement stuff, but occultists know that this happened before, in the 16th century. Two expedition are sent to the desert. The scientist wants to inspect the craters, and occultists want to find a solution to that curse. The both finds gigantic iron statues depicting eerie gods. Next day, one of the statue gets hit ! These statues are made by the Serpent People, and an insult to the Dhole living on the Moon. And poor, poor PC are caught in the crossfire.
>>31078978>FateYou need the players' cooperation to generate plot. So horror in ate only works i the players are such great fans of the genre that they will willingly and enthusiastically torture and chase their own characters on a permanent basis. Not many players are ready to do that, it is very counterintuitive. Fate characters like to be competent, heroic go getters - not rats in a corner with diminishing sanity.Try it, and when it doesn't work, switch to Nemesis. A sanity mechanic helps a lot, and in Dark ORE it even supports roleplaying with clear indicators what kind of situation bothers the character and how much.
>>31079077>NemesisGonna look at that, thanks for the feedback.
>>31079382My stuff keeps popping up. Well, stuff I stole anyway.Thanks for saving it, guys.
Do you guys know of anything like True Detective out there for reference? I know people are usually disappointed at the hallucinations and general lack of "proven supernatural" in it, but I got a lot of usable stuff out of this show.
>>31079851CarnivaleThe Lost RoomFringe/Lost is good, but not all episodesAmerican Horror Story if you are into cheesy stuff
>>31079994Great you reminded me of Carnivale, still have to finish it.Or better yet, rewatch from the beginning.Fringe/Lost isn't really of my liking, but I can see Lost's characters working well in this sort of game.I'll also take a look in Lost Room and AHS, for I know little of them.Thank you.
>>31079994Hit and miss.Abrahms is excruciating. His latest show (the iRobot clone) is the first one you can watch without grinding your teeth, but it's far from good TV.American Horror Story is great but immensely cluttered. They have 5 unrelated plots in the air at any given time, and that breaks the horror atmosphere.Carnivale is nice but not even a little scary.The Lost Room is great, but more Mystery than horror. And it's damn short.What made True Detective was the pace and the focus on the seemingly irrelevant. Check out Top of the Lake, NZ Mystery of similar pace by some of the same people.
>>31079851>True DetectiveShithole in Luisiana. Detectives investigate the ritualistic murder of former prostitute Dora Kelly Lange, found in a still smoking field of burned crops, with a symbol painted on her back and wearing a "crown" of deer antlers, blindfolded and posed as if praying to a large solitary tree. Numerous twig latticeworks, like Cajun bird traps, are found with her body in and around the field.Their investigation brings up the case of Marie Fontenot, a little girl whose disappearance five years earlier was not investigated. Another report is brought up of a child who claimed to be chased through the woods by a "green-eared spaghetti monster.Later they interview underage prostitute Beth, find Lange's diary and learn the location of the church, which was destroyed in a fire, and that Lange came under the influence of a man she called the "Yellow King" in a place called "Carcosa." While searching through the wreckage of the church, they find a nightmarish image of a woman with deer antlers painted on a wall.
>>31080239Yes, that's what we were discussing. How nice of you to catch up.
A game set on the Vietnam warCthulhu Mythos meets Tour of Duty
>>31080361This is a fitting setting.There was a great deal of insanity going on with "abandoned" soldiers all over those jungles.
>>31080262Not that anon, but... I think he post it as copypasta from last Cthulhu General, used as one of the ideas for campaign.
>>31080464Not him either, but I can confirm the pasta.
>>31080494>>31080464It's a summary of True Detective's pilot.
>>31080698Used as a CC for people to play it.
A hiker finds the skeletal remains of a body. The skeleton is intact except for a shattered skull. Forensic examination of the remains shows that the deadly blow came from inside the skull.It could be solved in two ways.>he was shot in the eye>something nasty was in his brain and decide to go out
>>31080727That is a very large Shoggoth
>>31071433Papercuts hurt, they don't kill.
>>31080768I know. It's beautiful.
>>31080727I'd be internally angry if as a GM the group decided to close the case with the shot thing.Then again, as a GM I'd have to cope with this kind of development.
>>31080829Single papercut don't kill, but what if there are many of them?
>>31080829>>31080872It's not helping anyone, guys. Focus.
Old as fuck pasta (possibly incomplete). Pic of Dark Young unrelated, I think.There is a legend about youg lady waiting for long lost lover.From the front, a beautiful woman. A gentle smile on her face; she looks distracted, not entirely there. Doesn't speak, mutely holds out her arms to anyone who approaches, making little gasping noises that sound almost, but not quite, like speech.Seen from behind, she's a hollow shell. When she embraces a victim, it kisses/hugs him, releasing a toxin that is as much drug as it is poison. The victim is trapped in an ecstatic paralysis, as she slowly inverts and wrap itself around him, inside-out. Eating him, killing him, mating with him? Who can say for certain?Either way, don't go to (insert some specific location).
Best video game about Ctulu?
>>31080893Jesus, I can't unsee how that gif looks like a vagina with teeth surrounded by what looks like several horse penises in sockets... what is wrong with me?
>>31076490Humanity is a waste byproduct of Elder Thing experiments with the unbegotten source, the UBBO-SATHLA. These same experiments produced the Shoogoths and may have spread tholins across the prebiotic earth. When earthly life encounters hypergeometrical creatures, unpredictable effects occur that can often be controlled or manipulated from a superposition in higher dimensions. We return to the UBBO-SATHLA. The meat in your brain begins to dissolve back into a primordial state of pre-life. Changes intrude into our quantum-state sapience. Changes that alter our ability to understand, destroying it and expanding it simultaneously, like a balloon squeezed into deflating. Too much exposure leaves behind a corroded shell. True understanding alters the comprehension of limited and inadequate human minds. The universe is a poisonous truth that erodes the soul. Know this, and be free.
>>31082730This... is really good. I like it. Here, have this pic in return.
>>31071378king kong.avi was the best thing that ever happened to that pasta
>>31076816>deleted-scene-from-Alien-stylePardon?
>>31083298Dallas wasn't killed, xenomorph knocked him down and dragged into some deep place in Nostromo looking like some kind or hive.
>>31083298https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS5MtzrW1vU&t=1m44shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrLCwsKT-2w&t=38
I used this for my game. Started off the whole campaign and the players rolled with it in a very different direction then I had intended.It was originally just gonna be "ooooo mysterious death" and it would lead them to occult mythos shit. But they didnt bite at that and instead became ghost hunters, who crossed paths with mythos related stuff. Good game.
Dagon? Dagon. Dagon Dagon DAGON.
So what is the difference between Trail and Call? I havent played either and want to start.
>>31084411Call is a game where players have to think, find the clues, go place, search, try things, make mistakes...Trail is a game where player say "we search", and then the GM do everything else, give them the clues instantly, joins them together, point the way and kill the monster at the end if the PCs says so. Trail is pure shit.
>>31084411Call of Cthulhu is a great old dinosaur that runs on BRP and runs well. Simulationist skill characters and deadly combat. Story is up to the GM entirely.ToC is a spin-off from Esoterrorists using Gumshoe which works much like >>31084595 explained. It is a half assed scheme to capitalize on Mythos having no license fee that somehow people on this board always yap about.For CoC there's probably 50 source books published, with new ones every quarter by trusted Chaosium. For ToC there's maybe 3 books, I've seen 1, and not much content.
>>31077014The whole idea of a kid with a pet mythos beast is actually kind of adorable if the monster actually likes him/won't backstab him later.
>>31086360Shoggoth is too dumb for backstab someone. It would devour him immediately or... play with him.
>>31080096>The Lost Room is great, but more Mystery than horror. And it's damn short.I'm still sad that it didn't do well enough to get greenlit for a full series.
>>31076861Compiled all of these for maximum reposting
>>31076490As someone who read about half of the complete works of Lovecraft (Kindle edition) several years ago, it's my impression that, in the stories themselves, the mental effects are closer to PTSD and related disorders than the popular conception of 'whelp, I saw a Cthulhu, time to go start murdering people and arranging their entrails in ritual circles.' It's fairly typical traumatic stress reaction. The thing which causes it may be supernatural, but the madness is wholly mundane and unremarkable.
>>31086425>Shoggoth>dumblooks like you don't know Mister Shiny and other shoggoth lords
Can we have this thread archived on suptg?Please?Loads of pdf resources, mythos artwork and some wonderful plot hooks.
>>31087104this thread is far from over I hope. I will continue to post plot hook tomorrow (since it's quite late here). I've been working on a DG campaign around Madam A being this gal : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agn%C3%A8s_SorelJacques Coeur who have boought her a island full of deep ones hybrid, making her an immortal sorceress
>>31087240I hope this thread lasts a long time as well, I just want a copy of it on suptg for when it inevitably dies. Much more worthy of the space there than the endless quest threads.
>>31081628Fuck you, now I can't unsee it either. The grandparents of the PCs were themselves PCs- genuine badasses, fighting off all the (minor) things which lurk in the dark. Now, one of the things they sealed has managed to loosen its bonds, and reaches out to the people it can influence- the blood of those who sealed it. It draws the PCs to where it is sealed- a small town in the middle of nowhere, and seeks to trick them into freeing it. The natives seemingly have amnesia about whatever happened fifty years ago, but persistent investigation will uncover clues- buried journals, old records, and the mutterings of sleeping townsfolk. Once they piece together enough information, the PCs can renew and reinforce the bindings and trap it for centuries to come, but it will seek to alter their perceptions, and cause them to free it instead.
>>31087457I approve. Make it meta, the Things are influencing the PCs senses, unclear if actions are being taken against monsters or other people, etc.
>>31065380And now you've reminded me that every place here has its share of spooky occurrences and ghost stories.And the always locked rooms so many people have in old ancestral houses.
>>31087457In a small backwater town, young children have begun disappearing. Each disappearance is accompanied by portents- strange lights, small totems found scattered around the town, sibilant whispers with no discernable source. The children are always returned exactly a week after their disappearance, apparently none the worse for wear, although they do not recall anything of their disappearance. If they can decode the portents, the PCs will be able to predict where, when, and how the disappearances are happening. Figuring out the why will be harder.
>>31088247On an obscure civil war battlefield, where both sides were wiped out completely, the ghosts of the dead have begun to refight the battle that killed them. At first, it only happens on nights of the full moon, but grows more frequent as time passes. At first, only glimpses of the battle can be seen, but the ghosts grow more substantial, and the scenes more disturbing. At first, it's a typical civil war battle, but it grows more savage, the ghosts beginning to show the madness that lead the two sides to completely annihilate each other. Soldiers on the same side begin to turn on each other, and their weapons, uniforms, and bodies grow increasingly twisted, until the battlefield resembles a scene out of hell every night. And each night, they grow more solid.Farmer Johnston was hit by a stray bullet last night, but the wound sealed itself up within five minutes. What will happen when the mad, mutant soldiers become fully real? And what happened on that long-past battlefield to make them that way?
>>31088458In a small backwater town, the inhabitants have begun organizing themselves into two sides. It begins with a friendly in-joke, or a sports game, but the rift grows deeper and more genuine. Soon, the first sparks of violence begins flying- harsh words, brief fistfights. It grows more serious, and when a man turns up dead, the situation is only one wrong move from exploding into a full-on war. And the two sides have begun adopting strange luck rituals...The two sides are being manipulated by opposing entities, in a supernatural proxy war. If you can break their hold over the townspeople, everything will return to normal. But how can you know? There's only one way to be sure. Burn them. Burn them all.
>>31081628Isn't that a closup of a proto-facehugger (aka trilobite) from Prometheus?
>>31088592>everything will return to normalAfter a man was killed? I doubt it. You can't sweep that shit under the rug.
>>31088802I think so. Explains the "penis everywhere" issue, blame Giger.
>>31088592The sides can be told apart by their clothing. Red and Blue.
>>31081628Congrats dude, that's what it's supposed to be. 100% of the creatures from the alien series are designed to look like terrifying, overtly sexual rape/murder machines.
>>31081628That's H.R. Giger Art 101, anon.It's like the mind of Sigmund Freud born into the physical universe.
Rolled 25, 20, 51, 97, 89, 81, 65, 10, 76, 37, 33, 18, 11 = 613>>31089437Well, relatively normal. They won't be preparing for all-out war, anyway.
The Zone.
>>31089706It's CoC. If anyone in the town survives that's the only way this could prove a problem.
>>31090115Not everybody dies. Only those with mythos connections.
>>31090287IE, the whole town.
