...Anonymous Archived
/ysg/-Yog-Sothothery General
07/03/16(Sun)23:30:22 No.48100874
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>Ïa! Ïa! /ysg/!
>Hastur, the Yellow King (again) Edition
This thread is meant to inspire Lovecraftian /tg/ (like Delta Green and CoC) and discuss Lovecraft's works for inspiration along with anything else that fits into this genre or takes place in the Yog-Sothothery.
(Are you pleased now?)
>Previous Thread:
http://boards.4chan.org/tg/thread/47980422/ysgyogsothotherey-general#bottom
(I'm not including the last thread, 12 posts aren't worth linking)
The Texts of Lore that Men were not meant to know:
http://www.eldritchdark.com
http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/
>PDF Archive:
>Self Explanatory One:
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/h9qjka0i4e75t/Call_Of_Cthulhu
>Atchung! Cthulhu:
https://mega.nz/#F!ywcHkIAA!ycphEhCOkbnjOvAQ4t7TBg
__________________
>Flash Gordon's Space Opera:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LJ_beiUVa7mpeKJGPBvH2yQCMDVWXLGawz4K39Rea8Q
>Recommend things to put in the next OP
>Our threads sink into degradation, we need a shepherd.
>Cthulhu lies fapping
>Please create a new thread when the Bump Limit has been reached and we are in the Lower Pages.
>If you don't horrors beyond your comprehension will shitpost.
>>48107366
Excuse me. I'm going to kill myself.Y'golonac
So, what's your favorite Mythos entity and why? Mine is the Elder Things, because I like fallen interstellar empires generally.
>>48109420
I can't recall there names off the top of my head but the guys who live in the underground cities and have mastered technology to the point that they spend all of their time being sadistic hedonist and worshipping elder gods just because it's something they always did.
I would like to see more lore stuff with them and about them. Other then that while not a "entity" I do enjoy the various witchs and sorcerers of the setting.
>>48109555
K'n-Yan, perhaps?
What are the main differences between 6th ed and 7th ed of CoC?
For a new player which one you guys think it's a best starting point?
>>48109420
I have a soft spot for Shub-Niggurath, especially in the interpretation that she embodies life in its most primal form. I love nature, but have also a very grim or morbid view of it (screw all the talk about nature being harmonious or somehow "good"; there's only one rule in nature: survive, and survive forever, no matter what. There's beauty in nature, and a purity that I respect, but natural world is from a human point of view a horrible place), and Shub-Niggurath can be seen as representing that taken to the extreme. She's also often associated with body horror type stuff, which I also like.
...And some things associated with her could very easily fall squarely in my magical realm.
>>48110500
>And some things associated with her could very easily fall squarely in my magical realm.
You sick fuck!Me too.
Speaking of magical realms, my favorite Derleth story is "The Seal of R'lyeh" for just that reason. You will never have an Innsmouth waifu to serve Cthulhu with, why even live?
I can`t get my players hooked on CoC since I am the only weird lover.
>mfw
>>48112256
comfy t b h
>THE RACES OF MAN: THE VITRIFIED
Many schemes were hatched during the Exodus to maximize the amount of people that could be lifted off-world, from the ultimately impractical (vacuum-adapted crops) to the boring-but-necessary (a whole host of incremental improvements in rocket design) to the interestingly insane (shipping only people's heads into orbit, their bodies to be re-grown at their destinations). The most successful of these programs, ultimately, was suspended animation. Placing people into a deathless state on the ground, they could be shipped into orbit and placed in vast vaults, to be revived in the future when mankind's holdings had expanded enough to have room for all of them. There were by this time many different methods of suspended animation available, from conventional cryogenics to reduction to 'essential salts'. In this phase, however, the most common method was chemical embalming, freezing the cellular machinery of the body in place; a process known as vitrification.
All of these processes were already well-established; indeed, cryogenic freezing and vitrification were common fates for those suffering from incurable diseases. Ultimately, tens, even hundreds of millions would be shipped into space this way; only a fraction of them have been revived.
They dream.
Not even a total pause in bodily functions can quite stop the human soul from sparking; they Dream at the same rate as the rest of humanity. They form cities there; unable to wake, they form the bulk of Exodus humanity's few permanent outposts within the Dream. The few human-friendly cities of the Dream swell in numbers; there are the usual, expected frictions.
Not all who dream Dream, and such a concentration of sleeping minds calls out to certain kinds of predators. There is a war in the mind going on, a slow war, a surreal war. A war fought in the flickering of neurons and their resonances across dimensions. (cont.)
>>48115255
A human mind generally flickers in and out of sleep to fast for them to even notice; for so many, now, to be so exposed...
It is a war which none of its participants will ever remember, as, like so many dreams, it dissolves upon waking. A war which no one who is not fighting even realizes is happening. All they know is that, every so often, when they revive someone new, they just don't wake up; their body thaws perfectly, cellular machinery restarts, essential salts reconstituted- whatever the method, their mind remains blank, without a flicker of higher activity. Hearts still beat, lungs still breathe, eyes still blink, but there's nobody left at home.
Perhaps it is for the best that none of the people who fought in it shall ever remember this war.
So, what do you fine people want me to cover next?
>>48115355
>that pic
Oh shit, I think I should feed my entire Lovecraft / HR Giger and Bekainakimfolders to deep dream and see what comes out.
>>48115409
Beksinski * damn it phone
>>48115409
Be sure to show us!
>>48115409
I think I'll have a go at it myself.
>>48107366
The greatest tragedy in tabletop gaming is that Delta Green and Unknown Armies are not, and can never be, the same game.
>>48116305
Take the agency and replace the unnatural with the anthro-focused horror of UA.
>>48110500
>there's only one rule in nature: survive, and survive forever, no matter what
Well no, it's "have a lot of offspring". We've got a lot of good evidence on that.
>>48116333
>an ex-government organization whose sole job is to fuck over crazy losers
???
>>48116380
But those crazy losers have a lot of opportunities to seize crazy power and fuck up the consensus man!
>>48116333
I was thinking more like agency members who are or become powerful in consensus-oriented ways and use it to deal with beings from the human brain-gestalt.
