The Sun Shines Over Innsmouth

Here is an incredibly dumb but potentially fun little question:

How would you take the basic premise behind H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and turn it on its head? If you planned on setting a game in the town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts and wanted it to be a light, bright summertime romp instead of a dark, dangerous flight for survival, how would you go about it? The travel season is upon us, after all, and quaint little coast towns with their quirky histories have long been favorite vacation destinations for more landlocked New Englanders.

Again, this is an incredibly dumb idea, but one that might provide a thread's worth of fun.

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youtube.com/watch?v=BRAUKhZDoZQ&ab_channel=illuminatus3125
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Go look up "The Miskatonic".

Don't know, but stealing this for my coming up DTD game. More Weird shit for the Weird shit god!

Thanks for the suggestion.

Humans make contact with Dagon in a boat in the sea near Innsmouth, but instead of weird cult things happening, a successful trade of technology and resources occurs. Innsmouth quickly becomes a bustling trade city, specializing in the sale of Deep One technology. Massive tide pools are created for the purpose of communicating with the Speaker for Dagon and Deep One ambassadors. When it is discovered that Deep One and human offspring are fertile, a new race of Human-Deep One hybrids are created. With the help of new technology, humanity enters a golden age greater than any seen before.

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The immortality thing is a plus too.

Sounds like Monster High, a kid's cartoon.

I live in a small New England sea coast town. Let me break it down for you.

Here, we thrive on tourists. Back in the day, there was a bit more of the hissing at outsiders. But now our towns economy does need it. Everyone knows each other here, so when a few tourists show up, we mostly just continue normally because they're here to see how quaint we are and swim and go to the beach. We don't talk differently around them, because we already talk in an occluded manner and we don't need to change because some people who think we're simple have shown up.

We have bonfires on the beach most weekends, but we typically don't let tourists come, because it's private and we're doing our thing. A few times people have invited hotties to come dance and play, but it typically sucks because they're so basic and don't understand what game we're playing. It changes the dynamic in a not very fun sort of way, but if they're hot enough we're in. Typically we pretend we're going to bed around 8 or 9 because all the stores close at 6.

The worst is when we think we've shaken them, and then they show up anyway. I'm always surprised by how they miss our hostility

So... don't go to New England?

What? No, it's pretty here. We'll make fun of you sometimes but it's all good. We like music and each other. It's fun if you can prove you're awesome, don't ask too many weird questions, and manage to get invited to the right parties

So with this in mind, maybe the Deep Ones wouldn't be obvious. Hybrids go about their days normally as tourists do whatever they do, but if you're cool or pretty enough to go to a bonfire, that's when you see the weird shit.

Right. The reason why the protagonist in Innsmouth got poor treatment is that he spent literally the whole day asking the town drunk about secret stuff, and then stayed the night.

Someone made the connection that the Deep Ones are essentially underwater elves. They're an ancient race with specialized crafts and technologies, and can become functionally immortal.

However, they still see the value in cross-breeding and incorporating new blood and cultures into their own to keep it from becoming stagnant, so they establish communication with humans and form cross-breeds and Innsmouth lineages, analogous to half-elves in that they many times combine the best of both races.

Sometimes Lovecraft stories are pretty easy to turn on their heads because Lovecraft's only stake in why the antagonists are the antagonists is because they're creepy and different. I mean, many times these monsters eat people and are murderous and stuff, but it seems the Deep Ones are only really concerned with themselves and share some generous benefits with those whom they deal with.

Considering he found humans of different races frightening, maybe Deep Ones aren't all that creepy and alien to modern sensibilities.

You know how in the last few lines of Shadow Over Innsmouth the protagonist seems to accept his true nature as a Deep One and plans on breaking his cousin out of a mental asylum so they can return "home"? Make it so the PCs are at that same level of insanity/Deep One transition so that all of the things that would normally be strange or horrifying about the town are familiar and enjoyable.

Probably make a fish out of water comedy about a young man who moves into a new town, wins over the hearts of the somewhat discomforting locals and sparks a romance with an ugly-cute local gal who really loves the sea.

I like that.

