Lovecraftian Anatomy Edition
This thread is meant to discuss Lovecraft's Works and other related media like tabletop games, video games, etc
Previous Thread:
>>47581698
The Texts of Lore that Men were not meant to know:
http://www.eldritchdark.com
http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/
A good playlist about the gods and other entities of Lovecraft: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-aprpylMuCdnaFEYwTzAobqUZGxS1D5p
>The Black King watches us
The drawing in the OP is Lovecraft's original sketch of the Elder Things by the way
reposting from last thread:
I read some of lovecrafts works and I loved them, I also like this concept about madness letting one see things others normally can't, So I was thinking that for one character I am playing, on a non CoC campaing, he slowly starts going insane, at first hearing whispers he dismisses, then starts being paranoid about a lot of things, things get worse and worse, his dreams are not even nightmares, but a collection of random events, ranging from historical events, everyday situations to cryptic messages and or warnings, easiest way to visualize it: someone took a bunch of film rheels, cut them then mixed them into one big mess.
The character looks like it may never recover, then next day, he's calm and happy, as if every single one of his problems was magically solved overnight. Friends assume their help worked wonders, but in reality, the character realised insanity was a good thing, but at the same time, it was not for everyone.
Now the idea may sound stupid I know, but how would I expand on the last point, the whole "is still insane, but doesn't show it, character does best to pretend he recovered sanity"
>>47630599
>Has a habit of talking to himself
>Freaks out over rather mundane happenings
>>47624248
Prepare to cringe
You called?
>>47630905
What is it?
>>47630973
A mini for Yog Sothoth. ~150mm in size.
Have one for the Dunwich Horror.
Anyone have recommendations for a Call of Cthulhu game geared towards beginners? I've been GM a lot before but I've never actually ran a game for completely new players.
>>47630988
The Thing is looking great
>>47627510
Insane people don't think of themselves as insane, but I'm somewhat reminded of quite a few stories. The first one in the King in Yellow comes to mind in particular.
So, Lovecraft's account of Antarctica is fiction, right?
Right?
>>47632434
Everything in Lovecraft's works are real.
>>47632434
Of course, just look at the lack of mountains in Antarctica. There's no trace of any hidden mountain range.
Oh, right, the Gamburtsev... at least they're not near a giant high cold waste.
Oh right, Dome Argus is above them, the coldest naturally occurring place on Earth, and highest ice feature in Antarctica... well, at least there's no great Antarctic Sea for the city to be built near.
Oh right, Lake Vostok, located between the gamburtsevs and Dome Circe. An ancient undisturbed salt lake likely filled with specialised life (since they've found micro-organisms in the ice samples when drilling to it)... But at least it's not anywhere particularly Dyer, er Dire.
Oh right, it's the Southern Pole of Inaccessibility.
How do you guys feel about vaguely benevolent Lovecraftian beings? And I don't mean in a Derleth sort of way.
I'm thinking of a setting and I'm considering having the central deity of the largely benevolent religion be a horrible madness causing squiggoth. It's sentient but, like Azathoth, a 'blind idiot god,' not entirely comprehending the largely insignificant world it has created quite possibly accidentally - just like a human probably isn't going to find a great amount of significance in their own footprint or sneeze. Also like Azatoth, it's kept placid (possibly even happy - I want this thing to be horrifying but not evil or as completely, utterly, amorally alien as Lovecraft's outer gods) by the prayers, songs, chants and all other forms of worship aimed at it around the world.
The way magic works in the setting is that it's basically the equivelant of physics. You look really deeply into how the world is made and what it's made from, in order to gain control over it. More powerful magic requires delving deeper into the secrets of reality, and because all of reality stems from a squiggoth, there's a positive correlation between magical power and insanity. Divine magic happens when you manage to gain the squiggoth's attention or favour and it implements knowledge of the world into your mind in such a way that it doesn't cause harm, or it alters your mind to be able to handle the knowledge - so the church has some very powerful magicians, but they in turn suffer from a sort of Lovecraftian, cosmic amorality; they know so much and have so much power the rest of the world just becomes sort of insignificant afterwards.
>>47633694
You know, I like everything you said, but what I really love is that it's all a Squiggoth. That just makes the whole thing totally awesome.