>>48116497
That could be interesting. I still like the idea of occasionally fucking over crazy losers though.
>>48116497
*beings beyond the human brain-gestalt
Things that are part of consensus are just, like, dogs or deer or something.
>>48115355
Forgive me if you've covered this already, but what's everyday life like, and what do people do for fun/relaxation/recreation?
>>48117378
Partially covered in the doc, but it doesn't hurt to elaborate more.
>LIFE IN THE DOMES
Life after the Exodus is defined by limits. Limits in space, limits in food, limits in water. (No air tax, though. Thankfully.) The Exodus stretched every one of mankind's capabilities to its limit, and even twenty years on there remain difficulties. They are, in some cases, generous limits; the tunnels of the Moon are hardly in danger of running out of space any time in the next thousand years, Mars has real open-air farms... but there is always something that will remind you that your life depends on the continued functioning of a vast technological infrastructure.
Life is communal, verging on communistic; the continued functioning of the essential infrastructure is the business of the entire community. There are centralizing and decentralizing forces competing; the impulse for life-support to be the domain of professional bureaucracies for greater efficiency and oversight, versus the impulse towards maximized decentralization and redundancy, to limit the effects of any particular failure. In some cases, centralization is inevitable and necessary; fusion reactors are delicate and demand Ph.Ds. In others, decentralization reigns; hydroponics and living spaces tend to blend. The exact structures of infrastructure and authority vary widely from place to place. Everyone is expected to have some familiarity with the structures that keep them alive.
>BIOTECH
The Elder Things were masters of biotechnology, possibly inspired by study of their own staggering physiology. (Some have speculated that the Elder Things were themselves artificial, Von Neumanns who have long since forgot their creator. Not even the Things can say for sure; they were already starfarers by the time they could write.)Many things are partly biological, or have structures inspired by biology. The outer skins of habitats heal, obviously. (cont.)
>>48117694
Soft robots perform a wide variety of dangerous or inconvenient tasks. Snake-bots inspecting narrow pipelines, etc. (The Exodus slang term for biotech is 'soft'; 'wet' and 'meat' seem vaguely unpleasant.) Vat-grown brains, likewise, perform a great many tasks. 'Pain' sensors lace vital systems to detect malfunctions early. Most systems are in some sense cybernetic; meat and metal merge, and both pure-bio and pure-mech is relatively rare. (Pure-mech is generally more common than pure-bio, for a variety of reasons.) Metal outer coverings are generally more convenient than trying to vacuum-proof meat, and most spacesuits use oxygen-recycling moss to supplement oxygen reserves; often even /vampiric/ moss, feeding off the wearer's own energy, if the anticipated mission time is short enough that hunger is not a limiting factor.
Most soft machines don't look overtly biological. Beneath smooth white plastic/chitin iPod coatings everything looks the same.
(Aesthetics generally go for the white minimalist look when not trying to capture wholesome green plant life; a reaction against the baroque awfulness of the universe at large.)
>CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Implementation of the technological panopticon has been set back by the Exodus; CCTV cameras were low on the priority list for lift capacity. Surveillance, therefore, is HUMINT; propaganda praises those who inform on their neighbors for suspicious, possibly cultist-like behavior. Exact implementation varies; anonymous tip hotlines, Block Wardens and Neighborhood Watches empowered with limited law-enforcement authority, your local Officer Friendly; the natural tendencies of power tilt the spectrum towards 'anonymous secret police', but sometimes you might know the people who kick down your door at 3 a.m. by name. (Repeated scandals involving compromised police forces have tilted the playing field a bit in favor of transparency, but honestly not enough.) (cont.)
>>48118009
Prison is a thing of the past; a luxury of rich civilizations, to have people sitting around doing nothing for years on end and count it a punishment! Community service, ranging from 'you get all the shit jobs for a week' to 'ten years' hard labor in the asteroid mines'. Public humiliation has made a comeback, after lying fallow since medieval times; cheap and surprisingly effective. And, finally, psychiatric intervention. The medicalization of dissent has not yet reached its final conclusion, but the habitual offender may still expect the 'Clockwork Orange' treatment, drugs and direct-nerve-induction magneto rigs and subliminal messaging and stranger things, although not outright sorcery; that only makes an appearance in top-level interrogations, when knowledge is more important than lives. (To survive a mystic interrogation is a literal miracle, akin to surviving having your brain vivisected. Indeed, literal vivisection is often involved.) Such treatment is often, but not always, quite effective; they've been refining it for over a hundred years. People who go through it also usually come out somehow a bit /less/.
The final sanction is recycling, although they'll usually try to flog you off to the Mi-Go first. (They generally don't bite; they want advisors which means, although they will accept a few below-average brains simply for variety, they want brains of agile reason and penetrating insight. Not usually qualities associated with the criminal classes.)
On the 'intake' side of law enforcement, Habitual Vagrancy is now a crime. While the system is robust enough that a few 'parasites' won't collapse it, the governments-in-exile prefer to keep such things to a minimum; they pursue a policy of universal employment, whether you want a job or not.
On the other hand, most 'current' drugs (Marijuana, cocaine, heroin, etc.) are sort-of legal; using enough of them to impair your health gets you bundled off to rehab, but occasional indulgence is fine.(cont.)
>>48118263
There is an actual reason for this; better living through chemistry is better than brooding on the loss of the Earth. The government doesn't generally explicitly encourage self-medication, but many varieties of 'light' drug are trivially available over-the counter. (Hallucinogens of any sort, on the other hand, range from strictly controlled to massively illegal- expanding your mind, in this environment, tends to be lethal for yourself and others.)
Besides, most 'current' drugs are long obsolete.
On the fourth hand, trying to make meth yourself is a reprogramming/execution offense- Endangering Habitat Integrity.
>RED DISTRICTS
In such a pressure-cooker environment, many people need- demand- a way to blow off steam. Thus, the Red Districts, places of tacitly or explicitly lowered surveillance and minimum government presence, where all manner of debauchery can be indulged in. Masks are de rigueur, to avoid accidentally recognizing anyone you know as you engage in wanton sexual debauchery and massive drug use. Deaths are surprisingly uncommon for what happens, but tend to go completely unsolved when they happen. (The Red Districts are, of course, a staple in detective fiction.) Cult activity is likewise surprisingly low, as the necessary privacy for extended rituals is hard to come by; dead-drops and quick clandestine meetings are the norm, the actors identifying each other by markings on their masks.
