“...Thus do the ancient ghiils, eaters of the dead, keep their counsels
in the lightless vaults far below the surface of the world. There do they meep
and glibber to one another, amid their collections of human bones and flesh.
They delight in pools of standing water, mounds of reeking filth, and the
hoards of mysteries they scavenge from human lives. The brave man who descends
to the ghiils may bring secrets, but
not without some change to himself...”
Meredith L. Patterson, “Principles
and Parameters”
The Pnakotica
comprises all known works which have been penned by or about the creatures
known as the Great Race of Yith or their doings on this world. Like the Hermetica of Hermes Trismegistus, this
collection of writings is wide-ranging and manifests in wildly different forms
across the planet. More sinisterly, the Pnakotica
are known to be systematically collected and hidden away by a shadowy
fraternity of humans, tentatively identified as the human agents which the
Great Race use to conduct its telepathic leaps through the timelines. The body
of works includes full texts, fragments and all kinds of writings in between:
one piece of the Pnakotica, for example,
is a marginal notation scribbled in the border of Miskatonic University’s copy
of the Necronomicon by Dr Wingate
Peaslee in 1910.
A constantly bothersome aspect of the Pnakotica is the tendency for pieces of
writing - often mere doggerel - to have no relevance until the discovery of
prehistoric etchings or other writings discovered in archaeological digs which
show that these scraps pre-date their own discovery. Furthermore, the tendency
of these pieces to form parts of prophecies of things yet to occur make
documentation and publishing fraught with difficulty for the uninitiated: few
extant academic institutions are willing to accept the notion of psychic
time-travel, regardless of the evidence to hand.
Finally, there is the difficulty of
language: the Pnakotica are written
in many different tongues and alphabets; oftentimes the idiom is that of the
Great Race, known as Pnakotic. This
language is in two distinct styles – Pnakotic
A and Pnakotic B. A limited
academic debate continues as to whether one style is more formal than the
other, possibly reserved for sacred writings, or whether one style is an older,
superseded form, abandoned after some historical milestone.
Various; Various authors; from the Permian Era;
Sanity loss: varies, depending upon content; Cthulhu Mythos +1 to +12
percentiles, depending upon content; Time to study and comprehend depends upon
length and contents
Spells:
Any, depending upon the
Keeper’s choice
*****
As discussed, there are complete texts
known to form part of the Pnakotica;
the best known examples are as follows:
The Pnakotic Manuscripts
“And after man was born he walked upon
the earth dumb and naked. The Winged Ones brought knowledge from the sky,
knowledge we did not know.”
This is the first written work of what
would become the Pnakotica; its
identification and perusal allowed for the first tenuous connexions to be made
between various parts of what would become that extensive body of coherent
knowledge.
The unpublished pages are handwritten on
parchment, folded and cut to quarto size. Several copies were made, obviously
by several scribes as the handwriting noticeably varies. Currently there are
only five known copies catalogued in libraries worldwide.
“The first men learned their written
language from the Great Winged Ones, Traces of these strange symbols have been
discovered across the world.”
The matter of the text concerns the
re-telling of a series of legends and myth-cycles purportedly native to
Hyperborea and Atlantis. There is also a large section devoted to the social
organisation of a group of unidentified beings inhabiting what appears to be
Jupiter. A final short chapter deals with the discovery and sinking of an
island known as “Real-Yea”.
The translator of the work (who says that
he transcribed the work from Ancient Greek) informs the reader that he was
given the scrolls by a “Winged One” and that this being also furnished him with
a special formula that would allow him to contact this creature if the
translation became bogged down. He carefully outlines this procedure in the
text.
