/ysg/-Yog-Sothothery General

Love the Lovecraft Edition

This thread is meant to discuss Lovecraft's Works and other related media like tabletop games, video games, etc

Previous Thread:
The Texts of Lore that Men were not meant to know:
eldritchdark.com
hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/

A good playlist about the gods and other entities of Lovecraft:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-aprpylMuCdnaFEYwTzAobqUZGxS1D5p

>The Black King watches us

Other urls found in this thread:

uploadmb.com/dw.php?id=1461968691
youtube.com/watch?v=BWT07iRvI9M
youtube.com/watch?v=ja0jS_toKxk
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Egad! I've put the wrong previous thread

Threadly Reminder that Derleth is a nicest of hacks

a hack we owe much to.

Based Derleth saved Lovecraft's works from falling into obscurity.

Also The Queen music and Lovecraft from Last Thread was simply the best idea I've heard in a while

can someone tell me more about the dreamlands? Does actual humans live there or everyone human is just passing by?
Also does time goes the same speed there?

Also also, ghouls and the dreamland, I heard there is something about time, like their god is there or something along that line. Anyone knows more?

The Dreamlands are made up of humanity and all other beings who can dreams, collective unconsciousness.

It can only be accessed awarely by Dreamquesters and those who sleep.

Not sure about that last one.

I mean, are there humans who live there, like for real? Who went through a gate so they enter the Dreamland physically and then decided to stay there forever?

ugh. Die of aids, user.

What is a good way of representing hamon/ripple in Call of Cthulhu? I need to know for reasons

what is that?

Thinking of picking up Trail of Cthulhu

Anyone have any modules they would recommend trying for it?
Going to start with Watchers in the Sky.

For those in the previous thread, yeah there was a graphic novel of ATMoM, but I dunno where to download it.

There was a storytime a while back, which is where I grabbed some pics.

Alright, I'm making the skeletal structure for a story set in the Yog-sothethery. It will be the first time I'll be the GM, and the players will all be newbies. I mostly only went as a player in DnD3.5 and the Hungarian Magus 1.0.
I want to toss them into the Lovecraft world. I've read all of Lovecraft's works, and I'm ready to use that to full effect.
I want this to be a light RP with the most basic roll-system to determine chances and opportunities.
I want it to kind of be the ship level, from Dark corners of the Earth. Does anyone have any experience they could share with me so I can give my players the best experience? Do's and don't's. Should I make a ship-map? Should I be merciless regarding deaths and traps?

>Hungarian Magus 1.0.
my condolences

House rules made it playable.
Fuck archers.

Look, playing M* with house rules is like playing with modeling clay made out of shit. With enough work and creativity you can make anything, but that won't change the fact that it's made out of shit

It's a form of martial arts from Jojo's Bizzare Adventure, back before they switched to punch ghosts.
the idea is that primarily by controlling ones breathing and focusing, one can pull off crazy Kung fu stuff. It also has something to do with sunlight. Basically, imagine old Kung fu movie cliches about chi and pressure points, without going full blown Naruro or DBZ retarded, and it was created by an ancient tribe to fight vampires.

I want to do an Adventure that starts in London, January 1889, and has a few references and cameos from the first story arc of Jojo. I'd like for the investigators to get attacked by zombies(Jojo zombies are more like weaker vampires), and just when it seems hopeless they get rescued by a Hamon user (who may or may not teach the adventures a trick or two, if he survives and they don't piss him off)

I know, I know. Not much I can do about it, though. Hungarians play Magus, and that's it. Anything else is to foreign for them. That's why I'm trying to play some Lovecraft-verse shit with some Serbs.

You might as well be making threads about quantum field theory that do nothing but discuss how Q makes quantum sound cool.

It may be required for your ego that you make threads upon threads, but why not actually post something worth reading? There is expansive literature on the subject available.

some edgy kids play WoD too.
Although have you looked at the new Delta Green? maybe that's the stuff you need, it's made for minimum dice rolling

I've been eyeing it 'cause of this threads, but haven't invested time into it yet.
Any torrents for the playbook, or something like that?

uploadmb.com/dw.php?id=1461968691
here is the new agent's handbook

I don't have anything to contribute, but I want to thank you guys for finally making a general for this.

As someone who has greatly enjoyed lovecraft but fucking loathed the Chaosium RPGs for a while now, it's good to see something like this pop up.