Keep them slightly mysterious though.

From what people have managed to put together, and holy fuck it's not easy to put things together with the language and cultural barriers, they worship Dagon as a sort of ultimate ancestor spirit.

They are Spawn of Dagon in a spiritual sense and, assuming Dagon was one of them back in the day, probably biologically also at this point.

They are innately good with technology despite living under water and therefore having no ability to develop technology of their own.

A thing that happens sometimes is that someone's radio will fuck up and they can't fix it. So they leave it near one of the deep rock pools at dusk for when the tide comes in. They also leave a double bacon cheese burger and two portions of fries next to it as payment. When the tide goes out next time a fully functioning radio will be there wrapped in old food wrappers.

They hybrids either end up as nearly fully human with a bit of fish in them or nearly total fish with a bit of human in them.

Presumably they live in the deep water on the other side of the reef. If the tide is high on the night of a full moon you can hear them singing.

youtube.com/watch?v=BRAUKhZDoZQ&ab_channel=illuminatus3125

With Veeky Forums's preoccupation with fucking what's normally considered unfuckable, and /d/'s existence, there's probably people out there who'd fuck the creature from the Black Lagoon, so whatever a Deep One looks like they're probably solid if they can reach those freaks.

But, yeah, one Lovecraft story's "horrifying" conclusion is that a guy's wife was secretly black and could pass for white. I mean, she was also a witch, but she was cursing the southern antebellum family that was kind of keeping her own family in literal chains and torture. Even if that wasn't justifiable, those are some perfectly understandable reasons. And, I mean, passing as white is preferable to living as black for the very reasons Lovecraft found it so shocking, it sucks living as a black person.

The way the "Innsmouth Look" worked was that it got progressively more fishlike as the person aged. Kids could be born perfectly human, but develop the fish features later on. Some never actually went full fish, or even developed fishy traits at all, and spent their time above the water in the town. Some were even amphibious for a time, heading in and out of the water as they want, though most became aquatic as they hit the ocean.

Still, some get stuck in various stages or even revert back to previous stages, as the "half" part was an imperfect mix and took differently in some individuals. Some Deep Ones breeding in the deep might have even had kids who needed to live on land, the human bits of either producing an offspring more human than Deep One.

But for the most part they had a baseline "normal" even if exceptions were uncommon, which was usually being born human and turning fishy with age, eventually becoming a full Deep One in appearance. What surprised me is that exceptions are tolerated, and even cared for or given a place in society. Lovecraft, of course, though deformity was spooky and evil, so he often had the bad guys be diverse and tolerant of deviation, but in the context of the Deep Ones it makes them look downright hospitable and accommodating. Can't breathe water and join us down there? Don't worry, we'll make sure everyone's cared for up on land.

Well, as far as Mythos entities go, the Deep Ones were pretty allright. Sure, they have a weird fashination with breeding with humans, but even then they don't force themselves on humans, but set up a mutually beneficial relationship, with the the Deep Ones helping fishermen and giving out treausers they've collected from the bottom of the ocean in exchange for being able to mate with humans. Sure, they may also want human sacrifices for Dagon, but even then they're clearly civilized enough to deal with humans, rather than just raping and pillaging stuff.

Do we want to stick with that?

It could be that the longer they spend on land the more they stay human, albeit with a bit of fishness about them.

The more they are exposed to salt water the more fish they turn.

Different people turn at different speeds. For some they can go from human to fish in six months. For others is an agonizingly slow process of decades.

Sort of like in Lord of the Rings how half-elves could choose what they were. But uglier and with more fish.

Some times some of the really old fuckers have gone fish, lived as a fish for a good long while, decided they miss trees and shit and turned back into a human. They stand out a shit load even after they finish turning as the last time they walked as a man was back in 1747.

Well, if you want a sympathetic take on Deep Ones, and perhaps a novel version of elves for your setting.

Sea Elves are occasionally a thing, but having those on ships and the surface being the equivalent of half elves makes it a bit more novel, while the Deep Ones proper spend their time underwater.

