Archive for Creatures

APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) BotNet

Nyarlathotep… the crawling chaos… I am the last… I will tell the audient void….

— screamed by a Security researcher as he plummeted off the roof of the datacenter cackling

“It’s the tree, moving along in a glow of phosphorous light.”
“It looks like a human giant!”
“Do you two see what it is carrying?”
“It’s carrying Crane! Tucked up under that huge branch that looks like a human arm!”
“Now do you believe? Now do you admit that the tree is alive?”

– Scott Bishop, “The Demon Tree”, Dark Fantasy, 12-5-1941

“Desperation led us to take on a cheap job dealing with the monastery’s irregular bookkeeping. Late that night, Plamena was squinting at a column of numbers. The candle guttered and died, and she cast light upon the sconce. Then they were all around us, consuming the library in flame.”

“He was collecting rushes when something exploded at his feet. He reeled – and it pulled him under the water. There was nothing I could do. And every night, I hear him calling again…”

We went to the farm in the morning after all the screams. What we found looked like a swamp. Bubbling pits of sulfurous liquid covered the area. Trees were splitting and breaking apart in the wind like sandcastles struck by the tide. If it weren’t for the disintegrating farm, no one would have believed anyone could live here. I painted that barn last summer. Uncle Alexander had given me twenty bucks. Now the paint was bubbling and peeling like sunburnt skin. All around, there were holes as though massive maggots had burrowed up out of the ground. My dad took one look in those holes and ordered me back to the car. We never even checked if Uncle Alexander was still there.

—Journal of Scott Mercer.

“This is a dreadful, a very unpleasant thing.
“Its nose is bowed and crooked entirely like a fishing-hook,
“The arms are not equal, the feet are like branches and boughs (?).
“Its sunken eyes sparkle and glare- It is dreadful if you see it, not only at night but even in broad day.
“It is all nude, quite delicate (?); but it has the shape of man,
“On its forehead it has a horn of the length of a middle finger. Its fingers are not crooked, they are all straight,
“Very unpleasant, each one longer than half a yard.”

Gabdulla Tuqaj, “The Forest-Demon”

Eternal Cubicle Denizens

I’ve got a review next week if Mohinder finally comes in.  Quarterly reports due in two weeks but I think we’ve synergized with logistics. *harsh cough followed by weeze* So we should be 5×5 for the stockholders meeting before earnings call

—According to the nameplate on the desk Jeff Carter, Regional Manager, spoke whilst experiencing cardiac arrest and dying whilst talking.

“Oh no – you don’t want to travel these plains without extra rations. Even if you can make it to the next village when it’s still light. I lost five friends for want of some hardtack biscuits and jerky. Sure, I’ll tell you – just watch your feet.”

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…