Gray Raven

Perhaps you could do something with an encounter with the rock that housed and brought the alien entity that is featured in the short story The Color Out of Space. From the 7th edition Keepers Manual: Colours Out of Space The shaft of phosphorescence from the well brought a sense of doom and abnormality which far outraced any image their conscious minds could form. It was no longer shining out, it was pouring out; and as the shapeless stream of unplaceable colour left the well it seemed to flow directly into the sky. —H.P. Lovecraft, The Colour Out of Space A colour is a sentient organism that manifests as pure colour—it is not gaseous, it is insubstantial. When it moves, it is visible as an amorphous, glistening patch of colour, rolling and shining in shades of its pale colours that match nothing in the known spectrum. This patch pours over the ground or flies in a living fashion. When it feeds, its victim’s skin and face glow with the colour. Though incorporeal, its passing nonetheless feels like the touch of a slimy, unhealthy vapor. Geiger counters register its presence as a distinctive burst of radiation. With today’s light-intensification gear, it shows as a bright patch of luminosity. Infrared viewers are useless. Colours come from the depths of space, where natural laws differ. Adult colours create embryos, harmless three-inch spheres seemingly empty. Deposited on verdant soil or in shallow waters, the embryo begins to germinate. After a few days, the outer shell dissolves and the new creature, which we may term a larva, emerges. The jellylike larva can grow to great size. As it infiltrates the ecosystem, local vegetation exhibits a tremendous but unhealthy growth. Fruit tastes bitter. Insects and animals are born deformed. At night, all plant life glows with the colour, and the vegetation begins to twist and writhe, as though in a strong wind. Even humans shine with the spectral light. After a few months, the larva transforms into a young colour. It now makes brief trips from its lair to feed, and begins to drain the life force from the area previously affected by the larva. When it drains enough energy, it departs the planet for space and adulthood. In so maturing, the colour may drain life force from an area of five acres or so if rich in life, or perhaps 10-20 acres of moor or grassland. The area drained is ruined thereafter, and no plant can grow. Bright light inhibits a colour. It spends daylight hours in dark, cool hideaways, preferably underwater: cisterns, wells, lakes, reservoirs, and oceans are all suitable page 285-286

I wonder who the other two are! Are you one of them?

My own experience is using KDP, which is a POD system devised by Amazon. There are no upfront costs charged by KDP. It is just your own time and effort. I wrote my fantasy novels and my nonfiction works on philosophy and on Qabalah/Kabbalah using Microsoft Word and then uploaded them to KDP. My Qabalah/Kabbalah texts have black-and-white pictures and diagrams in them. The covers for my books were in the first version created by myself using one of their templates. Now in the revised versions of my books, the covers were finalized by Marianne Nowicki of PremadeEbookcovershop.com. I used KDP's system to generate the ISBN rather than purchase my own set of ISBNs. There is the obvious drawback that a book created via KDP is an Amazon book; though it does show up in the official BOOKS IN PRINT listings, it is not accepted by brick-and-mortar stores to be sold by them.

One of my own house rules was 'the rule of the extra-ordinary' as a way to represent increases in a character's skill over time. Any time a player was tolled to roll their 2D10. If they got either a 01 or any double (00, 11, 22, 33, 44, etc.) besides being played out according to the rules of critical success or critical failure or success or failure - the player gets to increase their skill that was the reason for the die being rolled by 1 point due to the extra ordinary situation that just occurred. Succeeding in a scenario increases the character's sanity by some amount of points.

Finished listening to it all. Intriguing, with lots of characters introduced and lots of plot threads waiting to be brought together. Little hints of Cthulhu Mythos dropped in to offer teases of what may come as the novel progressed. Is there more?

This is a good presentation of Campbell's Monomyth theory which is embodied in The Hero's Journey. It shows that the Monomyth/Hero's Journey can be a seemingly universal pattern; it is not truly a set pattern of stages that all myths and thus a good guide for writing one's own stories. The presenter does a great job pointing out how Campbell was wrong in proclaiming it was a fixed and universal pattern of all cultural myths. The elements can be found in many myths and many fantasy stories in popular culture, but the pattern is not fixed in the actual narrative of popular literature. One can review pop culture stories, such as Lord of the Rings, the First Star Wars film, and the Harry Potter novels, especially the first one, and find all those elements of Campbell's conceptual pattern. But it is making those stories fit the pattern by conscious selection to make it work. However, as the lecture points out, when you pull the events to match up with Campbell's system, you have to take the scenes from those stories and pull them into the supposed fixed pattern and stages. The order of those elements in the story's plot doesn't actually always show up in the order that Campbell proclaimed. The idea is that the Hero's Journey can be a universal plot line for any fiction as some people try to sell in their books and seminars teaching would-be writers. This is clearly incorrect once you think of any genre of literature beyond fantasy stories. The first Holmes novels, The Study in Scarlet, The Maltese Falcon, and The Big Sleep, to take a few of the most famous detective novels, clearly do not fit the confines of the plot as laid out by Campbell's Hero Journey steps and stages. If you look at Westerns, Horror fiction, Ghost stories, Spy novels, War novels, and Science Fiction novels, many of them don't actually follow that fixed pattern. But you can force elements of Campbell's pattern onto those works. So, for would-be writers of genre fiction, your first novel might stumble into elements of Campbell's Hero Journey; as the presenter says, if you want to make your mark, don't force yourself into the box that Campbell lays out. Especially if you are not writing a fantasy novel.