>>31069312A bit late, but I love how it provides possible solutions to the mysteries that are completely mundane.
>>31089662
1958In January Sputnik burned up in the atmosphere and America is scrambling aerospace programs. Vertigo started selling out movie theaters in May. Everyone talks about Elvis joining up and the peace symbol is becoming a thing. IHoP and Pizza Hut open. Baby Boomers are everywhere, and during the long summer, kids start getting sent to that wonderful horrible place called camp.Camp Wampanoag, above Mt Hope Bay on the state line to Rhode Island (This was before they built Brayton Point Power Station) houses almost 60 kids of 2 age groups and separated by gender in 10 timber huts by a small lake with a creek. There is a large camp fire where everyone comes together before bed time and tries to scare the others with spooky stories. 8 camp councillors try to keep order as best they can, but they're clearly in over their heads. The group stays at camp for three weeks and then everyone still alive goes home to their family.The players are kids aged 8-12. There is a mass hall with an office, and a kitchen with a storage room. Bathrooms and showers are in every hut. There is a phone locked in the office and the next one is at a gas station 30 minutes through treacherous woods and along a dangerous road. There are boring camp activities every day that the PCs must attend and participate or they will benefit from special attention of the staff which makes getting away with things harder. All groups can mingle but no one must enter a hut not his or her own.In the woods 10 minutes from camp is an ancient cultic site buried by brush and overgrown. If a kid finds it it will immediately be identified as an Indian graveyard, although it is in fact much more dangerous than that. An NPC whose blood is spilled here will turn into a secret cultist over night, set on coaxing others to the spot and spilling their blood (a little cut is enough). As soon as 50% of the campers are turned they will resort to open violence against the not yet infected if they can get away with it.
>>31090933That means they will force others to the site, or beat them until they stop moving and drag them. But although a bit dazed at times they behave as normally looking as possible and don't creep away to conspire or eat worms with pleasure (later...).A PC whose blood is spilled there will have a nightmare sequence the next time he sleeps in which the other players take part but the fabric of time and space is all wonky and surreal things happen in quick succession. Make it through that and you're still yourself, fail and you play a different kid now because you're a cultist.The first week should establish a few NPCs, set boundaries, and involve some homely drama and comedy to get the players invested. Kids can be so cruel.By the end the daily schedule should be established and anything not relevant can just be skipped further on. Any one emotionally charged NPC will get turned before the second week begins - preferably in a way that the players feels responsible for or strongly about, but do not entirely understand yet.The second week establishes the rules and brings the cultist population up. It will be fun to maintain some ambivalence, place a red herring or two. Players will figure out ways to keep taps, by developing a zombie test or watching who goes where. Use it against them and bring one of their true allies under suspicion. By the weekend they should know about the place, be sure about at least 3 infested, and must have experienced the walls: police was called but left again, parents think it's just home sickness, running away brings the police back, and people who must be sent home must wait until their parents can be contacted and brought to pick him up (which the cultists will take as a deadline to turn him).The third week is Armagheddon. Depending on how the players escalate it can be prison atmosphere, Body Snatchers trust games, hide from the invasion, trench warfare, or zombie survival. Kids have imagination.
>>31090576https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTEJLCgamos You wanna play tooth dominoes?
>>31091419Something should be helpful against the cultists. Maybe the traditional Wampanoag camp song, based on an old tune, OLD, when loudly sung with conviction (roll) removes the sinister influence and lets the cultists forget what they are really up to now. But only as long as you sing. And only one cultist gets hypnotized by one singer.By the time the players are desperate a tramp happens along and is the only helpful adult in the setting. He believes the PCs because he also believes in ghosts and he knows a ritual to contact them and ask for their help. He will not physically attack any kids or councillors, even if they grab him. This will get him taken to the place as soon as the players have learned how to perform the ritual.The ritual doesn't contact ghosts but shines a compelling beacon to any Deep One for miles around, and there are a few. Of course they look like gilled sea monsters and although they understand the old soul well left in the woods by some careless ancient, they are interested in humans more with cruel curiosity than actual compassion. But at least one will reveal himself to the workers of the ritual and depending on the players' reaction maybe an arrangement can be made. If not they might just leave, take the soul well and leave the cultists madly searching for it, or kill any cultists who gets in their way. The cultists will instantly know them as natural enemies.So by the end of camp everyone is either back to normal, dead, or innocuous little cultists scheming to drag their families to the soul well, bleed them, and start taking over the world.
An ancient mine. Something bad happens. Everybody goes mad and disappears. The MacGuffin is buried down there, go and get it. And don't listen to anybody you find, they will try to trick you.
>>31087104Previous Cthulhu General is archived (and even has Batman/Cthulhu crossover comic in it!)
Little kid or kids is or are crying about 'imaginary friend':>mommy, he has no face>daddy, she stares at me from the ceiling>mommy, mommy! when you leave she crawls aout of closen on four>when i take bath he comes out of the water, dad>she cries all the time, mom...
The PCs begin on the trail of a missing doctor, and along the way they discover that at one point, the doctor was mixed up with a cult (more of a decadent Hellfire Club, really) nominally dedicated to the King in Yellow. This leads them in turn to an abandoned town where the walls of reality were cracked, and the town is now half-Earth and half-Carcosa.- Some gamblers are playing cards for organs. The PCs watch as one player cuts himself open when a set of blood-caked shears, tears out his own lung, and places it on the table. (These mutilated gamblers would be great characters to run into before and/or after.) Of course, they invite the PCs to play... - The PCs have to pass through a building made entirely of human bones. Eventually, they find an wing that's in the process of building itself. Dozens of people are bound to the walls and ceiling against their will. Their flesh rots away as they're absorbed into the building. Flesh tentacles lash out and grab the PCs... - A ballroom full of revelers are all wearing strange, smooth masks. The PCs cannot enter with masks, so someone offers to give them theirs as they leave. They pull the mask off to reveal bloody meat and tendons. Yes, the revelers are all wearing each other's faces and now the departing reveler wants the PCs face in return... - On the shores of Hali, the most violent member of the party is dragged under the water! They get free and go on about their adventuring. Later, they're attacked by a doppleganger who claims to be the "real" them. Play this out as long as you like, but eventually tell the player that they've started to remember their previous life, the one where they swam in the lake...
The characters enter a home. The main floor is divided as you would normally find a home - living room, kitchen area, a sitting room, dining room, etc. Except that the only furniture to be found are large cushions strewn about the floors, and large elaborate yellow hookahs. On the cushions are strewn naked people, looking thin and nearly emaciated, wearing black cloth blindfolds and smoking from the hookahs (if players investigate, it is opium in the hookahs) The characters then see one of the people stand up from their cushion, and slowly meander towards the back of the house, navigating themselves perfectly despite the blindfold. They lean on walls and doorframes as they go, but only for support as they weakly and wanly head to one of the back rooms. If players follow, in one of the back rooms they will find a large, 8 foot tall (just inches short of the ceiling) golden yellow statue of a naked, largely endowed man. There is currently one of the blindfolded & drugged wretches performing felati0 on the statue. When the wretch that the characters followed reaches the statue, they take the place of the one there, and begin performing felati0 themselves, almost lazily. The wretch who was there, then slowly makes their way to an empty spot on a cushion and begins smoking. Every few minutes, some new wretch will switch places. If the players try to stop the process at all...lets just say bad things will happen.
>>31094943That fucking picture.
Another pdf!In December one of the most destructive earthquakes in the history of the world struck the Gansu province of China, killing between 180,000 to 200,000 people. Perhaps something the PCs are investigating triggered the eathquake (dholes? cthonians?) and they have to go to China to investigate, or maybe something the PLAYERS did while battling a mythos being caused the earthquake to begin with!!!Carroll Deering, a five-masted commercial schooner that was found run aground off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, had it's crew missing and no explanation ever agreed upon as to why the ship was abandoned. Perhaps the players are hired by a family member to find out what happened, and stumble across cults of deep ones, degenerate Dagon worshipping pirates, or worse out in the Bermuda Triangle. Worse, perhaps a cargo on board (an idol, mummified hand, or alien artifact) carried or found by a crew member was the cause, and the investigators come into possession of it!
If you're in the prohibition timeframe, this one may well be good for parties which have some form of law enforcement or investigator bent (PIs, cops, etc).A speakeasy owner (whose primary non-wait staff may be comprised of zombies) is brewing his own special whiskey. The whiskey is laced with a chemical that, over time, causes the drinker to go mad, and eventually even turn feral. The reason the speakeasy owner is doing this is, of course, left up to the GM.
1/2If you want to be particularly obnoxious to your players, put them in the middle of nowhere... like, say, Anchorage, Alaska.In the 1920's, Anchorage was mud roads, and a couple thousand people. A commercial port, a rail yard adjacent, It ran 1st to 15th avenues, and from N to A then Barrow to Gambell. Two church town... one at 8th & H, and the other on 5th and H. Airport between 9th and 11th, A-I... Nearest town was the City of Spenard, a mere 4 miles out L street, and home to Chilcoot Charlie's bar - still at the corner of Fireweed & Spenard. (And technically, it was in the city of Anchorage - Northern Lights Blvd, the next major street (2 blocks) south, is the dividing line)Outside of that, next was Palmer, 60 miles away, with a native village, Eklutna, and it's Russian Orthodox Church and Russian Speaking Eklutna Tribe Athabascans, in the midway point.In December 1920, the first police chief was appointed for the 4 year old town. He was murdered in February 1921, in the back stairwell of the Druggist's shop.
2/2In the real world, it's still unsolved... but in your game, it could be the kick off of a wild-west-with-cars kind of campaign. Perhaps it was cultists, stealing needed chemicals, and he was on to them? Perhaps he was caught stealing the chemicals for his own cult activies? Perhaps the Druggist was the cultist?It's said many strange things are done in the land of the midnight sun... And you'd not be the first to set a Cthulu game in 1920's Alaska... but one of a very few.Oh, and there have NEVER been Sherrifs in Alaska.... Only Police in the cities, Territorial Troopers (later State Troopers), and the G-Men: US Marshals, and the FBI. One Marshal wrote in a report, "Never met a N* I couldn't frame." (I have handled that document... Records of the US District Courts, at the National Archives regional branch in Anchorage.
The Investigators are passengers aboard a newly created cruise ship. This is the maiden voyage of "The Diamond". It's named the Diamond not only for it's beauty, but for it's claims that it's nearly indestructible. This name was chosen mainly as a means to calm potential passengers worries about another catastrophe like The Titanic. Everything is going to plan, when unexpectedly everyone aboard hears a large explosion and a violent jerk on the ship. The Diamonds travel route takes the ship from a port harbor in New Orleans, LA, and plans to cross the pacific ocean, traveling to far off places. However, this same route takes the ship directly over the sunken city of Riyleh, and the Great Cthulhu is hungry for human flesh. Through the use of the Migo and cultists, an elaborate plan is executed to sink the ship, and drag every passenger down to the depths of the ocean, feeding the nightmarish Old One. The plan is properly executed, as cultists disguised as crewmen plant several explosive devices down in the bowels of the ship, leaving The Diamond to drown in the freezing sea. At this point, the ship begins to sink very quickly, leaving a short amount of time for passengers to launch rescue boats and avoid sinking to the bottom of the ocean. The Investigators will be part of a few remaining passengers floating on a rescue boat. There will be others as well, but they will soon succumb to the Migo and the madness of the sea. Just as the Investigators start to give up hope, they see in the distance a foreign land mass. They are unable to tell what it is, but they have no choice but to steer their vessel towards it in hope that salvation rests there. Unfortunately, this is not a safe haven. It is in fact a part of the city of Rileyh, sticking out of the ocean like a sore thumb. This part of the city is massive, with huge cyclopean stones and impossible architecture. The site of the structure is enough to drive someone mad. But the investigators have no choice.
>>31070983Beyond time and space is one thing.The fucking fish people from Innsmouth aren't from beyond time and space. They ain't right, but they're definitely on our frequency, which is coincidentally the same frequency that AK-47s inhabit. Same goes for Elder Things and Shoggoths. The Star Spawn of Cthulhu ARE from beyond fucking everything, which is why the Elder Things, with all their crazy radiation guns and inexhaustible Shoggoth legions, eventually lost the war against them and the Mi-Go, even if it took millions of years to be forced back to the fortress-continent of Antarctica.
>>31095263And papercuts still hurt and are used by Asian folk as torture device.
>>31094836Gay. Stop liking what I like.
