/ysg/-Yog-Sothothery General

What? Those all good examples but for what question?

Not really a question, just figured it was a thing to discuss or bring up: games with the /ysg/ themes rather than direct references.

Also, was wondering if others had more examples, which I suppose I should have said.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requim Requim
For starters: youtube.com/watch?v=HxkzCre3XJY

Typed Requim twice like a dolt, another lovely one.

Anchorhead:
ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=op0uw1gn1tjqmjt7

I tend more towards pulpy while not being all the way.
My campaigns feature gun fights and the occasional battle with a monster, but these are usually very deadly. The PCs aren't covered in plot armor.

The Dawn Machine is not particularly Lovecraftian. It's actually the antithesis of Lovecraftian: human ingenuity built to destroy the cosmic. I will cede that Fallen London setting is a bit eldritch, but one of the primary reasons I like it so much is that there's a lot more orange-blue morality than CRUSH HUMANITY going on. It's not like the Masters actively want to kill people or anything, and we don't actually know if the process of rendering down the remaining population of the cities into Lacre is intentional or just a byproduct. We also don't know if they do it after everyone dies, or if the people sumped into neath-snow are even dead at all. That you can create people out of Lacre lends credence to the suspicion that it's a lot more Third Impact than Soylant Green.

>human ingenuity

It's actually pretty likely that the Dawn Machine has had a lot of help from Hell; they probably don't call it the Department of Infernal Rarefactions for nothing.

I'd say the Dawn Machine is kinda Lovecraftian because it went so out of control. It might have been started by humans, but by the point of the game, it's less humans using it, than it using humans.

Fallen Londons big eldritch entities are less actively inhospitable to humanity, but their plenty creepy. And the smaller things can be pretty terrifying. Sorrow Spiders. Polythreme. The North. The conversations at Depot III still haunt me.

And fucking everything connected to Kingeater's Castle. I don't know much about it, and I feel I want to know less.

Man, I wish I could have a solid collection of Fallen London lore somewhere. The Bazaar wiki is so damn gimped.

somewhat intentional, as finding out the story isn't just the story is basically what the game is selling.

Which is why sunless sea is actually a better source for getting direct info, because the restriction on info posting isn't done there, as it's not just a story game. Though it's mainly about the story.

I'm this close to winning that game, but I realize over the course of it, my current captain is not a good man.

>toot toot

You had me at lovecraftian X-com

Isn't that already a thing?

I DID NOT KNOW THIS EXISTS.

STOP OR I BURST OUT OF MY MEAT SUIT IN EXCITEMENT

No.

...

Is it, though? I'm reasonably certain that its original intent is still fully online, even if the Machine itself is now bent on achieving its own goals, as much as a false Judgement has 'goals'. The Dawn Machine is, ultimately, human endeavor gone awry in a completely human way, as opposed to the Lovecraftian core ideal of complete and total human insignificance.

The King of a Hundred Hearts isn't what I'd call creepy, and it's not like anything other than Jack that comes from there is actually even particularly dangerous. He's just old and lonely and bitter. The Sea of Voices, though, that place is creep for days.

As a side note, I really do love how the Anarchists are realistically portrayed: deeply idealistic people with, perhaps, a noble goal in mind but holy SHIT do they have no head for consequences.

I would love a purist game but they always end up pulpy because >PCs

Humans becoming the eldritch horrors that haunt the nightmares of the helpless sounds lovecraftian to me desu. His biggest thing is the fear of the the unknown.

Take Herbert West - Reanimator. The monster was Herbert, not his creations. And to an extent Charles Dextar Ward, though that was humans harnessing the powers of Yog-Sothoth

...

>still no pingu version of this

The ABSOLUTE MADMEN.

>A few of the Daedra

Hermaeus Mora's stuff in particular.

Herma-Mora is pretty Yog-Sothoth-y, with his need to obtain all knowledge, and his tomes of forbidden lore that sends you into his world of stacked books and fetid pools.

I know it's intentional, but I feel like I'm missing half the lore just because I follow the wrong path. Hell, the Ambitions alone cut you off from 3/4 of their lore.

...

Plus there's his Lurkers which are pretty much how I'd imagine Deep Ones.

There's some direct references too. One of his Black Books is called "The Sallow Regent" which is a King in Yellow reference, and the last quest in the chain is "At the Summit of Apocrypha" which you could argue is a Mountains of Madness reference.

And his Seekers are pretty Star Spawn-esque.

