Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

In my remix of Eternal Lies, there are two major document dumps: The first are the individual volumes of Echavarria’s cult library. The second is Savitree’s research into the true identity of the Thing With a Thousand Mouths.

My first goal with these document dumps was to create a trove of immersive Mythos lore. Not all of my players are steeped in Lovecraftian lore, and these documents created a way for them to become familiar with the material through play. And for the experienced Lovecraft scholars in my group, these documents simultaneously created a flak cloud: There’s enough material here drawn from a large enough body of sources that, hopefully, they won’t be able to immediately zero in on the pertinent clues to what’s really happening. (So often you end up with Mythos adventures where you say “artist with weird dreams” and the experts immediately know it’s a Cthulhu scenario. That’s generally non-optimal for creating a sense of mystery and horror; and it’s really important that it doesn’t happen with Eternal Lies.)

My second goal was to enrich the final revelations of the campaign (as I explained here). Echavarria’s library exists to (a) create a “suspect pool” for the true identity of the Thing With a Thousand Mouth and (b) hide the Gaze of Azathoth (which provides an explicit solution to the campaign) in plain sight. Savitree’s expedition reports similarly create a “suspect pool” for the location of the Maw of the Mouth to which the clue “it’s a mountain” can be applied.

My third goal was to give the players the experience of actually performing Mythos research. I wanted them to feel like they were pawing their way through dusty tomes, tracking down particular leads, and drawing their own conclusions. (Instead of just saying, “You spend a couple of days looking through Savitree’s notes and now you know X, Y, and Z.”) This can be a little risky because, of course, that carries with it the risk they won’t be able to figure it out. But fortunately (a) I’ve built redundancies into the campaign and (b) if all else fails, they can always use Cthulhu Mythos to rend their sanity and figure it out.

USING THE CULT LIBRARY BOOKS: When the PCs gain access to a particular lot of books from the cult’s library (either the UCLA lot or the books in Trammel’s mansion), give them the list of volumes they’ve obtained. They can now choose which volumes they want to skim. (I used a guideline of 1d3+1 days per volume, modifiable by the Library Use spends listed in the core rulebook. You could also assign a specific number of pages to each book and use the official guideline of 1 hour per 100 printed pages or 10 handwritten pages.) Skimming a volume gives them access to the one page handout describing the contents of the book. The skimming might also trigger Mythos stability checks or give them access to dedicated pool points, as described.

Most books, you’ll note, also has a section describing the benefits of Poring Over. The standard rules for poring over apply (it happens between sessions): They could generally pore over 1 book per week between locales. (Or during significant down time during a locale, although that never came up.) Echavarria’s library was incredibly well-stocked and patient players can actually rack up a pretty impressive Cthulhu Mythos score by taking the time to study it in full. (I believe the maximum possible gain is +15 Cthulhu Mythos.) Of course, they’ll pretty much drive themselves insane in the process.

USING SAVITREE’S RESEARCH: Savitree’s Research is broken up into 16 briefing documents. These mostly consist of summaries of the various expeditions of the Emporium of Bangkok Antiquities, but also include letters from other cult leaders, and also a summary of her attempts to reconstruct Echavarria’s 1924 ritual.

For each day that the PCs spend studying this notes, give them ONE of the briefing documents. The first briefing document they receive will be random unless they proactively go looking for some specific topic right off the bat, and I strongly encourage you to actually randomize it. (Shuffle the papers up; pick one randomly.) Now that they’ve stuck their toe in the water, however, you should prompt them as they continue their work, “Is there any particular direction you want to follow in your research?” Or pay attention to their discussion and see if there’s a particular topic mentioned in the first briefing document that they sound particularly interested in and ask if they want to pursue it.

If they don’t have any particular topic in mind, then go ahead and give them another random document. But if the do, then give them an appropriate briefing document and continue from there.

For example, let’s say that you start by randomly giving them the briefing document for Hang Maden. In that document, it’s mentioned that Carsten Braunlich died in 1927. They want to know how he died, so the next briefing document they get is for the 1927 expedition to Tunguska. The reference to “Echavarria’s Gol-Goroth” reminds them of something they saw in the first document, and they notice that Savitree mentions her “studies of the Black Stone”. They follow that and you randomly select between several briefing documents discussing it and they get the 1934 report on the Obelisk of Axum. (Only later do they eventually track down the original reports on Braunlich’s 1927 expedition to Hungary to examine the Black Stone itself.)