(Again, a staple of detective fiction.)
There are, surprisingly, permanent inhabitants, who wear masks at all times and carry out the maintenance and clean-up. Rumors abound of hideous mutations and strange cult markings hidden by these never-removed masks (staple, fiction, subtype: detective) but these are just rumors; the occasional random raid by police forces has repeatedly confirmed this. So there is absolutely no need to be worried. None at all.
So, what next?
>>48118518
Is it bad I read this in Cecil Baldwin's voice?
>>48118674
Probably not.
Nyarly did nothing wrong.
>>48119024
How as human contact influenced other races? (Examples: Socially, Economically, ect.)
>>48119311
The Elder Things are at this point still largely dependent on humanity for industrial and military might; they are essentially a vassal scientific caste within the Exodus. Inextricable, at least for the near future. Although their population has increased to about three hundred from an initial population of twenty-two, these are all still juveniles. Given the average lifespan of an Elder Thing, it's a bit too early to say what, if any, long-term cultural impact on the (hopefully) resurgent Thing civilization there is, but the newborns certainly seem more comfortable with their position vis-a-vis humanity than their elders.
The Mi-Go are obtaining more metals and brains from their Yuggoth outpost than they once did, although at the cost of having to actually give things in return. (Mostly rent, actually; all the antigrav devices used in the Exodus have long since returned to their dimension of origin.) Culture... Mi-Go culture is not of a sort that /can/ be influenced by humans. Human brain-advisors, however, have certainly had an influence on their decision-making; those outposts that use human brains tend to be both more open to trade and more prone to open confrontation and violence. Just slightly, however.
The Great Race of Yith's anthropologists will be chewing over their new data for a time is only sort of an applicable concept here. However, the difficulties of trading across megayear gaps has prevented more meaningful influence.
There are fewer Deep Ones on Earth than there used to be.
>>48119538
Danke.
>>48116358
That's part of survival. Not of individual, but of species, which is the really important thing. Although not all animals go for the "lots of offspring" strategy: many bigger, long living animals instead have a small amount of offspring that take longer time to grow up.
>>48110500
>We will never have a decent thick antro Shubby
Kill me.
>>48121070
I've seen a few humanoid forms for Shubby, but pretty much all of them kind of miss the point on what she IS.
>>48119538
Fewer Deep Ones? Why?
>>48121596
There was a war after Innsmouth, which humanity eventually won after about a decade. (Won in the sense that all of their cities on the continental shelf were smashed; the Deep Ones withdrew to the deep abysses, to wait for the stars to come right and their god to rise.) Losses were bad but not crippling, primarily through starvation; the deep abysses are the deserts of the sea. Early scientific advances from the first couple of Elder Things helped immensely, of course, and the airship stayed around for decades longer since people no longer trusted sea travel as much.
>>48107366
Did someone say the KING IN YELLOW?
Spamming in a spam thred
>>48121517
Since the thread needs a bump, I might as well explain in detail what I meant. Now, I don't know what an anthropomorphised Shub-Niggurath (or a humanoid-shaped avatar of her) would look like, but there are certain key concepts associated with her that should be evident in the design, lest it feel like just the name being tacked on.
First of all, Shub-Niggurath is NOT your waifu. You don't glue horns and tentacles on a pretty girl and call it a day.
Lovecraft described her as a deity associated with fertility (perhaps fecundity would be a better word). It's been implied that she's the mother of all life, and that one day all life is destined to return to her womb.
More generally, she's often considered to embody life. Specifically, life at its most basic, primal form. Unrestrained, unbound. The urge that drives all living things to consume, grow, procreate and adapt, with no concern for suffering, death, or moral indignation inflicted in the process. Repulsive and beautiful at the same time, but always opposed to our way of civilisation (let us not forget that "civilised" man is always at war with life and nature). In effect, she's all the bad parts of nature (that is, not the tamed, managed, artificial part of nature average man knows, but the part that will eat you alive if you don't show it proper deference). She's the mother of monsters, the evil insticts of primal man, all the things our ancestors imagined when huddled around a dying fire with hungry eyes staring at them from the darkness.
>>48121656
You wrote the doc? Quite impressive mang. I was thinking about writing a few tales on a post-mythos earth bit I am afraid that I would accidentaly copy this setting.
Alas, do you heard about Cthulhu: Strange Aeons? It looked like a neat setting too.
>>48107366
Who or what is the yellow king?
>>48123809
It is a book written before Lovecraft, but was Derlethizied to become an avatar of Hastur
>>48121694
I love you Anon.>>48121694
>>48123245
>>48121517
Make it a huge vagina with teeth and tentacles.
But also make it so it's not just one of her dark young.
>>48121656
>>48123429
I would imagine it'd be relatively easy to get Destroyers to drop depth charges on specific places with no real explanation to the people aboard.
Maybe Bikini Atoll was conveniently close to a Deep Ones civilizations for some 'real' nuclear testing.
>>48125124
For a humanoid/anthropomorphic form, that alone wouldn't really work (giant tentacled vagina, while appropriate description of a lot of eldritch horrors, isn't really humanoid). The best idea I can think of for said form would be to make it look pregnant (mother of a thousand young, and all), give it some inhuman/bestial features (no "glue animal ears/tail on a girl", but features that represent the kind of things man fears in nature: taloned fingers with too many joints, mouth with way too many sharp teeth, luminous slit-pupiled eyes, etc.), and probably throw in the toothy tentacle-vagina for good measure.
The obvious problem is that you can't really make a good humanoid avatar of Shub-Niggurath without producing something that looked like it crawled out of some really weird porn, and being accused of injecting your horrible fetishes into the game (or whatever it was that you were doing).
>>48125511
Hmm, well there's a brainstorming idea.
