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Chaosium Digest Volume 08 Number 07
Chaosium Digest Volume 8, Number 7
Date: Sunday, November 6, 1994
Number: 2 of 4
Contents:
Porphyry and Asphodel, Part Two (Penelope Love) CALL OF CTHULHU
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From: Penelope Love <bassst@zikzak.apana.org.au>
Subject: Prophyry and Asphodel, Part Two
System: Call of Cthulhu
VISITING MARY IN THE WAKING WORLD
This section may not come into play, relying as it does on dreamers
making the decision to wake and investigate in the waking world.
Keepers should judge if their players need, or would enjoy, the
investigation, and wake them if appropriate. Dreamers must make a
Dreaming roll to recollect their dream on waking.
This investigation is by tracing the waking world picture in the folio
book. The folio book does not appear with the dreamers in the waking
world as its waking world form already exists.
Mills Gate Park, Arkham, Massachusetts
This is in the heart of the poor, industrial district of Arkham, below
Federal Hill. Streets are narrow and filled with a furtive, ragged
crowd, both native poor and recent immigrants. A nasty, heathenish
sort of church squats abandoned on the hill-top. Decaying houses
overhang the sloping streets. Washing dirtying in the morbid haze
flaps lethargically between their filthy facades. The winding
Miskatonic takes on a sickly stench and nauseous hue, fed by streams
of effluent from numerous pipes that jut from the dye-factories and
knitting mills.
Inquiry rapidly tracks down the two women pictured in the folio book.
Mrs Doherty, Miss Hazelhurst, neighbors, the local doctor or the
parish priest can inform the investigators of Mary's fate. A
successful Credit Rating or Psychoanalysis roll, or a letter from Dr.
Malkowski, admits them to the sanitorium.
Mary Doherty
Mary sits by day in a large, padded chair by an upstairs window.
Mary's cat, a large ginger tom called Meggs, followed her to the
sanitorium. The staff adopted this useful animal as a mascot and
rodent-catcher. When not thus engaged, he waits besides Mary, causing
much remark by visitors. Mary's mother visits on the weekends.
Father Doherty passes by on his rounds on Sundays.
Mary is twenty-five years old and dark haired, her young face placid
and unlined but also expressionless. Her mouth is slack, her neck
crooked, and her hands and feet clenched so tightly that they cannot
be unwound. Her gaze is fixed on the window.
If investigators succeed in communicating with her, her inward
concentration is snapped. Mary, the real Mary, flares a moment in her
heavy lidded gaze. As if propelled by a forward motion too great for
her to resist, she springs from the chair, and grasps them, her hands
unclenching to clutch them. "Help me," she screams, "Find the Silver
Key. I AM the Castle Called Sleep. I am destroying me." Then she
subsides back into her former stupor, her intense, watchful, absent,
alertness.
Mrs Doreen Doherty
Mrs Doherty is a widow, and Mary her only surviving child. She
dresses in black. She has prematurely white hair and a lined face
that makes her forty years seem sixty. Her husband worked at the
mill, but was killed in an industrial accident twelve years ago. If
the investigators pose as gentlefolk making inquiries into the
disposition of charitable funds they will have no trouble eliciting
information from Mrs Doherty, who recommends distribution of alms to
the Arkham Sanitorium.
Mary was a quiet, introspective and imaginative child. She did not do
well at school, and was often whipped for day-dreaming. However one
of her teachers, Miss Hazelhurst, befriended her and encouraged her to
sketch. Mrs Doherty could not afford to keep Mary in school after her
husband died.
Mary's sketches were of unusual source, her mother says proudly. She
would just draw things "from dreams she said". Mrs Doherty lets the
investigators look at her daughter's sketches, but refuses to let this
precious memento out of her possession. The folio book of their
dreams is a tattered, cheaply bound sketch pad, whose pages are
already yellowing. The paintings are pencil-sketches drawn with real,
although untutored, skill. The drawings are identical to the those in
the folio, except that the last picture does not exist (SAN 1/1D2).
Mary contracted the sleeping sickness when she was twenty. She
complained for the week prior of bad dreams. The nightmares were of
paralysis, of becoming stone and being torn apart by forces beyond her
control. They terrified her. The last morning she could simply could
not be roused. Dr. Malkowski said that it was catatonia. Mrs Doherty
could not afford to care for Mary at home. Both the doctor and Father
O'Brien, the parish priest, counselled that the Arkham Sanitorium was
the best option. Mary was a loving daughter and a hard worker. She
never complained about the blows life dealt her. Mrs Doherty's eyes
fill with tears as she remembers her.