The idea here is that, instead of just getting a big linear narrative, the players will actually crawl their way through the research. They’ll forge their own connections and create their own narrative connections through the material.

(PDF)

SAVITREE’S LIBRARY: Savitree’s actual library (as opposed to her research notes) is a completely different monster. It’s even more impressive than Echavarria’s library. As described in Eternal Lies, poring over this library is impossible within the timeframe of the campaign (it would take years). Skimming the library takes considerable amounts of time (as described in the campaign), but rewards you with a massive set of dedicated pool points.

(Note: Although the campaign suggests that the players will have to return to Ko Kruk Island in order to access the full library, you should be prepared for them taking the time to crate the whole thing up and ship it to a safe house somewhere. It’s not difficult, however, to argue that it can’t all fit on their plane in a usable/accessible form. Because it won’t.)

One specific tome that can be found in the library, however, is the 9-volume Matterhorn Press edition of the Revelations of Glaaki. I’ve prepped a specific handout for that and you should pass it over as soon as they’ve spent any amount of time perusing the library’s contents. (The relationship between various versions of the Revelations is one key way in which the remix allows the PCs to figure out the true identity of the Thing With a Thousand Mouths and succeed where Savitree failed. But there’ll be more details on that when we reach Severn Valley.)

Go to 2.1.1 Severn Valley

Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

Campaign Notes – Diorama – Props Packet

Bangkok is probably the most complicated locale in the Eternal Lies campaign: There are a lot of moving pieces for the GM to juggle and the investigation to unravel the Bangkok cult is difficult and dangerous for the players. This is probably even more true in the Alexandrian Remix because I ended up transforming the city into a second hub for the campaign.

From a structural standpoint, I ended up adding enough material to Bangkok that it now functionally “doubles” for Los Angeles. In the original campaign, the PCs hit Los Angeles and gain clues pointing them to all the other locations. In the remix, you could skip Los Angeles entirely and accomplish the same thing in Bangkok. Clues from Bangkok point to Malta, Mexico City, Los Angeles, and Ethiopia. (There’s even a subtle clue that might get the PCs to the Yucatan.)

But Bangkok is also a second hub thematically: Savitree stands largely independent from Trammel’s network of Nectar dealers, and where Trammel eagerly rushes forward to embrace the strange power behind the Mouths, Savitree is paranoically cautious in her approach to it. And the cult leaders in Malta and Mexico City are caught between these two centers of power. (Which you’ll see reflected in the differences between the correspondence they exchange with Trammel and the correspondence they exchange with Savitree.)

INVESTIGATION ORGANIZATION

The other thing that I think makes Bangkok a difficult location to run out-of-the-book is that the material has been primarily organized by the goal the PCs are currently pursuing instead of the thing they are doing. This leaves the GM flipping back and forth through the scenario trying to find all the information relating to the thing that’s happening right now.

A simple example of this is the character of Siripong: He’s encountered in the scene “Shadowing Lowman” and about half of the information he can impart to the PCs is included there (because it relates to Lowman). But then you have to jump ahead several pages to get the other half of the information he can provide (because it relates to finding the fights in “I’m Looking for the Fights”).

For my remix notes, I’ve tried to group information together tactically. Hopefully I’ve managed to do this, largely through the expedient of splitting locations from NPCs to keep the information less cluttered.

MAPS

The other thing that makes Bangkok a difficult location to run is the lack of maps. This is a point where I and the authors of Eternal Lies have strong philosophical differences. They repeatedly and explicitly lay out their opposition to the idea of using maps as a reference tool:

Maps of the Bangkok cult’s sewer stronghold are not provided in order to eliminate your temptation to turn an exploration of the sewers into a traditional RPG dungeon crawl.
(…) You should never find yourself saying things like: “You go another 30 feet and find a doorway on your left. You can see prison cells through the door.”

Instead, they want you to say things like this:

“You slink down a curving, flooded passageway awash in feces. Through a rough doorway that looks like it was hacked from an older tunnel with a pickaxe, you spy a rough iron grate with a hinged door in it. Through the grate you see what look like they might be cells, but the light in there is thrown by a few meager scattered candles, so God knows whether you’re right or what else might be waiting in there.”