Danish training ship the Copenhagen goes missing after setting sail from Buenos Aires to Australia in December of this year. It is a huge ship with a crew of over 50 cadets. Anything from sea monsters, to deep ones, to aliens, to frenzied cultists might have attacked the ship and drove it to the bottom of the sea....or perhaps the crew is being held on a uncharted island, being used for unspeakable purposes, waiting to be discovered (or unfortunately joined) by some intrepid investigators hired by the Danish government or a private firm...
>>31095355I think he's trying to help by providing more info and sources (although he should link to archive...)
>>31072548A 2D object is infinitely thin. Think about that for a moment.Crazy mythos bullshit works both ways, otherwise the universe just doesn't make sense. You can kill Flatlanders all day if you want, but eventually their generals and Kings will become desperate enough to use forbidden three-dimensional sorcery to launch suicide bombers into the ether.WHEN THEY HIT YOU, IT AIN'T GONNA FEEL GOOD
The Derbyshire Werewolf. Something black and of huge sized terrorized this part of England in 1925, killing dozens of sheep, and mysteriously disappearing. Thought by authorities to be at various times a large wolf, an escaped jackal (from a private menagerie), or a black hound, this is a perfect type of scenario for a "twist" to confuse the players. Instead of a werewolf, perhaps it's a byahkee, dimensional shambler, or a shoggoth that has been summoned by a crazy old coot. Or maybe the party just thinks it's something supernatural, when it's a nutty death cult practicing on sheep until they can finally start on people eventually. Or maybe it is indeed a werewolf, and the party has to find a way to put it down...
>Call of Cthulhu General, The 2D Papercut Edition
>>31095263Maybe the next /tg/ project should be making a setting out of the Old wars?A skirmish game where you have Cthulhu Vs Mi-Go VS Elder Things would be so fucking boss.
>>31095439We already have map about wars, check >>31070983Btw, what about corpses of various mythos beings? Do they... disappear or what? In Whisperer in Darkness, IIRC, dead Migos bodies just dissolve or something like that. But what about shoggoths, Deep Ones, Byakhee or Tindaloos puppies?
>>31095459That's a bestiary that gives no information about political/faction lines. Deep Ones and Star Spawn are in different slices of the pie even though they both serve Cthulhu. It a also has no information about the Old wars/Elder Wars, does not mention them, and is not actually a map.Shubnugga, what are you doing?
>>31095459>>31095627Forgot the other half of my post:Mi-Go corpses should not dissolve. In the original HPL story, they die in floods and their bodies wash up downstream, and several are injured by a 1900s shotgun in a siege of a farmhouse whose owner Knows Too Much. Having them dissolve is a bullshit cop-out.Shoggoths probably revert to a lump of goo, since that's pretty much what they are. Not sure about the others, though. Depends on what you're dealing with.
>>31095627>political/faction lines>lovecraftian cosmic horrorwat
>>31095653Read the original HPL stories, bomanski. At the Mountains of Madness is a good place to start.Basic breakdown is that the Mi-Go worship and serve Shub-Nuggath, Deep Ones, Star Spawn, and human cultists serve Cthulhu, the Shoggoths were created by and once served the Elder Things, and were the bulk of their armies in the terrible three way war between the Elders, Mi-Go, and the Cthulhu and Friends Club thatraged before humanity existed, and in their current feral state many are used as beasts of burden by Cthulhu worshipers, since there aren't any horses that can breathe water.
>>31095678This nigga be right.
>>31095678individual stories are roughly self consistent, but HPL was deliberately inconsistent in how he handed those aspects in other stories.There is not consistent overarching metaplot in HPL, there is loose, intentionally inconsistent, web of cross references.
>>31063278unedited pic
>>31063278Nice one, OP!Haven't seen a CoC Thread for some time. The setting with I'm in with my group momentarily is the 3rd Reich in the mid 30's. We're located in rural northern Germany, where my character (a young and annoyed Gestapo Officer) was ordered to investigate suspicious activities originally attributed to communists. I have already teamed up with the other players, a local Ordnungspolizist and an apothecary. Currently getting into an old sea-side mansion, shenaningans are about to ensue.
>>31095741My point is that the various monsters in HPLs original stories were not all made of gunproof astral matter. Some were (Good luck trying to protect yourself against Yithian mind-snatching with a helmet) but many most assuredly were not.There's a somewhat bullshit tendency in modern Cthulhu stories and games to give mere mortals no chance at all of victory against even the most meager of horrors. I'm simply arguing that while the Mi-Go are terrifying creatures that had space travel and crazy super-science before humanity existed, it is actually physically possible IRRC for one to die in a flash flood at the secret uranium mine. In fact, the reason why the Mi-Go never invaded and conquered earth, reported second-hand from a guy that talked with them, was that goddamn 1900s humanity with all its coal-powered warships and crude projectile weaponry would be more trouble to conquer than we were worth. Not difficult or even challenging to defeat, but strong enough to cause trouble.
>>31063278>Keep it simple. No pulp heroes. No tentacles. Act 1 stuff. Exposition. Era. Situation. Mystery and hints at horror.1920, Manchester, MA - shitty litttle town in Appalachian Mountains, mines and lumberjacks everywhere.Long story short - there is Shub-Niggurath cult, two times a year (summer/winter solstice) they kidnap, rape and kill young girls. Kids are raising to become another cult generation.PC1 lumberjack, male, late 30s, during work in deep woods has found body of kidnapped girl.PC2 librarian apprentice, female, early 20s, was friend with kidnapped girl.PC3 federal agent, late 30s/early 40s, male, was send to investigate kidnapping.It's quite like True Detective, to be honest.Sorry for poor english, not my first language.
>>31095757Few days ago was two-part general with Batman comic :3
>>31095822Damn, I missed that!
>>31095835Nothing of value was lost, most of it was copypasted here already.
>>31095854pity.that's why I really enjoy threads like this. OC is always appreciated from my side even if it's only a setting.
>>31081573No. It is great without guns - when you find firearms it's just another, generic horror fps which has raped HPL's mythology.SHOOTIN DAGON IN THE FACE? FIGHTING WITH POLYPS? KILLIN DOZENS OF DEEP ONES? OH COME ON.
>>31079851American GothicTwin PeaksCarnivale
>>31079851X-Files obviously, some of the episodes are really good in lovecraftian way.
>>31095807but your quote, and the quote you responded to, had nothing to do with that.It was about their being "political/faction lines", and there aren't consistent lines across the stories.The stories don't stack together like building blocks to create a single consistent universe, they blend into and touch each others, but they're blocks connected by a bunch of flailing interweaving tentacles, not legos.
>>31095976A few eps which would be suitable to rip off:IceSpace (shitty ep overall, but the plot's usable) EveDarkness Falls*Blood*Red Museum*Grotesque PusherWetwired**denotes plots better suited to Delta Green.
>>31096116Also Millennium.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPLQ4qUdrC4
>>31094943I like these.
Please archive this thread.
>>31096319http://archive.foolz.us/tg/thread/30969153 previous onehttp://archive.foolz.us/tg/thread/31063278 current one
>>31096395>http://archive.foolz.us/tg/thread/30969153 previous oneOn suptg, so text can be copypasted from it.
Beginning lovecraftian art dump and seconding the request for archiving this thread on suptg.
More art.
Vampire Fungus.Probably from the Dreamlands or something.
Might do well in an SCP-type game.
It's been 6 months since the second LCROSS mission was launched to find out the potential for water to aid in colonizing the moon. The space program has reasserted itself as a driving force of the betterment for society with the successful landing of three astronauts on the lunar surface. Their mission was to find out first hand the likelyhood of extracting water from the inner crust of the moons surface. What they did not expect to find was an even bigger threat from beneath the surface guaranteeing the destrucion of the human dream to one day colonize our smallest neighbor in the sky.As it turns out, the moon is not ours and never will be.
Please, how do you upload a thread to suptg?
>>31095382>You and your friends are artists who have been accidentally tormenting flatlanders.>There are cults worshiping you, but you neither know nor care.>Until, just like the cultists of Cthulhu, their prayer and human-flatlander sacrifice allows you to dip slightly into their world. >Flatlander investigators reach out to battle you with forbidden sorcery.10/10 would be eldritch abominations
>>31097249The box on the lefthand side of the archive page that says "Add Thread"
>>31097267Good idea. Would make for a good game.Please backup this thread...
Thread has been archived.
>>31096319>Please archive this thread.>>31096395>http://archive.foolz.us/tg/thread/31063278 current one
>>31064718Okay, that got me...time for bed
>>31097870I will bump this thread, don't worry.
A 'lost world' Permian-era flora and fauna, hidden underneath the desert and maintained by ... I'm thinking trapped Mi-Go, but I could be persuaded otherwise. It was sealed off in ancient times, but oops! The PCs just screwed that one up. Among the inhabitants will be eurypterids and other creepy-crawlies. Also, strange structures that could have been buildings...
Who wants to hear the Tale of Old Man Henderson, the character who 'won' Call of Cthulhu?
>>31098316Alright then, I'd like to start by saying that the GM was a bastard that had it coming. Bullshit tactics to make everyone go crazy like a d6 with only 5 sides. No story, no reason; lose 10 sanity. The others continued to allow this faggotry. We were playing a modem day setting, with the other players being a college professor who found a couple of stray pages of a copy of the Necronomicon and wanted to find out just what the hell it was, a detective who was investigating a missing persons case connected to the local cult and a local athlete (I think it was football) trying to find out why some of his friends seemed so distant lately. And then... there was Old Man Henderson, who was never given a first name. Old Man Henderson was already a little crazy, and blamed his life's misfortunes on Vietnam. He never went to Vietnam, he was 12 in 74. (And I will be fucking amazed if anyone gets that reference. (Not everyone does. It is the song "My Brother-In-Law" by Tim Wilson, as far as I can tell.) ) [Link for those without google-fu: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0O3gZVUp9o]
>>31098326Old Man Henderson wore combat boots, cargo shorts, and an open-front Hawaiian shirt with a wife-beater underneath. He was dyslexic, and had a lesser case of Schizophrenia. allowing him to assume that the reason he saw crazy shit was because he WAS a little bit crazy. He had a grizzly adams beard and wore his hair in a mohawk. He never took off his aviator shades, for any reason. He had a stuffed parrot on his shoulder named Rupert that he constantly asked for advice, while ignoring the other party members as convenient, assuming they were hallucinations. He had an Automatic combat shot-gun he knew how to use. He also had MEMORIZED the anarchist's cookbook. He started the game with a pre-existing hatred of religion, cutlery, and books. His motivation was that he thought that the cult had stole his lawngnomes; while he had actually donated them to a charity auction, got high, and forgot about it. Most importantly, he had a 320 page backstory that justified EVERYTHING, from his casual knowledge of physics to his ability to speak Portuguese flawlessly. You can just imagine the sort of Shenanigans that character was involved in.The point to having such a long backstory was three-fold. to ensure the GM would never actually read it and Since he would never read it except for in excerpts I pointed out to justify things, I could re-write and change things around completely at random without anyone noticing and MOST IMPORTANTLY Convince everyone that I was serious about this character, and that it wasn't simply the game wrecking bullshit that it was. Dickish yes, but he really did have it coming.
>>31098316Everyone and their mother has read this story by now
>>31098341First outing of the group. The Detective was spying on the building of the cultists with a camera. The Jock was parked nearby, waiting for the group to let out so he could snoop it out The Professor had joined the cult to try and gain information. Old Man Henderson very calmly parked his car, got out holding the shotgun in clear view of anyone who happened to be looking (in this case, the detective and the Jock), strolled up to the front door and kicked it in. While everyone just kind of stopped in shocked silence for a moment, he leveled his shotgun on the lead priest/cultist guy and yelled "MUCKLE DAMRED CULTI 'AIR EH NAMBLIES BE KEEPIN' ME WEE MEN!?!?" Did I mention that he had a nigh-incomprehensible Scottish accent that came and went as he drank and/or as amused me? The leader couldn't understand my simple request to return my lawn gnomes (literally, you think what I typed is hard to understand? imagine it being slurred at you by a drunken Scotsman), he assumed I was trying to cast a spell at him in an elder tongue and summoned a shoggoth by murdering one of his fellows. One Molotov And about 20 rounds later, the Shoggoth is dead, as is the cult leader, the Professor (he made the mistake of trying to make peace-maker mid murderous rampage) and about 10 assorted cultists. Old Man Henderson then pissed on the Shoggoth's corpse, got back in his battered '92 Buick Century, and went home. The whole event was over in about ten minutes game time and nobody thought to get the Buick's plates. The building burned down shortly, along with about half the written plot, and every lead either of the other surviving players had. The GM called a break then to figure out how to fix and/or work around what I just did. It only got crazier from there.