>>47633207
If accurate, this is an awesome post.
>>47634207Well, some of the distances are a bit off I must admit. Lake Vostok's not exactly close to the Gamburtsevs, 707km to be specific.
And of course they're subglacial, so Dyer'd have to have entered it by some kind of hole in the icea, so it's possible.
The Vostok Subglacial Highlands are presumably the actual mountains of madness and plateau where the Elder Things had their civilization, the Gamburtsev's are likely the even greater mountains beyond, where rose the Elder Pharos.
>>47633694
I likes it. I likes it a lot.
Have a smug Derleth as a reward.
>>47635509
Derleth might have been a hack but he was actually pretty handsome.No homo.
>>47630599
Not to crush your ideas or anything but you've described a typical CoC/DG character. Or at least what I think of a typical character to be
>>47634731
veemon/10
>>47630988
>A mini for Yog Sothoth
So a solid chunk of space-time?
>>47630524
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC_iOYvTBYM
>>47633694
>there's a positive correlation between magical power and insanity.
I don't necessarily like doing Lovecraftian "insanity" as insanity. I see it as gaining a perspective or understanding on reality that is so fundamentally different from what everyone else accepts that you look insane from their perspective.
Let's say you're actually picking up the telepathic messages of alien beings. You try telling anyone about that and they'll call you crazy. Maybe you gain the ability to see extradimensional beings, but no one's going to believe you if they can't see them for themselves.
The truth of the matter is that you're not the crazy one, it's everyone else who's blind. Of course, they're never going to believe you unless you find a way to show them that you were right all along...
>>47633207
>>47634207
Antarctica really does have subglacial mountain ranges, and they recently discovered the largest canyon on Earth buried under the ice as well. There's also multiple subglacial lakes, out of which Vostok is the most famous, some of which have been sealed off from rest of the world for millions of years. The place is seriously as spoopy as in "Mountains", although presumably with less shoggoths.
Also, fun random fact of the day: the dry valleys of central Antarctica are by far the most imical place to life on the planet. It never rains, as the air is so cold and dry that any air mosture immediately turns to ice. They've studied soil samples taken from there in order to learn more about possibility of life on Mars (which has pretty similar conditions), and found them to be completely sterile. Nothing lives there, not even bacteria, something that's completely unheard of before. You find bacteria miles deep in Earth's crust, and in the Atacama desert (considered the dryest place on Earth, although in actuality the dry valleys of Antarctica are even dryer, as you literally never get non-ice perspiration, but Atacama has been around longer so it has a longer record of no rain), so to discover some place so completely devoid of life was actually shocking and borderline inexpliable.
>>47633694
>How do you guys feel about vaguely benevolent Lovecraftian beings? And I don't mean in a Derleth sort of way.
http://houseofthenecromancer.blogspot.com/2012/01/demons-beyond-kadath.html
It can work.
>>47633694
> vaguely benevolent
imma big up one of my favorite aliens again. extremely friendly and happy, the game does a nice thing with their language, where your handwavey scifi translator machine can't quite figure them out, so it peppers their lines with not-quite translations in asterisks, eg "hello *extremely*! i hope you like to *play*". they're introduced via a spoopy story where you find logs of some race's scientists going too far, various reality-warping shit, and that race now simply doesn't exist, all their planets abandoned - and then you meet these happy yellow freaks, who talk about how they are not *many bubbles* like us, and how smooth and comfy this place is, and how they've been searching for so long and they like it here. they give the impression that they genuinely are friendly, as much as that concept applies to them, but there's a jarring wrongness to them that's really well done imo.
http://sa-matra.net/quotes/orz/
>>47637216
This is actually how I like to see Lovecraft insanity myself
Are sufficiently intelligent super-computers good substitutes for elder gods in a CoC game?
>>47639185
Are we talking AM levels of reality manipulation?
>>47639185
Read a summary of the Laundry series.
>>47640343
If you don't like it, filter it. We just wanted a place to congregate. This is 5 hours later so I doubt you'll read this.
>>47639185
Kinda.