Whereas I wouldn’t recommend saying either one of those: The first is obviously bland pap, but both descriptions are inadequate by virtue of failing to give a complete vision of the situation necessary for the players to make decisions as if they were their characters. (Most notably: Does the passageway they’re currently in continue or is the door their only option for moving forward?)

The authors’ primary point is this: “Describe the area as the Investigators experience it, not (necessarily) as it actually is.”

Which is good advice. But, to be blunt, it’s how you should be running your dungeon crawls.

And, more importantly, has nothing to do with the utility provided by maps. This GMing advice is a little like claiming that you shouldn’t give NPCs names because then bad GMs won’t describe how they look.

In any case, the primary effect of this strident declamation that they don’t know how to run a dungeon crawl is that pages and pages of largely unorganized text are spent trying to communicate information that could be instantly conveyed to the GM in a single glance via a map. Which is why you’ll find a whole bunch of maps in the campaign notes. And if looking at a map suddenly makes you want to break out a Chessex map and miniatures and convert your characters to D&D so that you can start throwing fireballs around… well, don’t do that. Bad boy. No cookie.

SCENARIO FLOW

The other thing you’ll note in reading through the Bangkok chapter of Eternal Lies is that the authors feel strongly that Savitree’s mansion has to be the big finale for the chapter. For example, in “Finding the Island” they write:

You should avoid staging this scene until after the Investigators have had the opportunity to infiltrate and investigate the death-fights. Otherwise, it’s possible that they’ll miss the valuable information that they can learn there (and, of course, that they’ll avoid the grim circumstances and experience you can inflict on them in that constellation of scene).

The concern seems to be that the PCs will short cut to Savitree, take her out, and then leave because they’ve finished Bangkok. But this argument ends up being circular: They’ll have finished Bangkok after dealing with Savitree because dealing with Savitree is the last thing they’ll do in Bangkok, so you need to make sure that Savitree is the last thing they’ll do in Bangkok so that they’ll leave after dealing with her.

In running the locale, I think you’ll find it more useful to think of it roughly in terms of a triangle: One corner of the triangle is the initial investigation in Bangkok as they follow up on their initial leads. Another corner is Ko Kruk Island (where Savitree is). And the third corner is the arena where the fights are held.

If they go to the fights first, then they’ll learn that there’s a shadowy mastermind behind the Bangkok cult and they’ll have to deal with her. Taking out the shadowy mastermind is the conclusion of Bangkok because it’s the pay-off for their entire investigation (having crawled up through the cult hierarchy).

If they go to Ko Kruk Island first, then they’ll take out Savitree only to learn of the horrible things that her cult is doing in Bangkok. Taking out the Major Mouth underneath the arena of death will be the conclusion of Bangkok because it’s a huge action scene ripped straight out of pulp fiction culminating (most likely) in a giant explosion.

If the PCs take out the Major Mouth but don’t deal with Savitree, she’ll summon another one and the assassins she sends after them will make it clear that they’ve left unfinished business behind them.

If the PCs take out Savitree but not the Major Mouth, then Savitree’s caution will be thrown to the wind and violent Bangkok nectar will begin flowing out of Siam. As the PCs continue their investigation, the dangerous rise of Bangkok nectar will make it clear that they’ve only made things worse.

This is one of the big tricks with node-based scenario design: Instead of trying to predetermine what the “big conclusion” is in a given scenario, you instead want to look at the box of tools the scenario gives you and figure out which tools you can use to provide the conclusion that the players create for themselves.

PROP NOTES

Savitree’s Research: The props file for this location does NOT include Savitree’s Research. Those are being presented separately (see link below).

Scrap of Correspondence with Donovan: This prop has been designed with the intention of actually burning away the edges of the paper you print it on. For best effect, don’t be afraid of burning away some of the words (or parts of words) along the edges. The only essential element of the clue is “Montgomery Donovan – Valetta, Malta”. (Although keeping the word “sacrifice” is also thematically a good idea.)

Go to Savitree’s Research

Let’s cut to the chase on this one.

