Cthulhu Megathread: It's pronounced "Khlul'-hloo" (Lose 1D10/1D100 Sanity)

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Cthulhu Megathread: It's pronounced "Khlul'-hloo" (Lose 1D10/1D100 Sanity)

«‹›88 »

Yoshimo: Oct 5, 2003; Fleet of foot, and all that!

Did I have a dream that 7th edition was out yet?

# ? Dec 1, 2015 09:40

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 4, 2024 05:51

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition has been out for a while now.

# ? Dec 1, 2015 09:43

RocknRollaAyatollah: Nov 26, 2008; Lipstick Apathy

There still isn't a printed version of the main books and screen available though if that's what you mean.

# ? Dec 1, 2015 12:51

LuiCypher: Apr 24, 2010; Today I'm... amped up!

Yoshimo posted:

Did I have a dream that 7th edition was out yet?

I've heard many tales about 7th edition - something around the lines of "frittered away all of the money" and "cleaning house" were some of the things I've heard.

Glad to hear they're getting it back on track, but it's been a horror show so far.

# ? Dec 1, 2015 14:12

moths: Aug 25, 2004; I would also still appreciate some danger.

They basically let idiots run the Kickstarter to ruin. Chaosium has since restructured and taken 7e back in-house, and production has resumed on the physical product.

The books themselves are complete - if they'd partnered with Drivethru you could probably have ordered a PoD copy months ago.

# ? Dec 1, 2015 15:45

Yoshimo: Oct 5, 2003; Fleet of foot, and all that!

Wow, really? Guess I'll stick with 6th for now then.

# ? Dec 2, 2015 01:50

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

But what of 7e as a ruleset? I thought things like the quick character creation were especially nifty, but I know just about nothing about CoC.

# ? Dec 2, 2015 02:09

RocknRollaAyatollah: Nov 26, 2008; Lipstick Apathy

moths posted:

They basically let idiots run ~~the Kickstarter to ruin.~~ Chaosium ~~has since restructured and taken 7e back in-house, and production has resumed on the physical product.~~

Pretty much this. I'm optimistic about the future of the company after chatting with all the principle players and listening to them speak but who knows. They are correct in the fact that Chaosium should be an industry leader right now instead of a 2nd or 3rd tier company.

gradenko_2000 posted:

But what of 7e as a ruleset? I thought things like the quick character creation were especially nifty, but I know just about nothing about CoC.

It's a solid ruleset. It's very similar to previous editions, it's Chaosium so don't expect them to reinvent the wheel, but a bigger divergence than previous editions that it's worth picking up. I'd wait until they release the physical editions but that should be soon according to recent news.

# ? Dec 2, 2015 02:44

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Have an idea dump.

Delta Green ideas.

From Nature: http://www.nature.com/news/what-sparked-the-cambrian-explosion-1.19379?WT.mc_id=SFB_NNEWS_1508_RHBox

quote:

What sparked the Cambrian explosion?

An evolutionary burst 540 million years ago filled the seas with an astonishing diversity of animals. The trigger behind that revolution is finally coming into focus.

Douglas Fox

A series of dark, craggy pinnacles rises 80 metres above the grassy plains of Namibia. The peaks call to mind something ancient � the burial mounds of past civilizations or the tips of vast pyramids buried by the ages.

The stone formations are indeed monuments of a faded empire, but not from anything hewn by human hands. They are pinnacle reefs, built by cyanobacteria on the shallow sea floor 543 million years ago, during a time known as the Ediacaran period. The ancient world occupied by these reefs was truly alien. The oceans held so little oxygen that modern fish would quickly founder and die there. A gooey mat of microbes covered the sea floor at the time, and on that blanket lived a variety of enigmatic animals whose bodies resembled thin, quilted pillows. Most were stationary, but a few meandered blindly over the slime, grazing on the microbes. Animal life at this point was simple, and there were no predators. But an evolutionary storm would soon upend this quiet world.

This reads straight out of the Mythos.

I think these images are of the pinnacle reefs in Namibia. Haven't verified.

Here's a useful related excerpt from The Color of Dust (Laurel Halbany) in the DG fiction book Extraordinary Renditions.

quote:

"Go to hell," she snapped.

Rob turned his dead eyes to her. "Way ahead of you," he said. "Anyway, I didn't mean the Pacific. I meant the old sea. You didn't know? Kid, half the country [America] used to be one big ocean. It's dried up now, but you know how it is. Not everything that dies is really dead. Especially if it's from the sea."

quote:

Within several million years, this simple ecosystem would disappear, and give way to a world ruled by highly mobile animals that sported modern anatomical features. The Cambrian explosion, as it is called, produced arthropods with legs and compound eyes, worms with feathery gills and swift predators that could crush prey in tooth-rimmed jaws. Biologists have argued for decades over what ignited this evolutionary burst. Some think that a steep rise in oxygen sparked the change, whereas others say that it sprang from the development of some key evolutionary innovation, such as vision. The precise cause has remained elusive, in part because so little is known about the physical and chemical environment at that time.

If we are going by the "Shoggoths were the antecedent for life on Earth" Mythos canon you could place Shoggoth influence on animal development as the X factor that is responsible for the generation of predators and rapid differentiation of body plans we see in the Cambrian explosion.

One could also place Shoggoth progenitor influence eons earlier in the RNA world when nucleic acids started to polymerize and double membranes began to co function with primitive long chain nucleic acids.

Anyway, if the Shoggoths are a reason for the Cambrian explosion, then one could assume there are proto-Shoggoth remnants or fossils laying dormant in the Nambian pinnacle reefs. Other locations (below) where the pre-Cambrian is being investigated include China and Siberia. Areas rife with Mythos links.

quote:

But over the past several years, discoveries have begun to yield some tantalizing clues about the end of the Ediacaran. Evidence gathered from the Namibian reefs and other sites suggests that earlier theories were overly simplistic � that the Cambrian explosion actually emerged out of a complex interplay between small environmental changes that triggered major evolutionary developments.

Some scientists now think that a small, perhaps temporary, increase in oxygen suddenly crossed an ecological threshold, enabling the emergence of predators. The rise of carnivory would have set off an evolutionary arms race that led to the burst of complex body types and behaviours that fill the oceans today. �This is the most significant event in Earth evolution,� says Guy Narbonne, a palaeobiologist at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada. �The advent of pervasive carnivory, made possible by oxygenation, is likely to have been a major trigger.�

Easy to blame Shoggoths for the initiation of carnivorous behavior.

quote:

Energy to burn
In the modern world, it's easy to forget that complex animals are relative newcomers to Earth. Since life first emerged more than 3 billion years ago, single-celled organisms have dominated the planet for most of its history. Thriving in environments that lacked oxygen, they relied on compounds such as carbon dioxide, sulfur-containing molecules or iron minerals that act as oxidizing agents to break down food. Much of Earth's microbial biosphere still survives on these anaerobic pathways.