Possibly. There could very well be a spiritual component if we're taking this into the fantasy realm, and so one makes the conscious/unconscious choice to join or not join, or to return or stay. Though choice itself seems kind of odd for it, a bit sue-ish.

If the setting is going to have a PC race, have them be kind of fishy and half-Deep One, and have it be that land-dwelling hybrids are pretty common, and only after a few generations do the Deep One traits take, so there's a sizeable number of land-bound or partially amphibious human hybrids for PC choice.

You have to remember that the horror in The Shadow over Innsmouth isn't just racism, fear of miscegenation and good old "fuck smelly poors" (look at Horror of Red Hook for more of that) on Lovecraft's part but also plain fear of intercourse. It's not just "and these women are having sex with nig--- DEEP ONES to get GOLD", it's "and PEOPLE are having SEX." Lovecraft barely touched his wife during his marriage because he was revolted by the very concept.

It could be that the sleepy and quaint seaside town is in the height of tourist season.

People come from many places due to the low prices, cheap bear and sandy beach. Families, collage students, old people and other types of tourists.

Not many, because other than beer and beach it's quite boring and out of the way but the selection is wide.

Then grizzly murders start to happen. People properly torn up and dismembered. Men, women and children with no distinction hacked apart or shot repeatedly.

And strange thing have been seen on the beech and in the surf. Shambling shapes of inhuman silhouette in the black of night with bright yellow eyes.

Eventually they start shambling into town and wrecking property.

Turns out that some "adventurers" have been going around killing the half-breeds. The Deep Ones are fucking pissed that people are killing their family and are coming up to take matters into their own webbed hands.

>Sailor's Traditions
Those who traverse the sea are a superstitious lot, and for good reason, the sea is a fickle and cruel mistress. Various rituals have been developed to try and appease the sea, or at least appeal to those beings who might dwell within it.

Sailors have been known to make two identical ceramic, wooden, or brass tokens, usually inscribed with their name and the holy symbol of their patron deity. One they keep around their necks or an item of value of theirs they take with them, and the other they place with a generous offering at low tide in very specific places around the coastlines. Should the sailor die at sea, a few days later his token might appear on the doorstep of his family or closest relation. Some have said that these tokens are brought by a shambling man who stinks of seawater and who is dressed in a thick, heavy coat. A few claim to have spoken with this figure or figures and, while they speak in a guttural or gurgling way, they show politeness and can teach you a few things about the sea others might not know, though they often excuse themselves shortly and leave with the high tide.

Lovecraft sounds like a terrible autist who looks at normal people the way we look at his Elder Ones.

>Lovecraft sounds like a terrible autist
He was. Half of the people in his stories are driven mad because 'math is confusing' or 'holy shit that thing is goddamn enormous.'

He was the shittiest kind of autist imaginable, and it's only when they're taken out of context that his stories are rad.

>Lovecraft sounds like a terrible autist
Sometimes it takes terrible autism to create amazing settings.

Tolkien was so autistic he put his wife's elvish name on her tombstone even after she begged him for years not to.

A Cthullhu mythos parody where you apply the "misunderstood because they're different" cliché to the monsters and have them be mostly harmless, would be pretty fun. I mean, Lovecraft has some goofy shit.

And yet he was friends with, of all people, Robert E. Howard, who could not possibly have loved sex more. The two even read each others' stories and put little references to each others' mythoi in their own stories.

Figure that one out.

>Tolkien was so autistic he put his wife's elvish name on her tombstone
Aww.

>even after she begged him for years not to.
Oh.

The whole thing about Lovecraft being disqusted by sex is likely nothing but a myth. His wife did state that he did perform his "maritial duties" satisfactorily. Although he doesn't appear to have been particularly interested in sex and sexuality.

I'd say have the town of innsmouth become famous for the fishmen. Like set it in the modern day and have there be a "Dragon's theme park" or a seafood festival or something.

As for an adventure? Maybe have shogoths trying to break into set up their own rival park/festival and it's up to the players to stop them from ruining summer break.

I'd actually play it more straight, where people act like people, some of the creatures are more animalistic and dangerous than others, but a good deal of the greater shit out there is either uncaringly neutral or actually is evil and terrible.