Why you should buy Lighting Strike – Behind the Veil: Twenty-eight vessels of the Venusian fleet – including exo-armors, capital ships, and drones – are described technically, narratively, and in terms of rules. This information is supplemented by a number of special case rules which modify the performance of Venusian ships in the game to match their actual strengths and weaknesses. That makes this book pretty much invaluable for anyone wanting to use Venus in their Lightning Strike games.

Why you shouldn’t like this book: In addition to the special case rules modifying Venusian vessels, a number of additional rules are presented for universal use in the Lightning Strike game – providing for grappling, new weapon characteristics, railguns, cluster munition missiles, stealth and cloak vessels, and external cargo. These are good rules, but their presence here suggests that Dream Pod 9 has decided on a design philosophy which will require you to pick up all the supplements for the game in order to have all the rules for the game. This type of methodology is extremely irritating to anyone on a limited budget – if I don’t want to play Venusian vessels, then I shouldn’t have to pick up a supplement on Venus in order to get four pages of rules.

And, now, the wrap-up: Ships and new rules. Although I may have some reservations about the direction the Lightning Strike product line seems to be taking, there’s really no doubt that this book does exactly what it’s supposed to do. A very solid product, and well worth the attention of Lightning Strike players.

Players of the standard Jovian Chronicles game interested in Venus might also want to check this one out: The Venus sourcebook for JC is still somewhere out on the horizon, so Behind the Veil (along with the Venusian volume of the Ships of the Fleet supplements) represents the only solid information on the second planet. This is delivered in the form of current political and military developments, including some tantalizing summary of the break-up of Bank power which took place in mid-2212.

Style: 4
Substance: 3

Author: Wunji Lau
Company/Publisher: Dream Pod 9
Cost: $15.95
Page Count: 32
ISBN: 1-896776-61-2

Originally Posted: 2000/10/14

As I mentioned in a previous review, the Jovian Chronicles universe took a weird turn with the Chaos Principle sourcebook by choosing to fast forward the setting by 3 years while not actually providing a full setting guide for the radically transformed solar system. Then Lightning Strike came along and decided to fast forward the setting again while also, inexplicably, flipping the entire premise of the game so that the Jovians were now the moustache-twirling bad guys. I largely point to this as the moment when Dream Pod 9 put a gun to the back of Jovian Chronicles and blew its brains out.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

Campaign Notes – Props Packet

I’ve talked in the past about how useful it can be to build a second track of events into your campaign. Although Eternal Lies does not contain a fully-developed second track, it does include a large number of what it calls “floating scenes”. I’ve broken these floating scenes down into two types:

FLOATING SCENES: The ten floating scenes can be freely dropped into most or all of the locales in the campaign. Their primary function is to allow the GM to flexibly play out the cult’s (increasingly hostile) reactions to the PCs. This is particularly useful in Eternal Lies because the various locales are non-linear: By divorcing these floating scenes from any particular location, the authors allow the GM to independently ramp up the pressure being placed on the PCs. This is both naturalistic and effective storytelling.

SOURCE OF STABILITY SCENES: Eternal Lies doesn’t specifically separate these scenes from the other “floating scenes”, but I’ve done so for utilitarian purposes. The Source of Stability scenes are generally designed to be used between the various locales visited by the PCs: They’re the interactions they have with their friends and loved ones during their moments of respite. (Although, of course, many of these scenes are specifically designed to threaten that respite.) In my running of the campaign, these inter-locale scenes were played out either via PBeM or as a sort of “before the credits” montage at the beginning of the next session. (Or some combination thereof.)

The primary reason I separated the two types of scenes is that it made referencing the floating scenes during play easier: I wanted to be able to quickly reach in and grab a floating scene whenever I needed a cult response or a thematic cattleprod. And I didn’t want to have to sift through the Source of Stability scenes (which are generally not designed for mid-session use) in order to find what I wanted.