(Source: H. P. Lovecraft, “Polaris”)
English; Author unknown; 15th Century AD;
1d4/1d8 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +10 percentiles; 45 weeks to study
and comprehend
Spells: “Beseech Winged One” (Contact Elder
Thing); “Read the Portents” (Augur); Baneful Dust of Hermes Trismegistus; “Summon
a Windstorm” (Bring Haboob); Chant of Thoth; “Create a Scrying Glass” (Conjure
Glass of Mortlan); “Summon an Intelligence from Beyond” (Contact Great Race of
Yith); “Converse with A Demon” (Contact Flying Polyp); "Call a Great Beast!" (Contact Hound of
Tindalos); "Summon a Spirit of the Desert" (Contact Sand-Dweller); Dust of Suleiman; Enchant
Brazier; Find Gate; Identify Spirit; Parting Sands; “A Sigil of Power!” (Pnakotic
Pentagram); “A Compound to show the Unseen” (Powder of Ibn-Ghazi)
Pnakotos: The Pnakotic Manuscripts –
Fraternal Order Version
This version of the Pnakotic Manuscripts is a very particular beast. It has no
immediate connexion to that parchment work called The Pnakotic Manuscripts; rather it is a compilation of Pnakotic
material dating all the way back to 4th Century Alexandria. The work
began as the remembered writings of Hypatia of Alexandria, the daughter of a
Ptolemaic philosopher attached to the Serapeum of Alexandria, who was herself
psychically abducted by the Great Race. Determined to protect the knowledge she
had discovered and keen to ally herself with the Yithians and their exploration
of the timelines, she established a coterie of followers dedicated to
preserving knowledge and serving the Great Race.
Hypatia’s version of the Pnakotic Manuscripts (which she named Pnakotos) has been heavily revised and
added to as more abductees flocked to the group and helped it to flourish into
a worldwide organisation, albeit a sub
fusc one. In this sense, the work is very similar to the Pnakotica but is more streamlined for
having been edited by Great Race representatives over hundreds of years.
Additionally, the work contains several appendices containing material that was
lost when the Alexandrian Library was ransacked and burnt.
The text underwent a recension during the
Enlightenment under Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, himself a former abductee, and
has since undergone various other emendations after discussion in the Fraternal
Order of Librarian’s in-house publication, Acta
Eruditorium. As well, the Order has produced an English version of the
text; however, this version contains no spells.
(Source: “Delta Green”, Pagan Publishing)
Ancient Greek;
Hypatia of Alexandria, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and others; since the 4th
Century AD; 1d4/1d8 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +12%; Occult +5%; 52 weeks to
study and comprehend.
Spells:
Augur; Baneful Dust of Hermes Trismegistus; Bring Haboob; Contact Bast; Chant
of Thoth; Conjure Glass of Mortlan; Contact Great Race of Yith; Contact Elder
Thing; Contact Flying Polyp; Contact Hound of Tindalos; Contact Sand-Dweller;
Create Time Gate; Dust of Suleiman; Enchant Brazier; Find Gate; Identify Spirit;
Parting Sands; Create Plutonian Drug; Powder of Ibn-Ghazi; “Hypatia’s Ankh”
(Prinn’s Crux Ansata); Seal of Isis; Sekhmenkenhemp’s Words; Voice of Ra
English;
researchers of the Fraternal Order of Librarians; 1973; 1d4/1d6 Sanity loss;
Cthulhu Mythos +10%; Occult +5%; 48 weeks to study and comprehend.
Spells: None
Analysis of the Manuscript of the “Pnakotoi”
Dr Schwarzwalder discovered a piece of
the Pnakotica transcribed into a
format resembling a parabaik of the
Burmese language regions, that is a type of book constructed from the dried
leaves of palms, held together by an idiosyncratic wooden frame. Whilst not
written in any of the Burmese dialectical forms, Schwarzwalder investigated it
and came to the conclusion that it was written in some archaic derivation of
Ancient Greek. His Analysis goes on
to discuss this observation, correlating his findings with a transcription of
the original Pnakotic Manuscripts (which,
said to have been translated from Greek, lent weight to his theories).
While not unmet with some derision –
Schwarzwalder had often written of his ideas about a pan-global “super race”
from which he believed the Greeks descended – his work on the “Pnakotoi”, as he called it, provided a
sound linguistic platform from which to expand the basis of research into the
language and its script.