Animals, however, depend on oxygen � a much richer way to make a living. The process of metabolizing food in the presence of oxygen releases much more energy than most anaerobic pathways. Animals rely on this potent, controlled combustion to drive such energy-hungry innovations as muscles, nervous systems and the tools of defense and carnivory � mineralized shells, exoskeletons and teeth.

Given the importance of oxygen for animals, researchers suspected that a sudden increase in the gas to near-modern levels in the ocean could have spurred the Cambrian explosion. To test that idea, they have studied ancient ocean sediments laid down during the Ediacaran and Cambrian periods, which together ran from about 635 million to 485 million years ago.

In Namibia, China and other spots around the world, researchers have collected rocks that were once ancient seabeds, and analysed the amounts of iron, molybdenum and other metals in them. The metals' solubility depends strongly on the amount of oxygen present, so the amount and type of those metals in ancient sedimentary rocks reflect how much oxygen was in the water long ago, when the sediments formed.

These proxies seemed to indicate that oxygen concentrations in the oceans rose in several steps, approaching today's sea-surface concentrations at the start of the Cambrian, around 541 million years ago � just before more-modern animals suddenly appeared and diversified. This supported the idea of oxygen as a key trigger for the evolutionary explosion.

But last year, a major study1 of ancient sea-floor sediments challenged that view. Erik Sperling, a palaeontologist at Stanford University in California, compiled a database of 4,700 iron measurements taken from rocks around the world, spanning the Ediacaran and Cambrian periods. He and his colleagues did not find a statistically significant increase in the proportion of oxic to anoxic water at the boundary between the Ediacaran and the Cambrian.

Modern mirrors

Sperling has looked for insights into Ediacaran oceans by studying oxygen-depleted regions in modern seas around the globe. He suggests that biologists have conventionally taken the wrong approach to thinking about how oxygen shaped animal evolution. By pooling and analysing previously published data with some of his own, he found that tiny worms survive in areas of the sea floor where oxygen levels are incredibly low � less than 0.5% of average global sea-surface concentrations. Food webs in these oxygen-poor environments are simple, and the animals feed directly on microbes. In places where sea-floor oxygen levels are a bit higher � about 0.5�3% of concentrations at the sea surface � animals are more abundant but their food webs remain limited: the animals still feed on microbes rather than on each other. But around somewhere between 3% and 10% oxygen levels, predators emerge and start to consume other animals4.

The implications of this finding for evolution are profound, Sperling says.The modest oxygen rise that he thinks may have occurred just before the Cambrian would have been enough to trigger a big change. �If oxygen levels were 3% and they rose past that 10% threshold, that would have had a huge influence on early animal evolution,� he says. �There's just so much in animal ecology, lifestyle and body size that seems to change so dramatically through those levels.�

The gradual emergence of predators, driven by a small rise in oxygen, would have meant trouble for Ediacaran animals that lacked obvious defences. �You're looking at soft-bodied, mostly immobile forms that probably lived their lives by absorbing nutrients through their skin,� says Narbonne.

Here's a thought. At this point in the timeline the hypothesis is that there are vast fields of "peaceful" multicellular life that feed off of microbes. Then this population of predators forms.

If we examine this dichotomy from the Catholic Mythos viewpoint, I can't help but draw parallels between a "good" and "evil" force and a war in Heaven. In this case the predators (Satan?) won.

Shall we speculate that the ancient non-predator life had intelligence and prayed to some Great One of their own? Did Nyarty in one of his myriad masks tempt an ancient multi-cellular progenitor with the power of becoming a carnivore? Was some peaceful race extinguished beneath the anoxic seas as a dark god laughed?

Does the potential Great One weep over it's fallen worshipers? Does it wish revenge upon those descended from a diversified body plan?

quote:

Studies of those ancient Namibian reefs suggest that animals were indeed starting to fall prey to predators by the end of the Ediacaran. When palaeobiologist Rachel Wood from the University of Edinburgh, UK, examined the rock formations, she found spots where a primitive animal called Cloudina had taken over parts of the microbial reef. Rather than spreading out over the ocean floor, these cone-shaped creatures lived in crowded colonies, which hid their vulnerable body parts from predators � an ecological dynamic that occurs in modern reefs5.

Cloudina were among the earliest animals known to have grown hard, mineralized exoskeletons. But they were not alone. Two other types of animal in those reefs also had mineralized parts, which suggests that multiple, unrelated groups evolved skeletal shells around the same time. �Skeletons are quite costly to produce,� says Wood. �It's very difficult to come up with a reason other than defence for why an animal should bother to create a skeleton for itself.� Wood thinks that the skeletons provided protection against newly evolved predators. Some Cloudina fossils from that period even have holes in their sides, which scientists interpret as the marks of attackers that bore into the creatures' shells6.

Palaeontologists have found other hints that animals had begun to eat each other by the late Ediacaran. In Namibia, Australia and Newfoundland in Canada, some sea-floor sediments have preserved an unusual type of tunnel made by an unknown, wormlike creature7. Called Treptichnus burrows, these warrens branch again and again, as if a predator just below the microbial mat had systematically probed for prey animals on top. The Treptichnus burrows resemble those of modern priapulid, or 'penis', worms � voracious predators that hunt in a remarkably similar way on modern sea floors8.

The rise of predation at this time put large, sedentary Ediacaran animals at a big disadvantage. �Sitting around doing nothing becomes a liability,� says Narbonne.

The world in 3D
The moment of transition from the Ediacaran to the Cambrian world is recorded in a series of stone outcrops rounded by ancient glaciers on the south edge of Newfoundland. Below that boundary are impressions left by quilted Ediacaran animals, the last such fossils recorded on Earth. And just 1.2 metres above them, the grey siltstone holds trails of scratch marks, thought to have been made by animals with exoskeletons, walking on jointed legs � the earliest evidence of arthropods in Earth's history.

No one knows how much time passed in that intervening rock � maybe as little as a few centuries or millennia, says Narbonne. But during that short span, the soft-bodied, stationary Ediacaran fauna suddenly disappeared, driven to extinction by predators, he suggests.

Narbonne has closely studied the few fauna that survived this transition, and his findings suggest that some of them had acquired new, more complex types of behaviour. The best clues come from traces left by peaceful, wormlike animals that grazed on the microbial mat. Early trails from about 555 million years ago meander and criss-cross haphazardly, indicating a poorly developed nervous system that was unable to sense or react to other grazers nearby � let alone predators. But at the end of the Ediacaran and into the early Cambrian, the trails become more sophisticated: creatures carved tighter turns and ploughed closely spaced, parallel lines through the sediments. In some cases, a curvy feeding trail abruptly transitions into a straight line, which Narbonne interprets as potential evidence of the grazer evading a predator9.