>>47639185
>>47640157
>>47642557
Man, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream was good
>>47640343
>forgetting that /tg/ was created to circlejerk about Warhammer 40k
why is the Great Race of Yith the most based species in the universe?
>>47643617
Because you obviously have one squatting in your brain!
>>47644079
The much dreaded Shan-Yithian!
I'm a big fan of how the Yithians were described in DG Future/Perfect.
I figure I'll nick that version for my own games, even if I prefer the Laundryverse.
>>47644359
Holy fucking... a Yithian in the hands of the bureaucracy. This cannot end well. It's Torchwood level stuff.
>A level 4 containment grid, fed by 3 redundant thaumic generators, one plugged into the London subway, one on the London grid, one on an ancient dieselelectric locomotive, hidden in some abandoned tunnel under the Thames, all to hold.. what exactly?
>It's definitely a thing. It has organic parts and a shape and all that. And it isn't some dimension bending hocus pocus. But that creature held in that humming ward strong enough to hold the river above if it did happen to be external (there are rumors...) extends beyond that almost fragile shape in spacetime. It is said to be a member of the Great Race, which is to say the Wormhole Aliens from Deep Space Nine who gave The Sisko all those visions of the future and could never understand that his time was in linear progression. And much like Jake's mother they can slip into someone and awkwardly stalk through linear experiences for a while. Sorry for the spoilers. Being stuck on a powered grid is very awkward, even when you're used to linear time. They do it to you in training.
>Anyway, the thing seems perfectly content, as long as there's someone talking to it. And guess who has the next shift!
>>47644359
Great Race are superior to the Elder Things, right? Like the Elder Things are incredibly advanced but ultimately they still seem to be 'mundane' creatures.
>>47644713
I'm kind of working on a scenario involving the Yithians, the OVERSHOOT committee, and the establishment of a second TURNSTILE (the site for continuation of government in the case of a a disaster)This goes back to the old scenario Bad Moon Rising from The Great Old Ones. In that, we're introduced to the British Lunar Expedition. Yes, the Brits had a space program long before anyone else, it was kind of on accident though.
Basically, they found an active gate at the bottom of a flooded coalmine, which led to an abandoned Yithian monitoring site on the moon.
According to another scenario (Blood Moon, in Strange Aeons) the expeditions continued throughout the 20th century.
In a Laundry supplement, the OVERSHOOT committee is designed to deal with all matters concerning the British Lunar Expeditions and its survivors.
With CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN fast approaching, the UK Government's going to need a new War Headquarters, and where better than the moon?
So yes, I'm working on a British Moonbase, and a shadow feud with the Yithians over its establishment.
>>47645200
Yeah, the Elder Things are probably the most "human" of the weird alien freaks out there.
They're made of the same kind of matter as us, have minds we can kind of understand, etc.
So, just came across this thread. Always liked Lovecraft, but never got around to reading the whole collection.
It's inspired me to work on a setting - something like Delta Green, I suppose - but I want to include more fantasy elements. Not like happy go lucky stuff - horror, because that's what the old tales, myths, and legends are all about: death, horror, 'don't do this or you'll be eaten'.
I was kinda aiming for this stuff to be the bigger evils in the setting. That sound interesting at all?
>>47645840
Yeah. Being a big fan of Lovecraft, I included mythos-like elements into my setting, although I haven't really done anything particularly original or interesting with it. Mostly the biggest antagonists in the setting are dark elves who worship the Outer Gods, and you occasionally have weird cults popping up. I did want to keep things in line with the mythos, though, so the Outer Gods or Great Old Ones themselves would not make an appearance (barring possibly Nyarlathotep in one of his many masks), and the threat comes motly from their mortal worshipers who try to summon them or wield their power for their own ends.
>>47645306
So are the Yithian's aren't they? They just understand differently advanced science.
Bumping.
>>47647930
>Those who give themselves into madness see the lovecrafian horrors as cute girls
Now I see it all
![latest[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/ReHU0z0.jpg "latest[1].jpg")
>>47647898
Conical bodies (pic related) are most likely made of regular matter because they evolved on earth and lived here.
The minds inside these bodies which are the real Great Race come from another planet/galaxy/universe and are most likely nontraditional in their make up.