German;
Dr. J. T. Schwarzwalder; 1895; 1/1d4 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +3 percentiles; 30
weeks to study and comprehend
Spells: None
The Pnakotic Manuscripts: A New Revised
Study
“In
the analyses of our collective mother-tongue, undertaken by notables such as
Drs. Berhold, Delbrück and Karl Brugmann, much attention has been given to the
idioms of western Asia, namely the languages of India and its environs; but
little study has been devoted to dialectics native to farther Eastern climes.
One such language, records of which are preserved on wood-and–palm-leaf tablets
known as the Pnakotic Manuscripts, had been the object of extensive studies by Dr. J. T. Schwarzwalder,
who in 1895 compiled his Analysis of the Manuscript of the Pnakotoi. As I shall demonstrate, however, his
characterization of the Manuscript’s
language as an offshoot of Greek proves highly inadequate...”
Meredith L. Patterson, “Principles
and Parameters”
Using
Schwarzwalder’s Analysis as its springboard, Roshenplatt’s
deconstruction of Schwarzwalder’s method is a convincing argument against the
Pnakotoi being in any way a derivative of Ancient Greek. Roshenplatt spends
quite a bit of time attacking Schwarzwalder’s theories of a pre-Hellenic
civilisation as the cradle of human development before methodically dissecting
the linguistic peculiarities which distance the Pnakotic script and language
from the Greek tongue. In this sense, without actually progressing the business
of translation, the work is valuable in that it highlights the language’s
idiosyncratic features whilst simultaneously divorcing it from several
established language groups.
English;
Dr. Dieter M. Roshenplatt; 1922; 0/1 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +0
percentiles; 12 weeks to study and comprehend
Spells: None
“Aphasiological Considerations of the
Pnakotoi”
This monograph stems from an incident in
which the author, Tripleten, treated a brain-damaged patient who inadvertently encountered
an extract from the Pnakotica.
Although suffering lesions to the Broca region of his brain as the result of a
gun mishap and largely incapable of coherent speech, the patient began to
respond favourably to a course of treatment proposed by Tripleten. It soon
became clear however, that the doctor’s therapy had little to do with the
remarkable progress that the patient began to experience. Tripleten discovered
that the patient was reading an old book hidden in his bedroom which contained
many reproductions of pages from the Pnakotic
Manuscripts.
Tripleten’s research led him to attempt
to contact Dr Schwarzwalder in Baden-baden, Germany. He discovered that the
doctor had spent the last years of his life in a sanatorium there, suffering
from a complete degeneration of his higher faculties accompanied by various
gross distortions of his speech capabilities. After gaining access to the dead
man’s research, Tripleten began work on this monograph which suggests that the
linguistic processes exemplified by the mysterious texts may actually stimulate
neurological change in the reader. Accompanying the outline of this theory,
Tripleten provides statistical charts tracing the progress of his patient’s
symptoms from the time he acquired the book at a church rummage sale to his
breakdown and death three months after the book was removed, as well as the
medical details of Schwarzwalder, charting his decline after first starting his
research of the “Pnakotoi”. Given
that Schwarzwalder died in a suicidal rage and that the other patient lapsed
into catatonia and succumbed, Tripleten draws some disturbing and
thought-provoking conclusions about the nature of the Pnakotic language.
English;
Dr. Thomas E. Tripleten; 1931; 1/1d4 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +1
percentiles; 20 weeks to study and comprehend
Spells: None
The Mathematics of the Pnakotic Manuscripts
“...In specific, the author
posits the case of a non-binary logic which was later suppressed by the
patriarchially imposed social constraints. The author’s methodology will be
substantiated with exemplary passages drawn from the heretofore unsuccessfully
translated documents...”
Meredith L. Patterson, “Principles
and Parameters”
In 1958, Dr Pelton d’Est published this
revision of the Pnakotic grammar system, positing it as non-binary logic structure
based upon a rigorous mathematical schema. In a ground-breaking analysis, she
demonstrated that – rather than being based upon a random and illogical
structure of cultural paradigms, like other known languages – Pnakotic is a
coding system capable of transcribing almost any observed phenomena through a
method of mathematical modelling. In establishing her theory, she dissects
several known texts of the Pnakotica
and proves that there is a solid numerical architecture grounding each of the passages.