>>31098349So? Is it bad to copypaste it? Now, time for what will forever be known as 'The tanker truck incident'. Notice 'The' is capitalized. This is because no matter what incidents in the future may involve tanker trucks, this is the definitive one. It started out innocently enough. Old Man Henderson left the stakeout in a van outside the evil cult's meeting place to go get some hooch. The only people left there were the Detective and James Fink (the professor's second character). Jimmy was gone because it was a school night (Old Man Henderson was a bad influence, but damned if he didn't have the kid's best interests at heart.) The cultists see me leaving --I had a very distinct appearance, after all. (VERY USEFUL in scoring TPKs.)-- and discover my friends spying on them. The detective gets a pretty GAR death, and James dies like a bitch. But not yet. I'm on my way back, walking along. The Detective and James had been brought inside as part of a ritual to give Hastur an avatar in our world (he had been banished, and the only way he could come here is via a loophole). He could only use as hosts people who knew he existed and had thwarted him thrice, and then he had to make them drink the life-blood of their closest friend to make the binding permanent. In case you're wondering, permanent binding = GAME OVER. The first part of the ritual was completed, but before Hastur could take control, the detective broke James' shackles and he tried to run. He made it as far as the street, when the detective (now Hastur) caught up with him, part demon-form.
>>31098374Now where this church (for lack of a better term) was located, was at the end of the road on a T-shaped intersection. There was a gas station about three blocks away, which is where Old Man Henderson was while this was going down. Old Man Henderson sees the shit hit the fan, and steals a half-full tanker truck that WAS refilling the station's holding tank. While I bring the truck up to ramming speed, I toss a 12 lb block of C4 in the passenger seat and rig the detonator to the airbags. Old Man Henderson then took a bracing shot of whiskey, jammed a knife through the gas pedal, then jumped out of the truck onto his heelies. Yes, he modified his combat boots to have heelies. I swear to god I had not planned this to happen, the heelies just sounded like something fucking ridiculous and in character. He watched the truck ram the detective into the church, then blow him and all the cultists to Kingdom Come. The truck also killed James by running him over. That's when the back-trail ignited, fire going all the way back to the gas-station and destroying it; continuing my streak of accidentally destroying anything that might lead people back to Old Man Henderson. I took a moment to call Jimmy. "Henderson here. Figured out what the nasties are weak against." "What's that, Mr. Henderson?" "Point blank annihilation." 'click'
>>31098374I guess not, but you could've saved everyone some time by just giving the 1d4chan link (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Old_Man_Henderson)
>>31098316That's ToC, not CoC, and it was mentioned in OP's pic, spambro.
>>31098395>>31098374>>31098362>>31098341>>31098326Delete post, shame can't be deleted.
>>31064718>>31097870Eh, felt like there was too much going on in thatThere were some pretty good ideas but it felt like the person was trying to cram too many into one story. Also the ending was such a cop out.
Art Noveau panelsInescapable demise, every timeVastly out of scale surrealismIt fits, but how do I make it work?Little Nemo Mythos
>>31098316>the character who 'won' Call of CthulhuSeriously, who reads that phrase and thinks what follows could be anything but fanfic level Lovecraft-rape?
>>31100484Oh, the Thing. Classic lovecraftian setup... Antarctic, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, somethng from other world, gruseome deaths... love it. Shame about prequel tho, could be good.
>>31100718http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?519380-Ice-Station-Zebra-The-Thing-One-Shot
>>31098255Henders island?
>>31097334Issue, there have been more good ideas since then added to this thread.How do we update the archive at suptg?
>>31082812Is that breivik going all"templar" on that thing?
>>31101606We don't, threads are archived automically. Check yourself.http://archive.foolz.us/tg/thread/31063278
>>31101606Suptg updates automatically once archived.
>>31094960>Dare the players try to stop my magical realm... let's just say bad things will happen.
>>31097234PCs are astronuats from an apollo-style near-future mission. Pic related happens, return rocked wrecked. Now what? Steal life-support oxygen from each other to live longer? Explore the hole left by the moon-monster? Try to jurry-rig a suit radio to contact earth and tell them what happened?
>>31082812Oh god, his face>implying I give a shit about your tentacles
bump
/tg/, I need help! What medicaments from 1920s can I use? Penicilin? Heroin? Ether? Cough syrup?
>>31103674All of the above.
>>31103674I search the condition or medication on Wikipedia, look up the underlying chemical, look at its history and if it replaced something used before, eventually I arrive at the first time the principle was understood. Add 10-30 years for rollout. Done.I recently discovered that there has been a vaccine against rabies since 1885 developed by Louis Pasteur, and it can be made from an infected animal's neural tissue within 5-10 days - just in time to save someone who got bitten.
>>31103966>recently discovered that there has been a vaccine against rabies since 1885 developed by Louis Pasteur, and it can be made from an infected animal's neural tissue within 5-10 days - just in time to save someone who got bitten.I think I will use this as background for my next session... add some cultits, some weird disease, small town, etc. etc.
>>31103966But I thought vaccines just immunized people, not cured them.
>>31104044With rabies you have a 10-15 day window after infection before outbreak. If your immune system recognizes the virus before it settles in you have a fair chance. You get a high dose and several small doses in the following weeks. With luck you'll get no more symptoms than a bad cold.
I had a weird dream that was basically a sweet old lady who owned an Orphanage and she guided me through it and the futher we got in the more it turned weird n spooky but for some reason I didn't have those nightmarish feels y'know? I was like 'oh this is sorta what I suspected'The more she talked about the orphans the more it felt like they were grooming them for something and then weird rooms showed up the lower we went into the basement, like more cave-ish, something about the roots of a tree and a nice basin of water around it. 'Iron roots' they called it. Which was used for diciplining or initiating the children. The old lady said that she had to be 'strict' now and then.I just jokingly said why they didn't simply brainwash them and she replied to that that she wasn't that "attractive anymore" and something implying about her libido.Then we stepped through one of the last doors and it was this huge underground Lovcraftian Cathedral and this Glas'n'lead (you know those fancy church windows) symbol of a brain and spinal cord turned into C'thullu's face and he looked at me.Then I put down a blue bag I've been carrying (incidently a payday 2 lootbag cause I've been playing that like crazy again) and found out I was armed to the teeth and I'm pretty sure I was about to ask 'What's the job?' but I woke instead.
>>31103674There was a flourishing trade of what we today summarize as snake oil. From soda pops with cocaine, lithium, codeine, and other fun stuff over far Eastern dried animal parts to tinctures with hazardous materials like mercury and radium. Doctors were lobotomizing patients and electroshocks were considered healthy for delusional patients. Your average hospital could basically cut off what wouldn't heal by itself with a cast.So weird science, strange remedies, and helping-or-hurting? all the way. Have fun.
Why do my players keep making characters that don't possibly fit with the setting, and still expect me to make them feel significant within the game world?Fucking set that shit on a decrepit fishing trawler in the northern pacific. Room for all kinds of low individuals, poor people trying to get somewhere new, and criminals on the lam, right? Perfect for a intro to a campaign full of crime syndicates, slave traders and dirty dealings, right?Motherfucker insists on playing as the pompus head of an important oil industry, who thinks it's cute to 'accidentally' work against the tide of the plot. I am not a stellar DM by any means, but I was moderately proud of the shit I set up.
>>31104504>Motherfucker insists on playing as the pompus head of an important oil industryLet him. I wonder how well he can do in such unfriendly environment, where moniez does not do shit.
>>31104600He hid in his cabin the entire first act. Had to make up some bullshit Round Up The Suspects thing to get him to come out, and then he hid behind the massive Hatian laborer for the rest of the game until they finally got wiped by a low-level Canton street gang.They want to reroll and continue the story, but I'm getting sick of it.
I doubt we'll hit the image limit before we autosage. So have some Launet.>>31104600Worse, what will his crew mates do once they discover he's filthy rich?
>>31104742>what will his crew mates do once they discover he's filthy rich?They will ask politely to share his fortune with them, right?
>>31105200With the polite reservation of a former criminal working one of the most dangerous honest jobs available.
>271 posts and 105 image replies omitted. Click here to view.Holy cow /tg/, this is awesome.
>>31106309We try
>>31106364Related: A thread on possible titles for cult leaders.http://archive.foolz.us/tg/thread/31078838/#31080563
>>31098362This part always grinds my gears. Shoggoths have an average of 63 HP, and regen 2 per round, and material weapons can only do 1 point of damage. After their pitiful first salvo, the PCs all would have been crushed by an 8D6 damage bonus. It's like the guy who wrote this never even played CoC and just heard it's reputation.
>>31106720It is stated in the text that it was ToC. Why do people believe OMH is CoC? It obviously cannot be.
>>31106960Whoa. My life is a lie. I still hate the story though.Who would play with such an insufferable PC and GM who is simultaneously an asshole and a doormat.
In Jharia, India a coal mine caught fire in 1916. It was quickly out of control and spread through the heart of India's only coal rich region. So they started mining coal around the fire, putting out what they could but never extinguishing the smouldering below. This is still happening today.The British investor who was digging that mine didn't anticipate this when he signed a contract with the Deep Ones to provide the cleverly concealed technology needed to dig so deep. Little did he know that they were using him to conceal their attack on the Cthonians as a human endeavour. Of course by the time he discovered the Cthonians' existence below he realized his folly and tried to blow it all up and save mankind from the wrath of the depth dweller. He was half successful.Even today Jharia is the shallowest Cthonian bastion below the surface on the entire planet.
>>31095125>>31095115>land of the midnight sunDon't forget just how long those winter nights are either.
>>31107547This is true horror. Lovecraft would be proud.
>>31110718The nights are dark, long and full of terrors. Almost like '30 days of night'.
I have this idea for short game...NPC, 20 years old, female, was pregnant with Deep One (raped and beaten hard, psychosis and other trauma, no one belevies in 'monster from the sea'). Cultist of Dagon have an eye on her so she couldn't kill herself and/or baby. But birth was a failure, baby-hybrid was dead, mother almost died, cultist stole baby-hybrid-corpe from hospital morgue and fake documents.PCs (mechanic, cop, psychiatrist) are friends of her and are investigating this situation.Sounds good?
>>31114760>rape as dramaDon't go full Alan Moore.
>>31114760Possibly the edgiest grimderpiest background I've ever read. I'd tone it down.
>>31114778
>>31114833>>31114833fuck this is real??>>31114760>>31114760tone it down, it could be fun to play but damn, its just so derpy and grimdark
>>31063278>Where would you like to play?Pic related. Seriously.
>>31114882Yep, Neonomicon is the comic title, it's fairly good but nothing to write home about.
>>31115125Courtyard is better in my opinion.
>>31115125>>31115171Both sucks.>>31114760Idea about woman pregnant with deep one hybrid is good, same as her psychosis and trauma. Drop whole rape shit and just go with third oath (marry deep one).
I have always enjoyed aquariums. There are few things more relaxing than looking at brightly coloured fish as they move gracefully through their tanks. There is so much beauty in the depths of the oceans. Yet it was in an aquarium that I saw the most terrifying and disturbing sight of my life, a sight that revealed to me the madness that lies so close to the world we inhabit.I was on holiday in a town on the south coast, not far from Brighton. Though it was summer, the weather was atrocious and spending any time outdoors was imprudent. Of course our English seaside towns cater well for all weather patterns and there were plenty of things to do out of the rain. Among these was a visit to the small aquarium.I have visited many aquariums and I have been scuba diving in several tropical reefs. I count myself as having a reasonable amateur knowledge of marine biology. Yet I was struck by how many species in this aquarium I did not recognise. Many of the specimens in the tanks had an oddly unearthly and disturbing quality. There were bloated fish with vicious teeth and a frightening array of poisoned spines, crabs covered in thick chitinous armour with long, spider-like legs, disturbingly large marine leeches and molluscs with curiously anti-geometric shells. In the corner of the main exhibition was an octopus whose true size was obscured by the darkness of its tank.
