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Chaosium Digest Volume 08 Number 06
Chaosium Digest Volume 8, Number 6
Date: Sunday, November 6, 1994
Number: 1 of 4
Contents:
Porphyry and Asphodel, Part One (Penelope Love) CALL OF CTHULHU
Editor's Note:
As promised, this week's digest contains a terrific four-part
Dreamlands adventure by Penelope Love (author of the Castle of Eyes
and assorted material for Call of Cthulhu and Elric!).
THE CASTLE OF EYES REVISED: Penelope Love is currently in the process
of revising Castle of Eyes, to be set as the second book of a trilogy.
She needs to make changes to fit it in with the other two books, and
also needs to cut 10-20,000 words. Penelope wonders if anyone has
opinions on which bits to cut, alterations, deletions, etc. If so,
write to her at bassst@zikzak.apana.org.au. Penelope says that she
has "a very thick skin with regards to this novel so there are no
worries about offending [her]."
THE HERALD OF DOOM ARRIVED: Early this week, I got my copy of Herald
of Doom, the Newsletter of Elric! Roleplaying. It's a bit short (just
12 pg.) but well laid out and designed, and full of articles from
interesting people including Richard Watts, Mark Morrison, Ross Isaacs
and Lynn Willis. I'll try and write-up a full review for next week.
NECRONOMICON PRESS UPDATES: There are now a few new files in the
Necronomicon Press archives on ftp.csua.berkeley.edu, including a
third update to the 1994 catalog. The files are all available in
/pub/chaosium/necropress.
PENDRAGON HOLY RELICS: Dale Meier (MEIERDALEPAU@bvc.edu) is looking
for descriptions of holy relics (esp. Christian ones) for Pendragon.
He has an article from Dragon issue 201, which gives a couple of
examples, but that's his only reference. If you have any info, drop
Dale a line (or, even better, put together an article about relics for
the Digest).
--------------------
From: Penelope Love <bassst@zikzak.apana.org.au>
Subject: Prophyry and Asphodel, Part One
System: Call of Cthulhu
PORPHYRY AND ASPHODEL by Penelope Love
Copyright 1992 Penelope Love
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Investigator's Introduction V8.6 +69
Keeper's Introduction V8.6 +123
The Castle Called Sleep V8.6 +163
Inside the Castle Called Sleep V8.6 +239
Visiting Mary in the Waking World V8.7 +15
Sleeping Sickness V8.7 +169
Thran and Similar Ports V8.7 +195
A Boat to Ilek-Vad V8.8 +15
Ilek-Vad V8.8 +78
The Wall of Sleep V8.9 +15
The Silver Key V8.9 +120
Returning to the Castle Called Sleep V8.9 +154
Conclusion V8.9 +305
Statistics V8.9 +371
INVESTIGATOR'S INTRODUCTION
This scenario assumes the investigators are dreamers. They experience
a frightening vision. This vision strikes as they are entering or
leaving the Dreamlands, as if they have accidentally broken into a
cyst in the Wall of Sleep.
They feel fastening upon them a leaden weight and terrible drowsiness.
The more they try to fight it the heavier the weight becomes, until
they are paralyzed by it and sink down, speeding towards a distant
light. Up to them comes a terrible, voiceless anguish that speeds
their flight further and faster, until they plummet into the light.
With a shock, they find themselves standing high up on a mountain.
Before them spreads a valley whose lawn of meadow grasses is starred
with the small and fragrant asphodel lily. The heavy, heavenly
fragrance engulfs the dreamers, who feel the titanic pull upon them
has abated for a scarce instant. In the center of the meadow stands a
shrine with an avenue of twelve fallen pillars of porphyry. In the
distance to the west can be seen a city whose high walls gleam
pallidly in the sun, beside a wide, placid river. Beyond the city and
to the south, rolls thick forest.
At the same time the emotion-filled wave of fatigue again engulfs the
dreamers, mixed with the scent of asphodel and the warm, gritty feel
of sun-warmed stone. It is a call for help, an appeal so strong that
it has broken through into their dreams, and now they can see from
where it comes. It wells up from some unguessable depth beneath the
shrine.
The dreamers then surrender to the pull dragging them down, and sink
into blackness, falling at a horrific pace into wakefulness. If they
fail their SAN roll, they lose 1D6 SAN for living such despair. The
vision returns whenever they suffer a nightmare as a result of SAN
loss in the Dreamlands, until they embark on a quest to find its
source.