She declares in her conclusion that, rather than being a language developed
within and through the demands of social need, Pnakotic is a constructed idiom,
created for a specific purpose. While her findings are remarkable, the fact
that she was still unable to translate the texts stood against her and the book
was given a cool reception.
(Source: Meredith L. Patterson. “Principles and Parameters”)
English;
Harriet M. Pelton-d’Est, PhD; 1958; 0/1d2 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +1
percentiles; 30 weeks to study and comprehend
Spells: None
“The Shadow Out of Time”
Dr Peaslee’s journal account of his
abduction by the Great Race and the things that he saw whilst taken (as revealed
later through hypnosis) are perhaps the best-known example of an instance of
the phenomenon. The document contains many interesting observations of his life
amongst the Yithians and creates a dramatic backdrop to his later expedition
into the Australian desert south of Cuncudgerie representing Miskatonic
University. The goal of the expedition was to find Pnakotus, the lost City of
the Great Race, but the net results of the trip were greeted with little
fanfair.
The journal has never been published, but
remains in the possession of Miskatonic University. Special permission must be
sought in writing before being allowed access to the document and a librarian
is required to be present with the reader at all times.
(Source: HPL, “The Shadow Out of Time”)
English;
Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee; 1936; 1/1d4 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +3
percentiles; 1 week to study and comprehend
Spells: None
Wondrous Intelligences
During the time of Oliver Cromwell’s rule of Britain as the Lord
Protector of England, one James Woodville of Suffolk was mentally exchanged
with a member of the Great Race. Records of his body’s actions during the
ensuing seven years are scant; however, upon his return to his own corpus
in 1658, Woodville penned this rambling tome, relating his time-displaced experiences
and his life thereafter.
It is obvious that Woodville’s time away with the Yithians had a
deleterious effect upon his mind. His desperate attempts to rationalise his
experiences amongst his “benevolent giant captors” break down in a sheer
inability to describe much of what he encountered. One element of what he
experienced however, did filter through – sex. The bulk of this tome details
Woodville’s distinctly unusual sex life in the stews and brothels of London
after his return. It would seem that he devoted a great deal of time attempting
to duplicate the sensations of Yithian procreation, leading to fetishistic
performances of mind-bending complexity. According to his meticulous notes, the
attempts were not always successful, but occasionally he did manage to capture
a fleeting essence of those sensations which so beguiled him. He died penniless
from syphilitic complications.
(Source: Larry DiTillio and Lynn Willis, Masks of Nyarlathotep – “City in the
Sands")
English;
James Woodville; after 1658; 1/1d4 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +3 percentiles;
1 week to study and comprehend
Spells: None
*****
Apart
from the Pnakotica, there are many
more tomes out there that have a connexion to the Great Race, either in that
they were written in Pnakotic, or that they touched upon the ‘Race or other
aspects of their culture. Their transmission has often mirrored that of the Pnakotica, in that discovered original
texts have been found long after the fact of the material was known, or have
been found to contain information or features anachronistic to their dating.
The Eltdown Sherds
The
Eltdown Sherds, as they
have come to be known, are a series of pottery fragments discovered in a
stratum of earth dating from the Triassic Period. While most sources agree that
the ‘Sherds were unearthed in 1882
near the town of Eltdown in southern England, another source claims that they
were discovered in Greenland in 1903. The 1882 discovery is the more widely
accepted.
A psychic evaluation of the pieces was
spearheaded by a Professor Turkoff of Beloin College, who declared that the
pottery had been created and inscribed by members of the Elder Thing race;
dissenting opinion however claims that the authors were the Great Race of Yith.
Comparisons between known samples of Great Race workmanship have revealed that,
if the Great Race created the ‘Sherds,
they must have transcribed the writings from an Elder Thing source.