This change in grazing style may have contributed to the fragmentation of the microbial mat, which began early in the Cambrian. And the transformation of the sea floor, says Narbonne, �may have been the most profound change in the history of life on Earth�10, 11. The mat had previously covered the seabed like a coating of plastic wrap, leaving the underlying sediments largely anoxic and off limits to animals. Because animals could not burrow deeply in the Ediacaran, he says, �the mat meant that life was two-dimensional�. When grazing capabilities improved, animals penetrated the mat and made the sediments habitable for the first time, which opened up a 3D world.

Great way to inject a little science in your game is to have an artifact out of place in deep Ediacaran sediments. The current hypothesis is Life couldn't burrow into that strata so what intelligent agent left it there?

quote:

Tracks from the early Cambrian show that animals started to burrow several centimetres into the sediments beneath the mat, which provided access to previously untapped nutrients � as well as a refuge from predators. It's also possible that animals went in the opposite direction. Sperling says that the need to avoid predators (and pursue prey) may have driven animals into the water column above the seabed, where enhanced oxygen levels enabled them to expend energy through swimming.

The emerging evidence about oxygen thresholds and ecology could also shed light on another major evolutionary question: when did animals originate? The first undisputed fossils of animals appear only 580 million years ago, but genetic evidence indicates that basic animal groups originated as far back as 700 million to 800 million years ago. According to Lyons, the solution may be that oxygen levels rose to perhaps 2% or 3% of modern levels around 800 million years ago. These concentrations could have sustained small, simple animals, just as they do today in the ocean's oxygen-poor zones. But animals with large bodies could not have evolved until oxygen levels climbed higher in the Ediacaran.

Understanding how oxygen influenced the appearance of complex animals will require scientists to tease more-subtle clues out of the rocks. �We've been challenging people working on fossils to tie their fossils more closely to our oxygen proxies,� says Lyons. It will mean deciphering what oxygen levels were in different ancient environments, and connecting those values with the kinds of traits exhibited by the animal fossils found in the same locations.

This past autumn, Woods visited Siberia with that goal in mind. She collected fossils of Cloudina and another skeletonized animal, Suvorovella, from the waning days of the Ediacaran. Those sites gave her the chance to gather fossils from many different depths in the ancient ocean, from the more oxygen-rich surface waters to deeper zones. Wood plans to look for patterns in where animals were growing tougher skeletons, whether they were under attack by predators and whether any of this had a clear link with oxygen levels, she says. �Only then can you pick out the story.�

Nature 530, 268�270 (18 February 2016) doi:10.1038/530268a

# ? Feb 20, 2016 06:35

moths: Aug 25, 2004; I would also still appreciate some danger.

Well this is pretty big news:

quote:

Chaosium Cult of Chaos Gamemaster Program

The Chaosium Cult of Chaos is an officially sanctioned Gamemaster program for GM�s and Keepers running demos and events for Chaosium Inc. Members are expected to run beginner friendly games at local game shops, events, conventions, or online to introduce new players to awesome Chaosium games including Basic Roleplaying, Call of Cthulhu, HeroQuest, and RuneQuest, as well as any future setting and games we release in the coming years. Our Gamemasters must be knowledgable with current editions of our rules and settings and to be able to answer basic questions about Chaosium games. In all endeavors, Cult of Chaos Gamemasters should be having and spreading fun.

The Crusade

The goal of the Cult of Chaos is to promote adventure gaming in general and Chaosium games in particular at local venues and online roleplaying events. Members of the Cult of Chaos are foremost community builders, who are constantly introducing new players to Chaosium games while encouraging existing players to participate in our games more often. The Cult of Chaos spreads fun and good will throughout our growing community. Our philosophy is to spread fun through the involvement of our volunteers.

The Perks

Primarily, the reward for being a member of the Cult of Chaos is community involvement. Your actions are building a larger player base with which to enjoy and celebrate Chaosium games. Additionally, you will have access to scenarios and adventures and insider information with which to entertain your players. Running events, and properly reporting them before and afterwards, will be rewarded with $3.00 in store credit at Chaosium.com provided we can verify the event took place. Members will have the opportunity to submit scenarios and adventures for use by other Cult of Chaos Gamemasters. These adventures will also be read by Chaosium staff and may lead to other opportunities. Eventually, Cult of Chaos members may receive promotional materials from us to give away at their events. Cult of Chaos members should be, above all, motivated by the desire to have fun rather than material rewards.

There's more information at the Chaosium site. $3 in Chaosium credit is pretty LOL compensation, but I applied anyway - the real payoff is free adventures and the prospect of running a regular CoCthulhu game for new players.

# ? Feb 24, 2016 23:51

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

I did think of this thread and the general complaints 'round these parts about how Chaosium should really be a real company since they have one of the most beloved games, and it looks like they might actually be trying now???

# ? Feb 25, 2016 00:05

Owlbear Camus: Jan 3, 2013; Maybe this guy that flies is just sort of passing through, you know?

"That's like... a dollar an hour."

These sorts of things you do because you love and want to grow the community, but it would probably be better to just do exclusive little swag items like exclusive pins or dice, directly "paying" in a tiny pittance of credit just makes it feel insulting.

But it's cool to have an organized play aparatus for a game one likes to keep it healthy and played, so they can always refine the specifics.

# ? Feb 25, 2016 00:06

moths: Aug 25, 2004; I would also still appreciate some danger.

At best the store credit is a pittance, at worst it's a huge "gently caress you."

More interesting is the actual organized play adventure. I knew I forgot something...

The first campaign is an amazing six months of new adventures that you get for the low, low price of actually running them.

If I'm mathing it out right, it's a crap $72 credit for a half-year's work (6 months x 4 sessions x $3) but if it's something you'd want to do anyway the payoff is free adventures plus a hardcover or two.

# ? Feb 25, 2016 01:06

Pope Guilty: Nov 6, 2006; The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty.

Honestly it sounds pretty okay aside from having to know anything about Chaosium's other games.

# ? Feb 25, 2016 01:35

moths: Aug 25, 2004; I would also still appreciate some danger.

It doesn't look like familiarity with the other games is required, but then I haven't gotten a reply yet so...

# ? Feb 25, 2016 02:01

Wise Learned Man: Apr 22, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS; Lipstick Apathy

The free introductory rules for the new version of Delta Green are out:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6vc7fuxg5n5jyfd/Delta%20Green%20Need%20to%20Know.pdf

# ? Feb 28, 2016 04:19

Yoshimo: Oct 5, 2003; Fleet of foot, and all that!

Looks like the stars are right...

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/01/could-cthulhu-trump-other-super-tuesday-contenders-hp-lovecraft

How old is the whole "Cthulhu for President" joke anyway? I started playing CoC in school way the gently caress back in 1995 or thereabouts - which is probably nothing compared to a lot of grizzled greybeards in this thread! - and I remember seeing "Cthulhu For America '96" or something similar.