Ahh, yes there are reasons to avoid Amazon. Though it being the kind of controlling website it seems to want to have almost everything that is in print listed on their site, even if it is not directly in their corporate clutches. Do I need to make a sanity roll after contemplating this? 😄

Excerpts from the journal articles based on Ariel Jaronofsky's recent field research. Interstellar alien physiology could be and perhaps should be truly alien to our conceptions of what has evolved on Earth. Here on our planet, sensing within the visual range of the electromagnetic spectrum has tended to be evolved into creatures with 'eyes'. The visible light spectrum is the segment of the electromagnetic spectrum that the human eye can view. More simply, this range of wavelengths is called visible light. Typically, the human eye can detect wavelengths from 380 to 700 nanometers. With our sensory organs, we can see things and focus, which has stimulated the creation of varieties of artistic creations as well as the means to communicate with written symbol systems that can be read. This ability to draw and write and thus to see those creations would be key for any species to create and store their learned knowledge to be transmitted to others of their kind. Thus, these alien species with scientific technology would have to have sense organs that allow not only the ability to sense their recorded symbol systems but to work with the material needed to build not only their technology but also to create their art forms of illustration and architecture. Now, for example, snakes have sense organs other than in the form of their eyes, which enable them to experience parts of the infrared spectrum. The ability to sense infrared thermal radiation evolved independently in two different groups of snakes, one consisting of the families Boidae (boas) and Pythonidae (pythons), the other of the family Crotalinae (pit vipers). What is commonly called a pit organ allows these animals to essentially "see" radiant heat at wavelengths between 5 and 30 μm. The more advanced infrared sense of pit vipers allows these animals to strike prey accurately, even in the absence of light, and detect warm objects from several meters away. It was previously thought that the organs evolved primarily as prey detectors, but recent evidence suggests that it may also be used in thermoregulation and predator detection, making it a more general-purpose sensory organ than was supposed. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_sensing_in_snakes It would seem that this physiology could evolve in other ecosystems on other planets, whereby the ability to recognize aspects of the electromagnetic spectrum would enable the species to discern the fine details of a symbol system. Thus, truly alien creatures might not have what to our human perspective and planetary expectation sensor organs resembling eyes as we are familiar with. Perhaps parts of their dermal surface can sense and gather the needed aspects of that spectrum in a manner similar to how Earth snakes have evolved to sense infrared radiation. Thus these creatures may not have 'eyes' in the familiar form that we are accustomed to seeing on our planet. This speculative fact might go a long way to explain a creature such as the so-called Moon Beasts, who do indeed have a written language as evidenced by the text called The Book of Black Stones. THE BOOK OF BLACK STONES: in Moonbeast, by unknown moonbeast authors. A series of plates of black stone, laced together with thick wire to form a sort of book. The book is inscribed in a series of strange hieroglyph-like symbols, which are the language of the moonbeasts. Attached to the book by a small chain is a disk of curved glass with a rod-like handle, similar to a magnifying glass. If anyone looks through the glass at the plates, they can read the inscriptions as though they were written in their own native tongue. The black plates deal with the worship of Nyarlathotep in clinical detail, as well as dealing with methods of torture as applied to some seventeen different alien species, including humankind (interestingly, ghouls and humans are classified as the same species). Dreamlands, Fifth Edition, 2004, pg. 148 Therefore, the entry in the important scholarly work by S. Petersen, his Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors, needs to be amended concerning the Moon Beasts and their pinkish tentacles. A submission to both The Preternatural Clearing House, Arkham, Massachusetts, which has since 1980 maintained a registry and information exchange of preternatural sightings in North America, and to the Windthrope Institute for Dream Research, in Clauson, Colorado, I have been told have been submitted to those important academic institutions. Ms. Jaronofsky, who is currently undergoing treatment at the Felton Institute in San Francisco, will hopefully, upon her full recovery, be able to respond to the success and publication of her important findings. Our prayers go out to her for a full recovery of her sanity. The loss of one of her grad students is truly a tragedy.

