Thursday 3 October 2024

The Father of Cryptozoology...


I am still hip deep in cataloguing a bunch of books for a colleague who’s going to the Sydney Rare Book Fair at the end of October. Working my way through the material I unearthed this gem and immediately had some X-Files flashbacks.

Bernard Heuvelmans (Introduction by Gerald Durrell; Richard Garnett, trans.; Monique Watteau, illus.), On the Track of Unknown Animals, Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1959.

Second impression: octavo; hardcover, full cloth with gilt spine titles; 558pp., top edges dyed black, with a monochrome frontispiece, 30 plates and many illustrations likewise. Minor wear; a little shaken; text block edges spotted, top edge dusted; offset to the endpapers; spotting to the preliminaries and around the plates. Price-clipped dustwrapper is rubbed and edgeworn with a few marks; spine panel sunned and extremities lightly chipped; now professionally protected by non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good.

Bernard Heuvelmans is considered to be the “Father of Cryptozoology” due mostly to the release of this book. It’s a loose piece of wishful thinking that establishes itself on the premise that, if we can re-discover some creatures that were thought extinct, then might there not be more such critters out there that we haven’t spotted yet? He then takes the next step – taking a line from Charles Fort – that perhaps we are seeing relict animals in the wild, it’s just that tales about them are taken as myths, or folklore, and are being discredited out of hand by the scientific community. At the time of his writing, the Coelacanth had been found and the Komodo Dragon had just been identified, so Heuvelmans decided that a wholesale revision of the animal kingdom’s catalogue was warranted.

What follows between these covers is part truth and part pixie-dust. Heuvelmans roams the planet creating ‘what if…?’ scenarios to cover a range of beasts, and their possible survival, with whimsical drawings and dreamy prose. He covers giant humanoids, sea serpents, riverine monsters, mermaids, and a whole slew of the cryptid animalia which populates the tabloid newspaper realm. Here’s a particularly relevant section concerning the Mythos:


Other plates show the infamous yeti scalp of the Pangboche Monastery which has been repeatedly debunked as being stitched together from yak remains, but I’m particularly enamoured of the sketch that introduces this section. While claiming to be a “reconstruction based upon all available evidence”, it displays more storytime drama and whimsy than it does scientific accuracy. Wherever photographic detail is not available, Heuvelmans turns to this type of fantasy to push his ideas.

And sometimes he tries to sell the reader an outright fake. The frontispiece of the text contains the following image:

It’s not clear whether Heuvelmans was behind this faked image or if he’s been duped along with many others. The issue here is that this is not a man-sized anthropoid photographed after being shot by big game hunters in the jungle. It is in fact a spider monkey, propped up on a footlocker by means of a twig and relying on an absence of scale references to sell the picture as some kind of Bigfoot creature. The original, uncropped, image can be found floating about and clearly shows that this poor mishandled beast was probably only two-feet tall at best, when seen with its slayers standing nearby. Heuvelmans – to give him the benefit of the doubt – obviously believed that the image was real, or he wouldn’t have been so brazen as to stick it at the start of his book; the fact that he got someone of the standing of Gerald Durrell to pen an Introduction to the work shows that maybe he wasn’t alone in having been fooled. Unless, of course, he did know and just didn’t care – a lot of shonkery was possible in pre-Internet days.

In the final analysis, this book shows that, in the 1950s through to the 1980s, a lot of pseudo-scientific publishing appeared and much of it was coming from Europe. It seems that, having been translated from French or German, such works developed a kind of legitimate sheen for the English-speaking market: ‘Well, golly! If they took the trouble to translate it, it must be real!’ This is the case with Erich von Däniken, Marcel F. Homet and, whether by accident or design, Bernard Heuvelmans. This phenomenon isn’t new: in Victorian days, evangelical Creationist preachers and astrological doomsayers used to gain credence simply by putting their assertions into print; the ‘translation cachet’ (if we can call it that) is simply the extension of an old game. In the final analysis, what we’re seeing here are publishers making bank, not any kind of scientific rigour.

And certainly, Heuvelmans wasn’t afraid of raking in cash, given that he released a sequel soon afterwards:

Bernard Heuvelmans (Richard Garnett, trans.; Alika Watteau, illus.), In the Wake of Sea-Serpents, Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1968.

First English edition: octavo; hardcover, full cloth with gilt spine titles; 645pp., with 32 monochrome plates, maps and many illustrations likewise. Minor wear; a little shaken; text block edges spotted with some minor marks; top edge dusted; light offset to the endpapers. Price-clipped dustwrapper is rubbed and edgeworn with a few minor marks; now professionally protected by non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good.

In this follow-up, he narrows his focus to marine cryptids and lake monsters, combing through the available legendry and fuzzy photos while berating the scientific community for trampling the evidence in their haste to disprove what everyone obviously – obviously! – knows to be true. It’s a subtle and slightly bewildering little mental two-step process that’s as fascinating to read as it is infuriating.

*****

Copies of both these works are available, print-on-demand, through all the usual outlets, and occasionally a diligent rummager might turn up a secondhand version. If you are interested in either of the two volumes presented here, get in touch and I will point you in the direction of my colleague who has them for sale.

Saturday 14 September 2024

Alexander Wilson on the Whippoorwill

“In the spring after this event Old Whateley noticed the growing number of whippoorwills that would come out of Cold Spring Glen to chirp under his window at night. He seemed to regard the circumstance as one of great significance, and told the loungers at Osborn’s that he thought his time had almost come.

‘They whistle jest in tune with my breathin’ naow,’ he said, ‘an’ I guess they’re gittin’ ready to ketch my soul. They know it’s a-goin’ aout, an’ dun’t calc’late to miss it. Yew’ll know, boys, arter I’m gone, whether they git me er not. Ef they dew, they'll keep up a-singin’ an’ laffin’ till break o’ day. Ef they dun’t they'll kinder quiet daown like. I expeck them an’ the souls they hunts fer hev some pretty tough tussles sometimes.’

On Lammas Night, 1924, Dr Houghton of Aylesbury was hastily summoned by Wilbur Whateley, who had lashed his one remaining horse through the darkness and telephoned from Osborn’s in the village. He found Old Whateley in a very grave state, with a cardiac action and stertorous breathing that told of an end not far off. The shapeless albino daughter and oddly bearded grandson stood by the bedside, whilst from the vacant abyss overhead there came a disquieting suggestion of rhythmical surging or lapping, as of the waves on some level beach. The doctor, though, was chiefly disturbed by the chattering night birds outside; a seemingly limitless legion of whippoorwills that cried their endless message in repetitions timed diabolically to the wheezing gasps of the dying man. It was uncanny and unnatural - too much, thought Dr Houghton, like the whole of the region he had entered so reluctantly in response to the urgent call…”

I’m in the process of cataloguing a small but eminently desirable collection of antique books for a client and my eye was caught by a nice, three-volume set of Alexander Wilson’s American Ornithology; or, The Natural History of the Birds of the United States, later amended by Prince Charles Lucien Bonaparte, and with the Notes and “Life of Wilson” by Sir William Jardine. This is the undated 1877 London edition, which can nevertheless be accurately dated by the publishing company’s name, which was changed in 1878. The catalogue description of the book is as follows:

Alexander Wilson & Charles Lucien Bonaparte, American Ornithology; or, The Natural History of the Birds of the United States, with The Illustrative Notes and Life of Wilson by William Jardine, in Three Volumes, Cassell Petter & Galpin, London, nd. (c.1877).

Three volumes, octavo; hardcover, quarter-bound in black morocco and red cloth boards with gilt spine titles and decorations and black endpapers; 1,451pp. [408pp. + 495pp. + 540pp.] (+8pp. of adverts), mostly unopened, top edges gilt, with an engraved portrait frontispiece, 104 chromolithographic plates and some other monochrome engraved illustrations. Mild wear, somewhat rolled; boards a bit rubbed and shelfworn with some minor insect damage to the cloth; spines mildly sunned, extremities a little worn and the head of Volume III pulled slightly; text block edges lightly toned; lower hinge of Volume I cracked (but still strong); light offset to the preliminaries and light scattered foxing throughout; some minor offset to some of the plates. No dustwrappers. Very good.

While I was poring through this – counting plates; noting wear and tear – I thought to myself, I wonder what he has to say about Whippoorwills? Here in Australia, we have our own crepuscular avians to mimic these famous American avians, however ours don’t carry anywhere near the whiff of superstition and folklore that the American versions do. Those well-versed in HPL’s works know whippoorwills famously from “The Dunwich Horror”:

“…But speech gave place to gasps again, and Lavinia screamed at the way the whippoorwills followed the change. It was the same for more than an hour, when the final throaty rattle came. Dr Houghton drew shrunken lids over the glazing grey eyes as the tumult of birds faded imperceptibly to silence. Lavinia sobbed, but Wilbur only chuckled whilst the hill noises rumbled faintly.

‘They didn't git him,’ he muttered in his heavy bass voice…”

The prevailing superstitious notion is that these birds act as psychopomps, that is, entities which accompany the spirits of the dead and which guide them to their deserved afterlife. In some schools of thought, the whippoorwills seek to attack and consume the spirit in some fashion, forming a kind of gauntlet run to the hereafter. This is certainly the aspect which HPL highlights in his tale.

“…Armitage, hastening into some clothing and rushing across the street and lawn to the college buildings, saw that others were ahead of him; and heard the echoes of a burglar-alarm still shrilling from the library. An open window showed black and gaping in the moonlight. What had come had indeed completed its entrance; for the barking and the screaming, now fast fading into a mixed low growling and moaning, proceeded unmistakably from within. Some instinct warned Armitage that what was taking place was not a thing for unfortified eyes to see, so he brushed back the crowd with authority as he unlocked the vestibule door. Among the others he saw Professor Warren Rice and Dr Francis Morgan, men to whom he had told some of his conjectures and misgivings; and these two he motioned to accompany him inside. The inward sounds, except for a watchful, droning whine from the dog, had by this time quite subsided; but Armitage now perceived with a sudden start that a loud chorus of whippoorwills among the shrubbery had commenced a damnably rhythmical piping, as if in unison with the last breaths of a dying man…”

“…As the presence of the three men seemed to rouse the dying thing, it began to mumble without turning or raising its head. Dr Armitage made no written record of its mouthings, but asserts confidently that nothing in English was uttered. At first the syllables defied all correlation with any speech of earth, but towards the last there came some disjointed fragments evidently taken from The Necronomicon, that monstrous blasphemy in quest of which the thing had perished. These fragments, as Armitage recalls them, ran something like ‘N'gai, n’gha’ghaa, bugg-shoggog, y’hah: Yog-Sothoth, Yog- Sothoth...’ They trailed off into nothingness as the whippoorwills shrieked in rhythmical crescendos of unholy anticipation.”

As we see in the story, old Wizard Whateley manages to elude the birds as he passes over. Wilbur Whateley, his monstrous grandson, is also sized up for predation:

“Then came a halt in the gasping, and the dog raised its head in a long, lugubrious howl. A change came over the yellow, goatish face of the prostrate thing, and the great black eyes fell in appallingly. Outside the window the shrilling of the whippoorwills had suddenly ceased, and above the murmurs of the gathering crowd there came the sound of a panic-struck whirring and fluttering. Against the moon vast clouds of feathery watchers rose and raced from sight, frantic at that which they had sought for prey…”

Obviously, in this instance they attempt to bite off more than they could comfortably choke down.

Alexander Wilson was a precursor of the better-known John James Audubon when it comes to American birdlife; however, Wilson was the original and best. His book is considered to be the first illustrated work of science published in the United States. It was later amended by Charles Bonaparte to include several new species that Wilson hadn’t spotted, and this edition contains useful emendations, along with Wilson’s biography, by Jardine. Here is the section pertinent to the Whippoorwill:


Wilson, along with other writers on avian subjects and pushing a sense of scientific credibility, is quick to distance his observations from any superstitious ideas doing the rounds. It would have been interesting to know exactly what “silly notions” had been retailed to him, but I guess that information has now been largely lost.


And that’s it. There’s a lot of detail here – probably more than any “Call of Cthulhu” game or Mythos story writer would ever need (or use), but it’s of interest, nonetheless. It’s intriguing to note that the folkloric qualities of the creature probably only survive in literary confections like “The Dunwich Horror”, in oral traditions among the various indigenous and regional tribes, and probably a few anthropological dissertations.

In the final analysis, the mention of crepuscular avians in HPL’s tale does little more that add a hint of flittering menace to the tale, but it also grounds the story in a folkloric tradition, lending a veracity to the narrative that it might otherwise lack. Literary packrat that he was, Lovecraft was very good at incorporating various scraps of local lore, general knowledge and scientific rigour to his fantastical notions, and this is what gives them all a solid foundation and a sense of distinct possibility. We get a sense that there is a wider reality beyond the writing, and it is implicit in everything he tells us, even if it is only glancingly referenced. This is high-quality storytelling at its best!