# ? Mar 1, 2016 16:23

Gosts: Jan 15, 2016

Did a quick one-off last sunday. It was fun and so I thought I'd post about it. Story time. :words:

(Some of the players are goons. If you're reading this, no. I'm not gonna post about anything that hasn't happened yet. So go ahead and read it if you want to know what i really think about you.)

The players all arrived at an old house in the countryside (1918) at the call of a man named Mr. Beck. Beck is a semi-famous adventurer who has just come back from a trip to India, and fallen very ill. He has called the players (A variety of investigators, professors, doctors, and also a fake chemist here to try and steal Mr. Beck's fortune) because he believes he is not, in fact, ill. But that he is being poisoned. His recent trip was a failure due to sabotage, and he thinks that someone is trying to finish the job, and end his life.

The players, of course, take the job, because as I mentioned, Mr. Beck is loaded. They start their investigation immediately, attempting and failing horribly to perform a variety of medical tests on Beck. They borrow his journal, and get a general idea of the trip he took, but don't do much else with it yet. They also begin interviewing his creepy butler, who seems to follow them around everywhere, and the cook, and the maid. All of them have some opportunity to be poisoning Beck, but no clear motive, unless perhaps they're being paid off by one of Beck's associates.

They find a few items of interest such as a book in the library about some rituals and superstitions in India, and they develop some of Beck's photographs from the trip, which gives them images of a bunch of carvings to look at. Unfortunately they haven't pieced them together just yet.

Mr. Beck wants the players to stay in his fancy mansion with him as protection, of course, so they decide they've done enough for one day and turn in for the night, going into various guestrooms. There are so many of them, however, (eight players, actually) that some of them sleep in other rooms. Including a delirious Russian professor who decides to sleep in the bathtub outside the master bedroom.

Surprisingly, this turns out to be a smart move. In the middle of the night, there's a shout of surprise, and a thump, coming from Beck's room. The professor quickly kicks the door down and enters. The bedsheets are all over the floor. Beck is missing. On the sheets near the pillows is a small bloodstain, but nothing else.

The other players arrive quickly and attempt to make sense of the scene. They decide to search the premise before Mr. Beck, and, if he doesn't turn up, the creepy butler is going to call the police.

Checking outside the mansion, they find something bizarre. There is a set of footprints that start in the middle of the backyard, wander around the area, then enter the house in the servant's quarters. However, there's no indication of how the tracks start. They simply appear in the yard.

They decide to check Beck's locked basement storage room. However, the butler does not want them to. He tells them it is Beck's private collection, and seeing as the door is locked, there's no way anyone is inside. The players convince the butler to let them in, but even after picking the lock, they can't find anyone inside. Just a bunch of strange artifacts.

Much wandering about and searching for clues ensues. Sometimes a player will hear odd noises or find doors ajar that were closed before, but this may just be the other household staff, as they are going about from room to room, sometimes making themselves hard to find, in their own efforts to find Beck (or, as it grows longer and longer, his body.) Eventually, the police are called. But since it's a dark countryside in the middle of winter at night, it will take a while for them to arrive.

Meanwhile the players keep searching, until a gunshot is heard. One of the players was yanked out the library window by some unseen person (or thing) and attacked. They failed their roll to hit the target, but after firing into the dark, their attacker fled, and everyone showed up to help after hearing the noise. It's clear now that someone is certainly here who is working against them actively. The players aim to find out who by splitting up and trying to bait the attacker into striking again. They tell the household staff to hide out. The butler locks himself in the winecellar. The cook and maid hold up in the study.

This is where everything goes to poo poo.

One of the players, an inept politician, hides in the pantry. He hears the sound of someone in the kitchen, so he climbs up as high as he can and gets ready to dump a sack of flower on the intruder. Unfortunately the intruder is another player who was investigating the sound of something else that led him to the kitchen. He opens the pantry and is doused with flour. This gives someone else the bright idea to pour flour in the hallways to see if they can track the movements of this slippery intruder by their footprints. But as they prepare to do so, another gunshot!

While this was happening, two sociopathic numbskulls came up with a bright idea after almost shooting each other in the basement. The butler did it. As such, they convince him to open the wine cellar door, and ask him to sing. He is very confused, and does not sing. So, they shot him. Right in the stomach. He winces in pain and falls over, dead.

Their plan was that since shoggoths cannot sing, they wanted to check if he could. However, it seems he wasn't a shoggoth. Surprise?

All the other players come running, to see what's the matter. "Oh no!" One of them says. "Someone attacked us and I accidentally shot the butler instead of the enemy!"

The players are suspicious of this incredible retardation, but before they can draw and quarter their team mates, they notice something.

There's only seven of them in the basement.

One of them was secretly asked to come with Gloria, the maid. She said he needed to come to the study. In the second dumbest move i've ever seen in a Call of Cthulhu game, the player willingly abandoned the party, telling nobody, and went into the study. Surprise, they got knocked unconcious.

So the other players start searching, until finally, they get suspicious when they're not let into the study. One player wants to climb up onto the roof from the guest bedroom to peek into the study window.

They do.

They find two figures on the roof. One lying down on the snow, the other, a hunched figure with an odd silhouette, doing something to the one lying down.

The player draws their weapon, after failing a stealth check. The hunched figure turns around. It's a body. I say body because there is no head. Instead, the neck ends in a gross stump sealed with brown crust, with a yellowish eye poking out of the throat. Running across the collarbones of the body is a mouth, all the way from shoulder to shoulder, with horrible pointed teeth. As you might, guess, this is Mr. Beck, although it takes a few combat rounds for the players to realize that. Beck's body has been taken over by something, and his head is nowhere to be found.

A rooftop battle ensues, with more players joining and scrambling about. Bullets have little effect but they don't seem to be entirely pointless, as enough of them can stun the creature for long enough that others can get away. They're trying to save their friend, the missing player, who is the body on the roof. Not dead yet, just unconscious. The creature isn't much faster than them but has incredible strength, grabbing players by the head and slamming their skulls against the roof tiles again and again.

One of the players attempts to gain entry into the study. The maid and cook let her in, but, they apprehend her and tie her up, much to her surprise and horror. To even more surprise and horror, as gunshots fire on the roof, both of them look upwards. Blood starts to trickle out of their necks, until their heads roll off, silently screaming. The bodies, now similar monsters, crawl out the window, onto the roof, to the terror of the other players, who were barely winning in a 6v1, and now must fight a 6v3. In the study, the heads of the maid and the cook are silently screaming, still alive. Their neck stumps have a swollen brown sack attached to them, keeping them alive somehow.

Combat continues for some time, with the players gradually retreating as they are picked off one by one. Eventually it turns into a full retreat. Mr. Beck's body is badly damaged by several attacks, notably the previously mentioned inept politician, who manages to impale it with his cane as he jumps downwards, and goomba-stomps on it to land inside the study. (He rolled a 2, so sue me.) Right now, the only players left are the politician, the Russian, the fake chemist, and the the two that murdered the butler (a zealous PI, and the professor, who they just untied as they climbed into the study.)