Go to 2.1 Bangkok

Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

LIGHTS IN THEIR EYES: WISDOM AND LUNACY 1840 to 1899

Elizabeth Anne Worley

Published by an English press in 1902, this is a fairly ordinary narrative of the so-called “mystics” and “spiritualists” who swept western Europe in the latter half of the 19^th century, along with the nascent culture of debunkers who sought to discredit them. Three of the cases detailed, however, are strikingly different in their character:

Naacal Spirit Worship. A group of veterans who fought in the early days of the Eumerella Wars between European colonists and Deen Maar aboriginals of southwest Victoria, Australia, returned to England in the late 1940’s. They claimed to have brought back a number of strange artifacts, which receive some write-ups in minor archaeological journals of the time before being dismissed as forgeries. These artifacts, however, became the center of an English Theosophist cult which gained notoriety for summoning “spirits of Great Naacal”. Automatic writing among the “possessed” was used in an attempt to reconstruct the “great libraries of the Mayan sages”. These texts, however, were destroyed in a fire in 1868. Worley claims that the rites of the cult were taken from the Cthäat Aquadingen and reports local tales (collected roughly 30 years after the incident) that suggest a “dirge” from that volume was used to “sever the connection” between the cult and ancient Naacal. The severing reputedly left the entire Theosophist circle dead, with only the singer of the dirge bearing any sign of violence (an apparently self-inflicted dagger wound).

Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh. Although most of Worley’s material on this cult comes from Egypt, its origins are reputedly primarily Sudanese and there are suggestions that it also has strange ties to political organizations in the Peloponnese. Worley also documents the cult’s queer obsession with the Red Pyramid in the Dashur necropolis. The Brotherhood seems to believe that the reddish hue of the limestone the pyramid is constructed from is due to the stones being “dipped in the blood of their god” (a forgotten Pharaoh of the Third Dynasty) and also seek a hidden entrance to the pyramid.

Cult of the Yellow Sign. Worley tracks the movements of a small group of theatrical players and technicians across Western Europe between 1873 and 1889. Although attached to (or perhaps reinventing themselves as) several different touring companies, the publicity material for their productions feature a small, curiously curved symbol which is always rendered in a yellowish hue. Following a series of murders in Lyon, the theatrical company disappears, although Worley suspects they may have escaped to America.

BENEFITS OF SKIMMING

• 2-point dedicated pool for any Investigative ability involving 19^th century cults

BENEFITS OF PORING

• Cthulhu Mythos +1

LIGHTS IN MY EYES: WISDOM AND LUNACY IN THE 20th CENTURY

Elizabeth Anne Worley

Although published in 1907, just five years after the first volume of this historical survey (Lights in Their Eyes: Wisdom and Lunacy 1840-1899), Worley’s second book nevertheless attempts to authoritatively document occult activities of the 20^th century. The mad scope of her attempt becomes virtually incoherent, however, as Worley begins simply inventing future events from whole cloth, creating a bizarre and fantastical narrative of future history.

However, it must be admitted that some of Worley’s predictions are uncanny in their accuracy. For example, she refers to the “damned Major Whittsley” who would “lead the 77^th into that land where man fears to tread, between the lines of Meuse-Argonne”. There, she says, “the star spawn seek to raise that tumult god who lies within the sunken mounts of Yaddith-Gho”. The rest of that section decays into a rambling account of geometric measurements purportedly belonging to the “megalithic temple of Argonne”, but it is true that on the morning of October 2^nd, 1918, the 77^th Division of the United States Army, led by Major Whittsley, entered the no man’s land of the Great War, became cut off from their supply lines, and entered history as the Lost Battalion.

Much of the text, unfortunately, is elliptical and, at, best, enigmatical. For example, one passage dated 1908 reads: “Legrasse presented himself before the council of wise men, and seventeen years hence the sleeper stirred and the slumber of the world was shaken.” If one could determine the identity of Legrasse, perhaps some meaning could be teased from this.

Where specificity (or at least clarity) can be found, Worley’s words only become more disturbing. She describes a “great protector beneath the lake of his own making” somewhere in the green fields of England, served by “bespined cultists”.

She names the “followers of the Bloody Tongue”, who worship a black mountain in Kenya and performed a ritual in 1916: “M’Weru whirled around the fire-lit circle, and as the blood flowed the apparition of the Herald of Azathoth came unto her.” Elsewhere she names the “Cult of the Bloody Tongue” as being responsible for a “campaign of terror” in 1952.

Towards the end of the book, she speaks of the “Cult of the New Millennium”. Founded in Maryland in 1990, the cult’s leader foretells the fiery destruction of the world in the year 2000. “Hundreds of people followed his vision into the welcoming maw of the end of days,” Worley writes. In fact, her writing in this section is generally more clear-cut and plainly stated than the rest of the book, and the reader is left with the eerie sense that all that she has written revolves around this singular point in a history which has yet to exist.