Also, the whole Sixth House in Morrowind feels like a Lovecraftian cult, with their mutations over time into twisted forms. Plus, Dagoth Ur's source of power is the heart of a dead god.

Granted, he's not a forgotten god, and he tends to be pretty benevolent.

it's not very good. It basically just a reskin of x-com with the difficulty cranked up. And that's if you get a properly patched version that doesn't autoset the difficulty to max.

>The King of a Hundred Hearts isn't what I'd call creepy
ale that screams in cups that moan.

What about Sheogorath, he reeks of a Nyarlathotep-esque influence. Except he dicks with mortals through madness more often than not and is a slight bit more silly than ol' Nyarly.

Polytherme comes off as creepier in Sunless Sea than in Fallen London.

Is the Sea of Voices the same as the Sea of Statues? just restarted Fallen London, and don't have boat yet, but Sea of Statues and Kingeater's Castle is nope.

the Eye will probably make you shit yourself when you first see it but as far as I can tell it's harmless .

Why again was this general getting flack every thread? It seems rather intelligent and thoughtful...

It drives your Terror to 100 crazy fast. So without some luck, it's game over, man. Game over.

Sheo doesn't seem to have any more significant knowledge of the universe's underpinnings than the other Princes.

If it ain't needlessly antagonistic, it ain't Nyarly.

>If it ain't needlessly antagonistic, it ain't Nyarly.
I suppose I overemphasized his trolling nature. But as I said, Nyarlathotep-esque.

Would Molag-Bal be the effective love child of Nyarlathotep and Y'golonac?

All right, let's sort this all.

Lovecraft in tone:
Sixth House & Dagoth Ur
The decay of the Falmer

Semi-Referential:
Hermaeus Mora, Lurkers, Seekers, Apocrypha, hypnotized people working for Miraak.

Referential:
Mehrunes DAGON
A book called The Sallow Regent and a quest called At the Summit of Apocrypha
A Shadow over Hackdirt

did not know that. I ran away the first time I saw it, and after that, it's location means I basically never pass through that region.

Though driving up terror makes sense, as I literal fell out of may chair that first time.

I agree that Nyarlar is a cosmic troll. He seems to be the only GOO whose actively interested in humanity. Which is a bad thing, of course.
But while he seems to cause destruction, madness, and ruin in his wake, I never get the intent of an end goal. It just seem like he likes fucking with people.

>only GOO
Dude's an Outer God, he eats guys like Cthulhu for shits and giggles.
>I never get the intent of an end goal. It just seem like he likes fucking with people.
Perhaps he loves his work, or maybe he's lying and he has no end goal.

>outer god not Great old one
meh, I go by the old Lovecraft standby here. He's willfully inconsistent in his classifications, so I'm not gonna bother.

Yeah, it's rather irritating isn't it.

The Sea of Voices is the Sea that surrounds Polythreme; there is something about the Heart of the Mountain shoved into the King's chest that has imbued eternal life into everything, the ocean included. I feel bad for the poor manager, almost; it's not like he knew what the Masters were going to do to his lover, and he was, frankly, desperate. There's a particular line of text that comes out of the Marvellous hunt (Heart's Desire ambition) where he drops all of his pretense about being the mad manager of the mad house in a mad land and, for a few lines of text, he's just a sad, old, lonely man who knows exactly how badly he fucked up.

To re-visit the Lovecraftian themes, though, the Judgements are pretty clearly Lovecraftian in at least a few ways. It doesn't get more Outer Gods than the cold (they are not cold) unfeeling stars. The Thief-of-Faces, too, suggests the kind of monstrosity that appears throughout Lovecraft: alien, ancient, angry and hungry.

To be fair, it was more that West succumbed to madness and became that which he sought to control; so far as we know, this is very much not the case with the Dawn Machine. Those that 'serve' it are still furthering their own goals, and the Liberation of Night, the death of the Mountain, breaking every link of the Great Chain, that's all progressing according to plan, it would seem. The Calendar Council cares far too much about their ideals to worry about anything so pedestrian as 'consequence'.

If you haven't read Hellboy or BPRD do so. They are awesome, way better than the movies, and I liked those.
BPRD is basically a very pulpy Delta Green.

Either you've played 90% of the content or figured some other way around it, but you should probably write all this lore down for the hungry ones, such as my self.

Hello, /tgesg/ here.