They are hotly pursued as they decide to get the gently caress out of the mansion. The PI makes a quick stop in the basement to gather a few armfuls of Mr. Beck's sick loot, while everyone else is trying to start their cars. (The PI has a motorcycle, for whatever reason.) There is a desperate fight to start the cars in freezing winter while the headless monsters leap from the roof, landing with thunks and denting the car roof, while Beck's body comes back for more. They dive from one car to another trying to get one to work. The politician is grabbed as he valiantly tries to defend the others and is strangled in a death grip. The Russian man is beaten to death as he tries to make his escape. The professor and the fake chemist manage to get a car started, even as the driver-side door is ripped off its hinges. They start it up, unbalancing the one on the roof and buying themselves some time. With incredible resolve, however, they drive to the front of the mansion to grab the PI, who yet lives. He leaps into the back of the car. And surprise! So does the investigator who was lying on the roof. They managed to interrupt the thing before it actually killed him.

Or not.

Even before they drive away, (which they do with haste,) they're very suspicious of this investigator back from the dead, and rightly so. He had been converted to one of the things, and they made quick work of the impostor, shooting him in the head and dumping his body, as well as the car, in a river in the next state.

Thus, only the fake chemist, and the two butler-murders survived.

Everyone had a good time, minus some player salt. I was very happy with how my scenario turned out except I definitely made a LOT of the clues that would have helped them win too difficult to figure out. If I ever run it again I will make most of them much easier.

If you're wondering:

The book and pictures had instructions on how to ward them off. Also, they don't like the chemicals in the dark room, and that can stop them from taking you over if you accidentally get infected. (I definitely didn't give enough clues for that one.)

They make more of themselves by using the heads of their occupants as egg-laying machines. The heads are kept alive in horrible agony for several decades while vomiting eggs, that are then forced into other people.

This was all started by one of the professor's associates, who mixed a few eggs into his food in India. There's no way to catch him this adventure, but it's a potential plothook for if you want to continue this.

The butler actually could get infected, but he hadn't been yet. They just straight up killed him.

My GM notes are kind of lovely but if anybody wants, I will fix them up, and post them, so that anybody can run this game for their players with all my maps and character notes and such. Most of it you can honestly glean from the story itself though.

# ? Mar 2, 2016 09:12

LatwPIAT: Jun 6, 2011

Yoshimo posted:

Looks like the stars are right...

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/01/could-cthulhu-trump-other-super-tuesday-contenders-hp-lovecraft

How old is the whole "Cthulhu for President" joke anyway? I started playing CoC in school way the gently caress back in 1995 or thereabouts - which is probably nothing compared to a lot of grizzled greybeards in this thread! - and I remember seeing "Cthulhu For America '96" or something similar.

Since 1988, though I've heard rumours of a 1984 popular campaign too.

# ? Mar 2, 2016 09:21

Sionak: Dec 20, 2005; Mind flay the gap.

Gosts posted:

Did a quick one-off last sunday. It was fun and so I thought I'd post about it. Story time. (Some of the players are goons. If you're reading this, no. I'm not gonna post about anything that hasn't happened yet. So go ahead and read it if you want to know what i really think about you.)

Sounds really fun and I quite like the monster. The murder mystery set up is a good one, though in general it's difficult to run a scary game with that many players.

I am really curious why the two murderous players decided a) the butler was a shoggoth and b) shoggoths can't sing??

The thing with the clues being too difficult is really common, both in homemade and published scenarios. It's part of the reason that Trail of Cthulhu makes it easier to find clues, but still leaves it up to players to apply/interpret them. Even in CoC, it works well to let them find something on failed rolls - but maybe it's incomplete or doesn't have the full context.

# ? Mar 2, 2016 20:24

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Sionak posted:

Sounds really fun and I quite like the monster. The murder mystery set up is a good one, though in general it's difficult to run a scary game with that many players.

I am really curious why the two murderous players decided a) the butler was a shoggoth and b) shoggoths can't sing??

This response pretty much covers everything I was going to add, that it sounded like a great time all around. I feel like this entire game would work great as a horror-comedy with the lead characters being the two idiots who decided shoggoths cannot sing and therefore anyone who does not sing on command is a monster. So... "Dumb And Dumber And Oh God...The Window!!!"

# ? Mar 2, 2016 20:35

Gosts: Jan 15, 2016

Sionak posted:

I am really curious why the two murderous players decided a) the butler was a shoggoth and b) shoggoths can't sing??

I cannot explain either of these things. They were private messaging each other to come to that conclusion.

If we had been a little more serious at the time I probably would not have allowed them to kill the butler for such an absurd reason. But since it was actually a fairly suspicious NPC, even if their reasons were all wrong, I decided to let them do it.

We're not a very serious group so if there's no mythos going on at that exact second I usually let them get away with silly stuff. Although that was a lot more over-the-top than usual.

# ? Mar 2, 2016 21:36

Spork o Doom: May 31, 2011

LatwPIAT posted:

Since 1988, though I've heard rumours of a 1984 popular campaign too.

This is about right I think. As someone who has been playing since 1986 I can remember it being a running joke pretty much the whole time.

# ? Mar 2, 2016 23:09

Nude Bog Lurker: Jan 2, 2007; Fun Shoe

I ran a fun little outing of Delta Green last night, in which a CGIS agent, a Forest Ranger, an Army Chaplain and a NASA analyst managed to muck up Last Things Last so badly they ended up blowing up a petrol station to put an end to the thing which was Marlene.

In a fortnight, they're going to find out all about the CIA smuggling Mythos-tainted drugs out of Aghanistan, and how to impersonate a defunct USAF UFO programme for fun and profit.

# ? Mar 4, 2016 22:02

Fuligin: Oct 27, 2010; wait what the fuck??

I'm planning to run a CoC oneshot for some friends in a week or two, probably in the classic 1920s. I'm trying to choose an adventure. Two have already played through The Haunting with me, so that's right out; any suggestions?

# ? Mar 7, 2016 22:22

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

I really like the structure of Caleb Stokes The Wives of March.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/120072/The-Wives-of-March

Does include a tentacled beasty. It's not the main horror though.

1930s iirc

Also there was another "haunted house" adventure. Can't remember the title. Grey Hunter ran three different groups through the scenario. There was a racoon under the bed as a red herring jump scare. Seemed like a fun one shot.

Helical Nightmares fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Mar 8, 2016

# ? Mar 7, 2016 23:58

Fuligin: Oct 27, 2010; wait what the fuck??

Helical Nightmares posted:

I really like the structure of Caleb Stokes The Wives of March.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/120072/The-Wives-of-March

Does include a tentacled beasty. It's not the main horror though.

1930s iirc

Also there was another "haunted house" adventure. Can't remember the title. Grey Hunter ran three different groups through the scenario. There was a racoon under the bed as a red herring jump scare. Seemed like a fun one shot.

