The Annotated Unspeakable Oath #3
Contents
Introduction to The Annotated Unspeakable
Oath
by John Tynes
Introduction to TUO3
by John Tynes
The Dread Page Of Azathoth
by John Tynes
Scream And Scream Again
by Divers Hands
A Tale Of Terror: The Spider-Man
by Steve Hatherley
Mysterious Manuscripts
by Thomas Stratman, Scott Aniolowski and Brian Bevel
A Tale Of Terror: Men In Black
by Garrie Hall
The Case of Mark Edward Morrison
by Mark Morrison
You Are Cordially Invited
by Thomas Stratman
The Eye Of Light And Darkness
by Les Dean and John Tynes
A Tale Of Terror: The Boods
by John Tynes
Message In A Bottle
by John Tynes
Afterword
by John Tynes
(click any dividing purple-blue line to return to this list)
Introduction to The Annotated Unspeakable Oath
©1993 John Tynes
This is a series of freely-distributable text files that presents the textual contents of early issues of THE UNSPEAKABLE OATH, the world's premiere digest for Chaosium's CALL OF CTHULHU (tm) role-playing game.
Each file contains the nearly-complete text from a given issue. Anything missing is described briefly with the file, and is missing either due to copyright problems or because the information has been or will be reprinted in a commercial product.
Everything in this file is copyrighted by the original authors, and each section carries that copyright. This file may be freely distributed provided that no money is charged whatsoever for its distribution. This file may only be distributed if it is intact, whole, and unchanged. All copyright notices must be retained. Modified versions may not be distributed -- the contents belong to the creators, so *please* respect their work.
Abusing my position as editor and instigator of the magazine and this project, I have taken the liberty of adding comments to some of the contents where I thought I had something interesting or historically worth preserving to say. Yeah, right!
John Tynes
editor-in-chief Pagan Publishing
Introduction to TUO3
©1994 John Tynes
TUO3 was a real breakthrough issue. It was our longest to date at 68 pages, and was packed with useful material. The two scenarios were quite good and the big "Mysterious Manuscripts" section was chock full of good stuff. The look of TUO3 was also improved over past issues, and TUO3 introduced our first mail order offerings - TUO1 & TUO2, subscriptions, a t-shirt, and our limited edition book STARK RAVING MAD!
That latter item was touched on in the The Annotated TUO2, and I promised to discuss here a bit more. So here goes. STARK RAVING MAD! began because I wanted to do a special book that would be free to subscribers - I just had no idea what it actually be. At the first get-together of Kevin Ross, Scott Aniolowski, and myself, we were standing on the porch late at night watching a thunderstorm move through the area and began talking about the idea. What they suggested was a book to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Call of Cthulhu (1981-1991), which would contain interviews with the game's creators, writers, and artists. They offered to put the project together, and assembled a standard set of questions to send to each interviewee. These questions dealt with the nature of horror, HPL's work, and various things relating to CoC and what made it tick. Contributors included CoC creator Sandy Petersen, Chaosium staffers Lynn Willis and Keith Herber, and a variety of writers and artists including Tom Sullivan, Mike Szymanski, Bill Barton, Mark Morrison, as well as Kevin and Scott. Several contributors provided brief articles or (in the case of Sullivan & Earl Geier) artwork to use in the book. The whole thing was published as a 52-page booklet with a cover by Jeff Barber, and printed in a numbered edition of 200 copies. These took more than a year to sell out, but I was very pleased with the project and still am. I don't think many readers have ever heard of this book, but if you can find a copy you should pick it up.
Pagan's first GenCon (operating from within the Chaosium booth) also saw the debut of White Wolf's VAMPIRE game. I distinctly remember tagging along with Mike Szymanski to thrust copies of TUO1-3 and SRM! into the hands of VAMPIRE author Mark Rein-Hagen in trade for some White Wolf stuff. He hadn't seen TUO before, and had a look on his face like "Uh, okay, sure, whatever," as he took these oddly-colored black-and-white little zines. At the next GenCon, though, he came by the booth and had some very nice things to say - having read TUO1-3 and more in the meantime.
That GenCon (1991) was where the debut of TUO3 occurred, along with the t-shirt and Stark Raving Mad! as well. It was a coming-out party of sorts for Pagan, although no one there really knew who we were or even noticed us except for the Chaosium folks of course. Still, we had fun.
This file contains the complete contents of TUO3, lacking artwork and four articles. The first, "Automatic Weapons in Call of Cthulhu" by John H. Crowe, III, has been superceded by John's massive reference work THE WEAPONS COMPENDIUM, available through Pagan Publishing's mail order catalog. The second and third, "The Travesty" by Chris Klepac and "The House On Stratford Lane" by John H Crowe, III are two scenario gems that will appear in THE RESURRECTED * VOLUME TWO in the spring of 1994. The fourth, "Excerpts From The Investigative Journals Of Mikhail Aksakov," was the first part of a two-part short story by artist Blair Reynolds that concluded in TUO4.
All annotations by me are enclosed in brackets, and are (C)1994 John Tynes.
The Dread Page Of Azathoth
©1991 John Tynes
[The following column generated some interesting comments from readers, both positive and negative. It was my first attempt at formulating and expressing the philosophy that guides the magazine, the same philosophy (more or less) that guided HPL's writing. It may seem strange to speak of a philosophy guiding the content of a gaming magazine, but Call of Cthulhu is a strange game.]
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
The above lines constitute the opening paragraph of "The Call of Cthulhu," a short story by Howard Phillips Lovecraft. I fully believe that it is one of the most striking and significant pieces of fiction to appear in this century.
Lovecraft was not the best of writers, certainly not from a modern appraisal. His writing, though endearingly archaic, is nonetheless often overblown and a trifle hard to accept. The `horrors' of the Cthulhu Mythos are, in truth, more than a little shopworn. They often speak more of the racial and national xenophobia of Lovecraft's time than they do of the otherworldly terrors they claim to represent.
With this in mind, let's try a little experiment.
From the Koran, chapter 25, verse 29: "For mankind, Satan is Khadhulu." What's that? Cthulhu?
From The Golden Bough, by James G. Frazier (the original two-volume edition): "Similar priestly or rather divine kings are found ... on the west coast of Africa. At Shark Point near Cape Padron, in Lower Guinea, lives the priestly king Kukulu, alone in a wood. He may not touch a woman nor leave his house; indeed he may not even quit his chair, in which he is obliged to sleep sitting..." Yes, The Golden Bough does exist (you can probably find it or order it from any large university bookstore) and it does indeed contain the above reference, curiously similar to Lord Cthulhu, dreaming in his house of R'lyeh.
Something wrong? Perhaps you hadn't expected this. I regret to say it doesn't end there.
From The Highest Altar, by Patrick Tierney (Viking Press, 1989): "According to Jose Huintrilaf, the cause of his withered leg is `a water creature,' a type of snake called Chunufilu ... Chunufilu means `Basket,' and the vision of this creature reveals a multitude of snake heads all woven together like strands in a wicker basket. It's a multi-headed snake monster, horrible to look at, a sort of Mapuche Medusa." The Highest Altar, a book on human sacrifice in South America, makes only this brief mention. But it's enough, isn't it? Can't you feel it now, the shivery uncertainty brought on by "the piecing together of dissociated knowledge?"
Well, you shouldn't. Because it's all bunk.
The Cthulhu Mythos is real only in the reader's mind. Cthulhu and his ilk don't exist; the above only represent phonetic coincidences, or more likely a demonstration of the common origins that languages and speech share.
The reason for my belief in the significance of "The Call of Cthulhu" lies not in the cheap spook-house horrors experienced by Lovecraft's trembling academics. Let's piece a few more things together, shall we?
I remember an afternoon spent with a friend of mine when I was a child. On the sidewalk in front of his home we found a baby bird, lacking feathers, lacking definition. It was a pink fleshy thing, its dark eyes clashing with the soft form they were joined to. It still lived, though apparently it had been injured in its fall from the tree. We debated over what we should do, and finally Ben reached a solution. He got on his bike and crushed the bird under its tires.
In sunday school, there were two brothers I knew and played with during recess. One day the younger of the two told me how he and his cousins would spread hot sticky pitch on old planks of wood. They would then take stray cats they'd nabbed and press them up to the pitch where they'd get stuck helplessly. Then, he and his cousins would set the whole assembly on fire. The fur of the cats would catch flame quickly, and the cats would twist and jerk spastically as the fire burned down to their flesh, trapped by the sticky tar. Eventually - after a stretch of time - the cats would die. I asked him why they did it, and he said "because it's fun."
One of my housemates, Prima Wagan, has a friend who is a nurse at a local hospital. She described the case of a homeless man who was brought in suffering from exposure and a fever during one long cold night. Unbeknownst to the doctors, flies had lain their eggs in the man's nose while he lay unconscious in a wrapping of dirty newspapers. The eggs hatched, and the larvae crawled into the man's nasal cavity for warmth. As the man lay in bed, Prima's friend realized that there were maggots crawling out of the man's tear ducts. She was momentarily confused; when first glimpsed from the open doorway, they looked like tears.
Do you understand now? Do you understand the significance of Lovecraft's story? HPL, a gentle nihilist at heart, recognized quite clearly and perceptively that humanity's greatest threat was inhumanity, presented in his fiction as the great alien forces of the Mythos. Humans would not suffer from neglecting their prayers every night, nor from missing church for a few sundays. Our eventual end - and Lovecraft refused to see it as anything other than inevitable and absolute - will be due to our own disregard for who and what we are. Ultimately, when we have lost sight of ourselves, we will be as one with Cthulhu and his minions in their writhing inhumanity. Lacking `Elder Signs' of conscience and self-respect, we shall pass beyond the dark age we now live in and pass into the dead sea of non-existence. Expressing this in fictional terms is Lovecraft's supreme accomplishment, bitter though it may be.
"Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. A time will come - but I must not and cannot think! Let me pray that, if I do not survive this manuscript, my executors may put caution before audacity and see that it meets no other eye." - H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"
Scream And Scream Again
©1994 by the respective writers
[TUO3 inaugurated our letters column, a staple of any magazine. The amount of space devoted to letters has varied from issue to issue - TUO8/9 had the most with six full pages. Despite appearances, we don't really get a lot of letters commenting about the Oath. Hint, hint!]
Well, having had the chance to really look over the premiere issue of The Unspeakable Oath, I can now give you some fair opinions and comments about the whole thing: first off, I really liked the cover, although I don't see what it really has to do with the Mythos! It was pretty neat, though. The majority of the text was exceptionally good, although I may disagree with a point or two, but that's okay - that's what zines are for - to let various views of shared interest be voiced. The artwork was mostly good as well ... "Within You Without You" was an interesting scenario ...
My last criticism is not to be taken personally as it is just an observation I made, and it certainly doesn't detract from the zine: I think you should watch the Hastur references - it seemed that that in nearly every article Hastur, Carcosa, Hali, or The King in Yellow are mentioned. I know Hastur is your favorite Great Old One, as he is one of mine as well, however the Cthulhu Mythos is so rich I think it presents a better package, as it were, to use various references to all aspects of it, and not just a single, small corner of the pantheon.
So, not bad, really; I'd give The Unspeakable Oath an A: very, very impressive for a first issue and I have to ask myself that if the zine continues, and I certainly hope it does, just how incredible it might become?
Scott Aniolowski
Lockport, New York
* * *
Just the other day, I was finally able to appropriate a copy of your little gem of a magazine. Truly, most impressive! I hope you can keep up the high quality of articles contained within it.
However...
This may seem overly nit-picky but I feel that the article by Mr. Crowe on firearms (a very useful article for myself) should have this note added to it. It comes from an issue of National Rifleman I read several years back.
The Webley Mark I Revolver would chamber the .455 Webley Auto round. However, as seeing that it was a more powerful round the gun had about a 50% chance of exploding when fired. The Webley Automatic Pistol could use either round safely. The key point here is that the British Military did not point this out when they started to issue the newer .455 Auto rounds and subsequently there were many incidents. It also should be noted that as the Mark I Revolver was in use up to WW2, both types of ammo were available, and sometimes confused (especially by investigators fumbling for a re-load).
Erik M. Solie
Santa Ana, California
* * *
While at work today, I read through the first issue of The Unspeakable Oath and was impressed. The cover illustration is remarkable in its pain and grotesqueness. It's one of those things that you don't want to look at but can't help it so you do anyway. The viewing of this artwork should necessitate sanity loss (fortunately, it is much too late for me).
Marie Listopad
Minneapolis, Minnesota
* * *
Praises to Nyarlathotep! Praises to His mighty name! Praises to Him in song, and dance, and blood-letting! Praises to His many dark forms, and those that worship them! Praises to the Black Wind! Praises to the Walking Chaos! Praises to the Shambling Mass and the Writhing God! Praises to the Bringer of Pestilence, the Lord of the Flies, the Black Pharaoh, Herald of the Dark Moon, and Destroyer of Lights! Praises to the Father of Harlots, Father of Shadow, Father of the Nile, Father of Knives, Father of Festivals, Father of Fires and Nightmare, and Father of Ashes. Praises to the Messenger of the Great Old Ones! Praises to the Messenger of the Sunken Church! Praises to the High Lord Priest of the Bloody Tongue, and the High Lord Priest of the Red Finger! (continues for the better part of a page, gradually lapsing into raving incoherency)
Shea (Blair) Reynolds
Fairbanks, Alaska
* * *
Just thought I'd drop you a line to say how impressed I was with The Unspeakable Oath. I presume that you are familiar with the British zine Dagon? It started out as a CoC-zine but became more scholastic about the fiction itself - our [British] equivalent of Crypt of Cthulhu if you like. TUO appears to be everything Dagon could have been had it not moved away from the gaming aspect. You will know, if you've seen Dagon, that this is meant to be a complement!
My least favorite thing in the book was the guns article. This is no reflection on the article itself which was obviously well written and researched - it's just that I'm not that into guns, and I try to avoid gunplay in my campaigns. I tend to set things in England anyway so the type of guns that get used are either shotguns or service revolvers (maybe the odd rifle or two if I'm feeling generous) which are adequately covered in the basic rules. The way I see it is that CoC monsters fall into two main categories - those that you should be able to defeat without gunplay (or minimum gunplay) and those that you can't defeat no matter how big a gun you've got!
The highlights of the issue were those relating to The King in Yellow. This is precisely the sort of thing I look for in a zine. It was informative, interesting, well-researched and above all, detailed. The rules and background information given in `official' packages are through necessity basic and it is up to zines like yours to fill in the details to `flesh out' people's campaigns. It is something I hope will continue in future issues - likewise the addition of new races and deities from the more obscure stories of the Mythos.
Garrie Hall
Loughborough, England
* * *
I can't begin to tell you how much I enjoyed issue #1 of The Unspeakable Oath. Not since the cessation of Crypt of Cthulhu has such an entertaining digest been available, but where Crypt dealt with Lovecraft Gaming only as a tangential subject, you devote the entire issue to it. Bravo!
I especially commend the short adventure of your creation, "Within You Without You." It reminded me of a minor detail one often overlooks when writing a "home" adventure: This Stuff's Disgusting! I am currently converting your premise to fit into my Gaslight campaign with Solace/Saulous being transplanted to [Scotland's] Outer Hebrides ...
I can see by the stars that it's time to go, but I look forward to your next issue with the greatest enthusiasm.
Keith M. Huey
Bloomingdale, NJ
* * *
I am a 23 years-old Italian student of literature, and since seven or eight years ago I am a role-player too. A few days ago I had the chance of reading the first issue of The Unspeakable Oath, owned by a friend of mine, and I was impressed by the quality of the material contained in it ... Here follows a rating of the articles contained in the first number of The Unspeakable Oath, rated from 1 up to 10 plus a little comment.
The Dread Page of Azathoth: 10
(I cannot imagine something better to start with. I really like the writing style; I write fiction, but I guess that you never studied Italian...)
Firearms in CoC: 7
(Very well done and useful, I'm sure, but not for me; I've never been one for firearms vs. monsters.)
Good Tidings From Shantak Claus: 9
(No comment: I'm still looking for that piece of lung...)
New for Cthulhu: 7
The Ponape Predators: 5
(I still have tens and tens of monsters I never used, and this one doesn't add too much to the Mythos.)
The Road To Hali: 10
(Well done, well written, immediately useful to anyone possessing "Tatterdemalion" and "Tell Me ..." like me; I can't ask for more.)
A Tale of Terror: 9
(Really this guy knows how to scare you! It's a pity that the ideas are not already developed to full adventures; of course, the first idea is the best.)
Creating and Using Mythos Tomes: 7
(Useful, but probably a lot of Keepers have developed their own systems or they flesh their Mythos Tomes out without using one.)
Within You Without You: 9/6
(The opening is a mind-shattering experience, with its weird imagery of singing children, etc., then develops in a more light-hearted adventure, quite good, but not up to my expectations.)
Message in a Bottle: 6
(Nice, with an exotic flavour, but I prefer the atmosphere you created with The Dread Page of Azathoth; I really would like to read more.)
Of course my comments are personal opinions, even if they can sometimes sound like judgements ... I can't wait for the next number of your zine.
Francesco Nepitello
Venice, Italy
A Tale Of Terror: The Spider-Man
©1994 Steve Hatherley
[This has always been one of my favorite Tales of Terror. Just weird and creepy all around. I used this (and a couple other ToT's) for an off-the-cuff scenario a while back and the scene with the Spider-Man worked great.]
He is their least favorite patient. Everybody, even arachnophiles, find the presence of so many spiders disturbing. They are everywhere in the barren room: on the floor, the walls, the ceiling. They infest his bed, scamper across his clothes, and stalk through his hair.
They are ignored by the patient, known to the staff of the Seaview Home for the Insane as `the spider-man.' He sits on his chair, head cocked to one side, staring blankly at nothing. He does not speak and needs to be hand-fed, not a popular task among the staff.
The spiders have defeated all attempts to shift them. Steely-nerved cleaners used to periodically clean the room, but each time the spiders were back within a week. Now they just don't bother. Besides, the spider-man doesn't seem to mind.
Possibilities:
1. Blown off course by a severe storm, the crew of a capsized tramp steamer found themselves cast on a pacific island inhabited by natives belonging to a spider cult.
In the months that followed, those that weren't killed lost their sanity. Eventually, the cult elected one of the crew to godhood, sacred for the rest of eternity. They cast him adrift in his lifeboat to take the word to the masses, quite oblivious to the fact that their god's mind was utterly blank.
The man was picked up by a warship, pronounced insane, and committed to Seaview. There he has attracted the attention of the local spider population. He is their god, and they like being around him.
2. The spider-man is host to the Children of Atlach-Nacha, huge spiders with horrible faces. While exploring the Dreamlands he stumbled across Atlach-Nacha and her web. Atlach-Nacha welcomed the interruption, happily taking the opportunity to inject her young into a suitable host.
The man awoke in screaming terror. If it was only a dream, why did he hurt so? Then he saw the neat puncture marks in his abdomen, and felt their presence. It shattered his mind.
Now the spiders that infest the room are waiting for the joyous day when Atlach-Nacha's brood will hatch from the man's rich flesh. For beneath the spider-man's tender skin they slowly mature, soon to hatch.
3. The spiders in the room are all of one species. The spider-man has been cross-breeding them. His listless, blank periods are interspersed with activity when he is permitted to go into the gardens and catch spiders for his room. There he is breeding a new species.