The relationship between Daedra and Lovecraftian influences is pretty varying.
The Daedra seem pretty Lovecraftian from the perspective of a mortal. The Princes are understood as good or bad, but are ultimately beings that belong to another sphere of being. They're not moral or immoral, simply amoral, and above all mortal concerns. Despite how much they pretend to care about their followers, they're generally in line with the cosmic indifference you get from Lovecraft.
They're also, again for normal people, somewhat unknowable, and even the normal clergy of Deadra-worshipping cultures can't usually be said to really understand the Daedra.
But ultimately, even mortals can grow tremendously powerful in TES, and the universe is ultimately all made of the same stuff. The Daedra aren't completely separate from us, nor are they so immensely powerful that no mortal could escape them.
Also, I'd argue that the Daedra aren't really unknowable to mortals.

Mehrunes Dagon is more than just referential, I'd say.
MD was originally known as the Demon Leaper King, a being who "leaped" from one kalpa (world-cycle) to the next, stealing/preserving pieces of creation before Alduin ended the kalpa. He did this until Alduin cursed him and ate him. This "eating-birth" curse made Dagon into the twisted Daedric figure he now is.
This theme of degeneration and decay is pretty common amongst the Daedra.
See for example Malacath and Meridia.

This is reminding me more of my old Fallen London game.

But yeah, the Sea of Statues is if anything more scary that the Sea of Voices.
What's it's story? I don't know, and I kinda don't want to. It's on the way to Kingeater's Castle. Which only bad things happen at, and the fact that you return there is the main reason why going east is almost as scary as going North.
I mean going of the map to the North is worse, and a great way to get yourself killed, but fuck Kingeater's Castle. I don't even know why it's so terrifying, but it is.

Sunless Sea is also where you can go further in Seeking Mr Eaten's name than you can in Fallen London. It's probably still a Bad Idea.

Sunless Sea user here. I've got too many things I need to write down for me to bother doing this and editing it for readability (Dark Heresy campaign material, CYOA based off the Controller CYOA, a half dozen for fun articles, etc), but if you have particular questions I'll answer as best I can.

Ask specific questions and I can try to answer them, or at least point you at the right things. It's worth noting that a LOT of my answers (as with all answers about the 'end game') are wild, half-baseless supposition.

Not anymore! They've just re-opened Seeking the Name in Fallen London, and there's buckets of new ways for you to completely destroy yourself and ruin your life and the lives of those close to you! Have at it, me hearty.

The same turbo spergs who throw a fit anytime a thread isn't solely dedicated to discussing the mechanics of D&D, 40k and MTG were under the impression that a thread for discussing Lovecraft wasn't Veeky Forums enough despite the fact that CoC basically requires a decent understanding of the man's work to run it competently.

Rumor has it that X-COM 2 is getting an expansion along similar lines as this.

King Eater's Castle is terrifying because it does not prevaricate, allude or obfuscate. Everything else in the setting at least implies mystery or profit or SOMETHING, and the fear is almost entirely either body horror or just the creepy unknown. It is the only thing (like Seeking, in Fallen London) that simply flat out says "No. Just... don't. This is terrible, all of this is terrible, only bad things will come of this, everything that happens here is horrible." That forwardness is a huge presentation, a way to tell you that, while the rest of the game is unsure and maybe you have a chance, Kingeater is unequivocally horrific. The change in tone is dramatic and noticeable, making what is normally the most bland kind of horror into something jarring and pointedly unsettling.

Kult. The system itself is bullshit, but the setting is brilliant.

Well, two lore-anons. Could you explain this line to me?

>Liberation of Night, the death of the Mountain, breaking every link of the Great Chain

I'm pretty sure it all has to do with Death, Life, and Immortality, putting out the Stars, and the Elder Continent, but that's about it.

I know about the Leaper Demon King, I don't find him particularly Lovecraftian, a little too tragic and his need to destroy is something understandable. I'm just saying the name Dagon itself is just a reference. It would be neat if he'd been the Prince of the Lurkers or Dreugh instead of Mora and Bal...

I second that motion. BPRD is some of the greatest shit I have ever read.

I also recommend Black fire by Hernan Rodriguez. its like lovecraft and Slavic mythology made sweet, sweet love.

So the Great Chain is, so far as we know, the pecking order of reality. At the top are Judgements (stars) and everything else is strung out in strict order under that. The Judgements enforce reality, which is why everything is so wonky in the 'Neath: no sunlight. For all kinds of different reasons, a lot of people HATE that and want to destroy it. This is the end goal of the Anarchists: breaking the Great Chain and shattering every link. That's the Liberation of Night.

So that's the summation of what we *know* about it. The next bit is wild conjecture.