Wives of March looks interesting, although I'm leery about putting this group up against any weird sex poo poo- gotta ease them in first. The rest of the free adventures by Stokes look cool, although it would be nice if they were statted for CoC. I love the premise for Lover in the Ice, but again, weird sex poo poo.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 19:58

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

If I am someone who thinks cosmic horror is cool, but the c'thulhu mythos is played out, what should I look into game-wise?

# ? Mar 8, 2016 21:19

moths: Aug 25, 2004; I would also still appreciate some danger.

If you're looking for a horror game, I'd steer you towards something like tremulous (but I've also heard Dread is really great.)

Are you just looking for a non-mythos threat to scare players with? You could probably poach some ideas from Ravenloft (or even vanilla D&D) and dump them into an unusual real-world setting. Even a crappy pack of kobolds could be scary if you're playing in a real-world setting like an 1870s Arizona turquoise mine.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 21:44

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Make them Tucker's kobolds for a real survival horror game

# ? Mar 8, 2016 22:09

HerpicleOmnicron5: May 31, 2013; How did this smug dummkopf ever make general?

Fuligin posted:

I'm planning to run a CoC oneshot for some friends in a week or two, probably in the classic 1920s. I'm trying to choose an adventure. Two have already played through The Haunting with me, so that's right out; any suggestions?

I really like the Edge of Darkness scenario, included in the 6th Edition booklet. A lot more lethal than The Haunting, but you should maybe add in a little bit of side-intrigue yourself to spice things up as its a bit tame.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 22:12

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

moths posted:

If you're looking for a horror game, I'd steer you towards something like tremulous (but I've also heard Dread is really great.)

Are you just looking for a non-mythos threat to scare players with? You could probably poach some ideas from Ravenloft (or even vanilla D&D) and dump them into an unusual real-world setting. Even a crappy pack of kobolds could be scary if you're playing in a real-world setting like an 1870s Arizona turquoise mine.

I mean more like "still giant, unfeeling/malevolent gods in a universe that doesn't care about humans" but not the same old, boring elder gods.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 22:18

WaywardWoodwose: May 19, 2008; The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Covok posted:

I mean more like "still giant, unfeeling/malevolent gods in a universe that doesn't care about humans" but not the same old, boring elder gods.

Try the gumshoe games, fear itself, esoterrorist, or trail of cthulhu.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 22:20

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Mechanically speaking you're still going to be playing Call of Cthulhu (or Trail of Cthulhu), you're just not going to be using the Mythos.

The quickstart scenario for Delta Green, for example, doesn't even really delve into any sort of relationship or call-back to the Mythos, just that it's a supernatural problem, ditto Caleb Stokes' work, especially since Stokes AFAIK isn't (or wasn't) really into the Mythos and so just writes poo poo that is bad, weird, unknowable, and near-hopeless to fight against, rather than picking and choosing Gugs and Ghouls and Polyps like it was some sort of D&D Bestiary.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 22:40

moths: Aug 25, 2004; I would also still appreciate some danger.

Covok posted:

I mean more like "still giant, unfeeling/malevolent gods in a universe that doesn't care about humans" but not the same old, boring elder gods.

In that case, you could try using the named elder gods as presented in the source material - instead of as the NPC stat blocks most games ended up presenting them as.

The real horror of Cthulhu in his big story is that without ever intending to, he sends thousands of borderline people over the edge into insanity, pushes bad people into a bloodlust, freaks-out tens of thousands of artists, and makes millions of people generally uncomfortable. That's the Cool Good place for a game, but gamers always want to drive a boat through him and go batty.

They're a lot of fun when you use them as a straight on, subtle force of nature but never tell the players exactly what they're dealing with.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 23:15

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Well, I did have an idea for elder gods based on pigs instead of seafood. No physical form and drive people insane as they feast upon people's minds like gluttons.

One day, you're fine. Next day, you keep hearing squeeling very faintly. Then, you always hear it. Next, it drives you paranoid. You begin to forget and lose touch. Your body withers as you forget to eat. Everyone is out to get you. Insame alsyums can't help: they're prisons. Then, you just expire as all you were was chowed away from the inside out.

Don't know if it'd work for a game.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 23:24

Sionak: Dec 20, 2005; Mind flay the gap.

Fuligin posted:

Wives of March looks interesting, although I'm leery about putting this group up against any weird sex poo poo- gotta ease them in first. The rest of the free adventures by Stokes look cool, although it would be nice if they were statted for CoC. I love the premise for Lover in the Ice, but again, weird sex poo poo.

Both "Red Tower" and "Fall without End" don't have any sex-related content if that's a problem. Bryson Springs has a little relating to an NPC but you could adjust/cut that.

If you poke around the RPPR forums (http://slangdesign.com/forums/index.php), you can find most of the monsters from No Security statted up for CoC.

Red Tower can be tricky to run since it's likely that at least some of the PCs will have clashing goals and the mystery is fairly involved. Fall without End, though I haven't run it, is very clear in terms of what the objective and (later) the problem are and might be better for newer players.

Covok posted:

I mean more like "still giant, unfeeling/malevolent gods in a universe that doesn't care about humans" but not the same old, boring elder gods.

Go for it. Even Delta Green has moved a bit away from easily recognizable mythos threats over time. While there's still colonies of deep ones statted up, there's also pernicious number sequences (The Last Equation). Or stuff that's still weird no matter how much Lovecraft you've read. One of the original run of Delta Green books (Countdown) pretty much reinvented Hastur (as an embodiment/manifestation of entropy) after feeling that its portrayal in classic CoC was lacking.

Covok posted:

Well, I did have an idea for elder gods based on pigs instead of seafood. No physical form and drive people insane as they feast upon people's minds like gluttons.

One day, you're fine. Next day, you keep hearing squeeling very faintly. Then, you always hear it. Next, it drives you paranoid. You begin to forget and lose touch. Your body withers as you forget to eat. Everyone is out to get you. Insame alsyums can't help: they're prisons. Then, you just expire as all you were was chowed away from the inside out.

Don't know if it'd work for a game.

Like, this is a lot of fun. In particular the parallels between asylums and the conditions of factory farms would be horrific. You could tie it to the mythos god Tsathoggua or to Shub-Niggurath, but if you are more interested in making it your own, go for it.

Generally for a game you'd want to give the characters some chance to figure out what's going on and (unlikely but possibly) avert their fate. Why are they the ones suffering from this? Cursed, did something wrong, just bad luck? Are the elder gods really pigs or is that the closest reference point humans have?

Conversely, you certainly can run a game where the point is to realize you are doomed, then die horribly (for example: http://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/the-final-revelation/) - but even among Cthulhu players, not everyone is going to enjoy that flavor.

Anyways, if you end up running it, Delta Green just put out rules for free. They work quite well for sanity blasting stories and are pretty quick to teach.