(NB: If anyone is at all interested in obtaining this copy of Wilson's "American Ornithology" drop me a line and I'll see what I can do...)

Wednesday 4 September 2024

Review: "River"

 

Abi Morgan (Creator), “River”, Kudos/Shine International/BBC One/Netflix, 2015.

Convincing an audience that something fantastic is going on in your fictive work is a bit of a high-wire act. If your target demographic isn’t convinced of what you’re trying to sell, then the whole enterprise quickly falls apart. The easy solution would seem of course - in the case of a visual medium effort – to obtain the best actors, directors, cinematographers – what have you - that money can buy; in this instance, I think the creators have knocked it out of the park.

There is a spooky premise to this show – a supernatural rationale – but I don’t want to let any cats out of their bags. Going in on these six episodes, I had no idea what to expect: I was looking for a gritty British police procedural to while away an evening’s ennui and I suddenly had just that, along with something completely unexpected and – dare I say? – delightful. Of course, the presence of Stellan SkarsgÃ¥rd and Nicola Walker meant that – had this been simply a stultifying home renovation program – I would still have watched the hell out of it; the supernatural aspects of this show were merely the excellent icing atop this wonderful cake.

The BBC is the spiritual home of the police drama. No-one else takes the sordid realities of the Street and boils them down to soul-crushing narratives in quite the same way. Take for example, the new show “The Responder” which is doing the rounds at the moment. I started watching this and had to stop. The grubby particulars of this show were almost too much to bear. I mean, there’s dark, and then there’s this: it’s like an exercise in pushing the envelope; there’s a gleefully iconoclastic edge to everything going on that actually starts to break the audience’s engagement due to its intensity. All that aside however, my main issue with it is that Martin Freeman – who I normally find eminently watchable - is completely miscast. There’s something about his performance and physical presence that is at odds with the material – maybe he was trying to prove that he too, could swan about like “Cracker” in a downbeat thug-fest, but I’m here to tell you that he can’t. No amount of withholding the razor and a good night’s sleep can knock the optimistic shine off Bilbo Baggins. There’s something quintessentially Home Counties about him that a bad haircut can’t disguise.

Now, if you had put Stellan SkarsgÃ¥rd in his shoes, then, you’d have something…

In “River”, my one issue is that the world – despite everything that comes out in the conclusion of this show – is a little too vanilla for the actors at hand. This is a plus and a minus: most of the drama here is internal with John River balancing his workload with his mental trauma, psychological scars which absolutely could not have been portrayed this well by any other thespian. Having witnessed his partner, and the person whom he had just begun to realise was the love of his life, gunned down brutally before him in the street, River starts tiptoeing around both his work colleagues and the enforced psychological review that he’s made to engage with, while simultaneously trying to solve the mystery of who his partner’s assailant was. That he hears – and responds to – voices unheard by those around him makes the knife-edge levels of his sanity more than apparent to everyone, including himself.

It's a testament to the writing that we don’t spot these voices until at least two-thirds of the way through the first episode. The writing allows the spookiness to slide right under the radar until the story deems it necessary to reveal the supernatural goings-on to the audience and it hits like a chill bucket of water to the face. I had been riding along with this show, enjoying the banter and the easy relationship of the two leads when suddenly I knew that I had something a bit extra to be getting on with. Right, I thought, this has taken a turn: I’d better strap in. Seriously though, with these two actors – plus the addition of a 70s disco soundtrack – if nothing at all had changed, I would have kept watching.

These supernatural elements are exquisitely handled. Everything occurs against the backdrop of John River’s mental disintegration and the plot becomes highly equivocal depending upon where you stand. The information that River receives from his spiritual sources is slippery and, at every stage, John, his co-workers, the suspects of his investigation, never know whether the information he’s working with is real or not, or whether it can be used in the chain of evidence. It’s a bravura performance from the writers and the actors and, because it’s all based upon a solid set of rules governing the spectral that the creators have set out clearly from the start, it works a treat. The scenes wherein John and his work-appointed psychologist play cat-and-mouse around the possibility of supernatural forces at play, are crafted to perfection and wonderful to observe.

The only real grizzle I have with the show is everything is a little too neat. The action takes place in a very enclosed world – every character leads to the next significant character and the narrative has a consequent hermetic feel to it. Essentially, the world of “River” is a very small one into which nothing of a wider reality intrudes. A key element of the investigation involves a shonky car-hire accompany and chauffeuring service, the name of which becomes a common refrain as things progress, flagging to the viewer the final destination of the mystery. In essence, all roads lead to Rome, and everyone has connexions to everyone else. It’s a little incestuous but, given one of the big reveals at the end, maybe that’s deliberate.

My biggest delight with this show is that, while it has everything that you’d want in a gritty police procedural, it’s also very human and incredibly sad, while at the same time being quite uplifting and inspiring, in the best tradition of such fare. As I said in the beginning, lesser thespians would not have made this work, but they run with it and elevate everything around them to build a fantastic – in all senses – piece of television drama.

Four Tentacled Horrors.

Thursday 29 August 2024

Review: Junji Ito's "Uzumaki"

Junji Ito, with Susan Daigle-Leach & Sam Elzway (Masumi Washington, ed.; Yuji Oniki, trans.), Uzumaki: Deluxe Edition, VIZ Media LLC., San Francisco CA, 2014.

As a seller of books, I am not a huge fan of manga. On the one hand, anything that gets the younger crowd to stick their nose into a book is great; on the other, because these things are pumped out in long series, few punters are willing to shell out for anything untried, and so, while the first volumes leap readily off the shelf, the subsequent tomes in any series languish unsold for unconscionably long periods of time. Many’s the time that a customer will ask “do you have issue number one?” and I grit my teeth while suggesting that they might start with number two and backtrack, all the while knowing that they absolutely won’t take that route. The other issue is that the readership is largely kids, and kids don’t have the ready cash to pay for an entire run of say, “Food Wars!”, or “Black Butler” – certainly not firsthand – and still, unlike a Marvel or DC trade paperback, will refuse to start a series without having read the first instalment. Finally, turnover in the world of manga is swift, and something that’s scorching hot one day, cools dramatically in a heartbeat. Grab your copies of “One Piece” while you can…

The other issue I have with these productions is a cultural one. In Japan, there is an understood commonality in place regarding who reads this material and how. Manga is largely targeted at young men; some manga is written for young women and other manga are intended for older readers: the idea is that every sector of the community has its specific ‘read’ and people tend to outgrow these pigeonholes as other necessities of life intrude. Of course, this is not written down as chapter and verse and is definitely not policed in any fashion, but there is an unspoken – and certainly unwritten – set of guidelines about how these “irresponsible pictures” proliferate throughout the Japanese-speaking world. Interest from outside of Japan has slowly changed how this material is disseminated and consumed, with the American market and its strategies affecting how manga is sold in the US, and European tastes influencing creation, translation and marketing in that global sector. The result is that overseas readers partake of things that are not “meant” to be read or evaluated by their age (or gender) group and such material is weighted inappropriately in those markets. Certainly, something like “Dragonball Z” was not to be considered high art, or lofty literature, but, amongst fans and collectors, it has almost attained this status. The Western equivalent is the prevailing notion that American comics are for children, when it is highly evident that only adults buy Marvel and DC comics and then discuss them in terms of university-level jargon.

So, in discussing Junji Ito’s “Uzumaki”, I feel that I’m not the target audience and that any kind of close dissection of the text is unwarranted and possibly unnecessary.

There are further wrinkles to all this. Because manga is pumped out in huge quantities as a disposable product for an endlessly thirsty readership, necessarily a bunch of tropes and other genre constructions start to become obvious after a short period of exposure. This is also visible in the field of anime – which developed from the manga substrate – and can be seen in other forms of Japanese popular entertainment as well. There is a type of cultural shorthand which permeates all of Japanese ‘pulp’, or ‘B-grade’ entertainment, and once you see it, it is very difficult to let go of it. Most of these notions can be seen in the way characters are established and constructed in relation to each other.

In most manga stories – and anime, and Japanese cinema – there is a girl and often there are two suitors for her affections. One of these suitors is level-headed, studious and determined while the other is generally excitable, dashing and “fun”. The female lead vacillates between the two trying to determine which is the best in terms of becoming a “life partner” and the narrative cut-and-thrust of this determination is what underscores everything else going on with the story. I say “most”, and it’s generally true throughout a majority of series, even when the purpose of the book is to undermine this trope, or to subvert narrative expectations: that is, when it’s not treading this path explicitly, it still references the guideline in some fashion. Whether it’s the original “Godzilla” movie, something goofy like “Project A-ko”, or horror fare like “Uzumaki”, this character template is readily apparent underneath the overt storyline.

For me, this lends a rubber stamp quality to most Japanese popular fare. It feels as though every “new” title has come into being partially pre-fabricated in some sense and that the bulk of the exercise is simply the ticking of boxes to an inevitable conclusion: here’s the girl; there’s the studious guy she feels sorry for; there’s the jock who’s determined to win her affections. It writes itself. For some series, this is deliberate: some titles are intended to go on indefinitely without resolving these interpersonal issues, since that’s the whole point of the exercise. In other titles, the set-up is abandoned after its inception and the narrative runs its own way to various conclusions. These hallmarks are quite clear in “Uzumaki” too.

What makes Junji Ito’s work a little different is that there is a creeping sense of dread that permeates the story. A golden rule of his oeuvre seems to be “don’t get attached”: characters get crunched down like corn chips at a roleplaying session, and “Uzumaki” is no exception. Still, the characters occupy certain set positions within the narrative format – potential boyfriend; rival in love; annoying unrequited crush – and lack a lot of depth or interiorality, the only difference is that here, they usually meet hideous ends.

The essential requirement for a horror tale is that it take place in an environment that is completely ordinary; the strangeness which the horror represents, therefore, is thrown into stark contrast, against the humdrum quality of the real world. Having “Uzumaki” spring from the standard manga set-up then, would seem to be a neat way of highlighting the horror to come. On balance, I would say that it’s a genius move on Ito’s part, except that it is the way that every manga narrative is established, which would seem to cut it off at the knees. As well, there is a fumbling quality to the way in which the series builds through its instalments that makes me wonder how completely planned the work was from the outset: as each episode falls into place, I had the sense that the story was being made up as it went along. There’s no doubt that the story had an endpoint predestined from its inception, but the steps along the way feel a bit clunky and bolted-on.

“Uzumaki” (“Spirals”) takes place in a seaside village which is nominally ‘cursed’. Our heroine is Kirie Goshima, the daughter of an artisanal potter, who is attending school in the village. Her best friend is Shuichi Saito, a scholar who lives at home with his parents and who attends a higher school in another village nearby: this commuter existence which he leads allows him to perceive that all is not quite well in their home village of Kurouzo-cho. After Shuichi’s parents both go mad and die horribly, after becoming obsessed by the idea of spiral formations manipulating the world around them, Shuichi comes to believe that spirals are the expression of the curse upon the place. As incident after incident unfolds, highlighted by the presence of spiralling phenomena, a trail of investigation leads our hapless pawns to the nightmare cosmic horror that dwells in caverns deep below the village pond. It ends messily. As I said: “don’t get attached”.

For most of the story, the manga framework guides the interactions of all the players: Kirie likes Shuichi, but he is focussed on his work and can’t afford to be distracted; Kirie attracts young male students keen for her attentions and she struggles to rebuff them without offending them; she encounters other girls, keen to steal Shuichi away from her. This is all textbook manga stuff and apart from the fact that Ito is ruthless in dealing out hideous comeuppance to the offending parties, it all goes rather by the numbers. On one hand, given that most characters in this tale end up in some kind of deadly body horror nightmare, it might be just as well that we don’t get to know the players better; on the other hand, we care less about what happens to characters that are broadly sketched on cardboard.

However, Ito is all about the horror. Some deeply unpleasant things take place between the covers of this book, and they are designed to make the reader feel as uncomfortable as possible. There are all flavours of nastiness here - body horror, splatterpunk, cosmic dread – and they all ratchet up to a fever pitch by the book’s conclusion. People turn into giant snails; people take sharp implements to themselves to extract offending organs; there are monstrous birth sequences of deeply unpleasant aspect; people are driven to cannibalism; others are transformed into boneless entities and forced to co-habit like spaghetti, packed into crude shelters. By the end of it all, it’s a relief to close the covers and walk away.