The spider-man was once a fine entomologist, fascinated by socially organised insects and puzzled over the lack of such order in spiders. The only survivor from an expedition to G'harne that went tragically wrong, he is now conducting his own peculiar experiments and trying to create a new arachnoid order.
Mysterious Manuscripts
©1994 Thomas Stratman, Scott David Aniolowski and Brian Bevel
[This was the kickoff to our column on Mythos tomes, and it was a doozy, encapsulating new creatures & items as well as books. I think this piece, assembled from several different sources and authors, worked quite well and I was very pleased with it at the time. We did, however, make one big huge ugly mistake. The description of "Azathoth and Others" that appears in this article completely missed the fact that the book's author was described in HPL's story "The Thing on the Doorstep" and bears no resemblence to the way he is described herein. Argh! The Editor's Note that follows appeared in the original article, and is not new to this document.]
(Editor's Note: Musty old tomes of sinister lore figure prominently in the works of H.P. Lovecraft and those who make efforts in the area of the Cthulhu Mythos. Likewise, Call of Cthulhu puts a heavy emphasis on these books. Yet the books listed in the basic rules are left largely undescribed. "Mysterious Manuscripts" will serve as an umbrella column, containing the work of different writers, all of whom contribute information about the strange books of the Mythos as well as new ones altogether. The first section of the column will be by Thomas Stratman, and his introductory remarks follow. Other writers' contributions appear afterwards. We are actively seeking items for "Mysterious Manuscripts," in the same general format as you'll find here. The line-up of writers will likely change from issue to issue.)
During my time as a Keeper I have found that the different tomes of the Cthulhu Mythos lack their own individuality. For any spell can be discovered in any book, and all books have a chance to contain any information.
Each book should have their own cohesion and subject matter. A book about the library of Celeano would have no need to contain spells of attack against mindless undead. But such a book would be amiss to neglect at least a reference to a spell which would assist in transportation to Celeano.
In keeping with this idea, all books listed in this column will contain a suggested spell list. When an INT save vs. a book's spell multiplier indicates that a spell has been discovered, the Keeper should choose which spell among those listed appears first.
Study Time
Anyone who has had to study a large, poorly written textbook or scientific lexicon can tell you that it takes time to truly glean most of the information. Yet not all books are equal. Therefore, I have developed a study time for each book that takes into account the book's length, age, amount of data, clarity of communication, and number of times translated. Lack of familiarity with the language of the book will adversely adjust this study time, at the Keeper's discretion.
New Books
New books are designed to fill in areas of Mythos knowledge and worship that would not be covered by the existing tomes. They also serve as models for Keepers to create their own campaign-specific works.
In order for the material in this section to be as accurate as possible, all readers are welcomed and encouraged to send to me copies of any references regarding mythos tomes as presented in the various Mythos stories, novels, films, etc. Please include the complete reference so that I can find the material you refer to.
Azathoth and Others, poems by Edward Derby
(English, +4 Cthulhu Mythos, -1D4 Sanity, no spells, study time: 8 hours)
Publishing History: self-published, circa 1910.
Providence House edition (reprint), 1952.
Next Age Publishers (reprint), 1985.
Excerpt:
I knew that earth should be for death a throne,
And evermore within their burials deep
The banded nations of the earth shall sleep,
Sunken in sepulchres of sculptur'd stone.
This is the only known collection of the poems of Edward Derby. Most are mundane poems of country landscapes and vague musings of a young idealistic Englishman. His last few poems are disturbing pieces about cosmic demons, an Earth without dreams, and astral travel to alternate realities. The last poem "Out of the Old Land," has been blamed for the manic-depressive state that led to Derby's apparent leap from a seventh-floor window in the middle of the night, which left his body crushed "as if trampled by an elephant" (quote from police report).
Anacrideity Tcho-Tcho, brief anthropological study by Prof. Nicholas Dandel, PhD
(Dutch, +6 Cthulhu Mythos, -1D6 sanity, x2 spell multiplier, study time: 26 hours)
Spells: (presented as authentic rituals) Contact Atlach-Nacha, Summon/Bind Child of Atlach-Nacha, Spider Movement, Enchant Item (needle to inscribe a spider tattoo over the left breast).
Publishing History: University of Utrecht, 1665
Excerpt:
The odd, mis-shapen natives call themselves the `Tcho-Tcho' which, I am given to understand, means `the dark ones of the dark ones.'
Each sub-tribe or family clan has their own patron deity which they worship with a fervor that would rival a zealot or an Anabaptist. The particular group of slaves that work my father's farmlands in the Oost-Indies was partial to their deity of spiders called Atlach-Natchi. This massive spider-creature is believed by these natives to inhabit an underground cavern and weaves a web with her thread of lives. They believe that the world will end when Atlach-Natchi bridges an unmeasurable chasm. This myth is strikingly reminescent of the Fates from Greek mythology, with their threads of life binding together all things.
This book was published only once, because most of the young professor's theories were officially debunked by Catholic missionaries within ten years. Professor Dandel left the East Indies in 1666 to teach at the University of Utrecht. In 1675 he resigned under pressure and was given the title of Captain on a Dutch war frigate. He died when he sacrificed his ship at a key point during the Battle of Oland, giving the Dutch fleet victory over the Swedes.
Massa di Requiem per Shuggay
In 1768, the enigmatic Italian composer Benevento Chieti Bordighera wrote Massa di Requiem per Shuggay, or Requiem for Shaggai, a lengthy and bizarre opera about the alien Insects from Shaggai, their plight, and subsequent exodus into the black gulfs of space. This haunting funeral mass recounts the history of Shaggai and its inhabitants, the Shans, including the great cosmic cataclysm which ultimately destroyed Shaggai, and the journeys of its exiled inhabitants from world to world.
Act I tells the story of the Shans' empire on Shaggai with their great cities of dull grey cones, and of their decadent worship of mighty Azathoth. The final scene of the first act recounts the approach of a mysterious crimson globe and the panic of the inhabitants of the emerald-lit planet.
Act II begins soon after the obliteration of Shaggai, with the few surviving colonies of Shans searching the universe for a suitable new home base. The Insects stop at Xiclotl, Thuggon, and L'gy'hx, but none of these worlds suit their purposes. They flee each in turn, capturing and taking along certain races for use as slaves.
Act III, the final act of the morose opera, tells of the Shans' arrival on Earth sometime in the seventeenth century. This final act of the ominous and morbid opera details the journey to Earth of another inhabitant of now-dead Shaggai: Baoht Z'uqqa-Mogg (see below).
Upon its completion, Bordighera's requiem immediately garnered the attention of Pope Clement XIII, who banned the opera in 1769 (but died shortly thereafter). The new Pope, Clement XIV, ordered a formal inquest, and in 1770 Benevento Bordighera was jailed as a heretic. In 1771, Bordighera was convicted of heresy and put to death; all existing copies of the dark Massa di Requiem per Shuggay were ordered destroyed. Pope Clement XIV died just three years later in 1774.
Little but the following is known of the life of Benevento Chieti Bordighera: he was born about 1746 in Rome, a musical prodigy. He traveled around Europe in the mid-1760's, and is known to have been in the south of England in or around 1766. He died in 1771 at the age of 25; no one knows the whereabouts of his grave, and his work and his name have all but vanished from history.
In 1891 two copies of Massa di Requiem per Shuggay turned up in London, supposedly having been smuggled out of library vaults in France and Italy. Poet and Golden Dawn member W.B. Yeats claimed to have seen the musical score briefly in the fall of 1891, and then both alleged copies disappeared. Nothing more is known of the opera until 1927 when a single crumbling copy is believed to have come into the possession of famed British parapsychologist Dr. Douglas A. Windthrope; Windthrope claimed to have obtained the text from an unnamed Italian gentleman in New York City in the spring of 1927. Two other copies of Bordighera's blasphemous score were said to have been seen in 1928 in Spain, but these rumors were never verified.
In 1940 Dr. Windthrope vanished from his estate and was not heard from again. Interestingly enough, several old and rare books Windthrope was known to have had were also found to be missing, including among them the evil opera.
In 1958 a copy of the mass was found to be in the possession of an unnamed man in India, and in 1967 another copy was said to be in a private collection in Japan.
In 1985, a wealthy bidder known in auction circles as "The Man in Gray" purchased a copy of the requiem at an auction in London for a rumored #25,000. Photographs of this mysterious collector showed a remarkable likeness to the long-missing Dr. Douglas Windthrope, and so it has been suggested that the buyer was, in fact, Lawrence Windthrope, of the Windthrope Institute for Dream Research and the grandson of the famed parapsychologist.
At least two other copies are thought to exist, although their whereabouts are unknown at the present time.
Massa di Requiem per Shuggay is a powerful composition, clearly showing the depths of knowledge Benevento Bordighera had concerning the Insects from Shaggai and other darkling things of the Mythos. It is assumed that the composer had actually been infected by one of the Shans, whereby he learned the history of the race. Anyone familiar with musical composition will instantly realize the incredible complexities of this work - certain portions appear to have been written for unknown notes and instruments.
This Mythos work contains no spells; however, Mythos knowledge may be gained by successfully reading the libretto: Massa di Requiem per Shuggay, Italian, +6% Cthulhu Mythos, -1D8 SAN.
Those who read the score or see the production performed often suffer from nightmares in which they hear far-off, haunting music and insane laughter (1/1D2 SAN loss the first time, 0/1 thereafter); anyone familiar with the Shans, their slave races, or their deities tend to have more horrific, vivid dreams (such as of Azathoth, etc.) and suffer an initial 1/1D4 SAN loss and 0/1D2 thereafter.