The Mountain of Light is PROBABLY the 'daughter' of the Bazaar and our Sun. The Bazaar is DEFINITELY in love with the Sun. Somehow, something about the Mountain grants true, honest-to-god immortality, meaning that the Mountain violates the Chain in all kinds of ways. The Dawn Machine is, almost certainly, some way to create a false Judgement, and I can think of no more direct use of enforcing reality than killing the Mountain itself; perhaps destroying a bridge between links will weaken the Chain, who knows, but certain Destinies makes two things obvious: the Liberation of Night has something to do with the Mountain, and it will work.

Oh, and congress between entities on different links in the Chain is Heresy with a capital H, which is why the Bazaar is in the 'Neath in the first place; there's a lot of theories that the Bazaar is collecting love stories to prove to the Sun that love between different stations is a real thing that can really happen and it's okay, but that feels entirely too human and pedestrian to me.

>Liberation of Night
Okay, so right now the Neath is in constant dark, which some call the Night, even if that isn't exactly right.

Some people want to bring light to the Neath, but not just any light, like candle light etc, but a light like the Sun, ie a Judgement.

Spoilers the sun and stars are Judgements, in that they judge how the world is to work. They communicate with each other through Correspondence, which cares this order of how the world should work, and this is carried by their light. That's why things from the Neath are different from the surface and can't return there. Because the light of the Judgement would say they should not exist, and destroy them.
Making a new Judgement in the neigth would effectivly destroy it. And worse, if that new Judgment was say, insane, and had different ideas of what the rules of the universe should be. This includes their rule that Things Die
The Mountain is would die because it is the daughter of the Bazaar, and like the Bazaar must be hidden from the light of the Judgements. It's also one of the Gods of the Zea, Stone. The mountain is part of the Elder Continent, but what the Elder Continent is is a bit of a question. It's part of the south, but distant directions are weird in the Neath.

Not sure what the Great Chain is, maybe the Correspondence, maybe what brings cities into the Neath.

I asked this in the last thread but didn't get a response. Has anyone run a campaign for Call of Cthulhu or any of the other RPGs that heavily involves the Dreamlands? If so, how did you go about it, did the players enjoy it, was it a success or a total failure?

Dagoth-Ur and the Sixth House certainly wouldn't be out of place in Lovecraftian literature. It goes beyond just him affecting people through their dreams and his followers mutating and twisting into something completely alien (with flute-tentacles for a face; connection to the flute-playing ervitors of the Outer Gods?). There's also his bizarre nature as what is effectively the polar opposite of undead (he's quite literally "dead but dreaming") and him attempting to essentially take over the world using the power of agressive solipsism (Dagoth-Ur sees the world as being his dream, and attempts to turn everything into Dagoth-Ur, hence him first taking over the dreams and minds of people, then twisting their flesh to suit his vision).

Where do the Masters fit in then? Judging from the Destiny I got, they are employed by the Stars for some purpose. Also, how is the Bazaar related to the Lorn-flukes?

no, their employed by the Bazaar to gather stories of love so it can prove the love to the stars.

>Lorn Fluke
possibly. It's not like Stone or Mt. Nomad or the Fathom King where they are descendants of the Bazaar. But it could be another type of creature similar to the Bazaar.

That's cute and disgusting

Bump

The Flukes and their sorta-servitor race, the Rubbery Men, were brought from the planet Axile to the Neath by the Masters(including Mr. Candles, who would later become Mr. Eaten).

They are essentially sea urchins(that also have tentacles maybe?). The normal Flukes are very small -- about the size of your hand, and are generally chill. They live on Flute Street in London, and mostly just want their Rubbery Men servants to hurry up and become as advanced and capable as the humans.

The Lorn Flukes are a subset of Flukes that live deep under the Zee. They're absolutely massive, easily dwarfing a full-size ship, and super fucking pissed at everything and everyone - probably because the Masters and the Bazaar have done nothing for the Axiles. I believe one of them is the Fathom King's wife.

I could be mistaken, but I believe The Mountain of Light's aura of vitality comes from its half-Judgement heritage. It basically is bathing the Neath in the light of god, but it behaves differently from the Judgements' light because of either the Neath's Neathyness or the Bazaar's lesser genes.

The violation of the Chain comes from two things. One, the amalgamy of the Sun and the Bazaar. The Judgements exist at the top of the Great Chain, while the Bazaar is high-tier but still lesser. Second, the amalgamy of the Mountain and the Thief of Faces, which resulted in Mount Nomad.

Dr. Zarkov, a pleasure to see you active.
If I mistook you this shall be awkard.