Miss Hazelhurst
Miss Hazelhurst lives in pleasant rooms on College Hill. She is a
ferocious, nimble tongued, sprightly spinster who has devoted her life
to cramming appreciation of Art into underprivileged children. She
has a private, diminishing income to supplement her charitable works.
Miss Hazelhurst recalls Mary as a bright girl who wanted to be a
painter. This was an unattainable ambition "in her circumstances".
Miss Hazelhurst sighs, and mentions that she tried to encourage her
towards a more realistic ambition, to go to trade school. But Mary's
talent lay more towards the fantastic. She asks rhetorically if the
investigators can you see the artist of those sketches drawing the
latest fashions for newspaper advertisements.
Miss Hazelhurst would like to attribute the sketches to nothing more
than a vivid talent for fancy, but has a dim suspicion (perhaps no
more than wishful thinking) that something deep and fabled might
underlie it. She was deeply saddened when Mary contracted sleeping
sickness, but hopes that the inner life that carried the girl through
life's trials sustains her still.
Father O'Brien
A stout, florid, black-headed and bull-necked Irishman, Father O'Brien
visits Mary every Sunday, along with other of his parishioners at the
hospital. He has known her since childhood and disapproves of her.
He thinks Mary has a pagan imagination. She was a quiet girl, he
agrees, but she often said things that disconcerted him, and laughed
at him, even looking down at the Church of Rome from some fey, lofty
perch of her own. He is concerned that beneath the mask of her
disease, her irreligious imagination yet runs riot. He nightly prays
for her soul.
Dr. Malkowski
This elderly, discreet and basically decent man wears a dusty, black
frock-suit whose collar and cut bespeak an earlier era. He has a
wispy, white beard and a strong Polish accent, despite arriving in
America a decade before the Great War. Prejudice against him, as an
immigrant and a Jew, bars him from any prosperous status, but he is
content with his busy practice amongst the poor of Federal Hill.
He is able to give inquirers general details about the sleeping
sickness. It first appeared in Vienna in 1917, and is caused by a
'devastatingly infectious' microbe, 'Encephalitis lethargia'. It has
a high mortality rate, and distressing after-effects - a form of
'paralysis agitans' known as 'Parkinsonism' which causes muscular
rigidity and paralyzis. If convinced that the investigators have a
genuine interest in Mary (Credit Rating or Oratory skills), he can be
guided to talk of her. Her symptoms were from the first severe, and
he now classes her as incurable. He notes that her sickness was
prefigured by a week of nightmares, a oft-noted symptom of the
disease, and mentions his theory about her (see the newspaper
article).
Dr. Malkowski has some unconventional notions about dreams and fevers,
born of a one-time patient of his, the late Walter Gilman (see
Lovecraft's 'Dreams in the Witch House'). He is tempted to talk about
these with sympathetic listeners. He believes that rare dreamers can,
intentionally or not, trespass into other realms of existence in their
dreams, and that experience of these other realms is not good for the
body or the soul.
SLEEPING SICKNESS
Sleeping sickness swept the world in the aftermath of the Great War,
following in the track of the influenza pandemic. It started in
Vienna in 1917, and disappeared in 1927. It was called 'sleepy
sickness' in Britain and 'sleeping sickness' in the U.S.A. Influenza
killed nineteen million, sleeping sickness roughly five million,
world-wide.
Most sufferers died during the initial onslaught of the disease, in a
wakefulness no drug could end, or asleep in comas too deep to be
revived. Those who survived had to wait forty years for L-DOPA, a
drug which sometimes alleviated the worst symptoms, but was certainly
not a cure. Probably the most frightening aspect of sleeping sickness
is that it destroyed the control of the conscious "I" over the body,
and disabled sense of time and reality.
Modern survivors of sleeping sickness, and their reactions to L-DOPA,
are depicted in Oliver Sack's haunting book, "Awakenings". Of
particular note is the tragic story of Rosie R., whose nightmares
inspired Mary Doherty's dreams. A second source for this scenario is
Kipling's short story, 'The End of the Passage', concerning the fate
of a dreamer who is hunted by 'a blind face that cries and cannot wipe
its eyes, a blind face that chases him down corridors' until finally
he can no longer escape its pursuit.