I think with fertility and life as a motif, there's a few things that could be made. A few threads ago, there was the idea that drawing Shub-Niggurath's interest in a specific area would cause a lot of good in the short term (crop harvests booming, more livestock being born, lover's lifestyle being more fulfilling, general happiness) but then as the interest increased it would start causing things to get worse and worse (insect populations skyrocket, people start feeling maddened on full moons, sex crazy cults start working in the open). That could be a good starting point for how Shub-Niggurath could manifest in humanoid form.
>>48125511
>>48125903
The big thing is that, I don't feel that Shub-Niggurath should take on a humanoid avatar. Her children would probably be the ones to do most of the earthly work for her. Be it satyrs embedded in society, fertility cults, witches, etc. Delta Green says that a lot of New Age movements probably have ties to Shub-Niggurath.
She isn't Nyarlathotep to interact TOO much with humanity, though obviously there's a lot of room for possible ways she could do so. I'd be surprised if insects like mayflies aren't more her thing.
>>48125511
Isn't that the point of Shubby?
She is a fertility goddess.
>>48126036
I agree. She could presumably appear in a human form, considering Yog-Sothot can as well, but would probably be the least likely to do so. Yog-Sothot has the connotation with knowledge, which a fairly human concept, but Shub-Niggurath's nature in diametrically opposed to civilisation, which a human form would represent. If she manifests as something other than the standard "blob of mouths and tentacles" form, it would probably be some kind of amalgamation of various terrifying traits of different animals, or the aforementioned tentacle-vagina.
I was thinking more of if you wanted to draw an anthropomorphic Shub, or possibly a spawn of hers with humanoid form, what would it be while still being obviously Shub.
>>48125903
I was the one who suggested that, although it was supposed to get even worse, with things devolving into full body-horror mode if the cultists aren't stopped in time (people giving birth to abominations, everybody's getting super-cancer, etc.).
I also had another thought that ties with this: what if, in the same way Yog-Sothot IS space-time, Shub-Niggurath IS life? That life as we know it is actually the parts of Shub-Niggurath that intersect with "angled space", individual organisms effectively being like cells in our bodies? That would fit with some of the stuff HPL wrote, and potentially allow for great horror scenarios (what if, when proper rituals are used to summon her, Shub-Niggurath could "assume direct control" of any organism, twisting it into her avatar?).
>>48126408
This idea is and I quote from the great Oscar Wilde "Dope as fuck."
>>48126255
>nature in diametrically opposed to civilisation
The civilization vs. nature dichotomy doesn't seem to fit in with the Mythos to me. It implies that man is somehow heightened or set apart by agriculture and the construction of cities, which is out-of-step with the existential nihilism prevalent elsewhere. No matter what lies you tell yourself, you will still be an animal, still nature red in tooth and claw- that seems much more in line with the Mythos as a whole.
>>48127987
It could also be interpreted in the nihilistic way of saying that at some point, you are aware enough to know that everything you do is meaningless and pointless. Animals can't truly grasp that idea, I don't think. There is always the idea that learning terrible secrets means you are smart enough to glimpse some sort of understanding, and wish you didn't.
The end idea is that an ant is to a human, what a human is to an elder god. We can see ant civilizations and recognize that they have some form of society, but in the end they are simply ants and we have no way to impart any of our real knowledge to them.
>>48127987
I was more thinking of the fact that to set up and maintain our civilisation, we have to oppose nature. Cutting down forests for farmland and building materials, domestication of animals, killing dangerous animals (or at least keeping them away from people), fighting diseases, and protecting ourselves from elements. A civilisation, by virtue of existing, imposes "order" (from our point of view) on nature. So it wouldn't make much thematic sense for a being of Nature to wear the trappings of civilisation.
>>48120540
Well, a lot of viable offspring. Ones that reproduce. Ones that end up successfully propagating on their own. Survival is just a means to that end.
>>48125165
>deep ones in bikini bottoms
I feel like there's no way to make this a plot point without it devolving into spongebob jokes.
>>48128873
except by this definition that's not opposing nature. That's simply the elimination of threats and the securing of food and safe places to breed and raise young, it's the exact same goals as every other species on this planet, the fact we're good at it doesn't mean the goal is fundamentally different.
If an Olympic sprinter and a toddler have a foot race, it's still a foot race.
>>48129602
And then there's the question: are humans the Olympic sprinter in this analogy, or the toddler? Having the intelligence to piece together eldritch lore and summon an Outer God to Earth is not a survival trait.
>>48129673
>having the intelligence to piece together eldritch lore isn't a survival trait
It actually might be; let's assume that every species eventually dies out, let's also assume that species which are more advanced live significantly longer (great race of yith, elder things etc) if a species never develops the ability to enter the universal stage then it'll probably die out in a pretty short time span like most animals, among those which can become more advanced one of two things happens, either they become very powerful and survive much longer than they normally would or they destroy themselves and shorten their existence. However as we already established the normal lifespan of a species isn't too long in the grands scheme of things meaning that the penalty for failure is comparatively minor whereas the reward for success is massive, even assuming that there's a 99% failure rate, it still might be considered worth it.
Unless you're literally summoning an outer god in which case I reckon 110% lethality is probably a conservative estimate
Putting Lovecraftian things into Deep Dream is my new favorite thing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiVUXCp8_jo
Reminder that Cthulhu has nothing to do with the oceans or water whatsoever.
>>48131676
Derleth saw it as a water elemental of sorts.
>>48131676
So is Earth like a prison for Cthulhu because 2/3's of the Earth is water.
>>48118518
I'd love to see more about interplanetary relationships and the major power blocs.
>>48133985
Yes. That's pretty explicitly stated in the original story isn't it?
Being so far underwater stifles Cthulhu's ability to psychically communicate with his subjects.
>>48134678
Relationships with different species are covered in their respective sections, so
>GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
The majority of Exodus humanity are governed by the 'governments-in-exile', which are the direct successors to the old Earthly governments. However, their structure and relationships to each other have been dramatically transformed by the Exodus and the events leading up to it. All of the Exodus (legally speaking, all of humanity, but this is obviously unenforceable) is subject to the Dresden Compact; starting as a sorcerous arms-limitation treaty, the increasing prevalence of rogue states seeking sorcerous lore saw it grow into an international army, nuclear-armed and terrible; the Exodus saw it morph, finally, into a true world government. Briefly. Several worlds, now. While each nation retains control of its own affairs, the Dresden Compact binds them to a single international law; while national militaries still exist, they are under a single international command. In theory, all of humanity is finally bound to a single goal.