>>31116051When the aquarium keeper came out to feed his charges, I naturally approached him to enquire about some of the more puzzling specimens. The keeper was a grizzled man in a set of greasy blue overalls with a thick beard. His tanned and weather beaten skin suggested much travel in tropical parts.After a fascinating conversation about the marine leeches I had just seen he said to me:"I see you are a gentleman with a real interest in marine life. Let me show you a really rare specimen. I caught it myself. I could probably sell it for a fortune, but I can't bear the thought of being parted from it."This immediately raised my suspicions. There was something of the Victorian showman about this man."I suppose you are about to show me a mermaid. No doubt with lovely golden hair and a very convincing tail," I said.For a moment the keeper looked very hurt"Oh no, sir. Something much better than a mermaid."I raised my eyebrow."Have you ever read Professor Dyer's account of his ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic?" he asked me.This was something I had not expected. I had read Dyer's short book some years ago and was convinced it was the work of a man suffering a gross delusion, exploited by some cynical publisher. Whatever the case, there was certainly something intriguing about Dyer's tale of a lost alien city and an ancient cosmic war."The ravings of a sadly disturbed mind," I replied. "Really? The man was a renowned scholar of Miskatonic University," the keeper argued. "I'll show you something that might just change your mind."The keeper led me into a drab back room. He pulled back a curtain and revealed a huge tank.
>>31116063I gasped with horror at what I saw behind that glass.The thing had a bulbous, cucumber-like body. From this sprouted several thin tentacles and a pair of membranous wings. At the top of it's torso was a head like no other head on any living thing. It was shaped like a starfish, with each ray ending in a globular eye.It was one of the very creatures that Dyer had described in his account!"Where did you find this thing?" I spluttered."In the south pacific, deep in an ocean trench. Dyer said some of his elder creatures lived deep in the ocean. This must be one of them. Maybe it's the last of its kind," explained the keeper.I stared at the creature. Just what was it? An animal? A vegetable? A radiate? Or just a monstrosity beyond imagining?The creature was alert to our presence. Its eyestalks wiggled and it seemed to fix its multi-eyed gaze on me. The look it gave me felt like one of pure hatred.The creature thrashed about the water, thrusting its form against the glass of the tank. I knew that if it was free, those tentacles would be about my neck.Professor Dyer had supposed, rightly or wrongly that these things had come from another world in the primordial past. He had theorized that they were the true creators of life on Earth. In his view, the elder ones were a great civilization, characterized by wisdom and nobility.
>>31116075I looked at the creature flapping about in the murky water, scanning it for any trace of wisdom or nobility. There was nothing. The creature was utterly savage and feral.Did it have any consciousness of the greatness of its ancestors? Had millions of years taken away all intelligence, every shred of sophistication and culture? Was a great civilization now reduced to animalistic savagery?Perhaps the last of its kind, the elder thing was just a lost, forgotten sad creature. A lonely haunter of the black depths.Was this to be the fate of humanity? Would the human race one day be reduced to such deprivation? I tried to imagine the last human being a naked savage, beating furiously at the glass of its prison. A sad specimen in a glass tank; its civilization lost forever.I turned away from the thing in the tank. Whatever it had been, I knew that in that tank I had beheld the face of a god.
>>31116051>>31116063>>31116075>>31116086Source:http://celestialhost.deviantart.com/art/The-Thing-in-the-Aquarium-311652397
>>31116110Quite a profound tale, dear chap.And that puts us in autosage
>>31116110Nice.
>>31116197>And that puts us in autosage>autosageWhat?
>>31116236Threads with more than 300 posts don't bump any more. lrn24chan
Strange pink-skinned bipeds have started appearing in your world. Your boss, Commissioner Tar'molag the Shoggoth, has sent your team to investigate their presence and destroy their horrific masters if necessary.
Traits of Innsmouth Deep Ones:• Immortal, biologically superior beings with art and magic better than anything humans have who know it and act snooty around the primitive humans.• With cities hidden in environments hostile to humans to guard them from attack.• Who are better in-tune with their environment and the true nature of reality than humans.• And can also interbreed with humans but the offspring inevitably takes on their traits.Now compare these to traits typically seen among stereotypical elves.
>>31116355>Now compare these to traits typically seen among stereotypical elves.>fags with pointy ears>all emotional about "secret elvish club">beautiful as fuck>basically hippy tree loving queers
No "Gods" mister Ryan?...In retrospect, it may have been a poor idea to build your underwater city on top of those flooded ruins on a sunken island.
>>31116330Sounds like it could make a fun game to me."The most fearsome monster I ever saw had two arms, two legs, and one head, and on it's head was a face with two eyes, two ears, one nose, and one mouth, and above this face grew a mop of hair. Everywhere else, the creature's flesh was mostly pink and bare. Mostly. Makes my slime crawl thinking about it."
The Titanians clustered about their visiray screens, watching, in almost unbelieving amazement, the supernatural being who labored in that reeking inferno of heat and poisonous vapor—who labored almost naked and entirely unprotected, refreshing himself from time to time with drafts of molten water!"
Guys, this has been grand. Thank you all very much. Keep up the good work.
Some more Launet before the sun goes down.
Image limit is 28 pics away.
>>31116413Pic related.
There's the image limit.I. The BookThe place was dark and dusty and half-lostIn tangles of old alleys near the quays,Reeking of strange things brought in from the seas,And with queer curls of fog that west winds tossed.Small lozenge panes, obscured by smoke and frost,Just shewed the books, in piles like twisted trees,Rotting from floor to roof—congeriesOf crumbling elder lore at little cost.I entered, charmed, and from a cobwebbed heapTook up the nearest tome and thumbed it through,Trembling at curious words that seemed to keepSome secret, monstrous if one only knew.Then, looking for some seller old in craft,I could find nothing but a voice that laughed.
II. PursuitI held the book beneath my coat, at painsTo hide the thing from sight in such a place;Hurrying through the ancient harbor lanesWith often-turning head and nervous pace.Dull, furtive windows in old tottering brickPeered at me oddly as I hastened by,And thinking what they sheltered, I grew sickFor a redeeming glimpse of clean blue sky.No one had seen me take the thing—but stillA blank laugh echoed in my whirling head,And I could guess what nighted worlds of illLurked in that volume I had coveted.The way grew strange—the walls alike and madding—And far behind me, unseen feet were padding.
III. The KeyI do not know what windings in the wasteOf those strange sea-lanes brought me home once more,But on my porch I trembled, white with hasteTo get inside and bolt the heavy door.I had the book that told the hidden wayAcross the void and through the space-hung screensThat hold the undimensioned worlds at bay,And keep lost aeons to their own demesnes.At last the key was mine to those vague visionsOf sunset spires and twilight woods that broodDim in the gulfs beyond this earth’s precisions,Lurking as memories of infinitude.The key was mine, but as I sat there mumbling,The attic window shook with a faint fumbling.
IV. RecognitionThe day had come again, when as a childI saw—just once—that hollow of old oaks,Grey with a ground-mist that enfolds and chokesThe slinking shapes which madness has defiled.It was the same—an herbage rank and wildClings round an altar whose carved sign invokesThat Nameless One to whom a thousand smokesRose, aeons gone, from unclean towers up-piled.I saw the body spread on that dank stone,And knew those things which feasted were not men;I knew this strange, grey world was not my own,But Yuggoth, past the starry voids—and thenThe body shrieked at me with a dead cry,And all too late I knew that it was I!
V. HomecomingThe daemon said that he would take me homeTo the pale, shadowy land I half recalledAs a high place of stair and terrace, walledWith marble balustrades that sky-winds comb,While miles below a maze of dome on domeAnd tower on tower beside a sea lies sprawled.Once more, he told me, I would stand enthralledOn those old heights, and hear the far-off foam.All this he promised, and through sunset’s gateHe swept me, past the lapping lakes of flame,And red-gold thrones of gods without a nameWho shriek in fear at some impending fate.Then a black gulf with sea-sounds in the night:“Here was your home,” he mocked, “when you had sight!”
VI. The LampWe found the lamp inside those hollow cliffsWhose chiseled sign no priest in Thebes could read,And from whose caverns frightened hieroglyphsWarned every creature of earth’s breed.No more was there—just that one brazen bowlWith traces of a curious oil within;Fretted with some obscurely patterned scroll,And symbols hinting vaguely of strange sin.Little the fears of forty centuries meantTo us as we bore off our slender spoil,And when we scanned it in our darkened tentWe struck a match to test the ancient oil.It blazed—great God! . . . But the vast shapes we sawIn that mad flash have seared our lives with awe.
VII. Zaman’s HillThe great hill hung close over the old town,A precipice against the main street’s end;Green, tall, and wooded, looking darkly downUpon the steeple at the highway bend.Two hundred years the whispers had been heardAbout what happened on the man-shunned slope—Tales of an oddly mangled deer or bird,Or of lost boys whose kin had ceased to hope.One day the mail-man found no village there,Nor were its folk or houses seen again;People came out from Aylesbury to stare—Yet they all told the mail-man it was plainThat he was mad for saying he had spiedThe great hill’s gluttonous eyes, and jaws stretched wide.
VIII. The PortTen miles from Arkham I had struck the trailThat rides the cliff-edge over Boynton Beach,And hoped that just at sunset I could reachThe crest that looks on Innsmouth in the vale.Far out at sea was a retreating sail,White as hard years of ancient winds could bleach,But evil with some portent beyond speech,So that I did not wave my hand or hail.Sails out of lnnsmouth! echoing old renownOf long-dead times. But now a too-swift nightIs closing in, and I have reached the heightWhence I so often scan the distant town.The spires and roofs are there—but look! The gloomSinks on dark lanes, as lightless as the tomb!
IX. The CourtyardIt was the city I had known before;The ancient, leprous town where mongrel throngsChant to strange gods, and beat unhallowed gongsIn crypts beneath foul alleys near the shore.The rotting, fish-eyed houses leered at meFrom where they leaned, drunk and half-animate,As edging through the filth I passed the gateTo the black courtyard where the man would be.The dark walls closed me in, and loud I cursedThat ever I had come to such a den,When suddenly a score of windows burstInto wild light, and swarmed with dancing men:Mad, soundless revels of the dragging dead—And not a corpse had either hands or head!
X. The Pigeon-FlyersThey took me slumming, where gaunt walls of brickBulge outward with a viscous stored-up evil,And twisted faces, thronging foul and thick,Wink messages to alien god and devil.A million fires were blazing in the streets,And from flat roofs a furtive few would flyBedraggled birds into the yawning skyWhile hidden drums droned on with measured beats.I knew those fires were brewing monstrous things,And that those birds of space had been Outside—I guessed to what dark planet’s crypts they plied,And what they brought from Thog beneath their wings.The others laughed—till struck too mute to speakBy what they glimpsed in one bird’s evil beak.
XI. The WellFarmer Seth Atwood was past eighty whenHe tried to sink that deep well by his door,With only Eb to help him bore and bore.We laughed, and hoped he’d soon be sane again.And yet, instead, young Eb went crazy, too,So that they shipped him to the county farm.Seth bricked the well-mouth up as tight as glue—Then hacked an artery in his gnarled left arm.After the funeral we felt bound to getOut to that well and rip the bricks away,But all we saw were iron hand-holds setDown a black hole deeper than we could say.And yet we put the bricks back—for we foundThe hole too deep for any line to sound.
XII. The HowlerThey told me not to take the Briggs’ Hill pathThat used to be the highroad through to Zoar,For Goody Watkins, hanged in seventeen-four,Had left a certain monstrous aftermath.Yet when I disobeyed, and had in viewThe vine-hung cottage by the great rock slope,I could not think of elms or hempen rope,But wondered why the house still seemed so new.Stopping a while to watch the fading day,I heard faint howls, as from a room upstairs,When through the ivied panes one sunset rayStruck in, and caught the howler unawares.I glimpsed—and ran in frenzy from the place,And from a four-pawed thing with human face.
XIII. HesperiaThe winter sunset, flaming beyond spiresAnd chimneys half-detached from this dull sphere,Opens great gates to some forgotten yearOf elder splendours and divine desires.Expectant wonders burn in those rich fires,Adventure-fraught, and not untinged with fear;A row of sphinxes where the way leads clearToward walls and turrets quivering to far lyres.It is the land where beauty’s meaning flowers;Where every unplaced memory has a source;Where the great river Time begins its courseDown the vast void in starlit streams of hours.Dreams bring us close—but ancient lore repeatsThat human tread has never soiled these streets.
XIV. Star-WindsIt is a certain hour of twilight glooms,Mostly in autumn, when the star-wind poursDown hilltop streets, deserted out-of-doors,But shewing early lamplight from snug rooms.The dead leaves rush in strange, fantastic twists,And chimney-smoke whirls round with alien grace,Heeding geometries of outer space,While Fomalhaut peers in through southward mists.This is the hour when moonstruck poets knowWhat fungi sprout in Yuggoth, and what scentsAnd tints of flowers fill Nithon’s continents,Such as in no poor earthly garden blow.Yet for each dream these winds to us convey,A dozen more of ours they sweep away!