Sentient races can act somewhat differently because they might have come to a "Golden Rule" kind of understanding; that the universe might be uncaringly terrifying, but they don't, and they can work it out with other races easily enough.

Turning it Deep Ones into waifu-bait like pic related would go a long way.

OR make Lovecraft into a Nyarko setting, toning down some of the WTF JAPAN

Skullgirls did that with Minette.

She's from a place called "Little Innsmouth."

>Conan is canon in Lovecraft
I've always loved this and it's sad e we don't see it much today. I guess because Paradox still has the Conan rights.

>you will never see the murderous spirit of Conan turn up in the Laundry Files as a Black Chamber assassin

Sometimes it takes an open mind to realize that Marshmallow Fluff and Peanut butter can't just exist on the same bit of bread, they can compliment each other.

One of the most fucking funny stories I ever read was a Round Robin story involving Lovecraft and Howard done for a Sci-fi magazine.
I can't remember the name of it right now, but it was 6 chapters, Lovecraft did 3, in which the character was abducted by aliens and turned into a primordial ooze monster, his mind rent by the horror of it and oh shit nigga, the Aliens are talking to me.

And then Howard sits down at the type writer.
And the character decides 'Man, know what, my body was just a frame for the mind, which is perfectly fine right? Besides, look at my awesome new psudopods, BITCHIN', the Old Gods tell him he's basically been abducted because they need a warrior bad ass from another planet, they thrust an alien gun into his hands and tell him to go fight a Warlord-alien from another race, Doom Guy style.
The characters reaction? FUCK YEAH, LETS DO THIS SHIT.
And the other 2 writers just fuckin' run with it, last chapter has him as the Shoggoth King of an entire planet.
And apparently Lovecraft laughed his ass off at the whole thing and thought it was amazing.

It really is amazing how two entirely different people can be so warm towards each other, I'd give anything to have been a fly on the wall in the room where that friendship was formed.

>Conan is canon in Lovecraft
More the other way around, actually. Many of the mad sorcerer-kings or blasphemous cults that Conan dispatches are worshiping entities from Lovecraft works.

Imagine Lovecraft having sex.
Lights off, the moon leaves a single beam through the slightly opened curtains, highlighting his entirely neutral and emotionless face as he thrusts away mechanically.

Aside from the goofiness, that's pretty much what happens in Mountains of Madness. The Antarctic expedion unearths some strange mummified creatures in the ice, and next morning they find the things gone and one of their team members (and a dog) disembowled.
From the perspective of the Elder Things, they wake up from hibernation sight-receptor to face with strange bilaterally symmetrical creatures that appear hostile, kill them for self-defence, and disect them to learn about their anatomy before trying to figure out their way back home.

As the human researchers follow their tracks, they find the ruined city of the Elder Things and learn about their culture, ending with a suprizingly un-Lovecraftian conclusion that despite their different appearance, the Elder Things were not so different from them, and despite their strange appearance were scientists and people. Had they not been killed by the Shoggoths, the humans and the Elder Things could've probably gotten along fine once everybody got over the initial misunderstandings and weirding out about each others' appearance.

*creak*
*creak*
*creak*
*creak*
*creak*
*creak*

The first things the narrator discovers about Innsmouth in the story is that the town has been in a long downward-spiral and the townsfolk have grown surly, mean-spirited and "ugly." All this, of course, is a result of the townsfolk breeding with the Deep Ones, but if the Deep Ones in this "sunny scenario" are not the evil corruptors that Lovecraft envisioned then the town will never have fallen to ruin and the people will have remained friendly and cheerful, if outlandish looking. My big question is, are they still secretive about their fishy benefactors and ancestors, or are they open about the existence of the Deep Ones? Have scholars and scientists from that bright, burning beacon of learning Miskatonic University come to speak with and study them? Is an entire "Bizarro-Mythos" in play here?

>bizarro mythos
Fucking fund it!

The reason Lovecraft's monsters had power was because of their impossible, unknowable, and incomprehensible nature.
The thing is though, humans are really really good at figuring shit out and adapting to change. We do some new math, you give us a generation or two to get used to it, and Lovecraft's impossible, unknowable entities just become another part of life.