THRAN AND SIMILAR PORTS
Dreamers can only enter Thran if they tell the red-clad sentries three
dreams beyond belief. If this proves a stumbling block, they can
obtain their information, and embark for Ilek-Vad, from some other
coastal port. Cheating the sentries is impossible, even if they are
slain. Thran's alabaster walls simply loom taller and more
threatening, blocking out the rays of the sun until they have blocked
all, and the dreamer is rewarded for their duplicity by being returned
unceremoniously to the waking world. What exactly comprises a dream
'beyond belief' is open to question, but can be taken as three
successful 'Dream Lore' skill rolls if invention otherwise fails.
Within are sun-gilded towers and antique houses. Cobbled streets wend
pleasantly but firmly to a harbour where bearded sailors swop yarns of
distant shores. Ships set out daily for ports whose names are a
litany of the fantastic, to ill-omened Dylath Leen or vapor-builded
Serannian, or even to fabled Cathuria, said to lie beyond the
boundaries of the world.
Inquiries about a porphyry shrine in the hills to Thran's east need to
be forwarded with wine, for only the well-liquored dare talk about it.
Best in this pursuit is the rare and heady chartreuse of Sarrub.
Second best, but considerably cheaper, is the heavier vintage vended
by merchants of Dylath Leen, purchased from hump-turbanned and
wide-mouthed sailors who fail to give a name to the port from which
their sinister, black galleys embark.
Their informant, finally relenting, hiccups that the porphyry shrine
is in a distant and untravelled part of the hills. It was built so
long ago that its use and the god it honors have been forgotten. But
the people of Thran are wary of it still, for they know that "all
which is forgotten need not necessarily be dead".
Strange reports have filtered down from the hills in past decades.
Rumor says that the shrine has vanished and in its place has appeared
the dreadful Castle Called Sleep. Informants fall silent on
pronouncing this name. Eyes darting around as if in sudden terror of
discovery, they decline any further answers and hurry away.
The common people know nothing of the pilgrimage of the king of
Ilek-Vad. Only Thran's priests are able to tell the dreamers of the
centuries that have elapsed since Aubeg the Bald travelled along
mountain passes to his temple of loveliness in the foothills of Kiran.
Inquiries after a Silver Key draw blank looks from all except those
from Ilek-Vad. Citizens and sailors of this city declare with
certainty that it is in the possession of their king.
Zoogs and their Malice
The flitting Zoogs, who have their own paths into Thran, follow the
dreamers, inspired by anger at their interference. The last time
Zoogs followed a dreamer thus, it was into the town of Ulthar. This
sparked the war between cats and Zoogs that ended in a humiliating
defeat for the Zoogs. The Zoogs therefor limit their activities to
setting free several tame magah birds. These flamboyantly colored
birds have a hypnotic song which is of no danger if kept caged. If
freed however, they sing to solitary people, and whilst they are
hypnotized, the bird hastily steals a tasty morsel - an eye, or
perhaps a snippet of tongue - and flies away. They cause a good deal
of alarm in the hitherto placid alley-ways and tranquil taverns of
Thran.
Thran's cats become suddenly militant, patrolling in bands at night.
Meggs is chief amongst these activities. However none in Thran speak
the language of cats, so the exact cause of the alarm cannot be
discovered. Thran's cats are less organized and numerous than the
cats of Ulthar, and the Zoogs wary and exceedingly low of profile.
The cats do not succeed in catching the Zoogs, who embark with the
dreamers to Ilek-Vad.
The Zoogs spy on the dreamers. Zoogs understand human language, but
cannot speak it. If convinced the dreamers quest involves either the
king of Ilek-Vad or meddling with the boundaries between sleep and
waking, they spread gossip of this to the ghouls of the Underworld.
Several ghouls, alarmed by their exaggerations, visit the dreamers by
stealth and at night. Their intentions are basically friendly - which
for these rubbery and loathsome creatures mean they will not devour
the dreamers out-of-hand. The Zoogs in their spite told the ghouls
that these dreamers were as great and as terrible as the king of
Ilek-Vad. As the dreamers are unlikely even to understand the
glibbering and meeping that passes for speech amongst ghouls, it
becomes rapidly obvious to the ghouls that they have been had.