As I finished reading, I was left to wonder why all this was taking place. In terms of themes or larger concepts about the world at large, art speaking to nature, there seemed to be little on offer here. There’s a common Mythos thing associated with Hastur and Nyarlathotep whereby stuff happens, and people go mad, and it’s this going mad which seems to be the whole, singular point. What happens? People go mad! Ba-doom, tish! There’s no rationale or purpose and this – for some authors and their readers – is good enough. Not me. I want metaphor; I want internal logic; a universe with rules; a result that seems somehow deserved. It’s not the case here. Why is Kurouzo-cho cursed by spirals? Just ‘cause. What is “Uzumaki” trying to say? Nothing, and “Boo!”. Quite unsatisfying…

The upside to all of this – and its strongest aspect – is the artwork. The whole purpose of the comics medium is to interrogate reality and conjure vistas and visions which would be impossible to capture in any other medium. The scenery in this book is truly gobsmacking, especially by the end when the full cosmic nightmare is on display, and it does all the heavy lifting which the limping narrative structure fails to achieve. This is a case where the story is definitely flying on the coattails of the art, and it shows. I’m aware that more than a few people have had images of these panels tattooed upon their person and I get that: I don’t know personally that I’d enjoy having a image of a young girl with a hole spiralling through her head inked upon my bicep but then, what do I know?

In the final analysis, this is a good comics read propped up by the art which definitely delivers on the horror score, the various concepts leaving the reader alternately creeped-out, shocked, and awed. I was left feeling more than a little grubby by the conclusion. There is little in the way of characterisation and the set-ups and narrative beats are nothing new for readers of manga or fans of anime. There is too much dependence on there being no rationale for the mayhem (see also: “Ringu” and “Ju on: The Grudge” – there’s no explanation! Ooh! Spooky! Not.) which leaves the reader frustrated and which might just be the point – mileage will vary. For me, it’s not how I like my chills.

I’m giving this three-and-a-half Tentacled Horrors.

Monday 19 August 2024

Many Happy Returns, HPL!


Little Howie is thirteeny-four today!

Cheers!

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

20th August 1890 - 15th March 1937

Thursday 25 July 2024

Hell, Bound: E

Continuing on, here is the next selection of Mythos material organised by the first letter of their title. For your delectation, this congeries of reading matter is brought to you by the letter “E”!

*****

The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Pert Em Hru or “The Book of Going Forth by Day”)

This ancient work concerns the beatification of the dead, who were imagined as reciting the various chapters in order and thereby gaining privileges in their new lives after death. The instructions and magical procedures contained within its pages protect the dead against the dangers they face in reaching the Afterlife. There are a wide variety of spells which cover everything from the preservation of the mummy against mould, incantations to assist in shape-shifting, to ritual procedures which assist the dead to become as gods themselves. The work also contains many related spells and other more mundane spells and charms from Dynastic Egypt.

The work began life as a series of spells and written invocations written on the walls of the tombs of the Pharaohs, and which were reserved exclusively for royal use. Over time, a change in the perception of the Afterlife and the role of Osiris within it as judge of the dead, meant that the life after death became available to all Egyptians and the spells were re-cast for use across the entire spectrum of the society. The coffins, tombs and funerary masks of the dead from all strata of the civilisation were inscribed with the new spells which were collected together by Egyptologists as the Coffin Texts, or Sarcophagus Texts; the preceding Pharaonic texts were collected as the Pyramid Texts. By the time of the Middle Kingdom, all of the spells and the new conceptual schematics of the Afterlife had been collated together as the Pert Em Hru, or the “Egyptian Book of the Dead”.

Pharaonic, in Cursive Hieroglyphs; author unknown; since time immemorial; No Sanity loss; Occult +7 percentiles; 10 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: “To See as far as the Aten” (Augury); “A Spell to Banish Apep” (Banish Apep); “A Spell to Ensnare One’s Foes” (Bind Enemy); “A Spell to Blind One’s Enemy” (Curse of Darkness); “A Charm to Reveal the Magic of Evildoers” (Detect Enchantment); “A Spell to Discover Hidden Ways” (Find Gate); “Call the Servants of Bast!” (Summon/Bind Cat); “Call the Children of Sobek!” (Summon/Bind Crocodile); “A Spell to Tear Away the Cloak of One Hidden” (Unmask Demon); “An Enchantment to Reveal a Hidden Way” (View Gate); “A Spell of Warding” (Warding)

Of course, any transmission of the text to the West had to wait until Champollion’s work in translating hieroglyphs reached fruition. The Pert Em Hru was known to Europeans as early as the Middle Ages, but it was thought to be some kind of ancient grimoire, or holy book, and generally avoided. In 1805, J. Marc Cadet published a bound collection of 18 colour plates reproduced from an original papyrus, with accompanying descriptive notes; however, his observations must be considered purely speculative. It was entitled “Copie figurée d’un Roleau de Papyrus trouvé à Thebes des un Thombeau des Rois, accompagnèe d’une notice descriptive.” Investigators may use the images as reference but, unless they can read Hieroglyphs, the material will be largely useless to them.

French; J. Marc Cadet; Paris, 1805; No Sanity loss; Occult +3 percentiles; 2 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: None; however, if the reader has the skill Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs, the spells are as the Pert Em Hru, above, but with a 15% chance of failure for each spell.

After the Hieroglyphic code was cracked, the first printed version of the “Egyptian Book of the Dead”, coining and cementing that title in the West, was by Prussian Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius. His “Das Todtenbuch der Ägypter nach dem hieroglyphischen Papyrus in Turin mit einem Vorworte zum ersten Male Herausgegeben” was published in Leipzig in 1842, and codified 165 spells.

German; Karl Richard Lepsius; Leipzig, 1842; No Sanity loss; Occult +3 percentiles; 4 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: “Um bis zum Aten sehen” (Augury); “Ein Zauberspruch um Apep Verbannen” (Banish Apep); “Um die Bediensteten oder Bast nennen!” (Summon/Bind Cat); “Zu den Kindern Sobek nennen!” (Summon/Bind Crocodile)

Lepsius worked from a single version of the Pert Em Hru held in an archive in Turin, and called upon his fellow Egyptologists to begin collating as many different copies as they could find, in order to pin down all the variant forms. Henri Édouard Naville, a student of Lepsius, bent to the task and, between 1875 and 1886, compiled many different versions – with a spell count of 186 – in a three-volume, bound edition.

German; Henri Edouard Naville; Leipzig, 1886; No Sanity loss; Occult +5 percentiles; 6 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: “Um bis zum Aten sehen” (Augury); “Ein Zauberspruch um Apep Verbannen” (Banish Apep); “Ein Zauberspruch seine Feinde zu ungarnen” (Bind Enemy); “Ein Zauberspruch seine Feinde zu Blenden” (Curse of Darkness); “Ein Talisman um die Magie der Ãœbeltäter Sehen” (Detect Enchantment); “Ein Zauberspruch Geheime Wege zu Entdecken” (Find Gate); “Um die Bediensteten oder Bast nennen!” (Summon/Bind Cat); “Zu den Kindern Sobek nennen!” (Summon/Bind Crocodile); “Ein Zauberspruch, Jemanden zu Zeigen,” (Unmask Demon); “Ein Zauberspruch eine Versteckte Eingang Sehen” (View Gate); “Ein Verteidigender Bann” (Warding)

The first English translation came from Samuel Birch, the head of the Egyptian and Assyrian Department who immediately preceded Wallis Budge in that role. His five-volume work was entitled “Egypt’s Place in Universal History”, and volume five contains the “Papyrus of Nebseny”, which is a copy of the Pert Em Hru written for and buried with that mummy. When using the spells in this volume – or any other similar, highly personalised version of the Pert Em Hru – there is a 20% chance that the spell will fail due to errors which have crept in during the transcription process.

English; Samuel Birch; London, 1867; No Sanity loss; Occult +4 percentiles; 6 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: “A Spell to Allow Nebseny to See as Far as the Aten” (Augury); “A Spell so that Nebseny may Banish Apep” (Banish Apep); “A Charm So That Nebseny May See the Magic of Evildoers” (Detect Enchantment); “A Charm so that Nebseny may Call the Servants of Bast!” (Summon/Bind Cat)

The Scroll of Ani

To ensure that the passage to the Afterlife was guaranteed, the Egyptians arranged to be buried with a copy of the Pert Em Hru beside them. Producing such copies was an expensive process and so, only the wealthiest of Egyptians were able to be interred with their own personal version. Mostly, the text was simply painted upon tomb walls or sarcophagi. While cheaper versions were available, many have not survived the passage of time.

The Scroll of Ani is a highly personalised version of the Pert Em Hru, in which all the illustrations and the text refer specifically to the owner – the scribe Ani – who paid for its creation. Along with all of the standard chapters and spells, it has many charms and incantations particular to this individual, along with a detailed (and probably hyperbolic) biography of his life and accomplishments. When using the spells in this volume – or any other similar, highly personalised version of the Pert Em Hru – there is a 20% chance that the spell will fail due to errors which have crept in during transcription.

Pharaonic, in Cursive Hieroglyphs; unknown scribe; ; No Sanity loss; Occult +6 percentiles; 12 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: “A Spell to Allow Ani to See as Far as the Aten” (Augury); “A Spell so that Ani may Banish Apep” (Banish Apep); “A Spell to Ensnare Ani’s Foes” (Bind Enemy); “A Spell to Blind Ani’s Enemies” (Curse of Darkness); “A Charm So That Ani May See the Magic of Evildoers” (Detect Enchantment); “A Spell to Allow Ani to Discover Hidden Ways” (Find Gate); “A Charm so that Ani may Call the Servants of Bast!” (Summon/Bind Cat); “A Spell so that Ani may Call the Children of Sobek!” (Summon/Bind Crocodile); “A Spell to Allow Ani to Tear Away the Cloak of One Hidden” (Unmask Demon); “An Enchantment to Reveal a Hidden Way before Ani” (View Gate); “Ani’s Spell of Warding” (Warding)

After obtaining The Scroll of Ani, Wallis Budge arranged to send it back to England for study. In order to do this without it being damaged en route, he cut the long length of papyrus into five equal strips, so that it could be mailed flat. Although he made efforts to minimise the damage to the work, many hieroglyphs and images were defaced in the process. He defended his actions in this regard by saying that he hoped future generations would be able to invent a way to piece the Scroll back together. In any event, his translation is nowadays considered quite poor. As a consequence, along with the 20% base chance of failure when casting spells from this source, Investigators must also make a Luck Roll when using the spells listed within.

English; E.A. Wallis Budge (trans.); London, 1895; No Sanity loss; Occult +3 percentiles; 1 week to study and comprehend

Spells: “A Spell to Allow Ani to See as Far as the Aten” (Augury); “A Spell so that Ani may Banish Apep” (Banish Apep); “A Charm So That Ani May See the Magic of Evildoers” (Detect Enchantment); “A Charm so that Ani may Call the Servants of Bast!” (Summon/Bind Cat)

*****

Egyptian hieroglyphs

“I have come armed with magical spells.

Thus can I quench my thirst,

Since I am master of the Words of Creation.”

-Texts of the Sarcophagi, Chapter 644

Egyptian hieroglyphic text is a formal script which is logographic (that is, each ‘letter’ stands for a word) and also alphabetic (combinations of images making words phonetically); this is similar to the way in which the Chinese written text works. To the ancient Egyptians, images carried the nature and power of the things they described, so to depict an object was to capture its essence. For this reason, hieroglyphs were used mainly for sacred and ceremonial occasions. Throughout Egyptian archaeology, there are instances where the hieroglyphic names of rulers or other famous individuals have been effaced from texts, an act which was thought to cause them harm, or even destroy them, in the Afterlife.

It is usually thought that the hieroglyphs were the original form of the written language; however this is not the case. The form of Pharaonic known as ‘Hieratic’ is older than the hieroglyphs and it is more likely that hieroglyphs were developed from this earlier script. Hieratic (from the Greek, meaning “priestly”) is a form of the language which is easier to write on papyrus as well as a myriad other substances including leather and wood; in some regions which were notably lacking in vegetation, hieratic has also been found carved in stone and incised into clay. Hieratic has many abbreviated and alternate forms to the hieroglyphs and contains ligatures, or joining lines, much like our cursive writing. Unlike every other form of Egyptian written script, Hieratic is always written from right to left. Research has shown that scribes were taught Hieratic and that only those destined for higher levels of work – such as court duties or funerary work – were taught the hieroglyphs.

Hieroglyphs, themselves, have a cursive form reserved for writing on papyrus. Examples of this writing style are normally encountered on scrolls or books meant to accompany the dead in their tombs; the style is notable for its abbreviated symbols and ligatures. The Egyptian Book of the Dead, as exemplified by the Scroll of Ani, is written in this style.

Of course, hieroglyphic images are time-consuming to write and scribes were often required to note down the utterances of individuals at meetings and other gatherings and convey those records to other parties. For this kind of writing, another style of non-hieroglyphic script appeared – Demotic – abbreviated hieroglyphs that could be quickly painted onto wood or papyrus with a brush and ink. Demotic came into use during the Graeco-Roman occupation of Egypt and exemplifies a shift towards Hellenistic styles and thought; it survived until being replaced altogether by Greek. Demotic eventually evolved into the style of writing used by the Coptic peoples, those Egyptians who moved elsewhere in the Greek empire, and its survival into the modern era was what allowed us to translate the original Egyptian hieroglyphs.