I've got bad news, user. I have no idea who that is.

We name our writefags after characters from Flash Gordon.

And it used to be an elf.

Oh. Of course.

Yeah, its an interesting general. We mostly talk about Derleth being a hack and discuss lore.

They enjoyed it quite well, be trippy as fuck.

This guy was once an Druid.

This is unnessecary and pandering yes?

I love you user.

>Pulpy Action Investigation for the most part
>Gun battles and fist fights against humans or wild Animals
>Immediate shift into Purist Supernatural Horror as soon as something truly Mythos Related is introduced

Currently playing with a group of semi-experienced players(mainly Pathfinder) who have ever played CoC before. I used Modified character sheets to hide that that was what we were playing and told them we were playing "d100 Modern"

They're playing Punk Rockers investigating the disappearance of a local music promoter...who was actually taken as a breeder by the deep ones.

>tries to be progressive and inclusive
>arab looks like he just stepped off the set of Indiana Jones

Worse look at the Jew, man. That's so stereotypical it hurts.

I bet the Chinese chick is actually the Bloated Woman.

thats the point

>the amalgamy of the Mountain and the Thief of Faces, which resulted in Mount Nomad.
well that's the first I heard of that.

Yup. The Sun and the Bazaar have a grandchild, a zee-faring mountain of black glass that can blast entire ships to pieces by shouting at them in Correspondence, the burning language of the stars.

Ooh! Ooh! I can be helpful!

I'm a big fan of the guy that runs two tumblr pages, his Saint-Arthur and Saint-Beau blogs, which are delegated to Fallen London and Sunless Sea specifically.
saint-arthur.tumblr.com/
saint-beau.tumblr.com/
He's also the guy who suggested the idea of (but did not write the story of, that was still Failbetter's work) the island of Nuncio.

He answers a lot of people's questions, which relate to gameplay and to lore in sometimes equal measures, so it's not always the best reading. However, he does have links set up to a majority of his most important lore postings.

It goes without saying that even opening up the following link will result in a saturation of spoilers.

docs.google.com/document/d/1CpnhakUKxFeXzONYyccrrWhvc7kZeIK4q7gcEtK6sQo/edit#_=_

I do like the idea of the Dawn Machine as an inversion of Lovecraftian themes, so much so it somewhat incorporates them again.

Thank you.

oh, I new about Mount Nomad being the Mountains child.
It's the Thief of Faces bit that I didn't know.

So random bits of Sunless Sea weirdness that you will encounter.

One of your engineers mother was a dream hallucination, and her father was a tiger.

You have two cook options, ones a mass rubber tentacles under the control of a mass of coral that wants you to melt it's brain, the other is man wrapped entirely in bandages except for his amazing mustache.

I was once exiled from London for delivering a box from a Monkey Emperor, I don't know what was in the box, but after it was opened everything was on fire. I delivered the box because I need to earn monkey's trust, so I could betray them, kill them, and steal their zeppelin.
This was not the weirdest thing I did that day.

Should I even ask?

For you and anyone else interested, I learned everything I know by going to saint-arthur.tumblr.com/tagged/fl lorepost/page/182 and just reading and clicking previous page until there was nothing left.

It's a massive amount of information, but it comes in easily digested bite-sized pieces, and you even get to see how previous theories and understandings of the lore evolved and changed as you proceed through the pages and more information came to light in the game. It's interesting how certain things that most people consider basic facts of the setting, like the relationship between the

However, if you want to submit a question, for the love of god please do a search first. Chances are it's been answered at least twice already.

This user makes a good case for remaining unspoiled, though. There's a lot of excitement to be had in the Neath, and you may be better off experiencing it for yourself. Especially in the case of Sunless Sea, where you can just dive in instead of digging for weeks/months in Fallen London to reach The Good Stuff.

Thanks user.

Depot III. where you bring corpses, a rare thing in the neath because death is so hard to make stick while leaving a body.
They cut out hearts of metal from the corpses. They took a tincture that seals away their pain and regret, but that pain hardens into metal that build up in the heart.

After brining enough corpses, the mortician asks you to help with a special autopsy. Seal in a glass case, is an exact copy of the mortician. She says it's her sister.

As she cuts open the corpse, she weeps about their history, about the lose and betrayal they shared. But then you realize something.

This isn't her sister, it isn't even human, it's something that took her face. The Mortician never had a sister.

In the end the mortician asks you for words of comfort. Do you tell her the truth, or help her with the lie

I never have the heart to tell her the truth

I didn't expect these feels.