Also we'd all totally bang a cute DTF fishgirl like or

Best part of that entire book was the fact it proves that Lovecraft wasn't just the foam-at-the-mouth-nigger-hater that people try to depict him as these days.
>After all, they were not evil things of their kind. They were the men of another age and another order of being [...] They had not been even savages—for what indeed had they done? [...] God, what intelligence and persistence! What a facing of the incredible, just as those carven kinsmen and forbears had faced things only a little less incredible! Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities, star spawn — whatever they had been, they were men!

The thing about Lovecraft is that while there are things beyond comprehension and humanity is in the dark, there are those who follow these beasts that would ruin the world for their own power and prestige, or simply out of apathy.
But not all monsters hate humanity (Just most) and now and then man rises to the challenge, as in The Shunned House, where a pair of Bad ass motherfuckers take out an abomination with acid and flamethrowers.
There is hope, not much, but it is the hang on by your fingers and maybe somewhere below there's a ledge in the unknown abyss, you just need to feel it out with your feet and pray its there.

>"Bizarro-Mythos"
>bright, burning beacon of learning Miskatonic University
>friendly and cheerful, if outlandish looking
I love it.

Wouldn't Bizarro Mythos basically be Pulp Sci-fi, where humanity has done something to not only gain the attention of the Old Gods, but their fear, pushing them back from our world one step at a time, bringing the light of knowledge to the dark places of the world?

I imagine they'd still be a bit secretive of the situation, if only to respect people's privacy. Having people come by to enjoy the cheap beer and beaches is a lot more fun than gawkers come to peep in on the 'freakshow'. A little flirty mystery never hurt anybody anyway. Persistent and energetic people who want to know will eventually get invited to the right party, and pushy jerks will probably leave frustrated.

>1940s rolls around
>Humanity invents the Atomic Bomb
>All the Horrors of the 'verse shudder for a moment as they watch what humanity is willing to do to its own without a moments hesitation, cracking the atom
>And oh christ they're building more
>Wait, what's a large hadron colli-oh shitting christ why would you do that, this isn't 'Nam humanity, there are fucking rules!
>And carefully they edge back from the world, like you would a man with a sawn off shotgun in a very small elevator.

The closest thing I have to cute fishies are a few cute mermaids...

Post what you can.

Okay here's my pitch for this flick: a brother and sister are spending the summer in Innsmouth for [reason].

The brother, who is the streotypical reedy, nerdy Lovecraft protagonist, has the standard Innsmouth plot, investigating shit and freaking out cause "oh god, they're fish people!"

Meanwhile the sister's plot is a light-hearted rom-com about her falling for a local fish girl

So... Gravity Falls on the East Coast then?

>Pacifica as the heir of the Order of Dagon
This pleases my erection.

Why is the sister a lesbian? Further, why would a fish person be lesbian? Fish can't into same sex relationships, unless it's a clown fish that would just become a man then.

You said it! Why, why, why!

>Gender-swapping deep ones.

A lot of Lovecraft's more sympathetic and less nigger-hating works were after he moved out of Boston to New York, and started hanging out with more people. After that, it's when I feel his horror really comes into its own. The Color Out of Space is a work of horror that's genuinely unnerved me, and it's raceless in characterization really lends it that otherworldly feeling towards the color itself.

At the Mountains of Madness is perhaps one of his best known works, not just because it's longer, but because it paints a huge picture of a sympathetic people, and even still managed to get some of that distilled, terrible otherworldliness Lovecraft is known for onto the page.

Lovecraft was probably very much a racist in as much as a skinny, frightful nerd can be, and his early works are so dripping with it that it's pretty inexcusable, but he mellowed out as he got older, more experienced, and matured. There's Lovecraft apologists and people who paint him as a vehement racist, but the true picture is perhaps a much more nuanced, complicated, and uniquely human image than what he's made out to be. How we reconcile that as fans of his literature reflects on ourselves, but I choose to see much what you got at in your own post; racist, writer, fearful nerd, buds with literary greats... Whatever he had been, Lovecraft was a man.