In practice?
In practice, it's still mostly true, actually. War, of any kind, is a losing game when you're breathing off the same life-support. The thriving spirit of internationalism created by cooperation in the Exodus has yet to fade; the mixing of races into the same refugee-habs has reinforced it. (There were debates over whether or not to try and keep ethnic and language groups together, to increase cohesion, or deliberately mix groups to try and create a single human race; in the end, the decision was made by the moment-to-moment exigencies of planetary evacuation- a bit of both.)
This does not mean there is no international rivalry, but it tends to get sublimated into other pursuits- scientific, economic, exploration.
And, occasionally, espionage and blackmail. Absent the ability to shoot at each other, heated relations tend to translate to high-impact attempts at altering the political process of their enemies.
>>48135691
The organs of the Dresden Compact itself have remained mostly above such things, but at great effort; attempts to sneak spies and double-agents into the mechanisms of the Compact are constant. The Compact's batteries of psychological screens, random loyalty tests, and occasional brain scans are touted as mainly being aimed at combating possible alien influence, but their role in rooting out residual national loyalties is an open secret.
Internal power blocks are, in no particular order: U.S. and close allies (UK, Panama, Philippines, etc.), China and Japan, the Soviet Union, the Communist International (most emphatically separate from the Soviet Union, mostly African and South American), the Commonwealth of Europe, and the Dresden Compact itself, which effectively controls the governments and populations of many third-world countries unable to get their own national patron or create their own evacuation program.
Then there are the inter-planetary tensions; this is mostly intra-national, as nations with colonies spread across different bodies struggle to maintain a cohesive identity, and mostly fail. New planetary identities are also forming- 'Martian' vs. 'American', for instance. The age of the government-in-exile is drawing to an end, but slowly. It will be a generation yet.
>>48136041
Fucking Black Magic Wielding Supercommies...
has /tg/ ever made an eldritch god?
>>48110500
>there's only one rule in nature
You anthrocentric ignorants always come out to shit things up. Nature has no rules, only trends. It also encompasses a hell of a lot more than just "living things untouched by man".Azathoth is better than shubby, imo
>>48110500
Nature is harmonius, the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder and fornication
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xQyQnXrLb0
>>48110500
>>48139077
That guy's got a very apt desription of natural world (and it would describe Shub-Niggurath well, too). The part about realising that the universe is not as neat and orderly as we like to think is pretty much the basis of Lovecraftian fiction (although you can say the Lovecraftian universe is actually quite well ordered, it's just that humans gnerally have no idea how it really works, and have massively overstated their own place in it).
>>48138283
I've tried to start it a couple times in different iterations of this thread and always got little to no response. If you'd like to have a go I could post the advice for doing so again
Now, for something moderately different.
>WEAPONS OF HUMANITY: THE DEMI-SHOGGOTH
One of the first fruits of cooperation with the revived Elder Things, any description of the Demi-Shoggoth must begin with what it is not. It is not a Greater Shoggoth, that last invention of the Elder Things. It does not have the same powers; the engines of creation do not churn within its core. It does not grow thick armor plating when faced with artillery fire, or ablative shells when faced with flamethrowers; it does not grow heat-ray eyes to strike down attackers from afar, or stretch itself into a thin wire net, to slowly, unnoticeably wrap around the legs and necks of unwary explorers who stray into its domain; it does not coat itself and its environment in vantablack, rendering itself virtually invisible, or belch acid fog or diamond needles or any of the other horrible, horrible stratagems the Greater Shoggoth has adapted when faced with a genuine threat to its existence. (Shoggoths are quite intelligent, but only when they need to be; once the immediate problem has been solved, they sink back into sub-sentient bliss. Killing one requires total surprise and overwhelming firepower.)
The Demi-Shoggoth merely eats everything organic in sight until it is killed, and that is often quite enough.
They were deployed in the latter days of the Winter War, as area-denial and terror weapons; sealed, hibernating, in steel canisters and dropped like bombs out of aircraft, to awaken when the canister shatters against the ground. (Without bones to break, a parachute would have been redundant.) Dropped in an industrial area, it would render the factories unusable until it was hunted down; dropped on the fields and it would consume the harvest (and the farmers); dropped on a military base... well, the pattern is clear.
(cont.)
>>48140239
It was a horrible thing, close to the ultimate expression of unrestricted bomber warfare. (They also saw more limited use in tunnel-fighting in later colonial wars.) Although later models of Demi-Shoggoth were more controllable, (mostly) responding to simple commands, their prime use was always indiscriminate slaughter.
Killing one generally required more than the simple application of napalm; fire applied to the outer skin would kill eventually, but it took time to cook all the way through. High explosives, to splatter it into manageable chunks, followed by bathing the smears in fire. (This is also the method for killing a Greater Shoggoth; the difference is that a Greater Shoggoth will never give you the opportunity to reload.)
The Demi-Shoggoth is almost never used in these modern times; a lack of appropriate targets more than any moral scruple. Still, thousands of them wait in their vaults in their long lonely orbits, waiting for the day when indiscriminate slaughter is once more needed.
>>48140631
Anyone taken a look at Cthonian Highways? Is it any good?
Does anyone here have the 5E homebrew stuff that was posted a while ago? It had different warlock pacts and some monsters. I forgot to save it when I saw it
>>48143448
Check near the top of the previous thread (linked in the OP).
>>48140301
Can we get a general timeline of major events? Maybe starting with the Antarctic expedition or the bombing of Devil Reef.
The prison colonies of 18th and 19th Century Australia are justly feared throughout the British Empire as places of unparalleled suffering and torment. The refuse of the Empire are sent here to serve out prison terms in a land half a world away from “civilisation”. A world that, to European eyes, seems thoroughly alien.