In the following table, the difficulty of identifying and translating a work that is in Egyptian Hieroglyphs (where no previous familiarity is present) is based on an Idea Roll at -10%; familiarity with Coptic, Demotic, or Hieratic script lends bonuses to this roll. Translating Hieroglyphics receives bonuses where the translator has access to certain works in the language which allow reference to be made; having access to the Rosetta Stone, gives a base 50% chance of translating successfully.

Egyptian Hieroglyphs (Pharaonic):

Difficulty:                 Very Hard (Idea Roll to recognise)

Modifiers:                Working knowledge of Coptic (+30%); of Demotic Script (+25%); of Hieratic Script (+15%)

Works in this Language: The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Pert Em Hru) (+20%); The

Palette of King Narmer (+20%)

Linguistic Key:        The Rosetta Stone (+50%)

*****

About Papyrus:

The Ancient Egyptians preferred to use papyrus upon which to write. This was made by stripping the stalks of the papyrus plant and laying the lengths of pith alongside each other. Another layer of these stalks was then placed atop them but at right angles to the first layer. The mat thus formed was then beaten flat to mash the stalks together into a flat surface which was then left to dry and later polished by a smooth stone. The limits of this product were that it could be uneven to write upon – some examples have been found where the writing follows the stalk layers on either side of the sheet, at right angles to the words on the opposite side – and that it did not stand up well to the rigors of damp and humidity.

*****

The Book of Eibon (aka, The Book of the Wizard Eibon)


“...The Book of Eibon, that strangest and rarest of occult forgotten volumes ... is said to have come down through a series of manifold translations from a prehistoric original written in the lost language of Hyperborea.”

-Clark Ashton Smith, “Ubbo-Sathla”

This ancient and extensive grimoire is the work of an eons-old sorcerer from Hyperborea known as the Wizard Eibon. The scope of the material is truly encyclopaedic, covering a bewildering array of topics, and it is renowned as a truly potent Mythos work, much sought-after by metaphysical researchers. According to legend, the text was discovered in the ruins of Eibon’s blasted tower; however, Cyron of Varaad, editor of the book and student of Eibon, explains in his prologue to the text that Eibon gave the book to him. Cyron broke the manuscript into three discrete sections and organised the material logically within each. From there, after the destruction of Hyperborea during Earth’s Ice Age, the text passed to other wizards in Zobna, Lomar, Atlantis and Hyboria, who, in turn passed the Book on to their students, adding material as they felt appropriate. The original versions of this work, in the Hyperborean language of Tsath-yo, are considered legendary and it is thought that no copies currently exist.

The Book is mostly filled with autobiographical details of the youth and accomplishments of Eibon along with the descriptions of many of his magical experiments. There are discussions of his journeys to Shagghai and the Vale of Pnath as well as what he discovered there. There is also a one-page coded index of the creatures that dwelt in the Antarctic regions and their accomplishments there; however, this table is rarely incorporated into any of the later editions of the work. It is said that Eibon’s workbook also contained a spell to summon and bind Dholes, something not normally possible as these are an independent race; thankfully, due to the damage these horrors can inflict upon a planet, these spells seem to have been lost. In addition, there are extended commentaries upon many of the Great Old Ones and their associated minions as well as some of the other independent creatures of the Mythos.

An ancient cult dedicated to the worship of the Wizard Eibon is thought to have monitored and preserved the content of the Book as it travelled through the world; another cult is thought to have similarly maintained a keen eye on the Pnakotica. Early incarnations of the cult of Mithras are also believed to have held this work as sacred but only according to limited and tenuous evidence. Along with these followers many other translations of this work have been made by various groups and these are outlined below.

(Source: Clark Ashton-Smith, “Ubbo-sathla”)

Tsath-yo; the Wizard Eibon, edited by Cyron of Varaad; Prehistoric timeline; 1d8/2d8 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +18 percentiles; 50 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: “Invoke the Blind God” (Call/Dismiss Azathoth); “Summon the White Worm” (Call/Dismiss Rlim Shaikorth); “Speak with the Children of Zothaquah” (Contact Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua); “Speak with Kthulhut” (Contact Cthulhu); “Invoke the Emanation of Yoth!” (Contact Nyogtha); “Speak with Yok-Zothoth” (Contact Yog-Sothoth); “Discourse with Zothaquah” (Contact Tsathoggua); “Invoke the Barrier of Naach-Tith” (Create Barrier of Naach-Tith); “Open the Mystic Portal” (Create Gate); “Summon Releh’s Mist” (Create Mist of Releh); “A Spell of Shielding” (Deflect Harm); “A Powder to Destroy Those From Beyond!” (Dust of Suleiman); “Invoke Wheel of Mist” (Eibon’s Wheel of Mist); “Conjure a Fire Spirit” (Enchant Brazier); “Create Athame” (Enchant Knife); “A Fitting End For One’s Enemies” (Green Decay); “Rise upon the Air” (Levitate); “Transform into Stone” (Petrify); “Summon a Demon” (Summon/Bind Star Vampire); “Sign of Eibon”; “Sign of the Voors” (Voorish Sign); “Curse of Wasting” (Wither Limb)

[The Book of Eibon] – the Kishite Recension


“...For Ubbo-sathla is the source and the end. Before the coming of Zhothaquah or Yok-Zothoth or Kthulhut from the stars, Ubbo-sathla dwelt in the steaming fens of the new-made Earth: a mass without head or members, spawning the grey, formless efts of the prime and the grisly prototypes of terrene life...And all earthly life, it is told, shall go back at last through the great cycle of time to Ubbo-sathla...”

-Clark Ashton Smith, “Ubbo Sathla”

Kish began life as a high priest in the city-state of Sarnath in Earth’s Dreamlands. He is noted in that city’s history for having tried to foment an attack upon the nearby city of Ib and its residents; however, he was unsuccessful in this regard. Nevertheless, he was taken away by the Elder Gods and lived with them as their disciple for a thousand years. Returning to Sarnath as the ‘Prophet Kish’, he arrived just in time to witness the Doom that came to Sarnath: his appeals to the rulers to flee the city went unheeded and he managed to escape along with his own disciples at the last minute, using the Sign of Kish which allowed him to break through the veil to the Waking World and materialise in Ancient Egypt.

Using his magical powers, Kish created a series of catacombs with which to protect himself and his followers from the harsh elements. From this stronghold, they established a city and settled into life in an unfamiliar reality. As part of this process, Kish sought far and wide for scrolls and other documents and, in this way, encountered a copy of the fabled Book of Eibon. This he completely re-wrote, deconstructing it and recompiling it with his own knowledge and wisdom. The result differs only slightly from the original, mainly in terms of the spells presented and the fact that it is written in Hieroglyphics. Regardless, this work was considered legendary by the end of the Third Dynasty and has not been seen in modern times.

Pharaonic; Kish, high priest of Sarnath; Third Dynasty, circa. 2650 BC; 1d6/2d6 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +17 percentiles; 48 week to study and comprehend

Spells: “Invoke the Blind God!” (Call/Dismiss Azathoth); “Summon the White Worm!” (Call/Dismiss Rlim Shaikorth); “Converse with Kthulhut!” (Contact Cthulhu); “Speak with the Children of Zothaquah!” (Contact Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua); “Summon the Eaters of the Dead!” (Contact Ghoul); “Invoke the Emanation of Yoth!” (Contact Nyogtha); “Discourse with Zothahqua!” (Contact Tsathoggua); “Speak with Yok-Sotot!” (Contact Yog-Sothoth); “Invoke Naach-Tith’s Fearsome Barrier!” (Create Barrier of Naach-Tith); “Open the Mystic Portal!” (Create Gate); “Summon Releh’s Mystical Cloud!” (Create Mist of Releh); “A Spell of Shielding” (Deflect Harm); “A Powder to Destroy Those from Beyond!” (Dust of Suleiman); “Invoke the Mist Wheel of Eibon!” (Eibon’s Wheel of Mist); “Conjure a Fire Spirit!” (Enchant Brazier); “Create Athame!” (Enchant Knife); “Open the Door to Dreams!” (Gate of Oneiromancy); “A Spell to Destroy One’s Enemies!” (Green Decay); “A Spell to Rise Upon the Air!” (Levitate); “The Puissant Symbol of Eibon” (Sign of Eibon); “The Powerful Sign of Kish” (Elder Sign); “A Spell to Summon a Demon” (Summon/Bind Star Vampire); “A Spell to Turn One’s Enemies to Stone” (Petrify); “The Gesture of the Voors!” (Voorish Sign); “A Smiting Upon One’s Foes!” (Wither Limb)

[The Book of Eibon] – Punic Edition

The amended version of the Book of Eibon was not the only version in circulation in ancient times, however: around 800 BC a Phoenician scribe by the name of Imilcar Narba translated a copy dating from 1600 BC into the version of Phoenician that was current in Carthage at the time, a North African dialect of that language known as ‘Punic’. The name of this scribe is known only from the later Graeco-Bactrian editions which arose from this version. The contents of this copy can only be speculated upon, as the Romans put paid to the Phoenician language and all works written in that tongue with an enviable efficiency – no copies of this work have survived.

Punic Phoenician; Imilcar Narba; 1600 BC, translated around 800 BC; 1d6+1/1d10 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +15 percentiles; 42 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: Call/Dismiss Azathoth; Call/Dismiss Rlim Shaikorth; Contact Formless Spawn of Zothaqquah (Tsathoggua); Contact Kthulhut (Cthulhu); Contact “Emanation of Yoth” (Nyogtha); Contact Yok Zothoth (Yog-Sothoth); Contact Zothaqquah (Tsathoggua); Create Barrier of Naach-Tith; Create Gate; Create Mist of Releh; Deflect Harm; Dust of Suleiman; Eibon’s Wheel of Mist; Enchant Brazier; Enchant Knife; Green Decay; Levitate; Sign of Eibon; Summon/Bind Star Vampire; Petrify; Voorish Sign; Wither Limb

The Codex Narbanensis – Graeco-Bactrian Edition

Trade with Greece and Byzantium saw The Book of Eibon travel north by means of various hurried translations made by itinerant sages, many of whom were making the Black Pilgrimage to Chorazin, or Khirbat Karraza as it was originally known, a magnet for dark magicians even before its denouncement by Christ. These copies are generally fragmentary, as the various translators tended to pick and choose from the vast array of information presented. In time the work became known as The Book of Narba, or the Codex Narbanensis, and the attribution to Eibon was temporarily lost. It is also at this time that ‘Bind’ component of the Summon/Bind Star Vampire spell was dropped, leading to many regrettable accidents stemming from future editions.

Byzantine Greek; various translators; after 1600 BC; 1d6/2d4 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +3d4 percentiles; 40 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: Eibon’s Wheel of Mist; Sign of Eibon.

Select two from the following: Call/Dismiss Azathoth; Call/Dismiss Rlim Shaikorth; Contact Formless Spawn of Zothaqquah (Tsathoggua); Contact Kthulhut (Cthulhu); Contact “Emanation of Yoth” (Nyogtha); Contact Yok Zothoth (Yog-Sothoth); Contact Zothaqquah (Tsathoggua).

Select four from the following: Create Barrier of Naach-Tith; Create Gate; Create Mist of Releh; Deflect Harm; Enchant Brazier; Enchant Knife; Levitate.

Select one of the following: Green Decay; Petrify; Summon Star Vampire; Voorish Sign; Wither Limb

Liber Ivonis (I)

Before the fall of Atlantis, adherents to the cult of Eibon – the Averones - fled with the words of their demigod etched onto stone tablets in order to preserve it for posterity. Interestingly, they chose to write the work in Latin, a language which, at that time, had little currency in the world. Obviously a degree of (supernatural?) foresight was in play as the decision served to keep The Book of Eibon alive. These refugees took their master’s wisdom north into – at that time - barbarian lands in the region of Europe which would later become southern France. The tablets were subsequently destroyed but the information which they held had, by that time, been copied extensively and passed through occult circles, mainly in that region known as Averoigne.

Latin; stone tablets, unknown translator; Atlantis, date unknown; 1d4/2d4 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +16 percentiles; 36 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: “Invoke the Blind God” (Call/Dismiss Azathoth); “Summon the White Worm” (Call/Dismiss Rlim Shaikorth); “Speak with the Children of Zothaquah” (Contact Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua); “Speak with Kthulhut” (Contact Cthulhu); “Invoke the Emanation of Yoth!” (Contact Nyogtha); “Speak with Yok-Zothoth” (Contact Yog-Sothoth); “Speak with Zothaquah” (Contact Tsathoggua); “Invoke the Barrier of Naach-Tith” (Create Barrier of Naach-Tith); “Open the Mystic Portal” (Create Gate); “Call Releh’s Mist” (Create Mist of Releh); “A Spell of Shielding” (Deflect Harm); "A Powder to Destroy Those From Beyond!” (Dust of Suleiman); “Invoke Wheel of Mist” (Eibon’s Wheel of Mist); “Conjure a Fire Spirit” (Enchant Brazier); “Create Athame” (Enchant Knife); “A Fitting End For One’s Enemies” (Green Decay); “Rise upon the Air” (Levitate); “Transform into Stone” (Petrify); “Summon a Demon” (Summon/Bind Star Vampire); “Sign of the Voors” (Voorish Sign); “Curse of Wasting” (Wither Limb)

Sadly, by being transmitted in this slipshod fashion, much of the information on the tablets became corrupted and incomplete, and highly dangerous as a result. It would not be until the coming of Gaspar du Nord that the situation would be rectified.