Early examination of the ‘Sherds condemned them as
“untranslatable” by the authors of the first paper dealing with them, Doctors
Woodford and Dalton. Thereafter, many occult organisations claimed to have decoded
them and many surreptitious pamphlets were circulated. In 1912, Reverend Arthur
Brooke Winters-Hall began working on the ‘Sherds
and, in 1917 he published a thick, 64-page pamphlet, in a limited edition of
350 copies, on the fragments, containing his observations and translation. This
work was initially derided for its translated text being larger than the
original inscriptions; however, later attempts to duplicate the Reverend’s work
have confirmed his findings.
Despite not a text penned by the Great
Race, the work deals with the planet of Yith and an entity known as the ‘Warder
of Knowledge’; it also refers to the creatures of the planet Yekub and their
attempts to invade Earth on several past occasions. Sections of the ‘Sherds have a close similarity to
passages from the Pnakotic Manuscripts
and, to muddy the waters further, another copy of the ‘Sherds was recently discovered etched onto metal plates and
written in a proto-Semitic language. A detailed comparison between the ‘Sherds and these other two works has
not been carried out as of this writing but such an investigation could bear
valuable fruit.
English;
Rev. Arthur Brooke Winters-Hall; 1912; 1d4/1d8 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +11
percentiles; 6 weeks to study and comprehend
Spells: Contact
Yithian
The Eltdown Sherds: a Partial Translation
Gordon Whitney took up the challenge of
evaluating the Reverend’s translation and worked upon a single section of the ‘Sherds, comparing an independent
translation (his own) to the Winters-Hall effort; he felt compelled to assert
the veracity of the previous translator’s production before retiring
prematurely to South Africa.
English;
Gordon Whitney; 1920; 1d2/1d4 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +4 percentiles; 4
weeks to study and comprehend
Spells: None
A Re-evaluation of the Eltdown Sherds
Two years after Whitney’s publication –
which was plagued with controversy from the start – Everett Sloan initiated an
independent inquiry. Having no firsthand knowledge of Winters-Hall’s work, he
approached Whitney’s translation without the benefit of a previous interpreter.
Again, using only a small segment of the work, he was able to verify that
Winters-Hall’s translation was likely as accurate as could be expected –
indeed, should be lauded - given the complexity of the original material.
(Source: Richard F. Searight, “The Sealed Casket”)
English;
Dr Everett Sloan; 1922; 1/1d4 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +3 percentiles; 3
weeks to study and comprehend
Spells: None
*****
G’Harne Fragments
“Ce’haiie
ep-ngh fl’hur G’harne fhtagn.
Ce’haiie
fhtagn ngh Shudde-M’ell.
Hai
G’harne orr’e ep fl’hur,
Shudde-M’ell
ican’icanicas fl’hur orr’e G’harne.”
Cthonian
chant
Brian Lumley, “The
Burrowers Beneath”
These are an extensive set of fired clay
or stone sherds impressed with a series of dot hieroglyphs, in a language which
bears much resemblance to that in which the Pnakotic
Manuscripts are written. The sherds appear to be part of a much larger work
which has not been discovered. An unnamed African tribe held the ‘Fragments until their discovery by an
adventurer named Windrop who convinced them (or otherwise contrived) to let him
take them away. The sherds were deposited in the British Museum, where they
reside today, and carbon dating has placed their creation at some point in the
Triassic Era (a dating which is fiercely contested in some circles). Windrop
published an article about them in The
Imperial Archaeological Journal and speculated (perhaps far too
precipitately) that the language of the sherds was unlike any writing to be
found on Earth and his attempts at translation met with much derision. His
findings caused a significant delay in the article’s publication, not seeing
print until 1934; but advance notice of the paper and its unauthorised
circulation amongst Windrop’s colleagues assured its dismissal before the fact,
and the matter of the sherds became known ever after as “Windrop’s Folly”.
Current thinking in relation to the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Sussex Fragments, posits that the G’harne Fragments were written by
members of the Elder Thing race. The main part of the text deals with the lost
city of G’harne in Africa and its destruction by a massive earthquake; the text
also deals with the race of creatures known as Cthonians and their leader, a being
called Shudde M’ell. Included is also a creditable, though limited, map of the
solar system and the naming of several sites on the planet’s surface
tentatively identified as places of worship for prehistoric peoples; certainly
references to locales such as Stonehenge and Avebury seem to indicate that the
work may have been edited at some point.