Although we cant be entirely sure.
To make matter even more confusing remember that the Great Race breeds in their stolen bodies and produces new members of their race. So how the hell does that work?
>>47648523
The new bodies become vessels for other Yithians to inhabit?
>>47648523
From a strictly naturalistic viewpoint, a mind is the way it is by the structural/chemical nature of the brain that it emerges from. When the Yithians inhabit a brain/neuronbundle/whatever, they likely have to physically change it in order for their mind to exist within. If they did this via genetic manupulation, it would mean that the traits that allow for a yithian mind to exist within the parent bodies would be passed down, and the resulting child would be, uh, yithian. It also means that anyone who's body has been inhabited by the yith technically meets all the prerequisites for being a "yith," unless they genetically tweak you back, which seems unlikely, because not doing so seems appropriately horrifying.
It also means that if you had been inhabited by a yith, your children would sort of be... half yith. Mentally, at least. It also means that Conical bodies inhabited by the human who has been transferred might technically be... part human, and offspring of yith inhabiting those bodies (unless they, again, genetically de-toxed the part of their brain structure that allowed a human mind to exist therin), would be part human.
Fuck.
>>47648791
Having Half-Yith children has happened before.
Cthulhu Live: Lost Souls has them relying on that to make hosts who'd have less effect on the time stream, at least before the native genetic engineering technology would allow them to make proper constructs.
And of courseHarvey Waltersin Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.
What exactly is Azathoth
>>47649269
It's the formless progenitor of the universe. A mind with no intellect, a creator with no goal.
The entirety of existence is merely the result of its thoughtless dreaming, and it is kept in that state only by the maddening lullaby of it's servants.
>>47649369
do those servants exist in this universe?
>>47649369
Yeah, they're kind of like a mostly formless mass playing a pipe of some kind (occasionally it's an Aulos)
>>47649476
How do they know they need to keep Azathoth asleep?
>>47649476
Er, whoops. Meant to reply to >>47649401
>>47649518
Because if Azy wakes everyone dies.
>>47649518
It's not specified.
Given that when he does wake up, it is possible to send him back to sleep, that his brief awakenings can show them that the universe starts to unravel.
>>47649369
Then what is Yog-Sothoth relation with Azathoth?
Are they the same being but with a split personality?
>>47649684
Maybe, Maybe not. Yog-Sothoth is all of existence itself. He's always existed like Azathoth so it could be a possibility.
>>47649735
Very vague. Did Lovecraft have a plan in mind for both?
>>47649756
Lovecraft while being top tier never explained everything, he had a novel about Azathoth he was going to write but he never finished it.
>>47649684
No, Yog-Sothoth is different.
One likely suggestion is that Yog-Sothoth is the perimeter of the multiverse, given physical form. Its manifestation inside our reality, as a mass of spheres, is a representation of the fractal nature of reality.
There's some question if applying the term "entities" to Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth is even applicable, or if they're more deifications of natural processes.
>>47649817
Can you read this unfinished novel somewhere?
>>47649923
I always saw Yog-Sothot as omniscient, but ephemeral, and Azathoth as omnipotent, but retarded.
King of a duality type thing.
>>47649956
Well, there's many options as to what they are, what they are like, and how you portray them.
In fact, have a bunch of options crudely cut and pasted from Trail of Cthulhu.
>>47649684
A commonly accepted theory is that Yog-Sothot is the universe/multiverse. It exists simultaneously in every point of space and time because every point in space and time exists within it ("Yog-Sothot is all-in-one and one-in-all, past present and future are one in Yog-Sothot"), and is normally incapable of manifesting in our universe because that would require it to enter itself.
If Azatoth dreams up the universe, then Yog-Sothot is the dream.
>>47650111
>Nyarlathotep made up Azathoth
I actually love this one.
>>47650148
Or to go all Platonic on us, the universe is just shadows on the wall.
Yog-Sothoth is the wall.
Azathoth is the flame.
(Which actually has some fun when you consider the holographic theory of the universe)
>>47650226
That makes me cringe and smile at the same time.
>>47650271
Then my work here is done.