Latin; manuscript, unknown translators; Averoigne, date unknown; 1d4/1d8 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +2d6 percentiles; 32 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: Roll POWx2 for each of the following spells to determine if they are present: “Invoke the Blind God” (Call/Dismiss Azathoth); “Summon the White Worm” (Call/Dismiss Rlim Shaikorth); “Speak with the Children of Zothaquah” (Contact Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua); “Speak with Kthulhut” (Contact Cthulhu); “Invoke the Emanation of Yoth!” (Contact Nyogtha); “Speak with Yok-Zothoth” (Contact Yog-Sothoth); “Speak with Zothaquah” (Contact Tsathoggua); “Invoke the Barrier of Naach-Tith” (Create Barrier of Naach-Tith); “Open the Mystic Portal” (Create Gate); “Call Releh’s Mist” (Create Mist of Releh); “A Spell of Shielding” (Deflect Harm); "A Powder to Destroy Those From Beyond!” (Dust of Suleiman); “Invoke Wheel of Mist” (Eibon’s Wheel of Mist); “Conjure a Fire Spirit” (Enchant Brazier); “Create Athame” (Enchant Knife); “A Fitting End For One’s Enemies” (Green Decay); “Rise upon the Air” (Levitate); “Transform into Stone” (Petrify); “Summon a Demon” (Summon/Bind Star Vampire); “Sign of the Voors” (Voorish Sign); “Curse of Wasting” (Wither Limb)

The Codex Narbanensis – Greek Edition

Theodorus Philetas discovered the Byzantine Greek versions of The Book of Eibon and set to work collating as many copies of the work as he could find. This recension served to save much of the material from dissolution and placed the work back into its proper context with a brief prologue outlining the history of the Book. Interestingly, he chose to maintain the adopted title of the work, although he does acknowledge the true author within the text.

Greek; Theodorus Philetas; 960 AD; 1d6/1d8 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +13 percentiles; 36 week to study and comprehend

Spells: Call/Dismiss Azathoth; Call/Dismiss Rlim Shaikorth; Contact Formless Spawn of Zothaqquah (Tsathoggua); Contact Kthulhut (Cthulhu); Contact “Emanation of Yoth” (Nyogtha); Contact Yok Zothoth (Yog-Sothoth); Contact Zothaqquah (Tsathoggua); Create Barrier of Naach-Tith; Create Gate; Create Mist of Releh; Deflect Harm; Dust of Suleiman; Eibon’s Wheel of Mist; Enchant Brazier; Enchant Knife; Green Decay; Levitate; Petrify; Sign of Eibon; Summon Star Vampire; Voorish Sign; Wither Limb

Liber Ivonis (II)

“Time is not constant, nor is the future unchangeable. I have seen the coming of the Daemon Sultan’s Seed and also the day the oceans vomit forth the citadels of the Elder Ones, when the stars shift in their patterns and the dead live again. I have seen the empire of Atlantae, not yet born, fall to the reign of years and those kingdoms which wax and wane in her shadow – serpent-haunted Stygia, Aquilonia, Aegypt and Rome. Mark well what I have seen for these are the signs of the Last Days, which foretell the return of those who Dream and Die Not...”

-Richard Watts, Dead Reckonings: “Behold the Mother”

Roman scholar Caius Philippus Faber prepared this translation of the Book from the Greek of Philetas, possibly motivated to do so by the prophetic announcements that the work contains about the collapse of past and future Empires, Rome along with them. This version differs primarily from the earlier Latin version in that it maintains the spelling and other errors that emerged from the Byzantine editions, most notably the missing Bind Star Vampire spell variant. Only six manuscript copies have been accounted for.

Latin; Caius Philippus Faber; 9th Century AD; 1d4/1d8 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +13 percentiles; 36 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: Call/Dismiss Azathoth; Call/Dismiss Rlim Shaikorth; Contact Formless Spawn of Zothaqquah (Tsathoggua); Contact Kthulhut (Cthulhu); Contact “Emanation of Yoth” (Nyogtha); Contact Yok Zothoth (Yog-Sothoth); Contact Zothaqquah (Tsathoggua); Create Barrier of Naach-Tith; Create Gate; Create Mist of Releh; Deflect Harm; Dust of Suleiman; Eibon’s Wheel of Mist; Enchant Brazier; Enchant Knife; Green Decay; Levitate; Petrify; Sign of Eibon; Summon Star Vampire; Voorish Sign; Wither Limb

Liber Ivonis (III)

Persecuted refugees from Averoigne fled mainland Europe and found a haven in Catholic Ireland. There they compiled their copies of The Book of Eibon, taken from the original stone tablets, and prepared new editions. Interestingly, it appears that very little of Book III of the work made it as far as the Emerald Isle, as all references to Rlim Shaikorth and certain associated spells – essentially, the bulk of that section entitled “The Papyrus of the Dark Wisdom” – is missing from these versions.

Latin; unknown translator; Ireland, date unknown; 1d2/1d6 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +11 percentiles; 28 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: Create Barrier of Naach-Tith; Sign of Eibon; Voorish Sign

[Book of Eibon] – Gaelic Edition

Some of the Latin translations prepared by French refugees from Averoigne were further translated into Gaelic, for the benefit of Irish hosts and possibly to further disguise the nature of the text. These versions too, suffer from a lack of the material contained within the Third Book.

Gaelic; unknown translator; Ireland, date unknown; 1d2/1d6 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +11 percentiles; 30 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: Create Barrier of Naach-Tith; Sign of Eibon; Voorish Sign

Liber Ivonis (IV)

This 17th Century Roman edition reproduces most of the work as translated by C. Philippus Faber. In an attempt to dodge any suspicion of heresy however, it avoids any direct references to various entities as ‘gods’ and edits out all of the Contact and Summoning spells. Copies from this print run are held in the libraries of Miskatonic and Harvard Universities.

Latin; after Faber; Rome, 1662; 1d3/1d6 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +10 percentiles; 32 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: Create Barrier of Naach-Tith; Create Gate; Create Mist of Releh; Deflect Harm; Dust of Suleiman; Eibon’s Wheel of Mist; Enchant Brazier; Enchant Knife; Green Decay; Levitate; Petrify; Sign of Eibon; Voorish Sign; Wither Limb

Livre d’Ivon

“Not without shudders, in the course of studies that the average person would have considered more than singular, Tregardis had collated the French volume with the frightful Necronomicon of the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred. He had found many correspondences of the blackest and most appalling significance, together with much forbidden data that was either unknown to the Arab or omitted by him ... or by his translators.”

-Clark Ashton Smith, “Ubbo-Sathla”

With the arrival of Gaspard du Nord it was time for the fourth recension of The Book of Eibon. Du Nord studied magic under the tutelage of a sorcerer named Nathaire, but eventually came to outstrip his master in power: he destroyed Nathaire’s mightiest magical construct which the vile magician had set against the city of Vyone; in return, the Council of Averoigne allowed du Nord to reside in the city of Vyone for the rest of his life, free from the interference of the Church into his activities.

Like many before him, Gaspard collected as many copies of the Book as he could find from his fellow countrymen and compiled all of the information together, along with his own insights, notes and observations. Interestingly, he was also able to locate a copy of the Greek version to help organise the material into the same scheme initiated by Cyron of Varaad. The result is a highly potent grimoire indeed.

It is unknown how many copies of the work were completed, although all known copies are bound, hand-written manuscripts. Today, only thirteen copies – some of them only partially complete – have been verified in major collections, including the van der Heyl mansion of upstate New York and the holdings of the Starry Wisdom Church in Providence, RI.

French; Gaspard du Nord; Averoigne, 1240 AD; 1d4/2d4 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +12 percentiles; 36 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: Roll POW x4 for each listed spell; a failed roll means that spell is absent in the present version. “Invoke the Blind God” (Call/Dismiss Azathoth); “Summon the White Worm” (Call/Dismiss Rlim Shaikorth); “Speak with the Children of Zothaquah” (Contact Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua); “Speak with Kthulhut” (Contact Cthulhu); “Invoke the Emanation of Yoth!” (Contact Nyogtha); “Speak with Yok-Zothoth” (Contact Yog-Sothoth); “Speak with Zothaquah” (Contact Tsathoggua); “Invoke the Barrier of Naach-Tith” (Create Barrier of Naach-Tith); “Open the Mystic Portal” (Create Gate); “Call Releh’s Mist” (Create Mist of Releh); “A Spell of Shielding” (Deflect Harm); "A Powder to Destroy Those From Beyond!” (Dust of Suleiman); “Invoke Wheel of Mist” (Eibon’s Wheel of Mist); “Conjure a Fire Spirit” (Enchant Brazier); “Create Athame” (Enchant Knife); “A Fitting End For One’s Enemies” (Green Decay); “Rise upon the Air” (Levitate); “Transform into Stone” (Petrify); “Summon a Demon” (Summon/Bind Star Vampire); “Sign of the Voors” (Voorish Sign); “Curse of Wasting” (Wither Limb)

Selections du Livre d’Ivon

"This wizard, who was mighty among sorcerers, had found a cloudy stone, orb-like and somewhat flattened at the ends, in which he could behold many visions of the terrene past, even to the Earth's beginning, when Ubbo-Sathla, the unbegotten source, lay vast and swollen and yeasty amid the vaporing slime ... But of that which he beheld, Zon Mezzamalech left little record; and people say that he vanished presently, in a way that is not known; and after him the cloudy crystal was lost."

-Clark Ashton Smith, “Ubbo-Sathla”

In preparing his French version of The Book of Eibon, du Nord felt compelled to comment at length upon the Latin material upon which he worked, exposing its flaws and warning potential adepts against catastrophes. It is unclear as to whether his concerns arose out of the myriad confused copies that abounded in Averoigne and the surrounding areas, or if he had found a copy of Faber’s translation and felt compelled to comment upon its shortcomings. Nevertheless, this volume is the result and painstakingly walks the reader of Eibon’s work through the darkest and deadliest chapters, while simultaneously offering warnings, counterspells and other preparations against the worst possible outcomes of that text’s experiments.

French; Gaspard du Nord; 13th Century; 1/1d6 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +6 percentiles; 4 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: Contact Nodens; Dismiss Nyarlathotep; Dust of Suleiman; Eibon’s Wheel of Mist; Elder Sign; Powder of ibn Ghazi; Sign of Eibon; Voorish Sign

The Book of Eibon – English Edition

“Got the Book of Eibon down from Uncle Hendrik’s old trunk in the attic last week, and am looking up something good which won’t require sacrifices that I can’t make around here. I want something that’ll finish these two sneaking traitors, and at the same time get me into no trouble. If it has a twist of drama in it, so much the better...”

-HPL & Hazel Heald, “The Man of Stone”

During the reign of King James I of England, one of the scholars who helped prepare the text for the King James Bible also created an English translation of The Book of Eibon, taken from du Nord’s French edition. Many copies of this manuscript were made and were circulated amongst various occult circles; some of these re-crossed the English Channel and were translated back into French – the author Clark Ashton Smith is believed to have owned one of these but efforts to locate it after his death proved fruitless. As far as is known, the Book was never printed and the existence of only eighteen copies has been verified, one of these held by the van Kauren family of New York.

English; unknown translator; circa. 15th Century; 1d4/2d4 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +11 percentiles; 32 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: Roll POW x2 for each of the following spells to see if they are present: “Invoke the Blind God” (Call/Dismiss Azathoth); “Summon the White Worm” (Call/Dismiss Rlim Shaikorth); “Speak with the Children of Zothaquah” (Contact Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua); “Speak with Kthulhut” (Contact Cthulhu); “Invoke the Emanation of Yoth!” (Contact Nyogtha); “Speak with Yok-Zothoth” (Contact Yog-Sothoth); “Speak with Zothaquah” (Contact Tsathoggua)

Roll Luck for each of the following spells to see if they are present: “Invoke the Barrier of Naach-Tith” (Create Barrier of Naach-Tith); “Open the Mystic Portal” (Create Gate); “Call Releh’s Mist” (Create Mist of Releh); “A Spell of Shielding” (Deflect Harm); "A Powder to Destroy Those From Beyond!” (Dust of Suleiman); “Invoke Wheel of Mist” (Eibon’s Wheel of Mist); “Conjure a Fire Spirit” (Enchant Brazier); “Create Athame” (Enchant Knife); “A Fitting End For One’s Enemies” (Green Decay); “Rise upon the Air” (Levitate); “Transform into Stone” (Petrify); “Summon a Demon” (Summon/Bind Star Vampire); “Sign of the Voors” (Voorish Sign); “Curse of Wasting” (Wither Limb)

*****

Partial Printings of the Book:

“Papyrus of the Dark Wisdom” (Book III)

“...but, as for Groth-golka, that brother of Mnomquah, He descended to this Earth in the regions circumambient to the Austral Pole, where to this day He abideth the passage of the ages beneath the black cone of Mount Antarktos...”