So, I'm working on a brief write up about Tcho-Tcho for my Laundry game.

How's this look to start with:
Tcho-Tcho are a tribe of human (or near-human) pygmies living in the Kachin hills of Burma/Myanmar. Although most scholars have connected them to the near-extinct Taron people of Kachin, the Tcho-Tcho appear to predate them, as documents from the Taungoo dynasty refer to "murderous savage dwarves" in the northern hills and jungles.
Further research from the Laundry (albeit hampered by Ne Win's coup and junta) has determined the Tcho-Tcho dwell primarily within range of hills referred to, rather inaccurately, as the Sung Plateau. Within this foreboding range lies a ruined city called Alaozar by the Tcho-Tcho, who claim it was built by the gods.
Unfortunately, there is more truth to that statement than is healthy for the Tcho-Tcho, and for Earth itself; aerial photography has shown many similarities between the city's architecture and those structures classified under CODICIL BLACK SKULL.

Biology
While appearing human for the most part, living next to a thaumaturgical hot-spot like Alaozar has altered the Tcho-Tcho's biology (and psychology), leaving many to question if they no longer qualify as human. At the very least, they display several signs of severe Resonance Poisoning. Although the exact form of Resonance Poisoning varies from individual to individual, cancer is remarkably common amongst the Tcho-Tcho, and viewed as a divine blessing.

Culture
The Tcho-Tcho have an intensely private culture, sticking to their sacred lands, and rarely travelling outside of it. Even during the British Administration, contact with the Tcho-Tcho was rare, but a few details have been determined.
Tcho-Tcho society is centred around the worship of a being referred to as either Zhar or Lloigor (no connection to PANDORA WAITING or its servitors has been confirmed), who built the city of Alaozar, and was said to have created them. The name itself has been suspected to be the cause of fratricidal combat between various families of Tcho-Tcho, over which name is correct.
Whatever the name, the presence of their god is found in tumours, thankfully limiting the lifespan of their priests.
However, GRAVEDUST interrogation, compared to autopsy reports from the few Tcho-Tcho remains, has suggested that the tumours may be evidence of GENOA FRACTAL infestation, with their god being a particularly large and dangerous specimen.

Technology
The Tcho-Tcho have firmly rejected the technology of the outside world, using their traditional weapons: a weapon similar to the Nepalese Kukri, and a variety of thrown darts. These are typically made out of the bones of their ancestors, and serve as much a ritual purpose as a functional one.
Tcho-Tchos have been observed using sorcery and alchemy, and display a resistance to K-Syndrome, leading some to suggest sending in researchers for a closer look. As much of the Tcho-Tcho's sorcery is based on ritual cannibalism however, cooler heads have prevailed for now.

And some codeword translations:
CODICIL BLACK SKULL Matters related to the extraplanar Plateau of Leng, and the Sleeper in the Pyramid located there.
PANDORA WAITING Ghatanothoa, whose servants are also called Lloigor.
GRAVEDUST Necromatic communication, specifically devices designed to facilitate it.
GENOA FRACTAL Flying Polyps

Alrighty, much appreciated.

I'm the guy who made this thing, and I've been thinking I could do continue in the same vein and make it a supplement with some Mythos-themed spells. Anybody got some good ideas for spells? Of the stuff we see in the books, there's Asenath/Ephraim Waite's body-swapping ritual, the "raising spirits of the dead from essential saltes" thing, The spells used to reveal and destroy the Dunwich Horror, and assorted summoning rituals. Could probably make up some spells with madness and body-horror themes, although considering my track record I'd run the risk of making stuff too weird.

Still waiting for my hard copy from the Kickstarter.

Ask /co/ or /wsr/ one or the other will have it.

So I just finished Mountains of Madness.
Seems like the Elder Things are alright guys, is that accurate? They did fight the Mi-Go who seem like dicks, and Cthulhu's spawn.

Reminder that Dagon > Call of Cthulhu

Reminder that Lovecraft's fiction isn't bad because it's racist, it's bad because it's cliched.

I liked the idea better that was put forward on Fairfieldproject: Tcho^2 become what they ingest.

Making a Kukri takes steel, so unless you are suggesting magic furnaces in the jungle smelting iron with precise carbon ratio...

Generally listing a lot of codewords is never a good idea, especially not in Laundry documents.