>>47649952
It's writen part has no relation to the big guy. I heard it was planned to be a journey of a dreamer slipping out of its boring grey world and unravelling the mysteries of the universe. In fact, It's so short I could write it here. Just a second.
>>47650444
>>47649952
Here it goes:
-----------------------Azathoth-----------------------
When age fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men; when grey cities reared to smoky skies tall towers grim and ugly, in whose shadow none might dream of the sun or of Spring's flowering meads; when learning stripped the Earth of her mantle of beauty and poets sang no more of twisted phantoms seen with bleared and inward looking eyes; when these things had come to pass, and childish hopes had gone forever, there was a man who traveled out of life on a quest into spaces whither the world's dreams had fled.
Of the name and abode of this man little is written, for they were of the waking world only; yet it is said that both were obscure. It is enough to say that he dwelt in a city of high walls where sterile twilight reigned, that he toiled all day among shadow and turmoil, coming home at evening to a room whose one window opened not to open fields and groves but on to a dim court where other windows stared in dull despair. From that casement one might see only walls and windows, except sometimes when one leaned so far out and peered at the small stars that passed. And because mere walls and windows must soon drive a man to madness who dreams and reads much, the dweller in that room used night after night to lean out and peer aloft to glimpse some fragment of things beyond the waking world and the tall cities. After years he began to call the slow sailing stars by name, and to follow them in fancy when they glided regretfully out of sight; till at length his vision opened to many secret vistas whose existance no common eye suspected. And one night a mighty gulf was bridged, and the dream haunted skies swelled down to the lonely watcher's window to merge with the close air of his room and to make him a part of their fabulous wonder.
>>47650526
(Part 2)
There came to that room wild streams of violet midnight glittering with dust of gold, vortices of dust and fire, swirling out of the ultimate spaces and heavy perfumes from beyond the worlds. Opiate oceans poured there, litten by suns that the eye may never behold and having in their whirlpools strange dolphins and sea-nymphs of unrememberable depths. Noiseless infinity eddied around the dreamer and wafted him away without touching the body that leaned stiffly from the lonely window; and for days not counted in men's calandars the tides of far spheres that bore him gently to join the course of other cycles that tenderly left him sleeping on a green sunrise shore, a green shore fragrant with lotus blossums and starred by red camalotes...
--------------------------END-------------------------
Sorry for the format, the only thing I have is a .txt where I saved it long ago.
>>47650526
>>47650552
Thank you very much for posting this
>>47650526
>>47650552
imagine if George R.R. MArtin write this much from the next GoT book and then dies
>>47650578
More work for Brian Sanderson.
>>47650526
>>47650552
Lovecraft is my favorite hack
>>47651196
So, if Lovecraft writes romantic fiction about Conan and Krull, is that technically Hack and Slash?
>>47651288
If Lovecraft wrote a book on Randolph Carter learning about Computers from Nyarlathotep it would be a Hack Hacker
>>47651379
Randolph Carter vs Shodan-Niggurath?
>>47651451
I actually want this now.
>>47651379
Lovecraft writing Starcraft.
Just to confuse the everloving fuck out of people.Actually, I think Lovecraft writing that kind of sci-fi would've been interesting. I mean, we probably wouldn't even notice that everyone's white in his future.
>>47651593
how it should be
>>47651593
>>47651606
But in Lovecraft's future, Chinese or someone else would crush the whites and take over to make it properly horrible.
>>47651593
Well, he did write (or at least rewrite and lengthen) some more standard sci-fi.
In the Walls of Eryx.
>>47651634
Some distopian Chinese overlords and a resistance of white freedom fighters.
That said, towards the end of his life he began to stop being so racist. Even regretting some of the overtones in his previous work.
Poor guy was just a scared little man in a world too big and scary for his own comprehension.
>>47651634
Ah, the Cruel Empire of Tsan Chan?
Also, it's worth noting that Australia survives relatively well for around 500 years at least.
>>47651667
So basically Flash Gordon is Lovecraftian.
>>47651634
>not Nyarlathotep's space Egyptians
Son, I am dissatisfied.
>>47651694
So ultimately we need the soundtrack to At The Mountains of Madness to be entirely made of Queen songs?
Just imagine the Shoggoth chasing Danforth and Dyer to the wonderful sound of Don't Stop Me Now.