-Lin Carter, “The Fishers from Outside”

Demand for the missing sections of certain translations led to the production of partial printings of The Book of Eibon, especially of the Third Book: “The Papyrus of the Dark Wisdom”. This section deals mainly with such beings as Cthulhu, Ithaqua, Yig and Chaugnar-Faughn, along with less well-known entities such as Aphoom Zhah, Rlim Shaikorth, Mnomquah and Groth-golka. Creatures such as the Cold Ones, Ghouls and Star Vampires are also mentioned with some specificity. The book describes the pre-human timeline of Earth and details such points as the Elder Race’s colonisation of Antarctica.

Regrettably, most versions of this volume have been derived from the Faber translation and suffer the problems associated with that work.

English; Various editors; various dates; 1d4/1d8 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +4 percentiles; 4 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: Create Barrier of Naach-Tith; Create Gate; Create Mist of Releh; Deflect Harm; Dust of Suleiman; Eibon’s Wheel of Mist; Enchant Brazier; Enchant Knife; Green Decay; Levitate; Petrify; Sign of Eibon; Voorish Sign; Wither Limb

In 1946, researcher Harlow Sloan made copious notes on the Papyrus, as part of his investigations into the nature of a strange black stone unearthed in Zimbabwe. Using the Kester Library copy of the Book in Salem Massachusetts, Sloan transcribed the entirety of the Papyrus into his journal; thereafter, copies of this transcription were made by other researchers keen to read The Book of Eibon but lacking easy access to it. Several of these copies have been sold at auction purporting to be Sloan’s original notes, but the real notes’ whereabouts are currently unknown.

English; Harlow Sloan; from 1946; 1d4/1d8 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +4 percentiles; 4 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: Call/Dismiss Azathoth; Call/Dismiss Rlim Shaikorth; Contact Formless Spawn of Zothaqquah (Tsathoggua); Contact Kthulhut (Cthulhu); Contact “Emanation of Yoth” (Nyogtha); Contact Yok Zothoth (Yog-Sothoth); Contact Zothaqquah (Tsathoggua); Create Barrier of Naach-Tith; Create Gate; Create Mist of Releh; Deflect Harm; Dust of Suleiman; Eibon’s Wheel of Mist; Enchant Brazier; Enchant Knife; Green Decay; Levitate; Petrify; Sign of Eibon; Summon/Bind Star Vampire; Voorish Sign; Wither Limb

“The Coming of the White Worm” (Chapter IX)

“But I, the sorcerer Eibon, calling up through my necromancy the wave-wandering spectre of Evagh, have learned from him the veritable history of the worm's advent. And I have written it down in my volume with such omissions as are needful for the sparing of mortal weakness and sanity.”

-Clark Ashton Smith, “The Coming of the White Worm”

Whereas the “Papyrus of the Dark Wisdom” is a logical choice for a partial publishing of The Book of Eibon, “The Coming of the White Worm” is somewhat more obscure. The chapter deals almost exclusively with the entity known as Rlim Shaikorth, but contains no spells or other esoterica; it is simply a narrative of the creature and its arrival upon the planet. Why someone would go to the trouble to compile, translate and edit this excerpt is unknown; its relative scarcity argues in favour of some kind of vanity press issue, by someone who simply enjoyed the tale.

English; Unknown editor; Dublin, 1735; 1/1d2 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +2 percentiles; 4 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: None

“The Life of Eibon according to Cyron of Varaad” (Prologue)

Eibon “the Unfathomable’s” books, notes and equipment were bequeathed, upon his death, to his erstwhile student, Cyron of Varaad. In collating the text for what would become The Book of Eibon, Cyron edited out the autobiographical material from the body of the text and compiled it together as part of the Book’s “Prologue”. To this material, he added the later episodes of Eibon’s life including the strange manner of his death.

This extract tells how Eibon was born to Milaab, who was Keeper of the Archives to the King of Iqqua. When Eibon was seven years old, the priests of Yhoundeh discovered that Milaab was a secret servant of Zothaqquah (Tsathoggua) and had him and his family exiled to the wilderness of Phenquor. To spare his son the rigours of banishment, Milaab apprenticed Eibon to the great wizard Zylac of Mhu Thulan. Eibon studied with Zylac until his twenty-third year when his master was destroyed by a botched incantation. Eibon then wandered the earth with his friend Zaljis for nine years before returning to Mhu Thulan and taking over his former master’s property there.

Cyron takes over the account from here, excerpting the self-references of Eibon’s text and correlating them into a timeline of his greatest accomplishments, including his travel to Mount Voormithadreth to see his deity Tsathoggua sleeping upon his enormous throne. In his 132nd year, Eibon was harried to his tower by the priests of Youndeh, bent upon his destruction. It is said that he escaped them by using a door of strange metal through which he was able to transport himself to Saturn; Cyron tells us that, from that remote outpost, he engineered a blast to destroy his enemies, simultaneously returning his magical apparatus to the site of the explosion for his heir’s continued use.

Why this part of the Book should have been singled out for separate publication is as great a mystery as the excerpting of “The Coming of the White Worm”; however, it’s possible that it was printed as part of the whole, then removed from the text block after being identified as a less puissant part of the overall text. The original version, written in the Hyperborean language of Tsath-yo has not been seen since the early Middle Ages; the French translation is only slightly more common.

Tsath-yo; Cyron of Varaad; Prehistoric timeline; 1d4/1d6 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +6 percentiles; 16 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: None

French; translator unknown; Thirteenth Century; 1d2/1d4 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +3 percentiles; 8 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: None

*****

New Spells:

The Green Decay

The caster prepares a special piece of parchment upon which they write the name of their intended target. This leaf is then perfumed by a combination of rare incense and, while chanting the spell, is pierced through by a large thorn from a hawthorn bush or similar. By spending 8 magic points (MPs) and losing 1d20 Sanity Points, the caster causes the target victim to putrefy and rot, growing an extensive mould-like substance over their entire body, which can even enshroud the area in which they are dwelling. The death that results is terrible and long in duration: the victim takes 1D6+CON days to die, although exposure to sunlight speeds up this process by double the rate. Each day, the target loses 1D4 to each of their APP, CON, DEX and SIZ, as well as 1D6 points of SAN. After any one of these statistics reaches 0, they must make a Luck Roll each day, in addition, in order to escape instant death. If they do die before the calculated time period, they may still be resurrected, as per the spell of that name; however, once the time period calculated has expired, nothing will restore the victim.

In many copies of The Book of Eibon, users of this spell have commented that the use of this magic creates a terrible mess. Sifting through the fungal aftermath can cause those so doing to catch diseases of a topical or respiratory nature, so caution is advised.

Petrify

This recipe instructs the user in the manufacture of a powder which, when mixed in with food or drink, transforms the one consuming it into stone. The magical concoction amplifies the amount of silica in the victim’s body and uses this to replace the carbon in all of their body’s cells. The result is a stony, incredibly-detailed image of the victim, which some, viewing it, may believe to be a carven copy.

The various ingredients used in this spell are up to the Keeper to devise; suffice it to say, they should all be rare and expensive to obtain. Once the concoction has been mixed, the caster chants the required incantation and infuses the mixture with 24 MPs, possibly over several days. Once created, the powder remains inert within a glass or stone container, becoming active only when mixed into food or drink: from then on, it will last only another four hours before losing efficacy. One casting of the spell creates 4 doses of the powder and costs 1D10 SAN; seeing someone transformed into stone costs 1D8 SAN, 1D8+3 if the person is known to the viewer.

The Sign of Eibon

The Sign of Eibon is a three-armed swastika, or triskele, enclosed within a circle; like the Elder Sign, it does nothing until it is enchanted but, once its magicks are empowered, it is a highly potent device against the minions of Nyarlathotep.

The Sign may be engraved in metal, scored in stone or painted upon a convenient surface. It costs the sacrifice of 1 POW to enchant but has no SAN penalty. It can be worn upon a pendant, or placed near an active Gate, and will render the wearer or mystical passageway inviolable to the agents of the Crawling Chaos. Nyarlathotep’s agents and minions will be unable to approach within 10 feet of the Sign due to increasing nausea and headaches, while those servitors with inhuman senses or thought patterns will simply be unable to identify the enemies of the Mighty Messenger or formulate a means of challenging them.

When worn as a pendant or inscribed and enchanted as part of robes or clothing, the Sign deflects magicks from Nyarlathotep’s minions directed at the wearer. This does not dispel the sorcery; rather, it alters the target to some other individual in the vicinity – everyone within 30’ of the wearer must make a Luck Roll or become the magick’s default target.

Please note also, that this spell has no effect whatsoever upon Nyarlathotep in any of its avatars or incarnations (or any other Great Old One, Outer or Elder God, or their minions or servitors); apart, that is, from generating its speedy dislike and vengeance.

*****

The Elder Key

Knowledge of this symbol apparently comes by means of magical contact from future beings who have sent their minds back into their past to relay vital information. These beings purport to be post-human creatures evolved from human beings. It is said that they used this “key” to ward off incursions by hideous creatures antithetical to their cause, but little else is truly known. Most likely, this symbol is simply the Elder Sign (see below) under a variant name.

*****

The Elder Keys, or The Elder Records

“Zon Mezzamalech had dreamt to recover the wisdom of the gods who died before the Earth was born. They had passed to the lightless void, leaving their lore inscribed upon tablets of ultra-terrene stone; and the tablets were guarded in the primal mire by the formless idiotic demiurge, Ubbo Sathla...”

-Clark Ashton Smith, “Ubbo-Sathla”

The Elder Keys (also known as the Elder Key, Elder Records or The Tablets of Destiny) are a series of carven stone blocks around which is draped the protoplasmic menace which is Ubbo-Sathla, “The Unbegotten Source”, a cosmic entity said to be the mindless twin of Azathoth. So powerful are said to be the incantations writ upon these tablets that the most minor of them – a one line inscription –brought our earth into this dimension and caused life to appear upon it. Many wizards and other hard-metaphysical investigators have attempted to locate and transcribe these carvings however none have ever returned – victorious or otherwise. The Mi-go, it is said, have the Keys as their ultimate reason for being on Earth and it is this which keeps them travelling to our planet from Yuggoth. Alternate theories suggest that Ubbo-Sathla excretes some arcane substance which is vital to Mi-go technology and it is this, rather than the tablets, which attracts their interest. Still another theory is that the presence of Azathoth’s twin on this planet is the cause of the Great White Space’s terminus on our home world, thus providing a rationale for our planet’s infestation of dire divinities and their associated misbegotten agents. There have long been rumours that another copy of the ‘Keys exists on this planet – bringing the total number of copies to two – but this has not been verified: it is more likely that the other copy is something completely different, with the same name.

While the rewards of obtaining the Elder Keys would seem to be obvious, the greatest danger to accessing them is Ubbo-Sathla itself, whose 100 attacks per round inflict instant death upon any living substance with which it comes into contact. Robotic or automated platforms for gathering information from the Keys may achieve greater benefits in future but this begs the question as to why the Mi-go, or the Great Race of Yith, or even the Elder Things – beings with more highly advanced technology than our own – haven’t explored these possibilities already. The shoggoths have long been said to have been created from the essence of this being. Ubbo-Sathla is sometimes equated with the being known as Abhoth who has similar qualities; it is likely that ‘Abhoth’ is a derogatory name applied to the creature by a subsequent civilisation who derided the worship of their precursors. And just maybe, Ubbo-Sathla isn’t as mindless as has been reported...

(Source: Clark Ashton Smith, Ubbo-Sathla)

Unknown language; Primordial Extra-Dimensional Hard-Metaphysicians; a time prior to the Big Bang; 1d100/100d100 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +100 percentiles; 208 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: None, any, or all as the Keeper rules

*****

Elder Script

Correctly known as “Tsath-Yo”, this is the primal script of Hyperborea. Most likely it is a form of writing rather than a language. It is seldom encountered in the modern world and then, mainly in dreams, or by means of some mystical process. The original version of The Book of Eibon was penned in this format; other books of a comparative antiquity may use it also.

Dreamers who encounter the script beyond the Waking World report that the format is fairly frequent in Dreamland’s libraries, however, the perceptual strangeness of the Realms Beyond the Wall of Sleep make any concept of legibility moot. Generally speaking, the only way to be able to read such script is via some magical translation process.