BENEFITS OF SKIMMING

• 2-point dedicated pool for any Investigative ability involving 19^th century cults
• 2-point Mythos Stability test

BENEFITS OF PORING

• Cthulhu Mythos +1

PRINCES OF THE DARKEST HOUR

Die Sphinx, the magazine which served as the official organ of the German Theosophical Society, published its last issue in June 1896 and was replaced, under new editorial control, by Rudolf Tischner’s Neue Metaphysische Rundschau. Despite that, this volume – custom-bound with bronze clasps between covers of golden velvet – purportedly contains two series of articles which ran in Die Sphinx starting with the February 1897 issue and ending with the January 1898 issue.

The first series, printed on crumbling newsprint, appears under the byline of Nicolaus Kiefer. Kiefer describes his participation in J. Theodore Bent’s 1891 expedition to the lost city of Symbaoe, the Great Zimbabwe which stands at the heart of a vast network of ruins built from stones of marvelous size. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that Kiefer’s intent is not to aid in Bent’s research but rather to thwart it: He describes numerous ways in which he baffles Bent’s work, seeking to conceal a “große wahrheit” (great truth) which the reader is largely assumed to already be familiar with. Although Kiefer is unsuccessful in dissuading Bent from his belief that the fortresses of Symbaoe is possessed of a “great antiquity”, Bent is eventually left convinced that the city was built by “either the Phoenicians or the Arabs”, leaving Kiefer more than satisfied that the “secrets of Symbaoe” remain hidden from the undeserving.

Some elucidation of the nature of Kiefer’s “große wahrheit” may be offered by the second series of articles, which is presented as a German translation of a document taken from Great Zimbabwe by Kiefer. This mystifying historical chronicle claims that the leaders of the “three of the tribes of Shona” were approached upon the same day and upon the same hour by an identical man “pale of complexion and dressed in rich robes” with his hair covered by “a white Atef crown, bedecked with wondrous-strange plumes which some took be those of an ostrich, but of which others were not sure”.

The pale man told the three chieftains that he would show them the marvels of their heritage and the secrets to which they were heir. One of the chieftains refused his gift, and so the pale man removed his white Atef and the chieftain was struck blind. But the other two chieftains went with the pale man and he led them to the “black city of Nyhargo”. There he took them through the “secret entrances of the basalt towers” and showed them “all that had been forgotten”. There follows a strange sequence of primitive imagery, almost Dadaesque in its fractured simplicity. At the end of these “visions”, the pale man left them, but the chieftains returned to their people and “upon the bedrock of Nyhargo were their great works built”.

BENEFITS OF PORING

• Cthulhu Mythos +1
• 1-point Mythos stability test

SEEDS OF FORBIDDEN FRUIT

Infamously printed in 1887 as a limited run of 500 copies (virtually all of which were destroyed shortly thereafter), this volume is Sir Richard Francis Burton’s translation of a Chinese original. This copy has been intricately decorated with gilt and has a single ruby carefully recessed in its front cover.

Seeds of Forbidden Fruit begins as a variant telling of the Feast of Peaches, a common Chinese myth in which the Jade Emperor ensures the immortality of his chosen deities by feasting them with the Peaches of Immortality at the holy palace of his wife Xi Wangmu (the Queen Mother of the West).

In this telling of the tale, however, the Palace of Xi Wang Mu does not belong to a goddess. (The shift in conjunction is crucial, according to Burton.) Rather it is the Western Palace of the Nothing-Spirits. The gods of this tale are born from the Nothing; “skimmed from the golden skein of the not”. And rather than being given peaches, they fall upon the Jade Emperor (who is described in disturbing and alien terms) and harvest their forbidden fruit from its sacrificial flesh.

After the fruit has been eaten by the gods, they harvest its seeds and give each seed to a mortal messenger. The journey of each seed is then told in a separate tale, and each journey is studded by allegorical incidents of a terrifying character. Many are pourquoi (origin stories) for various plants, animals, and locations, each purporting that various phenomena of the natural world are the result of actions depraved, disturbing, and, ultimately, alien.

