Shoggoth.net

Failed attempts at immortality

These creatures were once human, but are now trapped between the tides of life and death. They all began their journey to this state while questing for eternal youth, beauty, or immortality. Some began as wizards or alchemists, delving through arcane formulae and blasphemous tomes. Others were scientists, conducting illegal research into genetics, recombinant DNA, and forced mutation through reprogrammed viruses. Some were famous, wealthy, and vain individuals, willing to pay any price to cheat nature and the passage of time. Ultimately, their efforts were only partially successful.

A developmental-contamination dossier for Cthulhu Eternal

Celandine split the material across five laboratories so that no one team could reconstruct the organism. On the sixth day, one lab answered a question a second lab had not finished asking. By morning every laboratory had grown a different organ, and the organs were working together to leave.

Branch-injury report MH-27, with Cthulhu Eternal statistics

The team was sure the procedure had picked the one Hound capable of beating it. The strain gauges told a worse story. The projected animal had simply tried to reach the record that tied it to the room, and the containment shell happened to be in the way. The shell was not defeating the Hound. The shell was teaching it how to breach.

Forensic reconstruction dossier AM-26, with Cthulhu Eternal statistics

During surgery, every artery beyond the reach of direct light divided into pale planes and ran off into a volume with no stable anatomy. The planes rearranged themselves each time the endoscope changed angle. Quill stayed awake under the anesthetic and asked, quite reasonably, why they were teaching her how to be human.

Observer-horizon megafauna dossier HS-25, with Cthulhu Eternal statistics

They relayed Daniel’s coin-flip to his wife through six people, an optical cable, and a handwritten note carried down the central corridor. Every path came back with the same bit: zero. Daniel had chosen one. Whatever was moving through the noise behind his voice followed the exact line between the signals she could still receive and the ones that would never reach her again.

Two lights in the woods north of Arkham, moving side by side, as though holding hands.

Bargained he with Fowler strong, A witch of furious mood, That she should take these children young, And slaye them in a wood.

The Children In The Wood, folk song, Arkham variant

Sometimes called the Gagnon Lights or Jack Lights, these entities are flashing fiery spirits usually seen in May in the woods north of Arkham.

A channel-infesting organism dossier for Cthulhu Eternal

The brake pedal did everything it was supposed to. Pressure dropped, the cylinders extended, the pads closed on every wheel, and the current poured into the resistor bank. The wheels stayed cold and the speedometer held at 71. The cause had happened. The effect was somewhere else.

A reproductive caste and adaptive-selection dossier for Cthulhu Eternal

Three instruments looked at the animal and disagreed completely about what was inside the shell. They agreed only on its mass, its temperature, and its pulse. When labor began at 02:14, four shadows separated around the shell, and every one of them called Dr. Lin by the nickname her mother had used when she was a child.

A spontaneous-organism and memory-contamination dossier for Cthulhu Eternal

The specimen lived for forty-three seconds. Its wings, beating in a hard vacuum, reproduced Araceli Ward’s own voice telling someone to close a north valve because Isaac was still inside. The laboratory had no north valve, and nobody on site was named Isaac. Ward remembered his funeral anyway, down to the rain on his husband’s green umbrella.