I really wish we had a proper thread for this kind of thing.

They're by far the most human-like of Mythos creatures. While they might look weird as hell, they seemed to have though processes and emotions comparable to those of humans, they're made from matter as we know it, and considering life as we know it on Earth was seeded here by them, they're genetically relatively close to us as well (probably about as far genetically from us as we are from amoebas, but that's still a hell of a lot closer than something like the Mi-Go).

They're probably still be kind of assholes to humans, considering they had a civilization billions of years old and humans (and all life on Earth) pretty much evolved from their garbage. They certainly wouldn't see humanity as their equals, but at least they could be negotiated with and, being fellow 3-dimensional material beings would have at least some degree of common interests with humanity (the Old Ones waking up would fuck up their day pretty badly as well, although they actually fought Cthulhu to a standstill once before).

>they actually fought Cthulhu to a standstill once before
Which is pretty fuckign impressive, since the Elder Things were purely mundane creatures of flesh and blood. They had advanced technology, especially biotech, but compareed to most other things in the Mythos, they weren't much different from humanity. the Mi-Go, by comparison, are composed of some form of exotic matter and have a vast inter-dimensional empire, while the Yithians have the whole thing with projecting their mind across unfathomable distances of space and time to swap bodies with other beings.

The Elder Things don't seem to have been capable of anything humans theoretically couldn't do given enough time and advancement, and they somehow fought not only the Mi-Go, but fucking Cthulhu and all his spawn to a standstill.

That geographical formation looks like a shitty tilted drawing of the Americas with an island off Baja California.

So Lovecraft's setting is basically ETFY?

You already have elder sign related stuff. There's plenty of spells that apparently summon stuff from all sorts of nasty abysses. There's the geometry teleportation thing from Witch House. Maybe something like the ability/science the Elder Things had for being able to survive in outer space? I'd have to reread more of it, but you could also just feel out stuff that seems right.

Also, you could have a ranger archetype which is a dreamer. Someone who's never been out in the wilds or ruins in their whole waking life, but has several lifetimes worth of experience with the arcane in dreams.

>I liked the idea better that was put forward on Fairfieldproject: Tcho^2 become what they ingest.
Personally, I wanted to stay away from the inhuman idea. To me, they work best as humans who've been affected by living next to the thaumaturgical equivalent of Chernobyl. Like the people of Innsmouth, or the Gardner family. I wanted to try and go back to the original story, the Lair of the Star Spawn, and work from there (Hence Lloigor and Zhar rather than Atlach-Nacha, Chaugnar Faugh, Shuggoron, or the others.)
Something I've been thinking is that using the term Tcho-Tcho to apply to all mythos worshipping asian cultures is a lot like how Inuit has been used to describe the Yupik, Aleut and Inupiat peoples as well.

>Making a Kukri takes steel, so unless you are suggesting magic furnaces in the jungle smelting iron with precise carbon ratio...
Well, they're similar to Kukri, not exact. The blades could be made of a more simple iron or copper (suitable for summoning a dimensional shambler), or steel or even something more exotic. Alaozar may have had forges, or a supply of something stranger.

>Generally listing a lot of codewords is never a good idea, especially not in Laundry documents.
You mean the bit at the end? That was just added in case people wanted to know what they were, because otherwise they might not have the ridiculous knowledge of what they all mean. If you mean in general, their use is quite common.

>based Elder Things
My inquiry is have they any contact with the Outer Gods?

>GENOA FRACTAL
Goddamn Polyps, will they ever stop pestering us?

they fought the Yith too didn't they?

youtube.com/watch?v=BWT07iRvI9M

I thought the Yith arrived later. Like, after the partition between North for Mi-Go and South for Elder Thing.

Was that a reference to the late Freddy Mercury?
youtube.com/watch?v=ja0jS_toKxk

Well, they did somehow manage to pull off the standard HFY trope and through the power of TECHNOLOGY! and DETERMINATION! fough off the Mi-Go invasion and punched Cthulhu in the face long enough to survive until the stars stopped being right.
Too bad they're all dead, so humanity will likely never learn just how they managed to accomplish that.

Wasn't mentioned in "Mountains". They treated the mountains where another Great Old One dwelled with fear and respect, but no mention is made of their relation with the Outer Gods. Shoggoths apparently can be controlled by sorcerers, and one shows up in "the Thing at the Doorstep", in association with what I believe is a Shub-Niggurath cult or shrine, so there may be some conenction there.