Pnakotic
dialect in idiosyncratic hieroglyphs; Elder Thing scribe(s); Triassic Period;
1d8/1d20 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +14 percentiles; 42 weeks to study and
comprehend
Spells: Contact Cthonian, Contact Elder Thing,
Contact Shudde M’ell, Red Sign of Shudde M’ell
“There are fabulous legends of Star-Born
creatures who inhabited this Earth many millions of years before Man appeared
and who were still here, in certain black places, when he eventually evolved.
They are, I am sure, to an extent here even now.”
Sir
Amery Wendy-Smith
(Brian Lumley, “Rising
with Surtsey”)
Following on from Windrop’s researches in
the previous years, Sir Amery Wendy-Smith launched an expedition to the lost
city of G’harne and returned, the only survivor of that fateful voyage. Sir
Amery had first heard of the city in perusing Windrop’s translations and had
attempted a translation himself. With understandable reticence (given Windrop’s
vilification over the same material), Sir Amery hesitated to make known his
work upon the ‘Fragments and they
remained unpublished for many years. It is reasoned that his translation was substantially
complete by 1919.
After his disastrous expedition, Sir
Amery spent many years refining his work, attempting to cleave closer to the
heart of the material. It was during this time that he re-named the work “The G’harne Fragments” in an attempt to
distance the “Windrop’s Folly” taint.
In 1931, he released a partial translation at his own expense in a limited
cloth-bound 128 page edition of 958 copies in sextodecimo format. Sometime
after this, he was killed when his house fell in on top of him during a seismic
event: none of his copious notes on the ‘Fragments
have been located, although the occultist Titus Crow was rumoured to have had
some.
English;
Sir Amery Wendy-Smith; partial translation, 1919 (1931); 1d6/1d10 Sanity loss;
Cthulhu Mythos +10 percentiles; 12 weeks to study and comprehend
Spells: Contact Cthonian, Contact Elder Thing,
Contact Shudde M’ell, Red Sign of Shudde M’ell
To a cryptologist, any set of
untranslated or coded writings must be a source of fascination; this is almost
certainly the case with Professor Gordon Walmsley and his dealings with the G’harne Fragments.
Working independently of Sir Amery
Wendy-Smith, Professor Walmsley began research on his own translation using the
principles outlined in his major opus,
Notes on Deciphering Codes, Cryptograms and Ancient Inscriptions. These
guidelines had seen him successfully interpret such mysterious inscriptions as
the Phitmar Stone and the Geph Columns, and soon bore fruit with “Windrop’s Folly”. However, as with
Wendy-Smith before him, he was hesitant to publish his findings fearing the
caustic response which Windrop had received: to those inquiring as to the
nature of his endeavours, he pretended to be creating “spoof notes” on the Folly, deflecting any serious
investigation of his efforts. Professor Walmsley was murdered by unidentified
assailants near Wharby Museum in Yorkshire where he had held a curatorial
position; happily, correspondence which he had embarked upon with members of
the Wilmarth Foundation, allowed that organisation to prepare a definitive
translation of the ‘Fragments based
on his groundbreaking work.
English;
Professor Gordon Walmsley of Goole; partial translation, 1935-53; 1d6/1d10
Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +10 percentiles; 11 weeks to study and comprehend
Spells: Contact Cthonian, Contact Elder Thing,
Contact Shudde M’ell, Red Sign of Shudde M’ell
English;
Wilmarth Foundation; Miskatonic University Press, 1972; 1d6/1d10 Sanity loss;
Cthulhu Mythos +7 percentiles; 12 weeks to study and comprehend
Spells: Contact Cthonian, Contact Elder Thing,
Contact Shudde M’ell, Red Sign of Shudde M’ell
The Annotated G’Harne Fragments
In a splendid instance of parallel
research, while the Wilmarth Foundation toiled away at Walmsley’s translation
and notes on the ‘Fragments, another
researcher had already embarked on this course and had forged ahead. Ryan
Milbue’s translation and notes used Wendy-Smith’s 1931 private publication as
its springboard and, in tandem with photographs of the original sherds sent to
him by the British Museum, he created his own translation of the mysterious
document.