Baoht Z'uqqa-Mogg, the Bringer of Pestilence (Great Old One)
Description: Baoht Z'uqqa-Mogg is a scorpion-like monstrosity covered by a segmented, greasy green-black chitinous shell that is weirdly iridescent. The Bringer of Pestilence's head is nothing more than a warty, bulbous extension of the body. This head is covered by a mass of stiff, segmented feelers which constantly twitch and buzz weirdly. Numerous pulpy yellow eyes of various sizes and shapes peer out from between the feelers and several pairs of puss-dripping mandibles snap and hiss loudly. The Great Old One has a pair of massive scorpion-like claws and a viciously barbed stinger tail; countless spider-like legs click unnervingly as the insectile monster moves. Baoht Z'uqqa-Mogg has three pairs of stiff, sharply-thorned wings folded tightly against its back. Oozing sores and blistering ulcers continually burst open all over the surface of the Great Old One and a swarm of scampering, squirming, and buzzing contagion-laden vermin, worms, and insects ceaselessly burrow, crawl, and dart into, around, and over the bulk of Baoht Z'uqqa-Mogg.
Cult: The Bringer of Pestilence has no known human worshippers, although it is served by the degenerate rat folk and the diseased swarm that accompanies it, in addition to certain bands of ghouls. Historically devastating plagues in Europe and Asia may be attributed to the non-human worship of this entity in those time periods and areas.
Notes: Baoht Z'uqqa-Mogg is generally encountered or summoned in places of filth and decay, such as sewers, swamps, graveyards, dumps, or areas of plague. When summoned, the Great Old One bursts from the ground, showering all present with filth, dirt, and virulent ichor.
The Great Old One may nip at victims with its noxious claws or snapping mandibles, or attempt to sting them with its poison-dripping tail. Those stung by Baoht Z'uqqa-Mogg must be immediately treated for disease (Treat Disease at -50%), or begin suffering a loss of 1D4 CON per day as their bodies are ravaged by pestilence. Untreated victims will quickly die a horrible and leprous death. Any CON lost to Baoht Z`uqqa-Mogg will regenerate at a rate of 1 point per week of hospital care.
Characteristics
STR 35
CON 75
SIZ 45
INT 20
POW 28
DEX 12
HP 60
Move 8/16 flying/5 burrowing
Weapon Attk% Damage
Claw 90% 1D6+4D6
Mandibles 55% 1D4+4D6
Sting 85% 1D6+poison
Swarm 75% 1D2+infection
Armor: Baoht Z'uqqa-Mogg has 15 points of armor with its chitinous shell. The Great Old One can not be harmed by any non-impaling weapons. If reduced to 0 hit points, the god burrows away into the ground, leaving behind a foul, steaming pool of bubbling vomit and wriggling carrion worms.
Spells: Baoht Z'uqqa-Mogg knows most Summon, Bind, Contact, and Call spells, except those dealing with the Outer Gods and their minions.
SAN: 1D3/1D20
A Selection Of Period Occult Texts
Often when investigators recover books, those without immediate, impressive names and descriptions are more or less ignored. Players should not know if a book contains Mythos information until they have read it. Mythos books should only be distinguishable if they are bound in human skin, are growing hair, or scream when opened (although this often occurred with "normal" occult texts in my research for this article).
In this first of at least two articles, I shall attempt to remedy this oversight and supply your games with much-needed detail and confusion. It is suggested that merely reading an occult text should only provide the reader with a 1 point increase in Occult skill, following normal procedure for skill boosting. If the reader actually studies the text for a month, then the potential benefit is 1D6. Only one such study can be undertaken at a time.
Also, occult books can contain Mythos information at your discretion, either hidden in the text itself, scrawled in the margin, in notes paperclipped to the pages, or by important passages or word sequences marked with a cipher. Try setting up a tome as a false lead sometime, and watch the joyful chaos!
The following table shows real occult texts that investigators could expect to find in any bloodthirsty, power-mad, possessed, insane cultist wizard-priest; or, more likely, in their own bookshelves or on the nightstand, next to the Mauser. They are listed in order of the date published/written, to facilitate your campaigns. The books here all date from before 1700. Books dated after 1700 will appear in TUO4. All dates herein are A.D.
It should be noted that with some of the text listed below, the author and/or date of publication is not given, or is followed by a question mark. This denotes that the information could not be found, and rough guesses had to be made according to other works and/or birth and death dates. Some of this information is extremely difficult to get, and any help, corrections, or further information would be greatly appreciated. Write to Brian Bevel, c/o Pagan Publishing.
| Year | Title | Author | Language | Notes |
| 2nd Cent? | Adversus Hereses | Irenaeus, Bishop Of Lyons | Latin | A |
| 300?, 1911 | Theguria Of The Egyptian Mysteries | Iamblichus | Greek, English | D |
| 300?, 1607 | De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum... | Iamblichus | Greek, Latin | E, A |
| 800? | Book Of Ostanes | Jabir-Ibn-Hayyan | Arabic, Latin | A, I |
| 1300? | Secrets Of Nature | Arnold Of Villanova | Latin | A |
| 15th Cent | The Book Of The Sacred Magic Of Abra-Melin | Abra-Melin | Arabic | B |
| 15th Cent | The Golden Tractate Of Hermes Trimegistus | Hermes Trimegistus | Latin, Eng, Others | |
| 15th Cent | Veterum Sophorum... | Johannis Trithemius | Latin | C |
| 1510 | Three Books Of Occult Philosophy | Henry Cornelius Agrippa | Latin | |
| 1530, 1620 | Opera. In Duos Tomos Concinne... | Henry Cornelius Agrippa | Latin | A |
| 1537 | De Incertitudine & Vanitate... | Henry Cornelius Agrippa | Latin | A, F |
| 1558 | Propaedeumata Aphoristica | Dr. John Dee | Latin | J |
| 1564 | Monas Hieroglyphica | Dr. John Dee | Latin, English | J |
| 1570 | The Mathematicall Praeface To The Elements Of Geometrie Of Euclid Of Megara | Dr. John Dee | English | H |
| 1577 | General and Rare Memorials Pertayning ToThe Perfect Arte Of Navigation | Dr. John Dee | English | H |
| 17th Cent | Twelve Keys | unknown | Latin, English, Others | |
| 17th Cent | Phenomenae Invisible | Aeneas Of Gaza | Latin | A |
| 1604 | Novem Lumen Chemicum | unknown | Latin | A |
| 1630 | Divinus Pymander Hermetis... | Hermes Mercury Trismegisti | Latin | A, G |
| 1651 | Three Books Of Occult Philosophy | Henry Cornelius Agrippa | English | |
| 1652 | Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum | Elias Ashmole | Latin, English, Others | |
| 1659 | De Mirabili Potestate Artis Et Naturae | Roger Bacon | English, Latin, Others | K |
| 1690?, 1857 | Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects Microform | John Aubrey | English |
Notes
| A | Very rare; few, if any, translations into other languages. |
| B | The origins of this work are extremely suspect. The book was only rumored to exist until MacGregor Mathers produced a "translation" in 1948. Rumors mostly spread by Mathers himself. |
| C | Full title: Veterum Sophorum Sigilla Et Imagines Magicae/ E Johannis Trithemii Abbatis Peapolitani Quondam Spannheimensis: Manuscripto - Ervtae. Cui Accessit Catalogus Rariorum Magico-Cabbalistico-Chymicorum/ Studio Opera Frederici Roth-Scholtzii, Herrentadio-Silesii. Also available in a 1732 reprint. |
| D | Translated to English from Greek by Alexander Wilder. |
| E | Full title: Iamblichus De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum, Chaldaeorum, Assyriorum. Proclus In Platonicum Alcibiadem De Anima, Atque Daemone: Idem De Sacrificio & Magia. Porphyrius De Divinis Atq; Daemonib/ Psellus De Daemonibus. Mercurii Tismegisti Pimander: Ejusdem Asclepius. Translated to Latin by Jean De Tournes in 1607. |
| F | Full title: Henrici Cornelii Agrippae Ab Nettesheym, De Incertitudine & Vanitate Sciertiarum Declamatio Inuectiua: Denuo Ab Autore Recognita & Marginalibus Annotationibus Aucta / Capita Tractandorum Totius Operis, Sequetes Indicant Pagella. Printed two years after his death. |
| G | Full title: Divinus Pymander Hermetis Mercurii Trismegisti: Com Commentariis R.P.F. Hannabalis Roselli...Opus Vere Aureum Reconditaque Sapientia Refertissium, Ac Proinde Cuius Arcana Dei Scire Cupienti Utilissimum Accessit Eiusdem Textus Graecolatinus Industria D. Francisci Flussatis Candalae: Indice Rerum & Verborum Generali Accuratissmo. |
| H | These books, while by the famous Dr. Dee of Necronomicon fame, are not occult titles. The investigators may not realize this at first, though. Another possibility would be to have a significant occult or Mythos reference in the text, as Dee certainly considered the occult part of the real world. |
| I | As an aside, the author of this work was infamous for being obscure and incomprehensible. In fact, his name is the source of the word "gibberish." |
| J | Dr. Dee is such a fantastically famous man that all of his works can be found translated into any Eruopean language, and possibly some others. |
| K | Full title: De mirabili potestate artis et naturae, or Friar Bacon, his discovery of the Miracles of Art, Nature, and Magick. |
A Tale Of Terror: Men In Black
©1994 Garrie Hall
[This was the first Tale of Terror in the Oath written by anyone other than Steve Hatherley. Garrie Hall is one of Steve's cohorts, and the two have worked together on other projects for Pagan in the years since.]
One day, each of the investigators gets a knock at the front door. Standing before them are two men, each dressed identically in a black suit, white shirt, black tie, and polished black shoes. The investigator doesn't even have time to read the I.D. card that is pushed under his or her nose before the men barge in and ask the investigator to take a seat.