I imagine Miskatonic is much as it was, but in this instance it's just a tad bit comically inept because it's a little stuck up in the scholarly, gentlemanly view of things, an institution that is colored by its own cultural biases enough to miss a few important details or dismiss many "silly" ideas out of hand.

>maybe Deep Ones aren't all that creepy and alien to modern sensibilities.
They're a matriarchy, as far as I recall.

Except Dagon is their main Diety, and he's their father. True Hydra is also important.

> Half of the people in his stories are driven mad because 'math is confusing' or 'holy shit that thing is goddamn enormous.'
that's more of a dereleth thing, people who go mad in lovecraft's stories tend to just have PTSD, and for very good reason

He grew up with a ridiculously sheltered childhood, with very little human contact. His mother basically told him on her deathbed that "Oh, by the way, we're not filthy rich anymore. Enjoy poverty!"

Even in his correspondence with other authors (Howard, Smith, etc.), he was the frequent target of loving but not inaccurate mockery for his xenophobic attitudes. I don't remember the exact wording, but one such letter said something along the lines of "One of these days, Howard, you're going to sit down and have an actual goddamn conversation with a Jewish person, and you're going to learn that they're pretty cool."

If this were a comedy, the camera would cut from the incredulous look of dismissal on Lovecraft's face to his wedding with a Jewish immigrant.

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It's not as if that would be much of a stretch.

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We have different definitions of "Cute" it would seem.

>why would a fish person be lesbian?

they're already used to everything smelling like fish

Everything is cute in context.

For every little mermaid there's an Ursula.
The tribal/social differences between the different merms could be a plot point, it's a classic.

One of those apocryphal anecdotes says that Lovecraft was on an anti-Semitic rant once when his wife calmly taps him on the shoulder and informs him that she is, in fact, Jewish.
Without missing a beat, he tells her that she's not Jewish, she's a Lovecraft.

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I think that the "Bizzaro-Mythos" difference with Miskatonic University is that the eldritch discoveries and otherworldly extracurricular activities of its faculty and student body cause more happy accidents than abominable horrors and, as you say, are played for comedy. They would be that school of arts and sciences that's well respected and has produced a lot of scholarship and advancement in the understanding of Things Older Than We, but that is none he less still full of cooks, crackpots and stuffed shirts.

And, Innsmouth becomes the big local summer-break destination for the student body, of course.

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Awesome!

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I imagine sending your half-human offspring to study at Miskatonic is the Deep One equivalent of Americans sending their kids to Oxford. It's supposed to prestigious, and those surface worlders are mostly okay, but couldn't they have gone to Sharkvard or Whale instead?

That is bizarrely heartwarming, if you look at it a certain way.
He didn't even consider applying all the sterotypes to her or going 'well you're one of the good ones'
Just "You my wife woman, you don't think this shit applies to you do you?"

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>1940s rolls around
>Humanity invents the Atomic Bomb
>All the Horrors of the 'verse shudder for a moment as they watch what humanity is willing to do to its own without a moments hesitation, cracking the atom
>And oh christ they're building more

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I'm not sure that I find it heartwarming: after all, he was outright denying her identity and replacing it with one of his own choosing. But it goes to show that like says, Lovecraft was a man, complex and sometimes irrational but more than just a Stormfront stereotype.

It'd be the equivalent of if we woke up one day to discover that overnight ants had built a single giant ant city directly over Greenland, filled with tiny ant technology capable of leveling your average suburban household.
Sure it wouldn't be enough to stop them from being destroyed if someone got on it quick enough but would anyone really have their shit together after the surprise enough to deal with it before they break out the tiny ant tripods capable of burning a leg off?

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Next Barbarians of Lemuria game right here.

Right. Miskatonic is prestigious, but peculiar. An undeniably good school, but not necessarily one you'd want your child or spawn to attend. However, it does have the longest running, most widely respected "Mythos Studies" program in the country, so it's really where you want to be if you want to pry into the secrets of the cosmos.

Great stamina and endowment too.