Milbue’s work is couched heavily in
linguistic and cryptographic terms and focuses more upon the process of
translation and interpretation, rather than the abstruse material which is
contained in the ‘Fragments. To this
end he narrows his focus mainly to the historical aspects of the work and
glosses over some of the more fantastic elements, doing away with the spells
entirely. As it was published during a period when Miskatonic University was
trying to downplay many sensational aspects of its history, the book was
released by their Press without fanfare, in a bland, octavo paperback format
entitled An Examination of Cryptographic
Process in Linguistic Interpretation using African Models; the title was
changed back to The Annotated G’harne
Fragments in the second, hardcover edition (1969).
(Source: Brian Lumley, “The Burrowers Beneath: Cement Surroundings”)
English;
Ryan Milbue; Miskatonic University Press, 1965; 1/1d4 Sanity loss; Cthulhu
Mythos +3 percentiles; 7 weeks to study and comprehend
Spells: None
*****
The Sussex Fragments
There are two sets of these broken
tablets both dating from the Pleistocene Era. One copy was purportedly found in
Northern Europe; the other was found in Sussex, England, hence the name. With
the exception of some sherds which went missing in transport, the majority of
these fragments are housed in the Wharby Museum in Yorkshire.
In form and content, these texts bear a
striking resemblance to the G’harne
Fragments.
(Source: August Derleth, “The Seal of R’lyeh”)
Pnakotic
dialect in idiosyncratic hieroglyphs; unknown author(s); Pleistocene Era;
1d8/3d6 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +13 percentiles; 40 weeks to study and
comprehend
Spells: Contact Cthonian, Contact Elder Thing,
Contact Shudde M’ell, Elder Sign; Red Sign of Shudde M’ell
*****
Yellow Codex (aka
Xanthic Folio)
Rumour suggests that the Yellow Codex was unearthed at Niya in
Sinkiang, north of Tibet; since the exact location, or the fact of this city,
is still in question, the validity of these rumours cannot be verified. Either
way, the original documents have passed from view and the text, in low
circulation as it is, is all that remains. Even here, with different
translations claiming ‘authenticity’, the accuracy of the work must be held as
speculative at best.
The matter of the text deals with the
city of Hastur and the nature of its treaty with the nearby inhabitants of
Carcosa; the original text is said to be written in ‘Pnakotic A’ and etched
upon several stone tablets. It is said that the text of this work pre-dates its
own discovery and forms the background for the cursed play The King in Yellow; however, this could simply be a fiction
generated by poor scholarship.
(Source: Paul Bastienne, “The King in Yellow”)
‘Pnakotic
A’; various authors; various dates; Sanity Loss: 1d2/1d4; +4 percentiles to
Cthulhu Mythos; average 10 weeks to study and comprehend
Spells: None
*****
Pnakotic
This is a language which is believed to
been created by the Great Race of Yith and it forms the major part of the text
of the Pnakotic Manuscripts.
Linguists have identified two forms of the language – ‘Pnakotic A’ and
‘Pnakotic B’ – and assume, either, that one preceded the other, or that one is
a more formal version of the language. The question of which is which is still
an open one, however.
One of the most difficult aspects of this
writing style is the fact that it codes for a such a wide abundance of
languages and dialects: the form was meant to adapt any language from the
spoken instance to the written word and so, if the translator is not proficient
with the language of the text, they may simply not recognise a successful translation
as such. To muddy things even further, the Elder Things are also known to have
used this script while on Earth, for reasons of which they alone are aware: an
increasingly popular theory has it that the Great Race developed Pnakotic B as
a means of distancing themselves from Elder Thing texts and preventing
confusion as to the source.