But, few among the white-skinned invaders know just how many secrets lurk within this ancient land. For countless generations the indigenous men and women have lived in perfect balance with the timeless forces that haunt Australia; but now, just a decade or so after the arrival of the British colonists, their ability to hold those powers in check is about to fail. And while horrors long-resident are poised to awaken, dark-hearted white men have also brought their own horrors to Australia in the form of terrifying cosmic gods and occult creatures.
This is a sourcebook designed to allow Call of Cthulhu Keepers and players to run scenarios and campaigns set in the penal colonies of early Australia. It particularly targets the historical period from 1795 to 1810, a time in which law and order played second-fiddle to greed and corruption. This was the depraved era which led ultimately to Australia’s first (and only) military uprising: the Rum Rebellion!
Contained within this book are historical notes on the era, character templates for investigators from all walks of life (indigenous, convicts, military, free settlers), weapons and equipment, and detailed gazetteers for Sydney, Parramatta and other settlements. Also included are details of cults & Mythos entities in the colonies, a full introductory scenario and a plentiful assortment of scenario seeds.
This detailed and lavishly illustrated 96-page sourcebook is the first all-original Call of Cthulhu title from Cthulhu Reborn, and the first new Lovecraftian material written for the Australian setting in almost two decades.
https://mega.nz/#!zwMkzDTA!HZBwIL8jba65AMASEC3UHjCtOerj47JOKrgrHGC-biA
From the Patriots' raid on the necromancer Joseph Curwen to the Special Forces' assault on Leng in 2007, this unique document reveals the secret and terrible struggle between the United States and the supernatural forces of Cthulhu. In this war, immortal cultists worship other-dimensional entities and plot to raise an army of the dead. Incomprehensible undersea intelligences infiltrate and colonize American seaports, and alien races lurk beneath the ice of Antarctica and high in the mountains of Afghanistan. It is only through constant vigilance and violence that the earth has surived. Also included are threat reports describing the indescribable - humanity's deadliest foes serving Cthulhu and the other Great Old Ones. Strange times are upon us, the world is changing, and even death may die - but, until then, the war continues.
https://mega.nz/#!KkF20CYY!4h74Wm-P2QBvBXrZ47wBdJ_SSxabeC4vAlh2s2R00ag
>>48144071
Holy shit, thanks.
>>48143707
I have a rough timeline, going something like this:
-In the middle of WWI, Herbert West obtains government support and funding for his experiments in resurrection and regeneration.
-Depth-charging of Innsmouth colony; survivors disperse to other colonies. Plans for revenge are hatched.
-Starkweather-Moore expedition returns from Antartica, with a single live Elder Thing. Initial attempts at secrecy last only a few weeks; the revelation of an ancient, technologically-advanced civilization predating humanity results in denouncements of a hoax, religious extremism, and a few minor riots.
-The Second Starkweather-Moore expedition sets out almost immediately from the United States, followed closely by British, Japanese, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Argentine, etc. etc. etc. expeditions. Most of these are hasty and ill-prepared, and some will meet grizzly fates even before getting to the Mountains of Madness.
-Ships begin disappearing. This is initially chalked up to unusually severe storms; the accounts of the occasional raving survivor do not make it to people in the know about the Innsmouth Raid for several months.
-The right reports reach the right people; clandestine operations begin trying to locate other Deep One colonies within the United States, generally under the guise of various public-health initiatives. One is found almost immediately in Florida.
-After several months of this invisible war, secrecy (already increasingly tenuous) finally collapses entirely when the Deep Ones escalate to attacking coastal communities. Panic rocks the nation. The president is impeached for trying to wage a war in total secrecy from the American people. Shipping drops off to nearly nothing for fear of attacks; airship travel surges, helped by the fact that the Hindenburg disaster never made it past page 7. (Wouldn't be a proper alternate history without airships everywhere.)
(cont.)
>>48145942
-A Deep One colony is discovered in Scotland; the Deep War goes global. The Great Depression grows deeper with the collapse of global trade; communism and fascism sweep globe.
-Deep Ones begin using summoned entities to attack coastal towns; general flight from the coast. Certain old books in the restricted section of the Miskatonic get a look in.
-Human sorcerous weapons programs, with Elder Thing aid, begin bearing fruit; beginning with de-summoning rituals. Dr. Armitage suddenly becomes a very important person.
-Mid-1930s: Deep War begins drawing to a close. Despite all the hysteria, it was mainly a low-intensity conflict, with both Deep Ones and humanity lacking the tools to do crippling damage to their opponent. (While terrifying, the Deep One's summoned weapons were few and far between, and certainly not world-enders.) With most of their presence on the continental shelves near major nations now subject to depth-charging with advances in sonar, the Deep Ones withdraw to the lightless abysses. Sporadic combats would continue until the Exodus, but the major fighting was over.
-General world reaction is an intense swing towards traditional religion and values; sorcerous research grinds almost to a halt. Certain black projects continue, especially in Germany.
-By now, seven Elder Things have been successfully excavated; the excavation site is becoming almost semi-permanent. Tensions are high between the national teams, as mastery of the sorcerous sciences is coming to be seen as essential to national glory. The Shoggoths remain in their caves.
-Despite Herbet Wests' death, research continues; emergency medicine in particular leans heavily on the techniques he pioneered to sustain life until more conventional treatments can be made.
>>48146415
-Years pass in relative peace; people, previously unaware of their ancestry, continue to feel the pull to the sea. Many of these people remain in partial contact with the land; a 'hybrid culture' which owes more to humanity than the Deep Ones begins to form.
-Despite the general freeze on boundary-pushing, the value of Elder Thing knowledge becomes more and more obvious; the Antarctic excavations become a site of strategic importance. In the Southern Ocean, destroyer flotillas menace each other; the conflict becomes inexorably bound with other national rivalries in other theaters. Alliance blocs form and dissolve.
-Somewhere between 42 and 45.Franz Ferdinand is assassinatedReported exchange of gunfire between a French and German cruiser; events spiral out of control; the Winter War begins.
Now, the Winter War is still nebulous and will likely continue to be nebulous, but here are the salient points:
-The initial stages of the war- about six months- are primarily naval and colonial. For those major combatants that shared land borders, this period is a time of skirmishes and probes. Nobody is yet sure if this will be the Big One, or if they want it to be the Big One.