# ? Mar 9, 2016 05:33

clockworkjoe: May 31, 2000; Rolled a 1 on the random encounter table, didn't you?

If you want Cthulhu stuff, you should dig through the Fairfield Project, the Delta Green Mailing List wiki http://fairfieldproject.wikidot.com/

TONS of freely usable scenarios and other material for your game. Some of it is statted out, some of it is not.

Random scenario that I found and looks interesting: http://fairfieldproject.wikidot.com/radio-silence

If you want a more curated list, look at the Shotgun Scenarios: http://fairfieldproject.wikidot.com/shotgun-scenarios

It's a yearly contest of short (under 1500 words) scenarios. I've entered a few times.

# ? Mar 9, 2016 08:27

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Cross posting

Smugglers ship large antiquities murals by first cutting them into pieces.

Some of the murals depict seals and beings associated with protection.

Clearly nothing could go wrong.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35755273

quote:

Museum of Lost Objects: The Genie of Nimrud

Three thousand years ago, a genie graced the walls of an Assyrian palace. Then, probably about 20 years ago, it disappeared, only to re-emerge in London. Since 2002 it's been languishing in police vaults at Scotland Yard, because of difficulties determining the legal owner.

The genie is a powerfully built man, with wings sprouting from his back. About 2m high, it is carved in relief on a stone panel, holding a pine cone, and facing a pattern that represents the tree of life. The genie symbolised both protection and fertility - its role was to safeguard and replenish the ancient kingdom of Assyria.

It was a design particularly popular with the Assyrian king, Ashurnasirpal II, who came to the throne in 883 BC, and made Nimrud his new capital.

"Ashurnasirpal and his artists were really the first to decorate many of the rooms in the public spaces within the palace," says archaeologist Augusta McMahon, lecturer at the University of Cambridge.

"One of the key symbols that appeared over and over was this genie or protective spirit. Because in the minds of the ancient Assyrians it's an enormously powerful motif, it can't hurt to have a further fertility symbol somewhere in the room."

Protective genies came in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The photograph above is very similar but not identical to the one now in the hands of British police. Others had the bodies of men but the heads of ferocious-looking birds and a feathered hairstyle, still others were a combination of man and fish.

Guess who also is represented by a "combination of man and fish". The Phonetician diety Dagon

Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagon

quote:

Dagon (Hebrew: דגון'‎, Tib. Dāḡ�n) or Dagan (Ugaritic: Dgn, Dagnu, or Daganu; Akkadian: Dagana) was originally an East Semitic Mesopotamian (Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian) fertility god who evolved into a major Northwest Semitic god, reportedly of grain (as symbol of fertility) and fish and/or fishing (as symbol of multiplying). He was worshipped by the early Amorites and by the inhabitants of the cities of Ebla (modern Tell Mardikh, Syria) and Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra, Syria). He was also a major member, or perhaps head, of the pantheon of the Philistines.

....

In the 11th century, Jewish Bible commentator Rashi writes of a biblical tradition that the name Dāg�n is related to Hebrew dāg/d�g 'fish' and that Dagon was imagined in the shape of a fish: compare the Babylonian fish-god Oannes. In the 13th century David Kimhi interpreted the odd sentence in 1 Samuel 5.2�7 that "only Dagon was left to him" to mean "only the form of a fish was left", adding: "It is said that Dagon, from his navel down, had the form of a fish (whence his name, Dagon), and from his navel up, the form of a man, as it is said, his two hands were cut off." The Septuagint text of 1 Samuel 5.2�7 says that both the hands and the head of the image of Dagon were broken off.[6]

H. Schm�kel asserted in 1928[7] that Dagon was never originally a fish-god, but once he became an important god of those maritime Canaanites, the Phoenicians, the folk-etymological connection with d�g would have ineluctably affected his iconography.[8]

quote:

Museum of Lost Objects: The Genie of Nimrud Cont.

Our particular genie had copious amounts of curly hair and a long beard. "The really big crazy-looking hair and the massive beard were part of making him really stand out," says McMahon, who also draws attention to the "little fringed outfit that shows off these incredibly muscular legs".

The impact of all the genies side by side in the palace would have been to convey the strength and virility of the Assyrian empire.

Across the belly of the genie was a smattering of cuneiform in the now extinct language, Akkadian. The text is what's known as Ashurnasirpal's "standard inscription". It lays out in minute detail his many kingly accomplishments - from treading on the necks of foes to being "king of the universe" - and was carved on many of the reliefs and sculptures that filled the halls of his palace at Nimrud.

"It's my favourite ancient archaeological site," says Mark Altaweel, an Iraqi-American archaeologist whose ancestors come from Mosul - not far from Nimrud.

"You did see the reliefs in place, you can see the rooms. Even the ancient floors were sort of wobbly, and in some ways that gave it the ancient feel. You got a sense of what a palace was like when you walked in there."

Sometimes, however, even protective spirits need protecting. At some point since Nimrud's excavation, this genie relief was moved into a storage room from where it disappeared. It's believed to have been taken in the 1990s during the chaos of the first Gulf war, but no-one knows for sure.

The genie's whereabouts were completely unknown for about 10 years. Eventually in 2002, just before the second Gulf war, it turned up in London - one of the world's largest antiquities markets.

Scotland Yard's Art and Antiques Unit went to collect the genie, but it's unclear who legally owns it, so for the last 14 years it has been locked up in a secure storage unit belonging to London's Metropolitan Police.

"The problem is that the burden of proof on objects, when they are looted, is on the authorities to show that it really was removed illegally," says Altaweel.

This can be a challenge.

----
Find out more

*The Museum of Lost Objects traces the stories of 10 antiquities or ancient sites that have been destroyed or looted in Iraq and Syria

*Listen to the episode about the Genie of Nimrud on Radio 4 from 12:00 GMT on Wednesday 9 March or get the Museum of Lost Objects podcast

*Also in this series: The Tell of Qarqur, The Winged Bull of Nineveh, The Temple of Bel, The Lion of al-Lat, Aleppo's minaret and Mar Elian's monastery.
----

Looters sometimes lie about an object's country of origin, and move it through a variety of transit points. It may change hands many times and some of the sellers may insist on remaining anonymous.

"So the genie is basically in a kind of limbo state," says Altaweel.

Even though it appears to be part of a documented collection that was in Nimrud for 3,000 years, at present it seems unlikely to ever return to Iraq.

At some point in its journey, the genie was badly damaged. His head, wings, and upper body are still visible, but gone are his legs and much of Ashurnasirpal's cuneiform inscription. These may have been hacked away when the genie was first taken, or disposed of en route to London - it's not clear. But it is still highly valuable.

"We hear that just the head was going for �3.5m (almost $5m) in 2003 prices," says Altaweel.

"So imagine the value it would get today, and there are people who are willing to pay those prices. There has always been an interest in Nimrud."