An issue touched upon briefly (and not
seriously championed) in academia is the idea that fully interpreting Pnakotic
is not possible due to the limits imposed by the human brain. A possible reason
for the presence of either Pnakotic A or Pnakotic B is that one of these is a
form of the script that a human brain (and also an Elder Thing brain, by
inference) can come to grips with. More research is obviously needed. That
being said, Keepers can use the following mechanic to reflect the
neuro-linguistic dangers of messing with the Great Race’s scribbling:
First, the Keeper needs to decide which
version of Pnakotic is the primary one used by the Great Race – either A or B.
Then, whenever a player attempts to translate a piece of text written in this
primary script, have them roll their Cthulhu
Mythos Skill: if successful, the reader loses the maximum amount of Sanity possible for that text and raises
their Cthulhu Mythos Skill by 1D4
percentiles. This reflects the serious neural reorganisation that the language
has caused. Note however, that characters who have the ‘Innsmouth Look’ or who
are undergoing transformation into a Ghoul or other Mythos creature, will not
incur this penalty: their brains are already shifting to accommodate the alien concepts
involved.
(Source: Fred Chappell, “Dagon”)
Notes on Deciphering Codes, Cryptograms
and Ancient Inscriptions
No-one had more experience in translating
otherworldly languages and their associated scripts than Professor Gordon
Walmsley: he started his studies in linguistics and swiftly jumped ship to the
field of cryptography in which he served his country well during two World
Wars. This pamphlet was his life’s work: a primer for those who would follow
him in attempting to interpret texts from bygone ages. His insights and methods
are so revelatory that merely reading this work before attempting to translate
a Mythos work confers 20 bonus percentiles that a translator can distribute
across any of their Skills used in their attempt to read, translate, or
transcribe a Mythos text.
(Source: Brian Lumley, “The Sister City”)
English;
Prof. Gordon Walmsley of Goole; 1935; 1D2/1D4 Sanity Loss; Cthulhu Mythos +2%;
+20 percentiles to be used in reading, translating or transcribing a Mythos
tome; 20 weeks to study and comprehend
Spells: None
New Spell
Contact
Great Race of Yith/Contact Yithian
By expending 5 Magic Points and 1D3
Sanity, the caster of this spell creates a psychic beacon that extends from
their locus out the horizon in all directions: any member of the Great Race
within this compass will detect the call and may, if they so choose, home in on
its source.
If cast while under the influence of
Liao, the summons can also extend through time, either ahead to the future, or
back into the past. This requires the expenditure of POW: 1 POW creates a
‘radius’ of 1 year, ahead or back; 2POW encompasses 10 years; 3 provides a
range of 100 years, and so on, in a logarithmic progression. When establishing
a new office, the Fraternal Order of
Librarians normally cast this spell to attract the attention of any
Yithians in the vicinity.
*****
The Fraternal Order of Librarians
This organisation has its roots in Ancient Greece and
is dedicated to connecting those individuals who have been mentally abducted by
the Great Race of Yith and to supporting the actions of the Yithians in their
continued pursuit of knowledge. To this end they have a large headquarters in
Perth, Western Australia from which they mastermind their activities. From the
outside, the organisation appears as an altruistic think tank and networking
group, bent upon furthering communication between research and archive bodies
across the globe; underneath this charitable exterior, is an inner cabal
providing resources to the Yithians who mind-jump into this temporal locale, and
also to the shaken abductees after they have been returned.
The Order has a para-military arm that seeks to
undermine the efforts of Hastur and its agents wherever they appear and also to
amass and relocate texts which relate or discuss the existence of the Yithians
on this planet and their continued existence amongst humanity. The actions of
this agency are generally benign, but they are not above committing the most
egregious crimes in pursuit of their goals.
The Order has its own version of the Pnakotica which has been compiled and
edited since it was first written down as the Pnakotos by Hypatia of Athens in the 4th Century AD. Unlike
the Pnakotica which has been
identified and loosely catalogued by various independent academics working
alone since the 15th Century, this version has been rigorously
edited by members of the Great Race itself, and exists as an operational manual
for the Order and its members.
(Source: “Delta Green”, Pagan Publishing)
*****
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