XV. AntarktosDeep in my dream the great bird whispered queerlyOf the black cone amid the polar waste;Pushing above the ice-sheet lone and drearly,By storm-crazed aeons battered and defaced.Hither no living earth-shapes take their courses,And only pale auroras and faint sunsGlow on that pitted rock, whose primal sourcesAre guessed at dimly by the Elder Ones.If men should glimpse it, they would merely wonderWhat tricky mound of Nature’s build they spied;But the bird told of vaster parts, that underThe mile-deep ice-shroud crouch and brood and bide.God help the dreamer whose mad visions shewThose dead eyes set in crystal gulfs below!
XVI. The WindowThe house was old, with tangled wings outthrown,Of which no one could ever half keep track,And in a small room somewhat near the backWas an odd window sealed with ancient stone.There, in a dream-plagued childhood, quite aloneI used to go, where night reigned vague and black;Parting the cobwebs with a curious lackOf fear, and with a wonder each time grown.One later day I brought the masons thereTo find what view my dim forbears had shunned,But as they pierced the stone, a rush of airBurst from the alien voids that yawned beyond.They fled—but I peered through and found unrolledAll the wild worlds of which my dreams had told.
XVII. A MemoryThere were great steppes, and rocky table-landsStretching half-limitless in starlit night,With alien campfires shedding feeble lightOn beasts with tinkling bells, in shaggy bands.Far to the south the plain sloped low and wideTo a dark zigzag line of wall that layLike a huge python of some primal dayWhich endless time had chilled and petrified.I shivered oddly in the cold, thin air,And wondered where I was and how I came,When a cloaked form against a campfire’s glareRose and approached, and called me by my name.Staring at that dead face beneath the hood,I ceased to hope—because I understood.
XVIII. The Gardens of YinBeyond that wall, whose ancient masonryReached almost to the sky in moss-thick towers,There would be terraced gardens, rich with flowers,And flutter of bird and butterfly and bee.There would be walks, and bridges arching overWarm lotos-pools reflecting temple eaves,And cherry-trees with delicate boughs and leavesAgainst a pink sky where the herons hover.All would be there, for had not old dreams flungOpen the gate to that stone-lanterned mazeWhere drowsy streams spin out their winding ways,Trailed by green vines from bending branches hung?I hurried—but when the wall rose, grim and great,I found there was no longer any gate.
XIX. The BellsYear after year I heard that faint, far ringingOf deep-toned bells on the black midnight wind;Peals from no steeple I could ever find,But strange, as if across some great void winging.I searched my dreams and memories for a clue,And thought of all the chimes my visions carried;Of quiet Innsmouth, where the white gulls tarriedAround an ancient spire that once I knew.Always perplexed I heard those far notes falling,Till one March night the bleak rain splashing coldBeckoned me back through gateways of recallingTo elder towers where the mad clappers tolled.They tolled—but from the sunless tides that pourThrough sunken valleys on the sea’s dead floor.
XX. Night-GauntsOut of what crypt they crawl, I cannot tell,But every night I see the rubbery things,Black, horned, and slender, with membraneous wings,And tails that bear the bifid barb of hell.They come in legions on the north wind’s swell,With obscene clutch that titillates and stings,Snatching me off on monstrous voyagingsTo grey worlds hidden deep in nightmare’s well.Over the jagged peaks of Thok they sweep,Heedless of all the cries I try to make,And down the nether pits to that foul lakeWhere the puffed shoggoths splash in doubtful sleep.But oh! If only they would make some sound,Or wear a face where faces should be found!
XXI. NyarlathotepAnd at the last from inner Egypt cameThe strange dark One to whom the fellahs bowed;Silent and lean and cryptically proud,And wrapped in fabrics red as sunset flame.Throngs pressed around, frantic for his commands,But leaving, could not tell what they had heard;While through the nations spread the awestruck wordThat wild beasts followed him and licked his hands.Soon from the sea a noxious birth began;Forgotten lands with weedy spires of gold;The ground was cleft, and mad auroras rolledDown on the quaking citadels of man.Then, crushing what he chanced to mould in play,The idiot Chaos blew Earth’s dust away.
XXII. AzathothOut in the mindless void the daemon bore me,Past the bright clusters of dimensioned space,Till neither time nor matter stretched before me,But only Chaos, without form or place.Here the vast Lord of All in darkness mutteredThings he had dreamed but could not understand,While near him shapeless bat-things flopped and flutteredIn idiot vortices that ray-streams fanned.They danced insanely to the high, thin whiningOf a cracked flute clutched in a monstrous paw,Whence flow the aimless waves whose chance combiningGives each frail cosmos its eternal law.“I am His Messenger,” the daemon said,As in contempt he struck his Master’s head.
XXIII. MirageI do not know if ever it existed—That lost world floating dimly on Time’s stream—And yet I see it often, violet-misted,And shimmering at the back of some vague dream.There were strange towers and curious lapping rivers,Labyrinths of wonder, and low vaults of light,And bough-crossed skies of flame, like that which quiversWistfully just before a winter’s night.Great moors led off to sedgy shores unpeopled,Where vast birds wheeled, while on a windswept hillThere was a village, ancient and white-steepled,With evening chimes for which I listen still.I do not know what land it is—or dareAsk when or why I was, or will be, there.
XXIV. The CanalSomewhere in dream there is an evil placeWhere tall, deserted buildings crowd alongA deep, black, narrow channel, reeking strongOf frightful things whence oily currents race.Lanes with old walls half meeting overheadWind off to streets one may or may not know,And feeble moonlight sheds a spectral glowOver long rows of windows, dark and dead.There are no footfalls, and the one soft soundIs of the oily water as it glidesUnder stone bridges, and along the sidesOf its deep flume, to some vague ocean bound.None lives to tell when that stream washed awayIts dream-lost region from the world of clay.
XXV. St. Toad’s“Beware St. Toad’s cracked chimes!” I heard him screamAs I plunged into those mad lanes that windIn labyrinths obscure and undefinedSouth of the river where old centuries dream.He was a furtive figure, bent and ragged,And in a flash had staggered out of sight,So still I burrowed onward in the nightToward where more roof-lines rose, malign and jagged.No guide-book told of what was lurking here—But now I heard another old man shriek:“Beware St.Toad’s cracked chimes!” And growing weak,I paused, when a third greybeard croaked in fear:“Beware St. Toad’s cracked chimes!” Aghast, I fled—Till suddenly that black spire loomed ahead.
XXVI. The FamiliarsJohn Whateley lived about a mile from town,Up where the hills began to huddle thick;We never thought his wits were very quick,Seeing the way he let his farm run down.He used to waste his time on some queer booksHe’d found around the attic of his place,Till funny lines got creased into his face,And folks all said they didn’t like his looks.When he began those night-howls we declaredHe’d better be locked up away from harm,So three men from the Aylesbury town farmWent for him—but came back alone and scared.They’d found him talking to two crouching thingsThat at their step flew off on great black wings.
XXVII. The Elder PharosFrom Leng, where rocky peaks climb bleak and bareUnder cold stars obscure to human sight,There shoots at dusk a single beam of lightWhose far blue rays make shepherds whine in prayer.They say (though none has been there) that it comesOut of a pharos in a tower of stone,Where the last Elder One lives on alone,Talking to Chaos with the beat of drums.The Thing, they whisper, wears a silken maskOf yellow, whose queer folds appear to hideA face not of this earth, though none dares askJust what those features are, which bulge inside.Many, in man’s first youth, sought out that glow,But what they found, no one will ever know.
XXVIII. ExpectancyI cannot tell why some things hold for meA sense of unplumbed marvels to befall,Or of a rift in the horizon’s wallOpening to worlds where only gods can be.There is a breathless, vague expectancy,As of vast ancient pomps I half recall,Or wild adventures, uncorporeal,Ecstasy-fraught, and as a day-dream free.It is in sunsets and strange city spires,Old villages and woods and misty downs,South winds, the sea, low hills, and lighted towns,Old gardens, half-heard songs, and the moon’s fires.But though its lure alone makes life worth living,None gains or guesses what it hints at giving.
XXIX. NostalgiaOnce every year, in autumn’s wistful glow,The birds fly out over an ocean waste,Calling and chattering in a joyous hasteTo reach some land their inner memories know.Great terraced gardens where bright blossoms blow,And lines of mangoes luscious to the taste,And temple-groves with branches interlacedOver cool paths—all these their vague dreams shew.They search the sea for marks of their old shore—For the tall city, white and turreted—But only empty waters stretch ahead,So that at last they turn away once more.Yet sunken deep where alien polyps throng,The old towers miss their lost, remembered song.
XXX. BackgroundI never can be tied to raw, new things,For I first saw the light in an old town,Where from my window huddled roofs sloped downTo a quaint harbour rich with visionings.Streets with carved doorways where the sunset beamsFlooded old fanlights and small window-panes,And Georgian steeples topped with gilded vanes—These were the sights that shaped my childhood dreams.Such treasures, left from times of cautious leaven,Cannot but loose the hold of flimsier wraithsThat flit with shifting ways and muddled faithsAcross the changeless walls of earth and heaven.They cut the moment’s thongs and leave me freeTo stand alone before eternity.
XXXI. The DwellerIt had been old when Babylon was new;None knows how long it slept beneath that mound,Where in the end our questing shovels foundIts granite blocks and brought it back to view.There were vast pavements and foundation-walls,And crumbling slabs and statues, carved to shewFantastic beings of some long agoPast anything the world of man recalls.And then we saw those stone steps leading downThrough a choked gate of graven dolomiteTo some black haven of eternal nightWhere elder signs and primal secrets frown.We cleared a path—but raced in mad retreatWhen from below we heard those clumping feet.
XXXII. AlienationHis solid flesh had never been away,For each dawn found him in his usual place,But every night his spirit loved to raceThrough gulfs and worlds remote from common day.He had seen Yaddith, yet retained his mind,And come back safely from the Ghooric zone,When one still night across curved space was thrownThat beckoning piping from the voids behind.He waked that morning as an older man,And nothing since has looked the same to him.Objects around float nebulous and dim—False, phantom trifles of some vaster plan.His folk and friends are now an alien throngTo which he struggles vainly to belong.
XXXIII. Harbour WhistlesOver old roofs and past decaying spiresThe harbour whistles chant all through the night;Throats from strange ports, and beaches far and white,And fabulous oceans, ranged in motley choirs.Each to the other alien and unknown,Yet all, by some obscurely focussed forceFrom brooding gulfs beyond the Zodiac’s course,Fused into one mysterious cosmic drone.Through shadowy dreams they send a marching lineOf still more shadowy shapes and hints and views;Echoes from outer voids, and subtle cluesTo things which they themselves cannot define.And always in that chorus, faintly blent,We catch some notes no earth-ship ever sent.
XXXIV. RecaptureThe way led down a dark, half-wooded heathWhere moss-grey boulders humped above the mould,And curious drops, disquieting and cold,Sprayed up from unseen streams in gulfs beneath.There was no wind, nor any trace of soundIn puzzling shrub, or alien-featured tree,Nor any view before—till suddenly,Straight in my path, I saw a monstrous mound.Half to the sky those steep sides loomed upspread,Rank-grassed, and cluttered by a crumbling flightOf lava stairs that scaled the fear-topped heightIn steps too vast for any human tread.I shrieked—and knew what primal star and yearHad sucked me back from man’s dream-transient sphere!
XXXV. Evening StarI saw it from that hidden, silent placeWhere the old wood half shuts the meadow in.It shone through all the sunset’s glories—thinAt first, but with a slowly brightening face.Night came, and that lone beacon, amber-hued,Beat on my sight as never it did of old;The evening star—but grown a thousandfoldMore haunting in this hush and solitude.It traced strange pictures on the quivering air—Half-memories that had always filled my eyes—Vast towers and gardens; curious seas and skiesOf some dim life—I never could tell where.But now I knew that through the cosmic domeThose rays were calling from my far, lost home.
XXXVI. ContinuityThere is in certain ancient things a traceOf some dim essence—more than form or weight;A tenuous aether, indeterminate,Yet linked with all the laws of time and space.A faint, veiled sign of continuitiesThat outward eyes can never quite descry;Of locked dimensions harbouring years gone by,And out of reach except for hidden keys.It moves me most when slanting sunbeams glowOn old farm buildings set against a hill,And paint with life the shapes which linger stillFrom centuries less a dream than this we know.In that strange light I feel I am not farFrom the fixt mass whose sides the ages are.