The men themselves appear strange to the investigator. They are constantly looking around as if expecting someone to be standing behind them, and they only appear to be able to walk in straight lines and turn in right angles. Normally this would seem to be ridiculous, but it only serves to add to the menace of these unwelcome visitors. As they speak, they pick up objects close at hand and study them in great detail, as though they had never seen an ashtray or a cigarette or whatever before. When they do speak the investigator, they never seem to be looking directly at them, more as if they are looking at some point beyond.
The conversation is definitely not two-way. The men in black simply do not listen to questions. At first, they talk about the investigator - their life, their background, their family and friends. They know everything from high school grades to the license plate of a relative's car, and even some information that is so personal only one or two other people could know about it.
Then comes the punch line. The investigator must cease his or her efforts in stopping the forces of the occult, or the consequences for the investigator, their friends, and their family will be severe. The threat is not specific, nor does it imply violence, but the manner in which it is expressed is enough to cause great concern.
Should the investigator get violent at any point the men in black will simply leave, giving the threat as they do so. The men will get into a large black car and drive away. Any attempt to follow them will end in failure - often due to mundane events such as a car that won't start, a traffic jam at just the wrong time, etc. In any event, the car driven by the men in black will soon disappear.
Background Information:
The amount of information available for investigators and the nature of its source will vary greatly depending on when the campaign is set. Men In Black are encountered throughout history, though their appearance varies depending on the location and time in which they show up. Their clothes and vehicles will be appropriate to the setting. There are of course some common factors: they always appear to someone who has witnessed a strange (perhaps Mythos) phenomenon, and then make veiled threats as to what would happen to the person if they told of the experience or looked into it. The dominant color of their attire will usually be black. Gaslight-era M.I.B.'s would likely be upper-class sorts who make veiled allusions towards membership in the Freemasons or the Rosicrucians.
In a setting prior to the 1950's, finding accounts of visitations by these strange individuals will be very difficult, as reports of them were not widely circulated. The fifties, however, saw the U.F.O. boom and community paranoia reach new heights, sightings of strange objects and weird happenings skyrocketed, and the result was seemingly increased activity by the M.I.B.'s (as they came to be known). This increase did not go unnoticed, and soon reports of M.I.B. encounters were collected and published in the fringe media. The net result, however, is the same no matter what the setting - appearances by the Men In Black always raise more questions than answers.
Suggestions:
The Men In Black are McCarthyite paranoia incarnate. Are they the enemy within? Or the threat from without? As such, they can be used to great effect in your campaign. You can turn your players into raving paranoids by introducing M.I.B.'s into the fringes of your campaign early on and introducing the above encounter at a much later stage. Don't overuse them - in one scenario, a single M.I.B. could be standing on a street corner near an important site, or a carful of them could sit down the street from an investigator's house. Witnesses who are reached by the M.I.B.'s may suddenly turn hostile and uncooperative to investigators.
The players should get the feeling that they are being watched, and that something sinister is happening that goes beyond their current investigations that could affect their lives somehow... they just don't know how, when, and by whom.
Possibilities:
1. The Men In Black are a secret government department and they know much about the Mythos. So why don't they intervene? What are their objectives? In whose best interests are they acting? Whose side are they really on?
2. The Men In Black are an age old cult or group of anti-cultists. Their prime concern is keeping knowledge of the Mythos down to a minimum in order for their own activities to be hindered as little as possible. If you decide that the M.I.B.'s are anti-cultists, then it is unlikely that their threats will come to anything, and the investigators may even receive aid or information from them if the M.I.B.'s think that it is in their own interest to do so. Of course, the source of this aid may not be known. If the M.I.B.'s are cultists, then the investigators could find themselves in real trouble.
3. The Men In Black are a Lesser Servitor Race aligned to Nyarlathotep. Of all the Old Ones he has the most freedom of movement and is the only one who has commingled freely with mankind. The Men In Black are aliens with no real concept of humanity. They merely respond to the will of their master. Their appearance is consistent but unimportant - nothing more than misdirection. Once their mission is complete they teleport back to their master's domain. The investigators may never be troubled again by them, or they may find a Hunting Horror waiting to greet them the next time they open the door. After all, who can fathom the workings of the mind of a Great Old One?
The Case Of Mark Edward Morrison
©1994 Mark Morrison
[Mark's column this time was about Mythos books, and fit quite well with the Mysterious Manuscripts feature. I considered it the first step towards having a "theme" issue, which achieved substantial success in TUO5 and TUO6. We haven't done a real theme issue since those two, but hope to again sooner or later.]
The case; that infernal case. The Suitcase of Doom. The Portmanteau from Hell. The Luggage from Beyond. How its mirthless mocking smile haunts my dreams and plagues my waking life.
Readers not suffering from short-term memory loss may recall in the last installment that the case had apparently swallowed a load of books, neatly regurgitating them in the form of one dark volume: Dr. Laban Shrewsbury's Cthulhu in the Necronomicon. Astonishing as this seems, it is not an isolated incident when dealing with those black books that are the legacy of the Cthulhu Mythos. Investigators shudder not only at the thought of the knowledge in these hideous volumes, but also at the circumstances of their discovery, and the bad luck which befalls their owners.
The Call of Cthulhu rules give a list of Mythos tomes, with Cthulhu Mythos knowledge, sanity loss, and spell multipliers. This information is fine enough, but it's the equivalent of saying that Moby Dick is a book about a big fish; there's a lot more to them. The Books of the Mythos are evil, leprous, abominable collections of soul-blasting knowledge. Introduce them into your campaign with bearing and gravity, not mere game statistics. All should carry a sense of dread, a promise of things man was not meant to know. The author was a fool for setting it down, and the reader is a fool for picking it up.
Before the investigators acquire a Mythos tome, do some research. Find out about it. Consult articles such as "Fischbuchs" by Kevin Ross, in the second issue of this journal. Return to the source stories; for Unausprechlichen Kulten, read over R.E. Howard's "The Black Stone." For that hoary ancestor of all, the fabled Necronomicon, turn to Lovecraft's essay "A History of the Necronomicon." If you can't find specific facts, invent some; the thing that walks like an editor, John Tynes, discussed this in "Creating and Using Mythos Tomes," in the first issue of this shuddersome periodical (although his focus was on bibliographic details, neglecting to deal with the peril such volumes bring). The important thing is that when the players look at you querulously and say "What's it about?" you have something to provide beyond "Well, it gives +8% Cthulhu Mythos and you lose 2D6 Sanity."
Mythos tomes are never in the stacks of the local library; they are never on sale in a popular edition; they are never reviewed in the literary press. They are hidden, forgotten, and shunned. They are produced in limited runs, often rolling off the press scant hours before the building burns down. They are twice-cursed; those that revel in the dark lusts of the Mythos wish to hoard the books, and those who live to destroy such evil folk wish to see the books ripped up. These twin perils face those who own such threatening publications.
Mythos tomes should never be discovered randomly, in profusion, without risk, or without import. When the sweating investigators lay eyes on one, don't skimp on the detail. These things are extraordinary, and require detailed description. Some may be gaudy and shining, with gleaming gilt edges and gorgeous seductive covers; more often they are dismal, dark things, bloated with damp and mold, with frayed edges and peeling bindings; others make plain their subject matter with their composition, boasting covers of flayed human skin, or with human teeth inset as decoration, or printed in dried blood.
Inside the covers, the book should be equally distinctive. Some books have pages of florid illumination, clearly and mercilessly depicting torture and nightmare; others have no such aesthetic presentation, but are instead the ravings of a madman, without concern for grammar, cohesion of thought, or legibility. Some are in English, or other modern languages; others are in arcane and ancient scripts, often in bizarre dialects or forgotten tongues.
An old book might have fading or brittle pages; or they might be soggy and damp, in which case the ink may have run, or the pages stuck together. The thing may stink of decay and putrescence, so badly that no reader can stand to peruse it for more than a few minutes at a time. Previous owners may have tried to burn it, or thrown it down in horror, or slashed their wrists over the open pages; or they may have used it in conjunction with rituals most foul, splashing the pages with alchemical concoctions, ichor, blood, and worse.
While the investigator is reading, the dark world outside is stirring. Trees scrabble and scrape at the window; rats gibber and squeak in the walls, scampering about in terror; the wind moans, gusting across the roof and knocking tiles off; the fire flickers and cowers, shying away; shadows pass across the moon; the room becomes chill, and the house creaks and settles. Could this be coincidence? Are the forces of nature supplying a warning? Do those who would rather the investigator didn't read the book stalk softly along the hallway towards the library door?
When the investigator closes the book and goes to bed, their research does not end. Imprinted in their eyelids are dancing characters and swirling glyphs. As sleep drags them down, they disappear into a world of dreams, dreams in which they see themselves as the irrevocably damned author of the book, and undergo their terrors, their madness. To their somnambulist lips foul words steal and creep, and to their empty bedroom they whisper dread syllables of power and awe, mindlessly reciting the rituals they have read, unconsciously summoning slavering horrors to their bedside. There's nothing like a cosmic abomination drooling on your pillow to make you wake in fright.
In their waking hours, things remind them of that which they have read. Once they've read Alhazred, how can they contemplate Arabia without a shudder? After viewing the hideous wood-cuts in Regnum Congo, how can they walk past a butcher's without gagging? Who can go near the ocean after absorbing Cthaat Aquadingen? To read one of these awful books is to carve a ragged mental scar that will never heal.
The books may have more dire effects on the reader. The more the words of an ancient grimoire become clear to the investigator, the less they are able to comprehend and absorb the everyday language of newspapers and popular fiction. The investigator's speech might also begin to transform. As well as the poison in the words, a more literal threat may be posed. A black smear from the book's ink might not wash off the fingers. The next day this smear has moved up into the palms. In subsequent days it seeps up the arms, to the shoulders, spreading towards the heart.