Altaweel was in Nimrud just weeks after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and saw for himself fresh signs of looting.

"The site guard told me there was a gunfight that happened, with some bullets hitting the reliefs," he says. Some of the panels depicting genies and other figures had been cut out - the head would be missing, with the body and legs still in place.

The awful irony is that the looting of the genie now at Scotland Yard may have saved it from complete destruction. After seizing Mosul in 2014, the so-called Islamic State group began destroying sites in and around the city - including, the following year, Nimrud.

This has prompted debates about the thorny issue of repatriation. Some have argued that it might have been better if more of the Middle East's archaeological riches had been taken from the region during the era of European imperialism. To them, the iconoclasm of the would-be caliphate seemed to justify, in retrospect, the cavalier way in which Western archaeologists and collectors relieved the Middle East of its cultural heritage in the 19th and early 20th Centuries.

And yet for many people outside the West, it remains a source of grievance that so much of their past sits in the halls and basements of museums in Paris and Berlin, London and New York. Westerners can more easily enjoy the cultural history of Iraq than Iraqis themselves.

But while looters have plundered Iraqi museums and still threaten historical sites, the looted objects do not always end up being smuggled abroad.

Mark Altaweel was at the museum in Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan five years ago, when he got chatting to an American Kurdish man. Only after the man had left did Altaweel realise that a transaction had just taken place.

The visitor had offered to sell a series of cuneiform tablets and other objects and the museum at the time had a no-questions-asked policy, so it bought them.

"At first glance you think that's a horrible policy," says Altaweel. "But it did actually prevent them from leaving Iraq proper."

The visitor's haul included something amazing - a chapter of the Gilgamesh epic, the original blockbuster adventure, with monster battles, the search for immortality, divine kings, and even a whole section on how the wrathful gods flooded the Earth (a scenario that would appear again in the later biblical tale of Noah). Gilgamesh is humanity's earliest story. It marks that moment when gods and humans stepped out of the murky unknown and into the sharp relief of narrative.

"As soon as they saw that there's a text that talks about the Gilgamesh story, their immediate reaction was to buy this thing," says Altaweel. "They understood that this was extremely rare."

One of the key scenes in the Gilgamesh epic is the momentous encounter between the hero Gilgamesh and the monster Humbaba, described as a hideous ogre - his "roar is a flood, his mouth is death and his breath is fire!"

This beast of the wild can generally be found roaming the beautiful Cedar Forest. His primary aim is to terrify men and it's up to the brave, demi-god Gilgamesh and his sidekick Enkidu to vanquish Humbaba and rid the forest of his ugly tyranny. But what's remarkable about the Gilgamesh tablet recovered at the Sulaymaniyah museum is that it shows Humbaba in a different light.

"Where Ḫumbaba came and went there was a track, the paths were in good order and the way was well trodden," the tablet reads.

"Through all the forest a bird began to sing: A wood pigeon was moaning, a turtle dove calling in answer. Monkey mothers sing aloud, a youngster monkey shrieks: like a band of musicians and drummers daily they bash out a rhythm in the presence of Ḫumbaba."

In this version of the story, Humbaba is beloved of the gods and a kind of king in the palace of the forest. Monkeys are his heralds, birds his courtiers, and his entire throne room breathes with the heady aroma of cedar resin.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu, meanwhile, are aggressors, ecological thieves. They come to Humbaba's forest to take its timber back to their treeless homeland in Mesopotamia. In this newly discovered tablet of the epic, we find - remarkably - a sense that the heroes of the tale were in the wrong.

"Enkidu opened his mouth to speak, saying to Gilgamesh: 'My friend, we have reduced the forest to a wasteland. In your might you slew the guardian, what was this wrath of yours that you went trampling the forest?'"

This sense of remorse is particularly strong in the Sulaymaniyah tablet, but traces of it also exist in other versions of the Gilgamesh epic. In so many other ancient tales, the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf for example, we find a black-and-white world, a clear binary of good and evil. In

Gilgamesh there is plenty of grey. The hero is faced with the moral consequences of his actions. There is so much destruction in the achievement of his greatness.

Intentionally and unintentionally, modern-day combatants in Iraq and Syria are destroying precious records of antiquity, and more objects like the genie and cuneiform tablets will inevitably slip on to the black market. So, it's worth celebrating the rare recoveries of these artefacts.

"It's a good and bad thing. It's bad that it was looted, it's bad that it had to be purchased. But it's good because at least it stays in the country of Iraq," says Altaweel.

"It's one of these things where Western scholars actually have to come to Iraq to see this and study this tablet. So it's good that at least something of significance stays in the country. Iraqis need to see these things too, ultimately these countries need stability, and stability equals economy, equals tourism, equals the objects being back there."

War makes exiles out of people and cultural artefacts alike. It is a small victory, but a victory nonetheless, when an antiquity like the tablet of Gilgamesh can endure and remain in Iraq.

Ashurnasirpal's genie, however, seems destined to stay far from its old home. Once it guarded the palace of its king. Now it is guarded by
British police, in an obscure basement in a foreign country.

The Museum of Lost Objects traces the stories of 10 antiquities or ancient sites that have been destroyed or looted in Iraq and Syria.

Other useful stuff:

The RPPR crew Adam Scott Glancy hosted Delta Green game "Iconoclasts": http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/2015/08/systems/call-of-cthulhu/call-of-cthulhu-iconoclasts/

quote:

A group of useful idiots from the West have journeyed to war-torn Iraq in search of power and fame as soldiers of ISIS. Barely speaking the local language, they are used as pawns and propaganda tools. Their latest mission seems like a cakewalk � search an old man�s mansion for possible hidden antiquities and artifacts. The man is unarmed, assisted by a few servants, one of whom is an informant for ISIS. Ancient artifacts can be sold on the black market or smashed on video for propaganda, both valuable to the terrorist organization. Little do they realize that some artifacts are not meant to be sold or broken.

This game was recorded at Gen Con 2015 in an open gaming room, so there will be background noise. Sorry!

The Robert E Howard short pulpy Mythos story "The Fire of Asshurbanipal"

Text: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601741.txt

Resources and commentary: http://www.sffaudio.com/the-fire-of-asshurbanipal-by-robert-e-howard/

# ? Mar 11, 2016 23:05

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 4, 2024 05:51

moths: Aug 25, 2004; I would also still appreciate some danger.

That's a really great post! The Delta Green might be a bit too "ripped from the headlines" but I'll try to give it a listen.

There's a few news bits / announcements recently: A new licensed videogame in the vein of Dark Corners of the Earth, organized play starts later this month, and Sandy Petersen is writing a Free RPG Day adventure. (If you're on the mailing list you'll also get the RPG Day adventure as a download.)

# ? Mar 16, 2016 13:51

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Cthulhu Megathread: It's pronounced "Khlul'-hloo" (Lose 1D10/1D100 Sanity)

«‹›88 »