There is a lake in distant Zan,Beyond the wonted haunts of man,Where broods alone in a hideous stateA spirit dead and desolate;A spirit ancient and unholy,Heavy with fearsome melancholy,Which from the waters dull and denseDraws vapors cursed with pestilence.Around the banks, a mire of clay,Sprawl things offensive in decay,And curious birds that reach that shoreAre seen by mortals nevermore.Here shines by day the searing sunOn glassy wastes beheld by none,And here by night pale moonbeams flowInto the deeps that yawn below.In nightmares only is it toldWhat scenes beneath those beams unfold;What scenes, too old for human sight,Lie sunken there in endless night;For in those depths there only paceThe shadows of a voiceless race.One midnight, redolent of ill,I saw that lake, asleep and still;While in the lurid sky there rodeA gibbous moon that glow’d and glow’d.I saw the stretching marshy shore,And the foul things those marshes bore:Lizards and snakes convuls’d and dying;Ravens and vampires putrefying;All these, and hov’ring o’er the dead,Narcophagi that on them fed.And as the dreadful moon climb’d high,Fright’ning the stars from out the sky,I saw the lake’s dull water glowTill sunken things appear’d below.There shone unnumber’d fathoms down,The tow’rs of a forgotten town;The tarnish’d domes and mossy walls;Weed-tangled spires and empty halls;Deserted fanes and vaults of dread,And streets of gold uncoveted.
>>31118728These I beheld, and saw besideA horde of shapeless shadows glide;A noxious horde which to my glanceSeem’d moving in a hideous danceRound slimy sepulchres that layBeside a never-travell’d way.Straight from those tombs a heaving roseThat vex’d the waters’ dull repose,While lethal shades of upper spaceHowl’d at the moon’s sardonic face.Then sank the lake within its bed,Suck’d down to caverns of the dead,Till from the reeking, new-stript earthCurl’d foetid fumes of noisome birth.About the city, nigh uncover’d,The monstrous dancing shadows hover’d,When lo! there oped with sudden stirThe portal of each sepulchre!No ear may learn, no tongue may tellWhat nameless horror then befell.I see that lake—that moon agrin—That city and the things within—Waking, I pray that on that shoreThe nightmare lake may sink no more!
’Tis a grove-circled dwelling Set close to a hill, Where the branches are telling Strange legends of ill; Over timbers so old That they breathe of the dead, Crawl the vines, green and cold, By strange nourishment fed;And no man knows the juices they suck from the depths of their dank slimy bed. In the gardens are growing Tall blossoms and fair, Each pallid bloom throwing Perfume on the air; But the afternoon sun With its shining red rays Makes the picture loom dun On the curious gaze,And above the sween scent of the the blossoms rise odours of numberless days. The rank grasses are waving On terrace and lawn, Dim memories sav’ring Of things that have gone; The stones of the walks Are encrusted and wet, And a strange spirit stalks When the red sun has set,And the soul of the watcher is fill’d with faint pictures he fain would forget. It was in the hot Junetime I stood by that scene, When the gold rays of noontime Beat bright on the green. But I shiver’d with cold, Groping feebly for light, As a picture unroll’d— And my age-spanning sightSaw the time I had been there before flash like fulgury out of the night.
It was golden and splendid, That City of light; A vision suspended In deeps of the night;A region of wonder and glory, whose temples were marble and white. I remember the season It dawn’d on my gaze; The mad time of unreason, The brain-numbing daysWhen Winter, white-sheeted and ghastly, stalks onward to torture and craze. More lovely than Zion It shone in the sky, When the beams of Orion Beclouded my eye,Bringing sleep that was fill’d with dim mem’ries of moments obscure and gone by. Its mansions were stately With carvings made fair, Each rising sedately On terraces rare,And the gardens were fragrant and bright with strange miracles blossoming there. The avenues lur’d me With vistas sublime; Tall arches assur’d me That once on a timeI had wander’d in rapture beneath them, and bask’d in the Halcyon clime. On the plazas were standing A sculptur’d array; Long-bearded, commanding, Grave men in their day—But one stood dismantled and broken, its bearded face batter’d away. In that city effulgent No mortal I saw; But my fancy, indulgent To memory’s law,Linger’d long on the forms in the plazas, and eyed their stone features with awe. I fann’d the faint ember That glow’d in my mind, And strove to remember The aeons behind;To rove thro’ infinity freely, and visit the past unconfin’d. Then the horrible warning Upon my soul sped Like the ominous morning That rises in red,And in panic I flew from the knowledge of terrors forgotten and dead.
Babels of blocks to the high heavens tow’ring, Flames of futility swirling below;Poisonous fungi in brick and stone flow’ring, Lanterns that shudder and death-lights that glow.Black monstrous bridges across oily rivers, Cobwebs of cable by nameless things spun;Catacomb deeps whose dank chaos delivers Streams of live foetor, that rots in the sun.Colour and splendour, disease and decaying, Shrieking and ringing and scrambling insane,Rabbles exotic to stranger-gods praying, Jumbles of odour that stifle the brain.Legions of cats from the alleys nocturnal, Howling and lean in the glare of the moon,Screaming the future with mouthings infernal, Yelling the burden of Pluto’s red rune.Tall tow’rs and pyramids ivy’d and crumbling, Bats that swoop low in the weed-cumber’d streets;Bleak broken bridges o’er rivers whose rumbling Joins with no voice as the thick tide retreats.Belfries that blackly against the moon totter, Caverns whose mouths are by mosses effac’d,And living to answer the wind and the water, Only the lean cats that howl in the waste!
They cut it down, and where the pitch-black aisles Of forest night had hid eternal things,They scal’d the sky with tow’rs and marble piles To make a city for their revellings.White and amazing to the lands around That wondrous wealth of domes and turrets rose;Crystal and ivory, sublimely crown’d With pinnacles that bore unmelting snows.And through its halls the pipe and sistrum rang, While wine and riot brought their scarlet stains;Never a voice of elder marvels sang, Nor any eye call’d up the hills and plains.Thus down the years, till on one purple night A drunken minstrel in his careless verseSpoke the vile words that should not see the light, And stirr’d the shadows of an ancient curse.Forests may fall, but not the dusk they shield; So on the spot where that proud city stood,The shuddering dawn no single stone reveal’d, But fled the blackness of a primal wood.
There was no hand to hold me backThat night I found the ancient trackOver the hill, and strained to seeThe fields that teased my memory.This tree, that wall—I knew them well,And all the roofs and orchards fellFamiliarly upon my mindAs from a past not far behind.I knew what shadows would be castWhen the late moon came up at lastFrom back of Zaman’s Hill, and howThe vale would shine three hours from now.And when the path grew steep and high,And seemed to end against the sky,I had no fear of what might restBeyond that silhouetted crest.Straight on I walked, while all the nightGrew pale with phosphorescent light,And wall and farmhouse gable glowedUnearthly by the climbing road.There was the milestone that I knew—“Two miles to Dunwich”—now the viewOf distant spire and roofs would dawnWith ten more upward paces gone. . . .There was no hand to hold me backThat night I found the ancient track,And reached the crest to see outspreadA valley of the lost and dead:And over Zaman’s Hill the hornOf a malignant moon was born,To light the weeds and vines that grewOn ruined walls I never knew.The fox-fire glowed in field and bog,And unknown waters spewed a fogWhose curling talons mocked the thoughtThat I had ever known this spot.Too well I saw from the mad sceneThat my loved past had never been—Nor was I now upon the trailDescending to that long-dead vale.Around was fog—ahead, the sprayOf star-streams in the Milky Way. . . .There was no hand to hold me backThat night I found the ancient track.
When evening cools the yellow stream, And shadows stalk the jungle’s ways, Zimbabwe’s palace flares ablazeFor a great King who fears to dream.For he alone of all mankind Waded the swamp that serpents shun; And struggling toward the setting sun,Came on the veldt that lies behind.No other eyes had vented there Since eyes were lent for human sight— But there, as sunset turned to night,He found the Elder Secret’s lair.Strange turrets rose beyond the plain, And walls and bastions spread around The distant domes that fouled the groundLike leprous fungi after rain.A grudging moon writhed up to shine Past leagues where life can have no home; And paling far-off tower and dome,Shewed each unwindowed and malign.Then he who in his boyhood ran Through vine-hung ruins free of fear, Trembled at what he saw—for hereWas no dead, ruined seat of man.Inhuman shapes, half-seen, half-guessed, Half solid and half ether-spawned, Seethed down from starless voids that yawnedIn heav’n, to these blank walls of pest.And voidward from that pest-mad zone Amorphous hordes seethed darkly back, Their dim claws laden with the wrackOf things that men have dreamed and known.
>>31118837The ancient Fishers from Outside— Were there not tales the high-priest told, Of how they found the worlds of old,And took what pelf their fancy spied?Their hidden, dread-ringed outposts brood Upon a million worlds of space; Abhorred by every living race,Yet scatheless in their solitude.Sweating with fright, the watcher crept Back to the swamp that serpents shun, So that he lay, by rise of sun,Safe in the palace where he slept.None saw him leave, or come at dawn, Nor does his flesh bear any mark Of what he met in that curst dark—Yet from his sleep all peace has gone.When evening cools the yellow stream, And shadows stalk the jungle’s ways, Zimbabwe’s palace flares ablaze,For a great King who fears to dream.
The thing, he said, would come that night at threeFrom the old churchyard on the hill below;But crouching by an oak fire’s wholesome glow,I tried to tell myself it could not be.Surely, I mused, it was a pleasantryDevised by one who did not truly knowThe Elder Sign, bequeathed from long ago,That sets the fumbling forms of darkness free.He had not meant it—no—but still I litAnother lamp as starry Leo climbedOut of the Seekonk, and a steeple chimedThree—and the firelight faded, bit by bit.Then at the door that cautious rattling came—And the mad truth devoured me like a flame!
Where bay and river tranquil blend, And leafy hillsides rise,The spires of Providence ascend Against the ancient skies.Here centuried domes of shining gold Salute the morning’s glare,While slanting gables, odd and old, Are scatter’d here and there.And in the narrow winding ways That climb o’er slope and crest,The magic of forgotten days May still be found to rest.A fanlight’s gleam, a knocker’s blow, A glimpse of Georgian brick—The sights and sounds of long ago Where fancies cluster thick.A flight of steps with iron rail, A belfry looming tall,A slender steeple, carv’d and pale, A moss-grown garden wall.A hidden churchyard’s crumbling proofs Of man’s mortality,A rotting wharf where gambrel roofs Keep watch above the sea.Square and parade, whose walls have tower’d Full fifteen decades longBy cobbled ways ’mid trees embower’d, And slighted by the throng.Stone bridges spanning languid streams, Houses perch’d on the hill,And courts where mysteries and dreams The brooding spirit fill.Steep alley steps by vines conceal’d, Where small-pan’d windows glowAt twilight on a bit of field That chance has left below.My Providence! What airy hosts Turn still thy gilded vanes;What winds of elf that with grey ghosts People thine ancient lanes!The chimes of evening as of old Above thy valleys sound,While thy stern fathers ’neath the mould Make blest thy sacred ground.Thou dream’st beside the waters there, Unchang’d by cruel years;A spirit from an age more fair That shines behind our tears.Thy twinkling lights each night I see, Tho’ time and space divide;For thou art of the soul of me, And always at my side!
In a vale of light and laughter, Shining ’neath the friendly sun,Where fulfilment follow’d after Ev’ry hope or dream begun;Where an Aidenn gay and glorious, Beckon’d down the winsome way;There my soul, o’er pain victorious, Laugh’d and lingered—yesterday.Green and narrow was my valley, Temper’d with a verdant shade;Sun-deck’d brooklets musically Sparkled thro’ each glorious glade;And at night the stars serenely Glow’d betwixt the boughs o’erhead,While Astarte, calm and queenly, Floods of fairy radiance shed.There amid the tinted bowers, Raptur’d with the opiate spellOf the grasses, ferns, and flowers, Poppy, phlox and pimpernel,Long I lay, entranc’d and dreaming, Pleas’d with Nature’s bounteous store,Till I mark’d the shaded gleaming Of the sky, and yearn’d for more.Eagerly the branches tearing, Clear’d I all the space above,Till the bolder gaze, high faring, Scann’d the naked skies of Jove;Deeps unguess’d now shone before me, Splendid beam’d the solar car;Wings of fervid fancy bore me Out beyond the farthest star.