Mythos tomes can sometimes have a peculiar life of their own. The investigator last perused it on the desk, yet now it is on the window-sill, as if apprehended in the act of escape. Maybe it is still on the desk, but the ink-well has been upset, ruining the notes and translations the investigator has made so far. Perhaps all the other books and stationery are scattered on the floor, as if they could not bear to be in proximity of such an evil thing. Or maybe the investigator sits down to read, opens the pages, and finds flattened in the book the tiny corpse of a mouse, drained of blood.
There are a number of sources to consult on the evil that books do. Fred Chappell's excellent Mythos story "The Adder" ascribes verbal vampiric qualities to the Necronomicon. Wilbur Whateley's lust for that same unspeakable tract laid him low in "The Dunwich Horror." Insane bibliophiles act in deadly opposition in the marvelous scenario "Still Waters" from Great Old Ones. In the Evil Dead films, reading aloud from a black book wakes the dead (augmented in the title sequence for Evil Dead 2 by Call of Cthulhu artist Tom Sullivan, in which our leprous volume gibbers and flips its own pages and eventually flaps away).
But despite all this, Mythos tomes must be read. In many cases the only way to combat the Great Old Ones is to gain an understanding of them, no matter how dim or fragmented. If their dark plans can only be thwarted by spells, then only in these books will those spells be found. If their actions are guided by prophecy, then only in these books are those predictions recorded.
Some investigators have been known to hire translators to take on this onerous task; but that is akin to sending them ahead to test a minefield. The risks are intense and personal, and no human should undergo them without warning. The callous investigator who passes an innocent scholar a copy of Cultes des Goules for perusal is in effect handing them a loaded revolver; their honest and diligent research will pull the trigger. One investigatorial agency tried to solve this problem by sending a book out in chapters, to different experts, in the hope of lessening the shock; but this resulted only in an even higher toll of suicides, murders, breakdowns and disappearances.
With these warnings in mind, but with a sense of higher purpose, I cautiously returned to the case to consult Cthulhu in the Necronomicon. I threw open the lid, and confetti gusted up and puffed about the room in glittering clouds, drifting out the open window. Of the book there was no sign, nor ever will be. In a way, I am glad.
You Are Cordially Invited
©1994 Thomas Stratman
[This article contained the second in our series of special inclusions or "goo-gaws," the first being the cardstock figures and pull-out maps of TUO2's "Grace Under Pressure." The following article presents an auction of occult memorabilia for investigators attend. In the center of TUO3 was a sheet of high-quality almond-color linen paper, on which we designed a brochure for the auction to use as a handout. Each item was accompanied by an illustration, and there was an introduction to the auction plus a crest and logo representing the auction house holding the event. When this article was reprinted in 1992's COURTING MADNESS we went a step further, and re-did the brochure on a special marbled brochure stock that was folded and slipped into the book.]
In two Chaosium scenarios, "The Auction" and "Thoth's Dagger," the action centers around auctions of occult paraphernalia. The following is a set of items appropriate for just such an auction, all of which were formerly the property of an Hebrew/Egyptian historian. Keepers might wish to drop it into Orient Express.
In the center of this issue of TUO you will find a brochure to the auction, being put on by the Ausbergs of Austria (see "The Auction" in Cthulhu Casebook for details). This brochure contains a few introductory notes for the bidders, as well as descriptions of the items offered for bid. It is printed on heavy stock, and should be removed from the magazine, folded accordion-style, and handed out to the players.
The descriptions in the catalog are repeated below. In addition, options are provided for making each item into a genuine occult or Mythos artifact with unusual powers. Keepers can pick and choose which items they wish to imbue with such powers, thereby ensuring that players will be kept on their toes. Making more than half of these items into powerful occult magic is not recommended.
Lot 1. Toy Barge
Circa 2000 BC (Egypt)
minimum bid: $200
Complete. Unusual. Child's toy of Egyptian Burial Barge made of Sycamore wood. Workmanship is very fine.
Condition: Good. Several moving parts.
Optional: A History, Occult, or Egyptology roll will reveal that the barge is not a toy. It is a representation of the vessel that was used to carry the soul of the departed to the afterlife. These models were placed at the foot of the burial case for use by the spirit of the deceased for their voyage to the afterlife.
When someone is alone with this barge and opens the lid to the mummy case they will be immediately attacked by the spirit of the Pharaoh Uzrahotep, a ruler of Egypt before the drying of the Sahara. He has a vaguely cat-like appearance, owing to his worship of Bast. Uzrahotep will attempt to possess the investigator by draining their POW to zero through a series of POW vs. POW confrontations. Many game possibilities exist.
Spirit of Uzrahotep: INT 18, POW 26.
Goal: Protection of holy Egyptian sites.
Lot 2. Ornate Locket
Circa 1800 AD (Palestine)
minimum bid: $200
Redbud wood box with sturdy brass reinforcements and thick steel neck chain. Handmade by the deceased. Contents unknown. Locket does not open. Engraved designs of possible Kabbalistic origin. Unique item.
Condition: Very Fine.
Optional: Inside is the dried core of a Lloigor's brain. If worn, it conveys a 10% bonus to all Luck rolls made by there wearer. If the locket is busted open, the contents appear to be an uncut ruby that will glow slightly in total darkness. It will lose its light when danger is imminent.
Carbuncle of Power: Twenty carats. Hit Points: 5 (locket), 20 (carbuncle).
Lot 3. Stone Pharaoh's Head
Circa 1400-1300 BC (Egypt)
minimum bid: $400
Exquisitely carved Limestone head depicting an unknown pharaoh of both Upper and Lower Egypt. Unusual. Fair craftsmanship.
Condition: Good. Blemished on base.
Optional: The head represents an Egyptian mystic. A Geology roll will reveal that the blemish on the base is caused by an air pocket within the solid rock. A Mythos spell scroll is preserved inside; the only way to retreive it is to smash the stone head. An Archeology or Egyptology roll will suggest that the crown of the "pharaoh" is too short. A second roll will indicate that the figure is in fact of a holy man honored by the pharaoh with the authority to act in his name.
Scroll: Spell(s) left to the Keeper's discretion. The stone head has 18 hit points.
Lot 4. Alabaster Dish
Circa 1300 BC (Egypt)
minimum bid: $200
Egyptian eating dish. Part of a 10 piece set. Known pieces on display at the Smithsonian, the Louvre, the Penhew Foundation, the Mueseuminsel, and the National Egyptian Museum of Cairo. Rare. Fine workmanship.
Condition: Very Good.
Optional: Each piece of this table setting contains 10% of a forgotten Lesser Other God known as Golothess. He was bound and separated into these ten pieces by Yig during a time of great battles. Multiple story possibilities exist.
Golothess: STR 40, CON 100, SIZ 18, INT 8, POW 60, DEX 10, HP 60, Move 5, Armor: blunt weapons do 1 point; -3 points from cutting weapons due to flabby rubbery skin.
Spells: can summon Moonbeasts at will.
Description: Golothess resembles and has a similar domain as the Greek god Bacchus.
Lot 5. Egyptian Ceremonial Dagger
Circa 2800 BC (Upper Egypt)
minimum bid: $350
Excellent workmanship. Formed of the purest silver. Handle design in the form of an Ibis head. Blade engraved in Demotic Hieroglyphs. One of a pair.
Condition: Good. Nicked on blade.
Optional: See "Thoth's Dagger," in Cthulhu Classics for details. Or, the dagger will always do a minimum of one point of damage against any mythos being it strikes.
Dagger: DAM 1D4, HP 15.
Lot 6. Book, Egyptian Grammar
Circa 1909 AD (North America)
minimum bid: $50
1500 pages, leather bound. Out of print first edition. Monograph on conversational Egyptian. Written by Alan Gardiner. Rare. Signed by author.
Condition: Fine.
Optional: See "Thoth's Dagger," in Cthulhu Classics for details. Using this book will give a +50% in Hieroglyphics translation. The author's inscription reads "read behind the lines, (signed) Alan Gardiner." Hidden in the binding is a paper with four shifting magical heiroglyphs on it, 0/1 SAN loss to view. They generate a feeling of great wonder and fear. If deciphered and pronounced, the speaker must make a POW resistance roll versus a POW of 5. Failure leads to sudden death, due to a brain aneurysm. A successful roll sends the speaker into immediate slumber. When they awake, they will have gained great knowledge of the Dreamlands: +20 points of Dream Lore - and will know how to visit there again.
Lot 7. Papyrus Scrolls
Circa 1500 BC (Egypt)
minimum bid: $500
Unique. Six papyrus scrolls in excellent condition. Full copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, with marginal notes written in an unknown Demotic dialect.
Optional: Contains spells to help recently departed souls find their way to the afterlife. See "Thoth's Dagger," in Cthulhu Classics for details. The marginal notes are written in code. A successful Heiroglyphics roll and an impaled Know roll are needed to decipher and translate. The notes are written by a grave robber, and describe three trips he made into the tomb of Cheferin, a high priest of Ptah. The robber never got farther than the outer room, but took at least half of what was there. The directions he gives are sketchy at best. The tomb has not been found by modern archeologists.
Lot 8. Seal of Solomon
Circa 900 BC (Near East)
minimum bid: $500
Six-pointed, engraved star (Hebraic Star of David). Formed by two intertwined equilateral triangles. One golden engraved in Hieratic characters. One platinum engraved in Hebrew lettering. Exquisite workmanship. Unusual.
Condition: Excellent.
Optional: Provides its possessor with immunity to normal diseases and acts as an Elder Sign.
Lot 9. Ceramic Vial
Circa 1300 BC (Arabia)
minimum bid: $200
A yellow-brown ceramic vessel. Contains an unknown liquid. Sealed with wax cork. Inscribed in Ancient Hebrew. Very good workmanship. Common.
Condition: Excellent.
Optional: This liquid will cure up to five hit points of wounds at the rate of one per minute. There are three doses. Successful Chemistry and Botany rolls will reveal that the component plants are extinct and can not be duplicated.