(Source: “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” by HPL & E. Hoffman Price)

*****

The Elder Sign

Also known as the “Sarnath-Sigil”, the “Sign of Kish”, or “Star-Stone of Mnar”, there is some confusion as to the appearance of this symbol. Some sources say that the Sign takes the form of a branch with several twig-like extensions; others posit a more complex image of an eye within a pentagram with a column of fire emanating from the pupil. Still others claim that the Signs are greenish stones imprinted with an impressed star image. Any, or all, of these designs might be correct: variations in format may be the result of individual researchers attempting to refine the basic mandala component of the enchantment.

The purpose of the Elder Sign is to thwart the actions of the Great Old Ones and their minions. When placed by a Gate or a non-magical entryway, these entities are prevented from passing; when placed upon an object to be warded, the Sign offers a degree of protection against the designated beings: minions of the Old Ones will generally be unaware of objects and creatures so warded. Such protection is limited however, and many sources offer warnings to initiates to not rely solely upon the efficacy of this symbol.

*****

The Eltdown Shards

The history of this text has been obscured by an egregious instance of wilful academic misconduct. Two researchers, Doctors Woodford and Dalton, encountered the shards whilst in Britain, preparing for a geological expedition to Greenland. They discovered the fragments while staying in the Sussex village of Eltdown. From their discussions with the locals there, they determined that the pottery pieces had been unearthed from nearby fields and other construction works dating back to around 1882. The local townsfolk referred to them as “fairy pieces” and many families in the area kept them as tokens of good luck. Woodford and Dalton arranged to privately purchase as many pieces of the text as possible from the locals and smuggled them back to Beloit College in Wisconsin, their base of operations. Initially, Dalton was quoted in a London newspaper article as having discovered the fragments in Greenland during their 1903 investigation; later, publishing their findings in an initial paper, they both declared that the pieces had been found in a gravel pit within a stratum of earth dating from the Triassic Period near the small town of Eltdown in Illinois.

“The Eltdown Shards – an overview”

This monograph – given the shenanigans going on in the background – is terse and summarily executed. It provides a catalogue of all 23 fragments returned to Beloit College, giving their weight and dimensions with a rudimentary summation of the various characters depicted upon them. This listing is not of any particular use to translators as the characters need to be read in relation to each other to provide meaning. There are several engraved depictions of a few of the pieces, but these are small and not particularly detailed. In summation, the authors pronounced the shards to be “untranslatable”.

English; Drs. Woodford & Dalton; 1908; 0/1 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +0 percentiles; 1 week to study and comprehend

Spells: None

In the wake of the paper’s publication, the fragments went on show at the Logan Museum of Anthropology at Beloit College where they attracted some passing interest. The two ‘discoverers’ of the pieces seemed unusually willing to remove themselves from any involvement with the find and left the college soon after to pursue other avenues of research. While on display, many outside individuals took sketches and photographs of the pieces and soon a plethora of manuscript ‘translations’ of the hieroglyphs began to appear along the eastern seaboard of the USA, claiming to have interpreted the writings. Most of these documents circulated exclusively through various occult communities with unknown effectiveness, while a few made it into print as catchpenny pamphlets claiming to give the purchaser the ability to find buried treasure or to summon the dead.

English; manuscript, unknown transcribers and translators; 1908-1915; 1/1D2 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +1 percentiles; 3 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: 20% chance of Contact Yithian being present

English; cheaply-printed pamphlet, unknown transcribers and translators; 1908-1915; 0/1 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +0 percentiles; 1 week to study and comprehend

Spells: None of any effectiveness

In the wake of the appearance of these grimoires, a Professor Turkoff, in residence at Beloit College from Miskatonic University at the time, was given permission to perform a “psychic evaluation” of the fragments. This was a fairly regular occurrence during this period when Spiritualist notions flourished, although not considered entirely rigorously academic – even Percy Fawcett consulted a mystic before setting off on his expedition to South America. Through the agency of a medium, Turkoff was able to determine that the pottery shards had been manufactured by an alien race resident upon the Earth in the eons before the rise of humanity. He arranged for five of the shards – numbers 1, 3, 5, 19 and 23 - to be sent to Miskatonic University in order that the text could be compared against various writings held in the restricted section of the Orne Library. With these pieces removed to that other institution, the Logan Museum pulled the rest of the shards from public view – the display had been attracting too much attention of a decidedly unsavoury nature.

Meanwhile, in England, prompted by discovery of one of the cheaply-produced grimoires and memories of the London Times newspaper article in which Dalton had claimed to have discovered the shards in Greenland, cleric and amateur antiquarian Rev. Arthur Brooke Winters-Hall began to investigate the source of the pottery fragments. A Sussex resident himself, he had heard stories about the village of Eltdown and its “fairy pieces” and so he went there to talk about them with the townsfolk. He soon cottoned-on to what Woodford and Dalton had been up to, and began a new investigation, organising the local people into an informal archaeological dig which lasted from 1908 until after the Great War. He unearthed another 42 fragments of pottery from deep within Triassic Era soil strata and began his efforts to translate them, a task which took him from 1912 to 1917 to accomplish.

On Fragments Discovered in Sussex, also called the Eltdown Sherds

This work was self-published by Winters-Hall as a thick quarto pamphlet in a print run of only 350 copies. It provides detailed analysis of each fragment found by the author and a complex dissection of the hieroglyphs and their translation. The translated text discusses certain pre-human races dwelling upon the Earth in past times as well as giant worm-like creatures called the “Spawn of Yekub” and their use of strange cubes to project their minds across the universe. The text also tells of the Great Race of Yith and of their origins.

Upon its release, the Reverend’s efforts were met with general disdain from academia, a common sticking-point being that the translated text was much longer than the original collection of hieroglyphs. Winters-Hall’s insistence upon calling the shards “The Sussex Fragments” also meant that his efforts became confused with another work of that title, along with the “Sussex Manuscript”, a notorious translation of the Necronomicon. The Reverend finally walked away from the project altogether, donating his collection of fragments to the British Museum where they reside to this day.

English; Rev. Arthur Brooke Winters-Hall (trans.); 1917; 1d4/1d8 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +11 percentiles; 6 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: Contact Yithian

In the wake of the translation’s publication, a linguist at Miskatonic University named Gordon Whitney, a specialist in ancient scripts, stumbled upon the pieces contained in the Orne Library which had been left there after Professor Turkoff’s investigations. Whitney travelled to Beloit College to examine the rest of the collection; while there, he discovered a copy of Winters-Hall’s publication and began to examine the shards in detail.

In the course of his studies, Whitney created the cataloguing system which now organises the fragments. The pieces located in Wisconsin and Massachusetts are numbered 1-23; those held by the British Museum in London are numbered 24-51; where the fragments contain duplicated information, the London pieces are identified with a lower-case ‘s’ for ‘Sussex’. Thus, fragment 8 of the Wisconsin collection is mirrored by fragment ‘s.8’ of the London set. In total, there are seven replicated shards: numbers s.2, s.5, s.8, s.10, s.17, s.20 and s.21.

It should be noted that Whitney’s focus upon the shards was not to discover what information was contained on the fragments, but to unlock the written language upon them. He returned to Arkham and concentrated his efforts upon the largest shards kept there – numbers 5 and 19 – and, in translating them, corroborated much of Winters-Hall’s work.

Whitney’s published work on the Eltdown Shards, while not comprehensive, provides an exhaustive overview of the hieroglyphs on the fragments and the manner in which they work to convey meaning. The translations which he provides outline a terrible entity named “Avaloth”, some discussion of the Great Race of Yith and incomplete information concerning a being entitled “the Warder of Knowledge”, including a fragmentary spell for summoning it – the dismissal component of the ritual is missing. After its publication by the Miskatonic University Press in 1920, Whitney retired prematurely to South Africa where he later died.

The Eltdown Shards – A Partial Translation

English; Gordon Whitney; 1920; 1d2/1d4 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +4 percentiles; 4 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: Summon “Warder of Knowledge” (incomplete)

With the publishing of Whitney’s work, increasing attention was focused upon the shards and their background. Inevitably, the fact of Woodford and Dalton’s academic misconduct came to light and Beloit College resident Dr. Everett Sloan was charged with getting to the bottom of things. He travelled to Eltdown in Illinois, discovering only a ghost town without a gravel pit to its name, and then went to the British Museum to see the fragments held there, from which he took extensive rubbings and photolithographic renderings. Sloan’s concerns were primarily with examining the conduct of Woodford (now deceased) and Dalton (departed to parts unknown), and the validation of Whitney’s work; in his zeal, and thrown off by the reference to Winters-Hall’s work as The Sussex Fragments, he was unaware of Winters-Hall’s previous work until his own book went to print; a second-state issue of the title in the same year contains a revised Introduction which incorporates the Reverend’s observations.

In the final analysis, Sloan was able to show that Woodford and Dalton had falsified their discovery in order to keep the fragments to themselves, later to try and walk away from the whole situation and the potential scandal it would inevitably invoke. He combed-through Whitney’s work in translating the text and found it to be everything required of such an enterprise, and a worthy effort in linguistics. Later, in the revised Introduction, he was also able to praise the work of Arthur Brooke Winters-Hall and remove years of acrimony levelled at the cleric.

As to the text contained upon the fragments themselves, Sloan doesn’t go into the material too much, except to corroborate Whitney’s findings. He does provide a gloss of the material contained on each fragment, prefaced with an image of the shard in question and a collation of the hieroglyphs written upon it. There is also a revised History of the finding of the shards and a distancing of Beloit College from the actions of Woodford and Dalton.

A Re-evaluation of the Eltdown Shards

English; Dr Everett Sloan; 1922; 1/1d4 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +3 percentiles; 3 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: None

(Source: Richard F. Searight, “The Sealed Casket”)

*****

The Emerald Mandala

The Emerald Mandala is a complex circular design which creates an unhealthy craving and hunger for insight. Found in copies of select esoteric texts, meditating upon its geometric configuration opens the path to madness and cold human enlightenment. An Investigator’s INTx4 must be rolled each time they meditate on the Emerald Mandala. A failed roll creates compulsion to further meditate upon the ‘Mandala. If failed three times, the Investigator gains 1 point of Cthulhu Mythos Knowledge and the desire to further research the mystery of the ‘Mandala. In their dreams and meditations, the hovering form of the Emerald Lama appears to guide them to Yian Ho, Shamballah, or other mystic Mythos secrets. The appearance of the Emerald Lama causes the dreamer to lose 1d3/1d10 Sanity points. Repeat this cycle as long as the Investigator insists upon it or is driven to meditate upon the Emerald Mandala.

*****

The Emerald Tablet of HermesTrismegistus


“Seeing within myself an immaterial vision that came from the mercy of God, I went out of myself into an immortal body, and now I am not what I was before. I have been born in mind!”

-‘Hermes Trismegistus’

Hermes Trismegistus, or the “Thrice-Great Hermes” was not an actual being; rather, he is a syncretism of the Greek deity Hermes with the Egyptian god Thoth, dating from the Ptolemaic rule of Egypt under the Greeks. With the true authorship of the work thus shrouded, later writers created a complete backstory to account for the creation of the text: apparently, these cryptic words were found in a high mountain cave, carved on a slab of emerald and clutched in the desiccated claws of Trismegistus’ corpse. A colourful tale indeed, but this emerald tablet was said to have been removed and stored in the Library of the Serapeum of Alexandria where it was known variously as The Emerald Tablet, the Smaragdine Table, the Tabula Smaragdina, or The Secret of Hermes. It was said to have been stolen and/or destroyed during the sacking of that great repository. (It is worth noting that many ancient texts referred to green jasper or green granite, even green glass, as “emerald”.)

The text upon the ‘Tablet – probably originally written in the 1st to 3rd Centuries AD - is the cornerstone for that body of thought known as ‘Hermetic wisdom’. It is the single most-quoted alchemical text in the Western tradition of that art and is often incorporated into the works of other authors. It claims to reveal the secret of the ‘primordial substance’ and its transmutations; in essence a cryptic formula for the Philosophers’ Stone. Other writings attributed to Trismegistus, or which were derived from these texts, are referred to as the Corpus Hermeticum or ‘body of Hermetic lore’.

The earliest known arrival of this text into the West was as an incorporation to the Kitab Sirr al-Asrar (see image, above), in Latin translations entitled Secretum Secretorum (“The Secret of Secrets”). This book is pseudoepigraphical, that is, it purports to be a series of letters between Aristotle and Alexander the Great, containing many articles on rulership along with discussions of science, astrology, physiognomy and alchemy. The first translation from the Arabic into Latin was by John of Seville (“Johannes Hispalensis”, or “Hispaniensis”) around 1140, while a second translation was produced by Philip of Tripoli circa 1243. Medieval readers were absolutely convinced of the prima facie authorship of the work and, since it formed a part of the body of the works of ‘Aristotle’, it was widely read and circulated by scholars without fear of retribution.