Beyond the Mountains of Madness is yet another great Lovecraftian novel by Stableford. It evokes Lovecraft without falling into mere purple prose, slavishly copying his style. Stableford brings his own modern knowledge of science to update and infuse a greater sense of reality and, thus, cosmic horror into the novel. Truly a must-read for any fan of this masterwork, The Mountains of Madness of Lovecraft. Here is the blurb from the book: http://www.philsp.com/stableford/novels/beyond_mountains_of_madness.htm Tom Andersley returns to his family estate in Yorkshire after serving in France throughout the Great War of 1914-18, but like many of his fellow survivors he finds the estate very different and is not the same man who departed: a victim of "shell shock." Unable to reconnect with his wife and daughter, who have endured traumatic experiences of their own, he retreats obsessively into his old hobby, entrenching himself in his greenhouses in order to carry out meticulous experiments in the cross-breeding of fruit trees. He is interrupted in his existential paralysis by the mysterious arrival of an old friend from Eton, Lawrence Oates, whom everyone believes to be dead, having walked out of Robert Scott's tent in an Antarctic blizzard in 1912 in order not to slow down his companions in their doomed attempt to reach safety. Oates tells Tom that he was picked up and preserved by mysterious alien entities that have been entrenched in the Antarctic ice for millions of years, engaged in a long war fought with biological weaponry, against equally-mysterious adversaries, unknown to humankind, recent arrivals of their battlefield. Having learned about Tom's research from Oates, the aliens have sent the latter back to his homeland in the hope that Tom's expertise might enable him to bring a number of "seeds" to maturity, apparently as a clandestine move in their long-stalemated war. But what will the consequences be, for Tom, his family and humankind, of the failure or success of the mission into which he has been conscripted? Published by Snuggly Books in March 2022 ISBN: 978-1-64525-092-0

Brian Stableford expands upon Lovecraft's story From Beyond, first published in The Fantasy Fan in June 1934 (Vol. 1, No. 10), with this short novel Further Beyond. Stableford's short novel, published in 2017, captures the Cosmic Horror of the original while utilizing the insights of modern science to bring it to a richer and deeper feel of tangible and terrible reality. I can't praise this novel enough for evoking Lovecraft's cosmic horror. From the website dedicated to the writings of Stableford, I present a review of his novel. http://www.philsp.com/stableford/novels/further_beyond.htm Review by Sally Startup In a novel that takes places shortly after the events of H. P. Lovecraft’s story, ‘From Beyond’, another chilling tale develops. Crawford Tillinghast’s house and its contents have been left to his estranged widow, Rachel. Tillinghast’s friend, who was also the narrator of Lovecraft’s tale, tells the reader more about himself in this one. The police have given up searching for Tillinghast’s missing servants, and have accepted that David, the narrator, did not murder his best friend. David would prefer not to return to the scene of the tragedy, yet finds himself unable to refuse Rachel’s request for his help. It turns out that the damaged remains of Tillinghast’s terrifyingly uncanny machine are of huge interest to other scientific and occult investigators. In order to protect Rachel from the unscrupulous attentions of three such men, David agrees to return to the house. There, after enduring an apparent attack of migraine while trying to understand Tillinghast’s previous researches, and in fear of what could happen if the machine were to fall into the wrong hands, David takes an incredible risk. Out beyond the known boundaries of scientific knowledge, our actions might easily have consequences too terrible for most of us to contemplate. Through his own exploration of knowledge, David reaches a position in which he has to make a horrifying choice. The result is hauntingly poignant. For an online copy of the story, go to https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/fb.aspx "That Crawford Tillinghast should ever have studied science and philosophy was a mistake. These things should be left to the frigid and impersonal investigator, for they offer two equally tragic alternatives to the man of feeling and action; despair if he fail in his quest, and terrors unutterable and unimaginable if he succeed."

I would agree. Having humans, even NPC villains, have access to this mythos technology seems to take away the Cosmic Horror and the implied vast distance between humanity's levels and the Mythos beings. I think that it would be only through Mytho's direct connections and support via 'Gods' or Alien species that the villains would seem to get access to that tech. It keeps within the Lovecraft worldview for humanity not ever to truly have this kind of knowledge that they could make use of on their own. But, as always there is the 'Your mileage might vary' principle, and therefore the GM/Keeper gets to truly decide how to run their game.

That might be true for humans making use of those brain cylinders, but the Mi Gos have different motivations than us, mere humans. The story that prominently featured them was Lovecraft's The Whisper in the Darkness. The Mi Gos used humans to front their mining operations on Earth. Often taking over and replacing their human hosts to more easily control them and use them to deal with other humans, hence the brain cylinder device. But sometimes, they do it for what they consider a special favor for their pet humans. As it says in the 7th edition of the C of C Keepers Manual on page 301: Mi-go are inquisitive scientists, capable of astounding surgical feats, including the placing of living human brains in life-sustaining metal tubes. They can then attach speaking, listening, and seeing devices to the tubes, so that the brains can interact with those around them. Such contained brains may then be carried around and taken into the vacuum and cold of space, allowing their favored human servants the opportunity to visit distant stars and other mi-go outposts.

Just started to take a listen. Very interesting. I was curious that I didn't find it listed on Amazon, though. I will have to take the time to listen to the whole thing and I can comment more when I do.

It is a great production! Nice job! Along similar lines, have you ever seen the Batman-related preview for a movie that begs to be made? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayson_(film) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lyUEwNG-s8

Am I correct in that you are not familiar with and haven't checked out Lovecraft's Dreamland cycle of stories and Chaosium's Dreamland manual? In that Mythos, there are many ships that sail the astral/extraterrestrial/interstellar seas.