Lot 10. Robe of Office
Circa 1000 BC (Judea)
minimum bid: $600
Exquisitely embroidered robe and cloak of light wool. Gold and silver threads sewn into design on front mantle. Symbols indicate office of Judge. A centerpiece addition to any museum or collection. Exquisite workmanship and fine condition. Unusual.
Optional: If, while wearing this robe, the investigator performs the ritual of burial (a good deal of research would be needed to assemble this), they will be granted 3 points of Mythos, Occult, or Egyptology in the form of a detailed answer to the first appropriate question that they form in their mind. There is a 1/1D3 SAN loss for this supernatural communication.
Lot 11. Jeweled Scarab
Circa 3000 BC (Lower Egypt)
minimum bid: $500
Mica stone beetle with eight gemstone settings: 2 diamonds, 2 pearls, 2 garnets, and 2 emeralds. Back inscribed in Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Common. Good workmanship.
Condition: Very Good.
Optional: If the wearer is slain while carrying this, the soul inhabits the scarab and will attempt to take over the body of the next living creature to touch it. To do this, it must succeed in a POW vs. POW confrontation. The losing soul is lost forever.
Lot 12. Ob
Circa 1700 AD (North African)
minimum bid: $50
Authentic shrunken human head created for use in Kabbalist Magic rituals. Very Rare.
Condition: Good.
Optional: Contains summoned spirit of a deceased rabbinical kabbalist of 18th century Spain. Voice (only heard by owner of Ob) will advise and speak if and when it wishes to. The voice will seem to come from nearby items but never from Ob itself. SAN loss of 0/1D3 the first time this happens. Ob may try to use its owner for its own ends, as determined by the Keeper.
Lot 13. Basalt Paperweight
Circa ?
minimum bid $50
Fake Philosopher's Stone of deceased. Used as paperweight. Stone is convex without any facets. Deceased claimed gold he owned was made from this stone using modern chemicals and ancient alchemetical techniques. Curiosity item only.
Optional: It really is a philosopher's stone. When immersed in a mixture of chemicals (though only a master alchemist would know which ones) it will change base metal into gold. This 8 oz. stone will make 16 lbs. of gold before it is dissolved.
Lot 14. Spice Box
Circa 2200 BC (Middle-East)
minimum bid: $300
Carob wood and camel bone spice box. Fourteen compartments, each separately numbered and operating. Numbered and inscribed in Ancient Arabic. Contains various dried seeds and powders, all quite aged beyond recognition. Small, silver utensils in some of the compartments. Common. Fine workmanship.
Condition: Fine.
Optional: The contents of the drawers are listed below. At the Keeper's discretion, One or more of these substances may be given occult properties.
1. Aconite, powdered leaf, small silver spoon. When eaten it acts as a pain reliever. User effectively gains 50% of their lost hit points back for 3 hours. At the end of that time, if the actual hit points have fallen below zero the user may make a CONx3 roll. If successful, the user will fall into a coma for 2D6 weeks, gaining back lost hit points at the usual rate. If the CON roll is failed, the user dies.
2. Empty.
3. Lichen pollen, small silver spoon. When ingested, the pollen acts as a curious poison. A resistance roll should be made against a potency of 12. If the roll succeeds, the only result is nausea. If the roll fails, the user goes into a coma. Within six hours, the body will sprout roots and secure itself to whatever it is upon. In one day glowing lichen will appear on and around the victim. Each day that this progresses, the body loses a point of SIZ until death occurs when the victim's SIZ reaches 4. The body is totally absorbed at 0. This pollen is native to the Dreamlands, and the only cure lies there as well, possessed by the Zoogs of the Enchanted Forest among others. This cure must be brought back from the Dreamlands through one of the magical entrances on Earth - it cannot be brought back through normal dreaming.
4. Empty.
5. Allheal, small silver spoon. If eaten, it cures 3D8 points of wounds at the rate of 3 points an hour. Experiencing this effect costs 1/1D3 SAN. Observing it costs 0/1 SAN. 3 doses are present.
6. Opiate. This powdered remnant only has a 33% chance of being effective if smoked. If it works, the user will experience visions of the Egyptian afterlife. SAN cost is 1/1D3. User gains 1D3 points of Egyptology or Occult, their choice.
7. Polyidus herbs, cannula (tube for introducing fluid down unconscious patient's throat). Must be mixed with water. When ingested by a person who has died in the previous 10+CON minutes, they are allowed to make a CON resistance roll vs. 12. If successful the person will be brought back to life, in a coma. After enough time has passed for double their hit points to have healed, they will awaken. There is a permanent loss of 1 CON point. SAN cost for the user is 1D10/1D20. Viewing this costs 1D4/1D10. 3 doses.
8. Juniper, stirring whisk. When this substance is mixed with a glass of water and consumed, the drinker's skin becomes unpleasantly thick and rubbery. This provides 1 point of armor for the next 24 hours, by which time the effect will have ended. SAN cost is 1/1D3. 3 doses are present.
9. Jimsonweed, tongs. When chewed, this substance acts as a deadly poison of POT 10. It is safe if cut 10x with any edible substance, in which case it acts as a powerful narcotic. For the next three hours, all stats are reduced by 1D6, skills are at 50% of original. 3 or 30 doses.
10. Empty.
11. Lotus powder, straw. When sniffed, acts as a deadly poison of POT 20. If cut 10x with snuff, it produces a stultifying euphoria. All stats are reduced by 2D6, all skills are at 25% of original, for the next hour. 3 or 30 doses. This substance may be used in some Egyptian Mythos rituals, and could be found mentioned in relevant occult tomes.
12. Mustard seeds, small silver spoon. When eaten, it provides a second resistance roll against poison, acting as if the user's CON was 25% higher than normal. Active for 24 hours. 3 doses are present.
13. Empty.
14. Empty. An impaled Spot Hidden roll will reveal one grain of an unknown organic substance. If it is touched, the grain will be absorbed into the skin. After one day the person's hand will become numb. On the second day, their whole arm will go numb. On the third day, their entire body will be affected, and they will fall unconscious for 12 hours. When they awaken, their physical stats may be increased by 1 pont each - to determine if a stat goes up, roll higher than the present stat x5. SAN costs for each day: first, 0/1; second, 1/1D3; third, 1D3/1D6; fourth, 0/1D3.
The Eye Of Light And Darkness
©1994 Les Dean & John Tynes
[The debut of our review column. I think the review of "Return to Dunwich" set the standard I was looking for in TUO reviews, since it considered the item in question not just as a gaming supplement, but as a creative work with thematic intentions.]
(Editor's Note: Yes, another new addition. What better title for an ongoing review column? Submissions to the Eye on anything to do with Lovecraft, CoC, or the Mythos in general are welcome.)
Cthulhu By Gaslight
The second edition of CBG has been available for some time. William A. Barton has done an undeniably excellent job with this supplement, as has been shown by the numerous awards it has won. This, of course, is good news to those of us who enjoy adventuring in the 1890's. The historical information, maps, and new occupations for investigators are simply vital to any Keeper hoping to run a campaign set in the Victorian era. Sadly, though, all of this information is supplemented with only one adventure, "The Yorkshire Horrors." The scenario is good, though unfortunately the investigators must encounter Sherlock Holmes in it. I take a negative view of using Holmes in any adventure because the players are already aware of his strength and experience and could fall into the trap of "He'll solve it anyway," or "We're stumped - let's call Holmes!" However, the scenario's use of well-known supporting characters and its easy-to-follow presentation do make it a good adventure for inexperienced Keepers. On a scale of one to ten phobias, with Masks of Nyarlathotep being considered ten phobias, Gaslight rates an eight.
Dark Designs: Recently released. The creature on the cover is a Hound of Tindalos, and has my vote for the most repugnant artwork yet done for Chaosium. My congratulations to the artist, Lee Gibbons. Unfortunately, the cover art and the two period maps are the best part of Dark Designs. It includes only three adventures, as well as an 1890's investigator generation supplement to Gaslight. The first adventure, "Eyes for the Blind," leads into the third adventure, "Lord of the Dance," and both go to show that Chaosium pays by the word. These two adventures take up 75% of the book and could certainly have been done in a half to two-thirds of that. There are a few saving graces, however. The main villain in the "Eyes" adventure is excellent, though wise Keepers will give the villain credit for its intelligence and change the noticibly unusual color of the villain's home. The villain should also have plans to vanish in some way should things go wrong. "Lord of the Dance," though unoriginal in design, can be made interesting to players with a creative Keeper, and is by far the best of the three adventures in the book. The third, unconnected adventure is "The Menace from Sumatra," and it shows L.N. Isinwyll's welcome hand in the editing. The adventure might be made more interesting by adding a simple twist: allow the scenario's powerful villain to apply the blue fungus from the opening scene to rats. Whether this affects them the same way it does humans or simply allows it to be spread more widely is up to the Keeper's evil mind.
Dark Designs as it is rates 3 phobias. Good Keepers should be able to squeeze a few more out of it, however.
Other 1890's adventures:
The Vanishing Conjurer / Statue of the Sorcerer: Though the "Statue" half of this Games Workshop book must be set in 1925, "Conjurer" can easily be set in London during the 1890's. Modes of transportation and communication will change, as will the references to Queen Mary and King George (to Queen Victoria and Prince George). The scenario's unspecific time setting is appreciated, and wouldn't be a bad thing to see more of.
Fatal Experiments: The "Songs of Fantari" adventure can, with minimal modifications, be adapted to the 1890's, though I do suggest that only NPC's be subjected to the more fatal of the scenario's experiments.
Call of Cthulhu 4th Edition: Also with minimal changes, "The Brockford House," "Paper Chase," and "The Mystery of Loch Feinn" can all be enjoyable 1890's adventures, already possessing a mood and atmosphere appropriate to the era.