-The United States is going through an isolationist and Christian-fundamentalist stage and stays out for the first half of the war; Congress isn't entirely convinced that the Elder Things aren't some sort of Satanic trick and don't want more of them. (Real cults would be persistently conflated with 'Satanism' in the popular imagination up into the sixties, in the U.S. and elsewhere.)
-Much like the original WWII, the Winter War consisted of several distinct theaters only sort of connected to each other by the identity of one or two of the combatants.
(cont.)
>>48146846
-Initial stages of the war had little use of sorcerous weaponry, increasing over time; from the use of the reanimated dead as shock troops (another legacy of Herbert West) to, eventually, monstrosities like the Demi-Shoggoth.
-The German fascist leadership was absolutely riddled with cults; nearly every escalation in the use of sorcerous warfare was initiated by the Germans, finally going completely, utterly, and obviously insane with the use of mass necromancy and summoning hideous hybrids- precursors to the later 'divine warrior project.' This appalls and alienates even their allies, and from this point it's essentially Germany (and a few other equally compromised nations) vs. The World.
-It is at this point that the United States comes out swinging with nukes. It takes far more than two to end the war.
-Most of Germany and large parts of the Soviet Union are rendered essentially uninhabitable by necromantic residue and fallout. "Black blight from the Rhine to the Urals" is an exaggeration, but it captures the essence.
-The First Dresden Compact, an arms-control treaty, is signed.
-Sorcerous research recovers from its inter-war slump and then some. Antarctic excavations resume under direct Compact control; increased Shoggoth activity raises concern, but does not interfere with the excavations.
-First simple examples of biotechnology begin hitting market.
-The Cold War never entirely takes off, with much more important concerns looming; new communist regimes, without the threat of American intervention, feel much less compelled to seek Soviet aid, and the Soviets are less capable of giving it.
-A summoning in the Congo marks the beginning of a new age of terror. International politics snarl attempted responses; thousands die before a response can be organized.
(cont.)
>>48107402
Awww, can't find the song they did about him anymore.
>>48142031
Just downloaded all the .pdfs and shit for free since it's still in alpha testing, so I can drop the important ones here, if you want.
It's still incomplete, so I won't have everything.
>>48147207
-In response to the inadequacies exposed by the incident, the Second Dresden Compact, a U.N.-like organization with a mandate to suppress cult activity and its own independent military and nuclear force, is formed.
-This is the beginning of what is sometimes (hyperbolically) known as the 'Century of War', as various non-state actors and rogue states attempt to acquire and use eldritch superweapons. The Dresden Compact is very busy through this time period.
-First huldra created.
-With an increasing number of human-descended Deep One hybrids, large-scale exploitation of sea resources begins.
-Early 1960s: Certain sensitive individuals begin to dream of death and freedom. Connections are drawn to reports of a 'mass hysteria' in the late 1920s, presumed at the time to be connected to the Deep War and associated panics.
-Investigation of reports of UFOs leads to contact with the Mi-Go; the series of communications which follow perhaps do not deserve the term 'treaty', but protocols for further contact are established.
-Shortly afterward, the Great Race of Yith chooses to reveal itself.
-Late 1960s; first initial calculations of Cthulhu's rise are made, as rates of related madness slowly increase. First tentative inter-dimensional explorations are made, looking for a final fallback position; few explorers return.
-Early 1970s: cultism explodes. Mass insurgencies across the globe as Cthulhu stirs in his sleep, reaching a crescendo in 1973.
-Cthulhu rises, is repeatedly nuked and stranger, and goes back to sleep. Cult activity dies back to a low simmer, leaving tens of millions dead in its wake.
-After a series of tumultuous debates, the Dresden Compact determines that a third rising will almost certainly not be survivable, and decides on extraterrestrial colonization as the best course of action.
-1980: first men to deliberately walk on the actual, physical moon and return.
-Planning for the Exodus begins.
>>48147522
That seems like as good an endpoint as any.
Well, that was kind of exhausting, and I'm not sure of the quality; feedback of any sort is always appreciated. So, what next?
>>48147457
Fuck it, here's the main pdf
>>48144071
I'm guessing this is a separate thing from Delta Green?
>>48147537
Is all this part of the space opera?
>>48149014
Yes it is. Someone asked for a general timeline, I provided a general timeline. Very general.
>>48131676
>SACRED OIL FORT
Did they move Bakersfield north, or is that supposed to be Sacramento?
I just got back from a tropical vacation, and I have an idea for a CoC scenario. How about the PC's are strangers together on a tropical cruise, but some sort of horror starts killing everyone on board and strands them in the middle of the Pacific? If they escape the ship they'll have to survive on a sparse island chain populated by unnatural wildlife and cannibal cultists. My biggest problem is that I can't think of a non-contrived way of them escaping. Steal a boat or plane that the primitive cannibals just happen to have kept in working order? Strike a deal with a sentient shantak?
>>48149125
If I may give a suggestion, instead of making everybody crazy in the far-future earth, why not just leave it post-apocalyptic but with people still somewhat sane?
Overall, fuggin great setting, the post not-WW2 Germany sounds like a nice place to set adventures to weirder campaings. Btw, which system do you recommend? Coc, ToC..?
>>48151316
I was working on a CoC Dark Ages scenario a while ago with a sort of similar premise. The PCs just ended up managing to dig in enough to get a small settlement up and running but I doubt the PCs in your scenario would have enough manpower to pull that off.
Maybe if the island is somewhere inhabited by the Men of Leng and the island the PCs found is actually somewhere in the Dreamlands. I would explain the unearthly fauna and give a more interesting escape route than "keep trying to flag down a plane"
>>48151389
I must admit, I don't actually know much about the different systems; I enjoy thinking about RPGs more than I do playing them. However, if you must have a recommendation, I was thinking GURPS- plug in biotech, cyberpunk, space, etc. modules to handle the 'space opera' side, and the inevitable CoC supplements to handle the Lovecraft side. Not exactly an elegant solution, but it would work.
As to the other point, Tsan-Chan kind of counts?
>>48151665
I like that! Maybe their final goal is sneaking into a temple and running through a portal to the waking world while it's open for a nightly ritual.