If the dreamer's reaction to the ghouls is shrieks and immediate
flight, the ghouls lose their heads and give chase in the excitement.
If they come across the dreamer in a particularly isolated place, or
the dreamer is particularly plump or otherwise succulent looking, they
may decide that the opportunity is too great too miss. Otherwise,
after their failed attempt at communication the ghouls - who are in
any case wary, for the graveyards of the Upper Dreamlands are
traditionally claimed by their rivals, the red-footed wamps - shake
their heads in bafflement, and lope off. This communication should
include an attempt at miming the identity their source of information,
the Zoogs.
Dreamers who repeat the names of "Pickman" and "Carter" earn the
ghoul's respect (these names, and their importance to ghouls, can be
recollected with a successful Cthulhu Mythos or Dream Lore roll).
Repeating such names also ensures that the ghouls cease taking those
liberties which even the best bred ghoul takes with human companions,
such as nibbling their ears, speculatively pinching their meatier
limbs, or stroking their hair as if in wistful contemplation of their
toothsome brains.
Zoogs and ghouls have no separate existence in the worlds of waking
and dreaming. They cross from one realm to the other as the whim
takes them. They are indifferent to Hypnos, and he is indifferent to
them. Both Zoogs and ghouls therefor have certain advantages as
allies, if they can be but persuaded to the task.
Other Threats
Dreamers whose inquiries are too long-winded, or too open, encounter
several of those hump-turbanned merchants from the moon, who have
heard of their quest and seek, out of pure hatred of Ilek-Vad's king,
to thwart them. These merchants imply that they have travelled in
many far lands, and seen many strange things, and that they may have
the information the dreamers seek. This is a baseless promise. They
seek only an excuse to draw out a ruby bottle of strong-scented,
spiced, yellow wine, and in false camaraderie, encourage the dreamer
to drink from it.
Being inhuman these merchants can gulp this without harm. Any dreamer
foolish enough to even sip this heady liquor, wakens strapped to the
back of a zebra whom the tittering merchants are goading across
country towards Dylath Leen. There they will board a sinister galley
propelled forwards by ranks of oars too vast and mechanical of stroke
to be handled by anything sane, and journey across the voids of space,
to endure a brief and unscheduled tour of the city of the moon-beasts,
on the dark side of the moon. Their folly costs their friends some
trouble to rescue them.
Dylath Leen knows of the proclivities of these merchants, but ignores
them as long as their evil remains invisible, for this dark litten
city loves the rubies the merchants bring, and the heady and potent
moon-wine. However, if the dreamers bring an open charge before the
city's rulers, they act, reluctantly.
If they fail to recover their friend before the galley disembarks, the
dreamers must hire their own bright-sailed sloop and follow (first
ensuring the hull of the sloop is well daubed with Space Mead, else
they will fall between the Basalt Pillars that mark the end of the
world, instead of taking off into space as the galley of the
moon-beasts does. The shock of the fall wakes them). If all else
fails, they can rely on Meggs and his cohorts to gather them up in
their packed, furry ranks, and leap for the moon. Such a journey
arrives just outside the city of the moon-beasts, and involves a raid
into the heart of the city whilst the moon-beasts are quiescent. The
moon-beasts have learnt since last immuring a human dreamer within
their walls, and no longer take such dreamers from their city to be
sacrificed for fear of attack by an army of earth cats. They perform
their ceremonies inside their own walls, in order to ensure success.
But, as said previously, the cats of Thran are less organized and
numerous than the cats of Ulthar. They are unable to muster an army,
but only a raiding party. The party, be it solely human or
accompanied by cats, must sneak through the city, rescue the prisoner
from the lightless dungeon in which he or she is incarcerated, and
return again, braving at least one moon-beast sentry. Further details
of the city of the moon-beasts can be found in 'The Dream Quest of
Unknown Kadath", or in abbreviated format in the 'Dreamlands'
source-book.
The last journey through the country to either the boat, or the cats
that promise their return, is dogged by a threat from the cats from
Saturn, that also haunt the moon's dark side. The dreamer with the
lowest Luck must succeed in a Luck roll, or the cats from Saturn make
good their threat, leaping from crag to crag in pursuit.
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