Archive for Gaming

No one goes anywhere near the old wrecked oil tanker, Neptune Venture, in the mud flats. Not during the day or especially at night, whether your deep blooded or shallow, like me. The only people who ever go there are members of the Bishop family, and they only do that once a week. They only stay long enough to drop off a box of food and supplies. Even then they have a dog with them, and someone keeping watch with a shotgun. Kids used to dare one another to go touch the Neptune Venture after dark, that is until two of them went missing trying to do it, and the kids who put them up to it were disciplined by the Esoteric Order of Dagon. There are rumors of a hulking creature that comes out of the wreck at night, to fish, dig clams, and sometime burn a trash pile.  I’m not going to be the one to find out for sure. So, good luck with that…

Our guide led us into the old smugglers tunnels under Innsmouth, holding a lantern ahead of us, leading our company into darkness. We were desperate to rescue our companions, who’d been captured when we fled two days earlier. She said her name was Mary-Catherine, and explained that she lived as an exile in the marshes outside of town, because she had never fully made “the change”.  We weren’t sure what she meant, but she had that “Innsmouth Look” worse than anyone we’d seen yet, appearing to be some sort of unholy combination of a human woman, a frog, and a snapping turtle.
Ugly or not, we had limited options, and had put our faith in her, after hearing of the cruelty she’d suffered at the hands of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, whom had banished her and forbad her from entering the town.  Her steps were fast and sure, our team had trouble keeping up with her. Once we were strung out a bit in the twisting labyrinth of tunnels her lantern went out and we were all plunged into darkness. I grabbed for my electric flashing, but it was gone! We heard out guide giggling manically just before the mayhem began.
Of the four of us who followed that creature called Mary-Catherine into dark, I was the only one to survive.

When the mists roll in over the dark ocean waves,
The wrongfully deceased rise from watery graves.
They hunt for those who caused their death,
Until their quarry breaths their last breath.

-Old Captain Rosario, Kingsport, 1863

These strange and powerful creatures start out as humans, but are chosen in utero begins to become something more. Their mothers are always devoted high priestesses of the Goddess Hydra, blessed by the Deep Mother with a divine boon. In the weeks leading up to the delivery of their daughters (Blessed of Hydra are always female) the priestess is visited in her dreams by the Goddess Hydra, and told their child shall be a Blessed of Hydra.  

These mysterious creatures are the tragic end product of most Eldritch Symbiont rituals. They are formed when the dark entity allowed into a sorcerer’s body eventual takes full control over their physical form. At this point none of the host’s former intellect or humanity remains, leaving behind only the Eldritch Usurper, which now possessed the one thing it most desired, a physical form upon this reality. 

 “The only business of the historian is to relate things exactly as they are: this he can never do as long as he is afraid”

― Lucian of Samosata, Lucian’s True History

These strange creatures arise from the dark desires of sorcerers to enhance their powers.  Through a complicated ritual, passed down through the ages from the Arch-Wizards of Stygia and Atlantis, a sorcerer may offer their living bodies as a home to one of the countless living, yet formless entities lurking at the edges of our reality. The malevolent beings are desperate to obtain physical form, as it is the only way to enter our plane of existence.

Biters, Bloody Benders, Watchers

There was no flesh. Only skin and bone and taut, dry stretches of tendon between. The eyelids were closed; the sockets looked hollow under them. The nose was sunken and almost lost. The scant lips were tightly curled back from the long and very white teeth, which stood forth all the more brilliantly against the deep-brown skin.

– Anthony Boucher, “They Bite”

And there it was. I wish…I wish…The face of a little girl, frightened. Crying with hunger and terror. Hands like a human being…And a body…Well, I’ll tell you about that. I told you how I’m scared of spiders

– Wyllis Cooper, “The Thing on the Fourble Board”, Quiet, Please, 8-9-1948

“On the first day, Mariana walked into the field; she came back sightless. The second day, Grigor did the same, and he ran back with a broken arm. The third day, it was Valka, and she came back fine… but all she does now is stare into the fire.”