Return To Dunwich
First and foremost, Dunwich is a fascinating and enjoyable read. The book forms the second in Chaosium's "Lovecraft Country" series, following Arkham Unveiled, and maintains that book's standard of quality in writing and thought. It succeeds even moreso than the prior book, in fact. Where Arkham occasionally smacked of being too much a catalogue, Dunwich maintains a constant and rich theme: the price of secrets.
Dunwich Village is just that - a village, much smaller than politely bustling Arkham 45 miles to the east. You'll find only one real business there, the ubiquitous Osborn's General Store, housed in an old church. Instead, author Keith Herber has used the space to describe the people and places of the whole area, a region about ten miles wide and fourteen miles long. In addition to this, there is an extensive treatment of - but I really can't give that away.
Dunwich, you see, is a place full of secrets, secrets that have taken their toll - in more ways than one - on the people of the area. The "secret history" of Dunwich is old and vast, and will come as a stunningly fascinating surprise to even the most knowledgable Keepers and players.
With this in mind, I should state that Dunwich is not a book for inexperienced Keepers or players. Dunwich contains only one scenario, yet the book is truly a campaign, just as much as Masks of Nyarlathotep or Curse of Cthulhu. As the players progress through the adventure, their investigators will continually be running into strange situations and stranger people. Players will soon lose sight of the distinction between the scenario and their more general exploration of the ties that bind Dunwich together. Only experienced Keepers and players should tackle this; by and large, the players will map out the course of the wide-ranging investigation, and the Keeper needs to be familiar enough with all 132 pages (especially the index/directory - a welcome and essential feature) to handle meandering investigations smoothly. If all goes well, though, the experience should be very rewarding.
Keepers needn't worry about players who have read H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror," the primary source for the book. The opening scenario begins a few months after the Horror occurred, with Dr. Armitage of Miskatonic (the story's nominal hero) hiring the investigators to check into the aftermath of the Horror. Armitage can give the investigators a lot of information, essentially duplicating the benefits that players might gain from reading the story beforehand.
I would advise players or potential players not to look at Dunwich, however. Don't look at the table of contents, don't look at the pictures, don't flip through the pages. Some of the book's strongest elements would be quicky given away by even a casual glance.
The illustrations, by John T. Snyder, are quite good, some of the best in a Chaosium book in some time. Dunwich does have a number of typographical errors, of the sort that computer spelling checkers don't catch: plurals instead of singulars, missing words, etc. There are a few other minor annoyances as well. The table of contents has several serious mistakes, some of the "Points of Interest" refer to locations on the maps that aren't labeled there, and in one case a building is simply missing (#911). While showing the need for further proofreading, Dunwich's errors are not truly sloppy, a welcome change from the usual low editing standards found in much of the gaming industry and a particular pet peeve of mine.
My chief complaint with Dunwich is the lack of a more detailed guide for Keepers in running it. Dunwich is a fully-fledged campaign, perhaps the most realistic - or at least believable - campaign yet published. As such, it really requires a lot of preparation on the part of the Keeper to run well. A page or two outlining major lines of investigation beyond the scenario, NPC responses and tactics, and likely events and reactions would have been a big help. Much of this information is in the book, but is scattered amongst the dozens of entries.
Return To Dunwich is wonderfully written and is as rich and fertile a campaign supplement as any I've seen. Its inappropriateness for less-experienced Keepers and players and its lack of more-cohesive campaign information drag it down slightly, though. Bearing these last two points in mind, Return To Dunwich easily rates seven out of ten phobias. Had more work been done to aid the Keeper in running it, this rating would have been an eight.
A Tale Of Terror: The Boods
©1994 John Tynes
[I've long been fascinated by the Consume Likeness spell; it was the centerpiece of my scenario "Nemo Solus Sapit" in Chaosium's "The Stars Are Right!" and does the same here, as well as in my notes for a solo scenario that I never wrote. This is the only Tale of Terror I've ever written (as best as I can recall) and sure enough I blew it. I didn't follow the format of these things, a format that I've made a point of sticking to ever since - in which the writer presents a situation and then gives three possible explanations/plots for the Keeper to choose from. That format gives more bang for the buck, if you will, by providing more options. This one didn't do that. Oh well. Incidentally, I'm very fond of the family name that appears in this piece ("Bood"). I ran across the name in a short story somewhere and loved it.]
Aldous Bood is a professor of Paleo-Linguistics at a nearby university. Short, thin, and stooped, he is known for being well-intentioned but boring. His wife, Dottie, is a huge woman, loud and overbearing, and favors garish floral print dresses. She takes every opportunity to put Aldous down in public, and their neighbors are used to hearing her screaming at him at the top of her lungs when nights are long and tempers are short. Aldous puts up with it as best he can - it is the way of things.
About a week ago the two of them had a terrific fight, Mr. Bood for once giving as good as he got. In the time since that night, no one has seen Dottie Bood.
Prompted by suspicious neighbors, the police investigate her absence. Finding a blood-spattered pillow under the bed, they take Mr. Bood into custody on suspicion of murder. He is released on bail, refusing to offer any explanation whatsoever for his wife's disappearance. Two hours later, Dottie Bood walks into the police station. It's all been a terrible mistake, she says. She was so upset with her husband that she had a nosebleed, and finally fled to her sister's house. The charges against Mr. Bood are dropped.
What's Going On?
Doing some research into the notes of a discredited colleague who recently passed away, Mr. Bood discovered therein the spell Consume Likeness. When he killed his wife in a moment of rage, he seized on the spell as his only way out. It took him a week to fully devour his wife's corpse, as is required by the spell. The arrest came unexpectedly, though, and he had to wait until he was released on bail before he could make an appearance in the form of Mrs. Bood.
In the weeks to come, the Boods will get a surprisingly amicable divorce. Not so surprisingly, perhaps, they are never seen together in public. An investigator who is a friend or colleague of Mr. Bood may notice this curiosity, though, and may know a little something about the deceased professor with the peculiar interests that Mr. Bood was recently looking into. If he isn't caught, Aldous will keep up the sorcerous pretense that his wife us alive until the divorce is final. Then Mrs. Bood will "move away" and will soon be all but forgotten by a community that is not terribly sad to see her go.
It may be that wily Mr. Bood, unhinged by the whole experience, will have acquired a taste for human flesh. He is unaware that the spell does not change your shadow, however, and the investigator may find it unsettling that the rather weighty Mrs. Bood casts such a thin, stooped shadow...
Message In A Bottle
©1994 John Tynes
[This was the first "Message" to really work, I think, and I'm still pleased with it. Astute readers will notice the "Masks of Nyarlathotep" reference contained herein.]
Johann faxed me the note from the plush home of a minor despot somewhere in the jungles of Malaysia. The man was a callous butcher; had he ruled a larger area, Amnesty International would have been on his case long ago. But his cooperation with our efforts was essential in getting the work done in his private little backyard of a feifdom, and Johann and I had years ago ceased to view morality as a force of any importance whatsoever.
Johann's note was succinct, written in the careful penmanship drilled in him by the nuns at St. Elegius: "Tomb explored. Artifact en route to you via FedEx. Definitely of Jeffersonian origin."
Jefferson's parents had named him Thomas Xavier, reflecting their admiration for a firebrand politician and a musician named Cugat. The three of us - Johann, Thomas, and I - had been partners of sorts, brothers in secrets. We'd smuggled guns and drugs and people: dictators and dissidents, couriers and killers. Our private interests had little to do with how we made our living. Profits from our enterprises were funneled into strange purchases, bribes, and the sponsoring of quiet expeditions. We were searching for knowledge that would have bored or frightened most people, knowledge of what had lived before our species arose, and lived yet in secret places.
Then Jefferson fell in love. Suddenly he regained a semblance of conscience, and clutched for the threads of a soul. When he abandoned our efforts and became an interference, Johann arranged for Jefferson's lover to have a fatal "accident." That night, the minions of Cthugha struck, burning three of our warehouses full of metal merchandise waiting to be shipped. It was obvious who was responsible.
Miles Shipley's hungry painting brought things to an end. I had acquired it only recently, and Jefferson knew nothing of it or its power. It was not difficult to have it slipped into the sleazy apartment he had just taken under an assumed name. Come morning, I retrieved the painting, approaching it from behind and draping a cloth over it so as not to suffer from its effects. Thomas Xavier Jefferson simply vanished.
Morning brought the arrival of the promised package from Johann. Within it was a corroded liquor flask, the initials TXJ still barely visible. The tomb it was discovered in was older than mankind, though no archeologist would accept this as true. The serpent people of old knew how to make things last.
The metal flask had lain in this tomb for thousands of years, undisturbed, until now. Jefferson had left it there, knowing that we had already worked out a rough idea of the tomb's location from references in a few moldering texts and something glimpsed through the conjure glass of Mortlan. He knew that we would go there before too long, and that when we did we would know that he had been there already, thousands of years before.
According to our researches, the tomb contained a time portal, one keyed to astronomical events. As I write this, on July 11, 1991, CNN relays footage of the beginnings of this century's greatest solar eclipse. It begins with the dawning of the day in Hawaii, then creeps across the continent. By all reports, here in Mexico City the view of the eclipse will be extraordinary. In an hour or so I'll step over to my balcony and stare directly into the blinding gulf of the eclipse, like they tell you not to. I'd like to have done something memorable before Jefferson comes back.
Afterword
[Well, that's TUO3. A solid issue all around, I think. It had a print run of 1200 copies or so I think; I can't keep the old print runs straight anymore. This time we counted all the copies before we left the printer's shop and weren't shorted a bit. The trip to Memphis to pick up the Oath became a regular event, and my parents were of great help for these trips. They even processed subscriptions for TUO5 or 6, a thankless task that I still can't believe I foisted off on my own parents! Sigh.]