Well until they had a robot rebellion with grey goo colonies.

Badass as hell for a bunch of virus looking squid guys

Make it similar to the martial arts skill but make it also consume magic points.
Also good idea with the JoJo zombies...been a while since I read Phantom Blood

Starfish guys. Star Spawn are the squid-guys.

Something that has puzzled about the creatures in Lovecraft, can you actually consider them aliens? Because for the most part they seem to function as demons, just a lot more mind-bendy and generally stranger. Usually they are classified as aberrations but that's also meh.

If these things like Heaven or Hell were to exist, where would these alien niggas fit on to the totem pole? Would they be like foreign exchange students in comparison to the more mainstream good/evil outer-planers?

>can you actually consider them aliens?
they fit in that zone of the Venn-Diagram yes...

They are aliens, sometimes interstellar and often extra-dimensional.

they would be from some different planet or dimension's hell and heaven at best, not from this one.
Because, grab onto something, they are aliens. As in, not from this planet.
Like, extraterrestrials, and sometimes they even phone home.

Either that or they are from Mexico

Yes, you can do that. In "Celephaïs", a man dreams himself up a city while living in London, and is carried off to it, escorted by spectral knights. Later, his physical body is found washed up on the shore.

Then, in "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", Randolph Carter encounters him, now going by the name "Kuranes". He's still ruling that same dream-city.

Lovecraft isn't one for coherent world-building, but if I had to explain it I wouldn't call it "entering dreamland physically" (although it seems as thought Ghouls can do that). I'd call it something more along the lines of astral projection that you do while dreaming. If you do it well enough, you can leave your actual body behind. Otherwise, you can just wake up in it.

Yes, several characters do that. In Pickman's Model the goblins he paints are from a passageway to the Dreamlands. This can be inference from when he later appears alive and well in Dream Quest, where he has become transfigured into a goblin himself and has been living out his days with them. He helps Randolph Carter, who apparently was a close friend. Carter also makes reference to another friend who settled there and became a great king.

Hevan, Hell, and Squids

What about the more magical aspects of the creatures? Clearly people summon these things or that magic at some point was used as a way to fight them, that or electricity. A lot of it feels really tied into demonology. Unless in Lovecraft's pure canon such things weren't elaborated on too greatly until later when other authors started taking up the work, then forget I mentioned it.

So you're saying these niggas aren't just tied down to one classsification, but more rather a large variety of sub-types? Goddamn.

Get out Double Satan.

I don't think Lovecraft every truly explained magic, but I have always felt that it takes advantage of knowledge that goes beyond human understanding, but is comprehended as magic. Like a demon summoning spell would be using highly advanced geometry to open a hole into higher dimensions, but understood as the practitioners differently. I guess I got that feeling the most from Dreams in the Witch House, wherein the geometry of the house allows it to travel to other planes . Much of Lovercraft's work that seems strictly fantasy often times have some fascinating science-fiction underpinnings, which I feel came from his fascination with astronomy.

*understood differently by the practitioners.

Not even just that, there is the basic guys who are interplanetary, the Great Old Ones (GOOs) who are extradimensional and the Outer God who control all of the Lovecraftian multiverse.

Also, 1. they granted people magic, ie: Magic is powered by them 2. they are aren't demons, demons were based upon them.

I will take the credit for this even though I've barely done anything, you are welcome.

I like the Laundry's approach to magic, but then I'm just a fan of that anyway.

But yeah, it's all sufficiently advanced science and stuff like that.

>Lovecrafty rpg thread

Fuck yeah.

Question, is a human/Elder Thing romance viable, at least emotionally? Provided there's some.kind of translation spells I'm effect, I'd love an inversion of the usual "the horror!' reaction to "I have low SAN, so wow, she's actually kind of cute" progressing to "and that, my star-spawn hybrids, is how I met your mother!"

Yes, I want a story/NPC with an Elder Thing waifu in my Laundry campaign. I'm mad, I tell you, stark raving mad.

interdimensional satan right here

>oblivion picture
That actually looks nice, but I immediately knew what it was

Hey, why not.

I'd fuck it.

No not really. Elder Things reproduce through hermaphodite spores. They don't have gender, or the concept of romantic love/familial love.

You could have a wicked bromance with one though.