>>47634207
Lake Vostok is spooky as to fuck.
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/02/03/missing-scientists-mystery-deepens-in-frozen-antarctica.html
>>47651780
Or Bicycle Race
>>47651835
Ooh, a good choice.
And of course Under Pressure has some somewhat horrific undertones.
Just set it in the modern era and have all the music be diegetic from a Best of Queen album.
>>47651780
I didn't know I wanted this so much, until now.
Honestly, Lovecraft movies work with a lot of soundtracks.
Imagine as Randolph Carter finally sees the abandoned city of the Gods, and that slow build-up, of him just flying there, as Claire de Lune plays.
Carter flying the mysterious being, the first few notes of CdL plays as he sees it, the mere sight of it makes him reach for it, then he realizes the distance. Anxiety catches his breath, but joy feels his heart. He thinks back on all the shit he had to do just to get here. He sees the mountains move, the monsters below, the clouds slowly parting. The cool sense of 'the Moon' calms his nerves, gets of his mount at the cliff. Throughout this whole ordeal we hear nothing but CdL. He opens the great gates, just to see ol' Nyarly infront of him. With wild imagery, and grins, throughout his body, Nyarly shows him what's up. First we get a glimmer of hope, seeing Randy's face, but it slowly just goes dim, and his expression goes dead, as he realizes what's going on, and with that CdL wraps up, and leaves us with a taste of bitter happiness. He finally got to get rid of his obsession regarding Kadath, yet it was the most heart-breaking experience finishing it.
Pretentious, as it may be, but I would love to see that happen on screen.
>>47651780
Nyarlathotep takes on a female form and she sings Killer Queen with her Cultists.
>>47651924
>I didn't know I wanted this so much, until now.
I know. It's an insidious idea, especially with Queen's amazing range.
Can't you just imagine them flying over the mountains and revealing the city of the Elder Things to Radio Gaga's almost ethereal quality. (And given the music video, appropriate)
Of course, as you say, a lot of music works with Lovecraft. Personally, with Dream Quest, I think back to the earlier threads where it was suggested as a Ghibli movie; so Joe Hisaishi's music would be a natural fit.
>>47652027
I'd be disappointed if we wouldn't get a shot of Azathoth, as Queen plays to keep it asleep.
>>47652080
The Show Must Go, on of course.
>>47652027
Wouldn't he also sing "the Great Pretender"?
Great Cthulhu obviously dresses up as a Housewife for "I want to Break Free".
>>47652133
But who would he sing to for it?
>>47652189
Yhoundeh?
>>47652266
That's actually sorta adorable
>>47652312
And we come full circle. Nyarlathotep's not a bad guy, he's just pining for the Elk Goddess.
>>47652357
No, he's complete asshole who apparently does have something else.
>>47651811
Those scientists were rekt by the Nazi remnant forces, not Shoggoths.
>>47652080
>>47652104
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t99KH0TR-J4
The song of most investgators
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jtpf8N5IDE
>>47652357
But who's attracted to a nice guy Nyarlathotep?
>>47644359
This is the most cynical thing I've ever read from the Mythos.
Most big scary things simply don't care about us. These guys seem like they would have a vested interest in keeping Man from "advancing," and we have no way to fight back.
>>47653344
Well, they want us to advance to a certain point.
After all, where do you think the Beetle race comes from?
They've been subtly manipulating humankind to progress with genetic engineering, just to make a perfect host body to survive the oncoming wars.
Think of it as like arming the Mujahideen to fight the soviets. Equiping an indigenous people to fight your battles, with no way it could backfire.
>>47653760
Just as amazing as I imagined
>>47653760
Shit, is there a full Mountains of Madness comic? Got any links to it?
Threadly Reminder that Derleth is ahothack.
>>47654485
I mean just look at him
>>47652849
Man, Queen is better than I even remembered
>>47654516
>You will never have passionate sex with Derleth and groan in a mixture of pleasure and annoyance as he takes the mystique out of it by attempting to narrate your love making as a conflict between good and evil
>>47654516
My passion for Derleth burns like the flames of Cthugha
>>47654724
But who is the evil one?