>>31118901Reaching, gasping, wishing, longing For the pageant brought to sight,Vain I watch’d the gold orbs thronging Round celestial poles of light.Madly on a moonbeam ladder Heav’n’s abyss I sought to scale,Ever wiser, ever sadder, As the fruitless task would fail.Then, with futile striving sated, Veer’d my soul to earth again,Well content that I was fated For a fair, yet low domain;Pleasing thoughts of glad tomorrows, Like the blissful moments past,Lull’d to rest my transient sorrows, Still’d my godless greed at last.But my downward glance, returning, Shrank in fright from what it spy’d;Slopes in hideous torment burning, Terror in the brooklet’s tide:For the dell, of shade denuded By my desecrating hand,’Neath the bare sky blaz’d and brooded As a lost, accursed land.
O’er the midnight moorlands crying,Thro’ the cypress forests sighing,In the night-wind madly flying, Hellish forms with streaming hair;In the barren branches creaking,By the stagnant swamp-pools speaking,Past the shore-cliffs ever shrieking; Damn’d daemons of despair.Once, I think I half remember,Ere the grey skies of NovemberQuench’d my youth’s aspiring ember, Liv’d there such a thing as bliss;Skies that now are dark were beaming,Gold and azure, splendid seemingTill I learn’d it all was dreaming— Deadly drowsiness of Dis.But the stream of Time, swift flowing,Brings the torment of half-knowing—Dimly rushing, blindly going Past the never-trodden lea;And the voyager, repining,Sees the wicked death-fires shining,Hears the wicked petrel’s whining As he helpless drifts to sea.Evil wings in ether beating;Vultures at the spirit eating;Things unseen forever fleeting Black against the leering sky.Ghastly shades of bygone gladness,Clawing fiends of future sadness,Mingle in a cloud of madness Ever on the soul to lie.Thus the living, lone and sobbing,In the throes of anguish throbbing,With the loathsome Furies robbing Night and noon of peace and rest.But beyond the groans and gratingOf abhorrent Life, is waitingSweet Oblivion, culminating All the years of fruitless quest.
How sad droop the willows by Zulal’s fair side,Where so lately I stray’d with my raven-hair’d bride:Ev’ry light-floating lily, each flow’r on the shore,Folds in sorrow since Laeta can see them no more!Oh, blest were the days when in childhood and hopeWith my Laeta I rov’d o’er the blossom-clad slope,Plucking white meadow-daisies and ferns by the stream,As we laugh’d at the ripples that twinkle and gleam.Not a bloom deck’d the mead that could rival in graceThe dear innocent charms of my Laeta’s fair face;Not a thrush thrill’d the grove with a carol so choiceAs the silvery strains of my Laeta’s sweet voice.The shy Nymphs of the woodland, the fount and the plain,Strove to equal her beauty, but strove all in vain;Yet no envy they bore her, while fruitless they strove,For so pure was my Laeta, they could only love!When the warm breath of Auster play’d soft o’er the flow’rs,And young Zephyrus rustled the gay scented bow’rs,Ev’ry breeze seem’d to pause as it drew near the fair,Too much aw’d at her sweetness to tumble her hair.How fond were our dreams on the day when we stoodIn the ivy-grown temple beside the dark wood;When our pledges we seal’d at the sanctify’d shrine,And I knew that my Laeta forever was mine!
>>31118967How blissful our thoughts when the wild autumn came,And the forests with scarlet and gold were aflame;Yet how heavy my heart when I first felt the fearThat my starry-eyed Laeta would fade with the year!The pastures were sere and the heavens were greyWhen I laid my lov’d Laeta forever away,And the river god pity’d, as weeping I pac’dMingling hot bitter tears with his cold frozen waste.Now the flow’rs have return’d, but they bloom not so sweetAs in days when they blossom’d round Laeta’s dear feet;And the willows complain to the answering hill,And the thrushes that once were so happy are still.The green meadows and groves in their loneliness pine,Whilst the Dryads no more in their madrigals join,The breeze once so joyous now murmurs and sighs,And blows soft o’er the spot where my lov’d Laeta lies.So pensive I roam o’er the desolate lawnWhere we wander’d and lov’d in the days that are gone,And I yearn for the autumn, when Zulal’s blue tideShall sing low by my grave at the lov’d Laeta’s side.
The cloudless day is richer at its close; A golden glory settles on the lea;Soft, stealing shadows hint of cool repose To mellowing landscape, and to calming sea.And in that nobler, gentler, lovelier light, The soul to sweeter, loftier bliss inclines;Freed form the noonday glare, the favour’d sight Increasing grace in earth and sky divines.But ere the purest radiance crowns the green, Or fairest lustre fills th’ expectant grove,The twilight thickens, and the fleeting scene Leaves but a hallow’d memory of love!
In the midnight heavens burning Thro’ ethereal deeps afar,Once I watch’d with restless yearning An alluring, aureate star;Ev’ry eye aloft returning, Gleaming nigh the Arctic car.Mystic waves of beauty blended With the gorgeous golden rays;Phantasies of bliss descended In a myrrh’d Elysian haze;And in lyre-born chords extended Harmonies of Lydian lays.There (thought I) lies scenes of pleasure, Where the free and blessed dwell,And each moment bears a treasure Freighted with a lotus-spell,And there floats a liquid measure From the lute of Israfel.There (I told myself) were shining Worlds of happiness unknown,Peace and Innocence entwining By the Crowned Virtue’s throne;Men of light, their thoughts refining Purer, fairer, than our own.Thus I mus’d, when o’er the vision Crept a red delirious change;Hope dissolving to derision, Beauty to distortion strange;Hymnic chords in weird collision, Spectral sights in endless range.Crimson burn’d the star of sadness As behind the beams I peer’d;All was woe that seem’d but gladness Ere my gaze with truth was sear’d;Cacodaemons, mir’d with madness, Thro’ the fever’d flick’ring leer’d.Now I know the fiendish fable That the golden glitter bore;Now I shun the spangled sable That I watch’d and lov’d before;But the horror, set and stable, Haunts my soul for evermore.
Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber, Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night, I have liv’d o’er my lives without number, I have sounded all things with my sight;And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright. I have whirl’d with the earth at the dawning, When the sky was a vaporous flame; I have seen the dark universe yawning, Where the black planets roll without aim;Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name. I had drifted o’er seas without ending, Under sinister grey-clouded skies That the many-fork’d lightning is rending, That resound with hysterical cries;With the moans of invisible daemons that out of the green waters rise. I have plung’d like a deer thro’ the arches Of the hoary primoridal grove, Where the oaks feel the presence that marches And stalks on where no spirit dares rove;And I flee from a thing that surrounds me, and leers thro’ dead branches above. I have stumbled by cave-ridden mountains That rise barren and bleak from the plain, I have drunk of the fog-foetid fountains That ooze down to the marsh and the main;And in hot cursed tarns I have seen things I care not to gaze on again. I have scann’d the vast ivy-clad palace, I have trod its untenanted hall, Where the moon writhing up from the valleys Shews the tapestried things on the wall;Strange figures discordantly woven, which I cannot endure to recall.
>>31119057 I have peer’d from the casement in wonder At the mouldering meadows around, At the many-roof’d village laid under The curse of a grave-girdled ground;And from rows of white urn-carven marble I listen intently for sound. I have haunted the tombs of the ages, I have flown on the pinions of fear Where the smoke-belching Erebus rages, Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear:And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes what it never can cheer. I was old when the Pharaohs first mounted The jewel-deck’d throne by the Nile; I was old in those epochs uncounted When I, and I only, was vile;And Man, yet untainted and happy, dwelt in bliss on the far Arctic isle. Oh, great was the sin of my spirit, And great is the reach of its doom; Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it, Nor can respite be found in the tomb:Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom. Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber, Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night, I have liv’d o’er my lives without number, I have sounded all things with my sight;And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.
There’s an ancient, ancient garden that I see sometimes in dreams,Where the very Maytime sunlight plays and glows with spectral gleams;Where the gaudy-tinted blossoms seem to wither into grey,And the crumbling walls and pillars waken thoughts of yesterday.There are vines in nooks and crannies, and there’s moss about the pool,And the tangled weedy thicket chokes the arbour dark and cool:In the silent sunken pathways springs an herbage sparse and spare,Where the musty scent of dead things dulls the fragrance of the air.There is not a living creature in the lonely space around,And the hedge-encompass’d quiet never echoes to a sound.As I walk, and wait, and listen, I will often seek to findWhen it was I knew that garden in an age long left behind;I will oft conjure a vision of a day that is no more,As I gaze upon the grey, grey scenes I feel I knew before.Then a sadness settles o’er me, and a tremor seems to start:For I know the flow’rs are shrivell’d hopes—the garden is my heart!
How dull the wretch, whose philosophic mindDisdains the pleasures of fantastic kind;Whose prosy thoughts the joys of life exclude,And wreck the solace of the poet’s mood!Young Zeno, practic’d in the Stoic’s art,Rejects the language of the glowing heart;Dissolves sweet Nature to a mess of laws;Condemns th’ effect whilst looking for the cause;Freezes poor Ovid in an ic’d review,And sneers because his fables are untrue!In search of Truth the hopeful zealot goes,But all the sadder tums, the more he knows!Stay! vandal sophist, whose deep lore would blastThe graceful legends of the story’d past;Whose tongue in censure flays th’ embellish’d page,And scolds the comforts of a dreary age:Would’st strip the foliage from the vital boughTill all men grow as wisely dull as thou?Happy the man whose fresh, untainted eyeDiscerns a Pantheon in the spangled sky;Finds Sylphs and Dryads in the waving trees,And spies soft Notus in the southern breeze;For whom the stream a cheering carol sings,While reedy music by the fountain rings;To whom the waves a Nereid tale confideTill friendly presence fills the rising tide.Happy is he, who void of learning’s woes,Th’ ethereal life of body’d Nature knows:I scorn the sage that tells me it but seems,And flout his gravity in sunlit dreams!
I am a peaceful working man— I am not wise or strong—But I can follow Nature’s plan In labour, rest, and song.One day the men that rule us all Decided we must die,Else pride and freedom surely fall In the dim bye and bye.They told me I must write my name Upon a scroll of death;That some day I should rise to fame By giving up my breath.I do not know what I have done That I should thus be boundTo wait for tortures one by one, And then an unmark’d mound.I hate no man, and yet they say That I must fight and kill;That I must suffer day by day To please a master’s will.I used to have a conscience free, But now they bid it rest;They’ve made a number out of me, And I must ne’er protest.They tell of trenches, long and deep, Fill’d with the mangled slain;They talk till I can scarcely sleep, So reeling is my brain.They tell of filth, and blood, and woe; Of things beyond belief;Of things that make me tremble so With mingled fright and grief.I do not know what I shall do— Is not the law unjust?I can’t do what they want me to, And yet they say I must!Each day my doom doth nearer bring; Each day the State prepares;Sometimes I feel a watching thing That stares, and stares, and stares.I never seem to sleep—my head Whirls in the queerest way.Why am I chosen to be dead Upon some fateful day?Yet hark—some fibre is o’erwrought— A giddying wine I quaff—Things seem so odd, I can do naught But laugh, and laugh, and laugh!
At morn the rosebud greets the sun And sheds the evening dew,Expanding ere the day is done, In bloom of radiant hue;And when the sun his rest hath found,Rose-petals strow the garden round!Thus that blest Isle that owns the Rose From mist and darkness came,A million glories to disclose, And spread BRITANNIA’S name;And ere Life’s Sun shall leave the blue,ENGLAND shall reign the whole world thro’!
To the Old Pagan ReligionOlympian gods! How can I let ye goAnd pin my faith to this new Christian creed?Can I resign the deities I knowFor him who on a cross for man did bleed?How in my weakness can my hopes dependOn one lone God, though mighty be his pow’r?Why can Jove’s host no more assistance lend,To soothe my pain, and cheer my troubled hour?Are there no Dryads on these wooded mountsO’er which I oft in desolation roam?Are there no Naiads in these crystal founts?Nor Nereids upon the Ocean foam?Fast spreads the new; the older faith declines.The name of Christ resounds upon the air.But my wrack’d soul in solitude repinesAnd gives the Gods their last-receivèd pray’r.
spambro is spamming
>>31119418What? The thread is on page 10 autosage. This isn't spamming, this is archiving.
>>31119471I'll help you archive it!