Other Arabic texts have also been found to contain The Emerald Tablet: amongst these are the Kitab Ustuqus al-Uss al-Thani ("Second Book of the Elements of Foundation") supposedly written by Jabir ibn Hayyan, and the Kitab Sirr al-Khaliqa wa San 'at al-Tabi'a ("Book of the Secret of Creation and the Art of Nature"), both dated between 650 and 830 AD. It was also to be found in the original Arabic Book of Causes (Kitab ul-iadh li-Aristutalis fi'i-khauri'l-mahd), allegedly written by Apollonius of Tyana,

English Translation from the Arabic of the Book of Causes attributed to Apollonius of Tyana:

“It contains an accurate commentary that can't be doubted.

It states: What is the above is from the below and the below is from the above. The work of wonders is from one.

And all things sprang from this essence through a single projection. How marvellous is its work! It is the principle [sic] part of the world and its custodian.

Its father is the sun and its mother is the moon. Thus the wind bore it within it and the earth nourished it.

Father of talismans and keeper of wonders.

Perfect in power that reveals the lights.

It is a fire that became our earth. Separate the earth from the fire and you shall adhere more to that which is subtle than that which is coarse, through care and wisdom.

It ascends from the earth to the heaven. It extracts the lights from the heights and descends to the earth containing the power of the above and the below for it is with the light of the lights. Therefore the darkness flees from it.

The greatest power overcomes everything that is subtle and it penetrates all that is coarse.

The formation of the microcosm is in accordance with the formation of the macrocosm.

The scholars made this their path.

This is why Thrice Hermes was exalted with wisdom.

This is his last book that he hid in the catacomb.”

The Medieval alchemist Ortolanus wrote an exegesis of the ‘Tablet, a massive examination and interpretation which had a heavy influence on the development of the Western alchemical tradition. Known as The Secret of Hermes, many copies of this work survive, dating back to the 15th century. Other works were not so lucky: due mainly to Papal interference, most other texts concerning the Hermetic Tradition were consigned to the flames. It was not until the Renaissance that many of the texts attributed to Hermes Trismegistus – in fact the whole Corpus Hermeticum – were rediscovered from Byzantine sources.

Various; ‘Hermes Trismegistus’; 1st to 3rd Century AD; 0/1 Sanity loss; Occult +13 percentiles; 21 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: None

*****

Enochian

The term ‘Enochian’ is supposed to reference the fact that the Biblical Prophet Enoch is the last person to have seen or used this particular script before John Dee - wizard to Queen Elizabeth I - and his associate Edward Kelley were reintroduced to it, supposedly by the Archangel Uriel. These two adepts wrote many long journals in this script, mainly transcripts of the discussions they had with angelic beings whilst under trances and maintained it as the prime means whereby they coded their grimoires.

Latter-day attempts at deciphering the ‘language of the angels’ has brought it into disrepute: it has proven to be a poor effort at a relatively simple language based upon English grammar and with symbols derived from many extant alphabet systems known to Dee and Kelley. Nevertheless, many magical practitioners have taken it at face value and have used it in their own workings, most notably A.E. Waite in his evaluation of ancient grimoires.

There is a great divide between those who believe that this alphabet is an angelically imparted system and those who point fingers of blame at the notorious Kelley and his persuasive hold over the otherwise-credible Dee. QEI’s wizard himself refused to use the term ‘Enochian’, preferring such titles as ‘Angelical’, the ‘Celestial Speech’, the ‘Language of Angels’, the ‘First Language of God-Christ’, the ‘Holy Language’, or ‘Adamical’, because, according to Dee's Angels, it was used by Adam in Paradise to name all things. Nevertheless, the existence of the language itself has given rise to many latter-day incantations and other formulae which all bear the descriptor ‘Enochian’.

*****

“The Equinox – The Review of Scientific Illuminism”

A semi-regular journal launched by Aleister Crowley and a major organ for the dissemination of his theories on Thelema and “magick”. First published in 1909, the work contains essays, discussions, and theoretical articles of import to Crowley’s magickal order, the AA, or ‘Silver Star’, the Thelemite organisation he created after leaving the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The journal is also of interest to members of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), the sister organisation of the AA.

The first volume of the Equinox took Crowley from 1909 to 1913 to complete; it was released in a series of 10 issues containing many treatises on subjects ‘magickal’, most of them written by Crowley himself under a bewildering variety of pseudonyms. It also contained short fiction and poetry, not only by Crowley and his Thelemite brethren, but also by such luminaries as Lord Dunsany and Katharine Susannah Pritchard. The completion of this first volume seriously drained Crowley both emotionally and financially and he declared the second volume would be a “journal of silence”.

The first issue of the third volume was printed in 1919 and released as a hardbound tome. Printed under subscription, it was of primary interest to the OTO and further codified Crowley’s aims in his Thelemite teachings and explorations into “sex magick”. Due to its striking blue cover, it was commonly referred to as the Blue Equinox. Later issues from this volume trickled out sporadically in a more typical magazine format. Volume four contained only two issues and was largely compiled by Crowley’s adherents. After Crowley’s death other individuals took over the journal and it was still in print as of 1998.

English; Aleister Crowley & other contributors; 1909 - Present; No Sanity loss; Occult +2 percentiles/issue

Spells: None, unless the Keeper deems otherwise

*****

The Ethics of Ygor


“Scarsdale looked at me with thinly disguised triumph. ‘I have been working long years at this, my dear Plowright,’ he said. ‘These carvings are hardly unfamiliar to me. And I had The Ethics of Ygor to guide me’”

-Basil Copper, The Great White Space

The text of this work deals in part with a phenomenon called the ‘Great White Space’. Reading between the lines of the archaic writing, this appears to be an alternate dimension sacred to the ‘Old Ones’ and used by them to travel across vast distances. By means of a polarised region of space called the ‘Magnetic Ring’, this dimension intersects our own at a point far below the earth in west China or possibly Mongolia. The text discusses a city guarding the phenomenon called ‘Croth’ and places the location of the dimensional rift in a mountainous region of western China. It also mentions a sect of worshippers dedicated to protecting the phenomenon called the ‘White Brotherhood’. Whether these individuals are the same as the ‘Hidden Elect’ of Mme. Blavatsky’s writings, who also use this cognomen, remains to be seen.

The text deals in part with the journey to the ‘Space referencing a city called ‘Zak’ on the edges of ‘The Plains of Darkness’, beneath the ‘Black Mountains’ – the exact locations of these places have not yet been determined.

(Source: Basil Copper, The Great White Space)

Latin; Unknown author; date unknown; 1d3/1d6 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +4 percentiles; 13 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: None

*****

ESP: Beyond Time & Distance

An odd book produced during the Cold War era and in response to Russian claims that they had identified the brain as the source and capabilities of human psychic powers. In response, Lethbridge – an original member of the Ghost Club and the Society of Psychical Research – demonstrates by means of several simple experiments how the mind exists free of the physical reality of the brain and is capable of many great and astonishing feats. Along the way, in a fumbling attempt to explain how psychic powers work, he prefigures the concept of string theory – without using any concrete terminology from that field (at that time not conceived) - as the means whereby human psychic power can be facilitated.

English; T.C. Lethbridge: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., London 1965; 0/1 Sanity Loss; Occult +6 percentiles; 6 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: None

*****

An Examination of Cryptographic Process in Linguistic Interpretation using African Models

See: The G’Harne Fragments

*****

An Examination of De Vermis Mysteriis

Joachim Feery’s overviews of various Mythos tomes have been discussed before. His reviews are a handy means whereby readers without access to the necessary mystical works can enact a workaround to their logistical problems; however, the incomplete knowledge that these books afford is fraught with danger. This book is a case in point. Much of what Feery committed to print from his reading (and suppositions) of the contents of Prinn’s magnum opus is lacking in certain necessary particulars – spells are unfinished; rituals are lacking in requisite information; and certain vital elements of various discussions are left out. The hard metaphysical researcher is warned to proceed with care…

German; Joachim Feery (after Ludwig Prinn); Berlin, circa 1930; Sanity loss 1/1d3; Cthulhu Mythos +3 percentiles; average three weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: None complete

Of course, there is also an English translation, produced in London after the Second World war:

English; Joachim Feery (after Ludwig Prinn); London, 1948; Sanity loss 1/1d2; Cthulhu Mythos +1 percentiles;average three weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: None complete

*****

“Experiments with a Medium”

Professor Garder was a noted lecturer and researcher into the phenomena of occult experiences. Like many other psychic explorers of the time – Sir A. C. Doyle, Harry Price, Thomas Carnacki – Garder was concerned that his experiments and methodologies were above reproach, reproducible and, above all, free from any taint of sensationalism or perceived attempt at personal gain. Garder was no exposer of false mediums like Harry Houdini; rather, he attempted to quantify the mediumistic experience as a whole in scientific terms, rather than tear apart individual cases.

These experiments took place with an unnamed medium and there is some suggestion that two or even more mediums took part in the sessions. Many believe that Rudi Schneider, with whom Harry Price worked at length, was the main test subject, based upon Garder having spent some time in Germany prior to the paper’s publication.

The point of these tests was to see if there were any substances or barriers, physical or otherwise which could prevent contact by “etherical or spiritual forces or substances”. Such materials as lead, zinc and copper were rated as largely ineffective in preventing the medium from contacting the Other Side, while underwater experiments and those conducted in rooms filled with chlorine or sulphuric gases were of greater danger to the test subjects than to the “forces Beyond”. Many standard ‘magic circles’ and other such protective diagrams, with or without the adjuncts of garlic oil, salt, iron or holy water, were tried and the results were ambivalent at best. The most successful trials were those in which varying frequencies of light were employed.

At the blue end of the scale, it was found that contact “across the Veil” was successful and benign; at the red end of the spectrum, contact was no more or less affected, but was more agitated and even malevolent. By sheer accident, attempting to focus and intensify different wavelengths of light, Garder discovered that spirit contact was rendered useless by the imposition of a barrier of electrical current passed through vacuum tubes. Seated within a cage of softly glowing vacuum cylinders, the medium subject was unable to summon spirit contacts and complained of feeling “peculiarly isolated”.

(Source: William Hope Hodgson)

*****

Extractus Alsophocus

During the Renaissance, the Black Tome of Alsophocus was discovered by the Inquisition and a collection of extracts compiled from it. This book contains no spells but is written in the Inquisitorial alphabet, making decipherment a bothersome difficulty. The extracted passages are concerned with the Shining Trapezohedron, from its creation on Yuggoth to its disappearance during the Ancient Egyptian reign of Nitocris. It deals with the known qualities of the device and the means whereby it can be used against the Haunter of the Dark.

(Source: Bruce Ballon, et.al., Unseen Masters: “Coming of Age”)

Latin, in the Inquisitorial cipher; Unknown translator; circa. 1517; 1d4/2d4 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +6 percentiles; 3d4 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: None

*****

The Inquisitorial Alphabet

Most people would not be too surprised to learn that the Inquisition, that instrument of terror deployed by fanatical Popes throughout European history, used a series of codes to hide the nature of the correspondence between their agents. What is surprising is that this invented written language was based largely on alchemical and Hebrew symbols. For an organisation heaven-bent on wiping out heretics across the globe it seems more than a little hypocritical of them to have borrowed their enemy’s alphabets as inspiration for their secret codes. To add insult to injury, it’s also a very simple replacement code that’s laborious to write, so what they gained from it is anybody’s guess.

Difficulty:                             Slight: Idea Roll x2

Works in this Language: Codex Maleficium (+20%); Zekerboni (+10%); Extractus

Alsophocus (+0%)

‘Rosetta Stone’:                  None, although presumably Vatican agents have textbooks on the subject

*****

Vaults of Academia:

DANNSEYS, Peter (1987), “Early Research Results from the N’Kai Excavations”, Publications of the Arkham Biophysical Institute 40:21-25

IBID., (1988), “Elegant Symmetry: Inversion and Reversion in Dark Dimension Demi-life”, Houghton & Mifflin, New York NY, USA

GARDER, Prof. W., (18__), “Experiments with a Medium” (Publication details unknown)

MARSH, S. Robert, (1976), “Extension and Resorption in Nubes raptus (Robson)”, Abstracta Bestialis 82:39-78

MUSTOLL, Ivan, (1984), “Emergency Procedures During Controlled Obsession of Yog-Sothoth”, Annals of the Innsmouth Society 82:317-324

RATSEGG, F. Ford (1988), “Exploring the Outer Alpha Centauri System”, unpublished NASA document, 88.3.21/889912

SMITH, C.A. (1932), “Examining Tomes of Knowledge”, The Occult Librarian, March: 23-29

TYPER, Alonso Hasbrouck (1881), “Ein Katalog von Vampirism”, University of Heidelberg Press, Heidelberg, Germany