>All my love craft pics are on hd, not mobile

b-be gentle user

>someone actually had a relevant picture for this

Well I'll be gosh darned.

Don't encourage me, now I want to write a short fic where a Miskatonic student on a trip to the Antarctic gets lost, falls down a hole and accidentally thaws out an Elder Thing girl (do they even have females what am I doing) and then they have to huddle together for body heat until the rescue team finds him and he inevitably has to stop them from capturing and dissecting her

MAD, I TELL YOU

Awww.

I thought that was the Mi-Go?

Not the original user by the way.

Fuck off Nyarlathotep

Any entity out there that is actively trying to help/protect/aid humanity? I'm not talking about a good guy sort but just one whose plans include the prolonging of humanity's existence

I'm much more familiar with Delta Green's take on the Mythos than the original material but to my understanding magic is really just significantly advanced science, crazy math and alien technology. The bad shit that happens when humans use "magic" mostly happens because our understanding of science is too primitive to take the same precautions that the aliens that use the stuff all the time do.

Bast seems relatively happy with us existing. We do feed her children.

This sadly can't happen with a female Elder Thing because
Still do it

Nope. Mi-go society is never thoroughly detailed.

That said, Elder Things just spend all day broing it up with their best friends. Though, they are socialists if you have a problem with that.

Also notably the Yithian's are also socialistic and don't place large value on family. Seems to be Lovecraft's default "utopia".

Nodens, sort of. And Nyarlathotep when he feels like it.

Elder Things are absolutely adorable just from that fact

Fascist Socialists.

To be specific: "The Great Race seemed to form a single loosely knit nation or league, with major institutions in common, though there were four definite divisions. The political and economic system of each unit was a sort of fascistic socialism, with major resources rationally distributed, and power delegated to a small governing board elected by the votes of all able to pass certain educational and psychological tests. Family organisation was not overstressed, though ties among persons of common descent were recognised, and the young were generally reared by their parents."

LOVECRAFT WAS A COMMIE

Nyarly's mood changes faster than you read this

>Is a human/Elder Thing romance viable, at least emotionally?
No. What makes mythos creatures so alien is their complete incompatibility with our ways of understanding. Now that is not to say breeding hasn't occurred. In Dunwich Horror, for example Yog-Sothoth himself fucks some whore and has two sons, one resembling a man and the other a giant invisible monster . It is just unlikely that these creatures would feeling any romantic emotion towards humans, if they had romantic tendencies at all.

I find it odd how even though humanity are insignificant in the grand scheme of things, the Mythos still has Earth as an important place in the universe (shitton of trapped gods, loads of races making it their past and future home, prophecies of gods ruling it etc.)

We're the equivalent of an interstellar dive bar. Everyone ends up here.

Or, even more horrific than that... we're not special. There are millions of worlds just like ours out there. We just think we're special because we only know of the guys who visited or got imprisoned here.

I think that crazy shit is happening everywhere in the universe, and Earth is mundane compared to other places.

I always imagined that it was kind of like how God can have a singular interest in a person but also see the whole universe at the same time. The universe is so huge and terrible, and the gods are so omnipresent and horrible, that the fact earth is so bustling doesn't even indicate that it's special. A world that was central or important would be a global absolute nightmare by human standards.

SUPER IMPORTANT SPACE LIBRARY

So what do people think of the K'n-yan?

This is probably the canon explanation

We got shota Librarian Hastur out of it, so I'm okay.

Speaking of the anime which had Cthugha in it, why does nobody like Cthugha? I always thought it was one of Derleth's more positive additions to the Mythos.

I think he's fine. People don't generally do much with him, but the Stars are Also Fire was an awesome scenario.

Cthugha, a Living Fireball who hates Nyarlathotep. A pity that he isn't used

Elephant trunks are more of a Indi thing.

And directly opposing Nyarly is a good way to get fucked into irrelevancy.

You're thinking of Chaugnar Faugn, who was Long, not Derleth.

(Long's the guy behind the Hounds of Tindalos as well. Which actually has someone write down their own death scream)

K'n-yan was rather interesting, it scoffs at superior which I actually am surprised Lovecraft wasn't into. It has zombie slaves which are sorta cool and generic cult behavior

>And directly opposing Nyarly is a good way to get fucked into irrelevancy.

>forgetting Nodens

*superior genes making you fit to rule