All of the seeds (save one) eventually arrive at the legendary monastery of Yian-Ho where they are planted to form a hidden garden. From time to time, one of the immortals who fed up on the fruit-flesh of the Jade Emperor will come to the garden, take from it the seed of a flowering sapling, and carry it out into the world “beyond the monastery”. Those who feed upon these seeds are “made part of the Immortal” (which, by implication, does not appear to be the same thing as becoming immortal).

BENEFITS OF SKIMMING

• 2-point Stability test
• Cthulhu Mythos +1 (if character does not already have Cthulhu Mythos)

THE TEMPLE OF FURTEA-NYA

Custom-bound with a clasped, bi-fold cover, this oversized volume has been printed on linen paper and features lush, 19^th-century watercolors that are almost completely at odds with the bleak text which accompanies them.

The book begins: “At the heart of the temple of Furtea-Nya there stands a grim altar of human skulls, smeared with grisly phosphorescence.”

The temple is said to “lie apart from this world”, but also to be “nestled within the honeycomb warrens of the worms of the earth” who were “sprung from the loins of the children of the night”. It was built to venerate the greatest treasure of the Children, which is described as “a decahedronal mass of flinty crystal, with the weight of foul nightmare”.

To reach the Temple of Furtea-Nya, one must find “a door of lilies” and present to it “a lotus in full bloom”. But it is also said that a “blood-soaked hand must be used to mark bare stone” in order to create “cracks which gloom with the nether of existence”.

The Temple of Furtea-Nya is, in fact, filled with these contradictory images, which are further highlighted by the unrelenting imagery of the watercolors, which seem drawn from the fancies of Richard Dadd and John Anster Fitzgerald through the distortion of a funhouse mirror.

The text, like the impossible temple it describes, also seems to pivot endlessly around the “greatest treasure”. Its “impervious strength” and “adamantine shell” are often invoked, but it is also described as a “seed” which will be “driven like a spike into the minds of men, and from those fertile fields swell in obscene pullulations that stretch forth to form the bridge”. A bridge, it is said, which will carry all those who are willing “unto the Castle in the Sky”.

THE WOMB OF THE BLACK STONE

Handwritten onto pages of limp vellum, The Womb of the Stone is a Hungarian translation reputedly transcribed from a folding book which is described in detail and almost certainly represents a Mayan codex similar to the Codex Dresdensis.

The content of the book, however, bears little resemblance to the other Mayan codices which survived the flames of Spanish intolerance. It takes the form of a mystical autobiography as the author performs the mental and physical preparations necessary for some form of momentous religious rite. Some of the acts described may represent actual practices of the Mayan religious caste (such as the application of face paints or tattoos using a queerly metallic substance), but others seem to be symbolic explications of the spiritual journey undergone by the “chosen” (for example, the visions of a “sky-born citadel” which hang in a seemingly hallucinogenic “empyrean void” which is “one with the skies of Earth”). Many of these acts are barbarous, involving acts of violence either committed by the author or done to them. (In one lurid passage, the author is forcibly castrated because his “seed which shall be transformed” has not been deemed “worthy of inheritance” (or perhaps “lacking of primogeniture”).

The ritual at the heart of the book consists of entering “the needle which his a dark (black? starless?) echo of the Stone”. It suggests the author’s religious beliefs revolve around some form of primitive animism: Life is a river that nothing from the universe can separate itself from. “That which is apart is illusion; all things are as one.” (More literally, “share a common pool (of blood)”.) This “binding of Life” forms a tenuous (nebulous? ethereal?) link “between worlds”.

After the author passes through the “transforming womb” of the ritual, he engages in what appears to be a dialogue with his god, an entity he names “Gol-Goroth”. The actual words exchanged, however, are rendered in a script apparently unfamiliar to the Hungarian translator (who instead merely attempts to duplicate the original characters). Studded around these incomprehensible words, however, are brief descriptions of the “chosen place (large land?)”. The author’s attention is apparently drawn repeatedly to the “great eye” which hangs in the “vastness” of their spiritual journey – above, but not of their god.

The last words of the book read, “Now do I speak with the voice of God.”

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BOOKS OF THE LOS ANGELES CULT: ECHAVARRIA’S LIBRARY
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