>>48151942
Another good thing is that the Men of Leng are usually followed around by a cult of cannibalistic humans so you can have a threat the PCs can actually have a chance of beating in a stand up fight before you whip out the big guys.
I haven't looked at it yet but I hear Sense of the Slight of Hand Man has some really good material on the Dreamlands.
Trying to think up lovecraftian city names for a location near Arkham anyone have any spooky names?
>>48152542
Just give it real New England names.
Eldritch Doot.
>>48155571
/ysg/ loves its Servitors of the Outer Gods.
How much of Lovecraft is fetishes?
>>48156152
Lovecraft himself? None, the dude was seriously phobic of that kinda thing. Or regular sex. Or women. Or other people. No chance of fetishy stuff.
/tg/'s reading? The magical realm generators are charged by a wider range of shit than a lasgun, it's irrelevant.
>>48156224
>the dude was seriously phobic of that kinda thing. Or regular sex. Or women.
He was married, and his wife is quoted as saying that he "performed" quite well in bed, and read extensively on the subject of sex before marriage to make sure that he could do so.
>>48156321
>and his wife is quoted as saying that he "performed" quite well in bed
Citation please?
>>48156611
“adequately excellent lover”
Sonia H. Davis, “Memories of Lovecraft: I,” The Arkham Collector, No. 4, Winter 1969
>>48156611
>HPL had read up on his husbandly duty, and he was more than adequate in his performance.
http://www.hplovecraft.com/study/articles/hpl-sex.aspx
Seems like I misremembered though, he was definitely squeamish about it. That article's pretentious, but a pretty interesting read.
Is it a good or bad thing Nyarlathotep is rather obscure to mainstream audiences?
>>48147681
Yeah nothing to do with DG. Osprey is a publishing company which does a whole pile of military history books on all sorts of subjects for nearly forty years now. Recently - for whatever reason - they created a "Dark Osprey" line which produces books on obviously fictional subjects but does so in the standard Osprey format. I thought some folks here might like it for inspiration.
>>48146846
Franz Ferdinand survives WWI? What triggered it, then?
>>48157140
That's a joke.(Obviously it was /Zombie/ Franz Ferdinand that got assassinated.
>>48156731
The anime that had Nyarlathotep as a little girl as main character probably has had some effect on public knowledge of Nyarlathotep. But then again, I don't know how accurate the show was to the mythos, as I found the premise rather repulsive. It might've been very misinforming thus making the real Nyarlathotep even more obscure.
As for your actual question though. Why should it be either good or bad? For people who aren't into the mythos isn't it simply inconsequential?
>>48157166
Hard to tell what's a joke and what's not in a discussion about an alternate history.
>>48157179
More just Nyarly never showing up in mainstream media often.
He simply is a great character who doesn't get used a lot and if he got that sort of attention upon him would it make him... Defanged like Cthulhu.
Yo /ysg/, sometime in the next few months I want to run a kinda village-whodunnit in my PF campaign with some Lovecraftian twist. How do ease into the horror on vigilant players who are prone to cast various Detects as cantrips all day every day, while giving them sufficient routes out?
>>48155924
Look at the little guys there, dooting on their flutes! They're just so cute! I wish I had a little Servitor following me around playing background music.
>>48157529
You can! Just sell your soul soul to Nyarlathotep and call it a day with your new friend.
>>48157399
Start off by just making it a friendly idyllic town and drag in occultism as you discover more about the townsfolk. Don't even have the Cultists be malicious, have them think that they're doing the right thing.
>>48157599
I wonder what Nyarlathotep does with souls anyway? He is known to give people eldritch knowledge in exchange for signing abook and pledging their soul to him (or Azatoth, but there's quite little difference there). But since humans are less than ants to the Outer Gods, I can't imagine him having much use for human souls.
I bet he just takes them because he's a dick and knows we generally value our souls.
>>48156152
None of it, really.
He mostly just pandered to his own phobias. I don't think he got off on it or anything.
>>48156224
To be fair, he had a really fucked up childhod.
After he got a taste of the less fucked up world he ended up with a wife, had friends and stopped being a /pol/ak.
>>48158220
I like to imagine he pulls them apart and turns them into POW/Magic Points that he later enchants into magical items or grants to his servants. Or maybe grants them new physical bodies which he twists and tortures into the warped forms of his servitors.
>>48161488
>Sign your soul over to Nyarlathotep
>Become Servitor
>Doot eternally
I see nothing wrong with this plan.
On an unrelated note, I updated the 5th edition Lovecraftian homebrew thing (addesd bestiary entries, as well as stats for playable ghouls because those are probably the closes you can get to a suitable PC race in the Mythos, as much as I'd be tempted to make an Elder Thing wizard or something). Unless I can come up with more spells (read: somebody has some good suggestions because I can't seem to come up any), this is starting to approach a stage where I should check it for typos, add a cover picture, and add it to my Mega.
>>48157179
>I don't know how accurate the show was to the mythos
"haiyore nyaruko-san"? Some of the character names were similar to mythos names. That's pretty much it.
>>48162201
There's a whole bunch of little references that show the writers actually were very familiar with the Mythos (and the CoC roleplaying game), but yeah, the show itself has as much to do with Lovecraft as Evangelion with christianity (that is, nothing, they just used some names and concepts).
Anyone got Pulp Cthulhu pdf? My players are too dumb to investigate and get bored easily, so I am searching for alternatives. Also, in the same line, Cthulhu Achtung has more action? I never bothered readingbecause of the evil nazis
>>48140176
Not the same anon, but I'd like to.
>>48162772
yay, it's very simple, take the three concepts which scare you the most (try and use ideas or traits rather than literal things, it works better), roll them into one entity and then exaggerate that entity until it's dangerous enough to wipe out life on earth. I look forward to your response.
Eldritch Bump.
Also, any comments on >>48161634
? Some changes I should make?
>http://www.thebadguyswin.com/2015/12/wtf-dd-cthulhu-90s-solo-project-the-tone-out-of-space/
HARD TICKET TO BAGHDAD FINALE WHEN?
>>48165708
Are things like the star vampire statted elsewhere?