A Knowledge roll reminds them that the asphodel lily carpets the
valleys of Elysium (the Heaven of the Ancient Greeks). Its fragrance
is said to render immortal the blessed dead.
An experienced dreamer recognizes the distant city as Thran, beside
the great river Oukranos, and the woods to the south as the Enchanted
Forest. The mountain valley is located very close to the borders of
dream. Diligent inquiry at any of those ports where the
wide-journeying sailors of the Dreamlands gather will otherwise
discover the name of the city and river.
A Dream Lore roll remarks on the fashion of the little shrine. To the
eye of the waking world, it has Classical Greek lines with a strong
Egyptian influence. This architecture most closely resembles that of
ruined Golthoth, also known as Golthoth the Damned, that has been dead
in the land of dreams for four thousand years.
KEEPER'S INTRODUCTION
Mary Doherty was in the waking world a poor seamstress, living a hard
life in a grim part of Arkham. In the world of dream she was a wise
woman, dwelling in a small shrine to a forgotten god, high in the
hills above the mystic and impenetrable city of Thran. Kings and
commoners would come to her for advice, but most she loved the
solitude and peace of her mountain fastness, in which the tawdry
hollowness of the waking world mattered little, for every day she
spent in that world was balanced by months in the world of dreams.
Five years ago by the time of the waking world, rather than the pliant
and elastic reckoning of the realm of sleep, Mary Doherty had a week
of terrible dreams. She dreamed that she was paralyzed, that she was
turned into living stone, that she was so deeply asleep that she could
not be woken, and then that this paralyzed and slumbering body was
rent apart. All these dreams came true. Mary Doherty contracted
sleeping sickness, the scourge that swept the world in the wake of the
influenza epidemic and the Great War. Her waking self is a catatonic
wreck immured in the Arkham Sanitorium.
The fate of her dream self was worse. She became a living castle that
every night is torn apart by the ravages of the disease, and every day
must painfully rebuild herself again, or be broken forever by the next
night's onslaught. Hypnos, the god of sleep, has been attracted by
her struggle. The ways of divine love are strange. Hypnos has been
unable to totally vanquish her for the illness that has confused her
boundaries between waking and sleep also defends her; her torment is
her saviour. He has until her waking body dies to overcome her
resistance, and is confident of success. When she finally succumbs he
shall gather her up in the rest of his train, changing her outward
form and soul as suits his whim. She will become immortal, but
inhuman.
Only dreamers can find the Silver Key which will release her both from
her present and future fates. They have to travel to the location
shown by the vision, learn what is happening, then journey to Ilek-Vad
and consult with the new King there. Only then can Mary Doherty, the
lady of asphodels, be freed.
THE CASTLE CALLED SLEEP
Great is the dreamers' shock on arriving at the valley of their
vision, deep in the hills to the east of the deep flowing Oukranos.
Nowhere is seen the quiet, desolate shrine, and nowhere lingers the
heady scent of asphodels. But from a place deep in the hills,
billowing clouds of black rock dust sail, and the deafening grinding
of rock on rock can be heard.
The entrance to the valley is blocked by a wall of wrought black rock,
dressed in blocks too large for humans to have quarried. Scaling one
of the neighboring hills provides a vantage point. Climbing to the
east confirms that the valley is that of the vision, for the Oukranos,
Thran and the Enchanted Forest lie exactly as prefigured. But all
else is changed.
A forsaken castle fills the valley, reaching four wings into the
valleys that climb from it. Two domes rise from the center of the
castle, and an odd, triangular tower juts from the lowest end. During
the night, the castle is torn down by invisible presences, starting at
the outermost ends of the four wings and working inward, to the
accompaniment of the colossal groaning of falling and moving stone,
until only the lowest part remains (the part with the triangular
tower, which blocks the entrance to the valley). All day, the castle
is rebuilt, again by invisible presences, until just before dusk.
Then, all but the ends of the four out-flung wings are rebuilt. These
remain in ruin. At dawn and dusk there is perhaps an hour of hiatus.
Then the endless work begins again.
Mary's dream form lies below. She never entirely succeeds in
repairing her hands and feet, the outermost extremities. Her body
sits with its head at the mouth of the valley, waiting to be reborn.
The shrine, her heart, sits close guarded beneath her left breast.
Ginger Meggs and the Zoogs
The sentinel of this castle is a starving, bedraggled ginger tom cat
called Meggs. At the hour of peace at dusk and dawn, he scrambles
from his post at the shrine, looking for something to eat. Unknown to
this faithful animal, his movements have been under the scrutiny of a
small band of bold Zoogs, whose curiosity has caused them to stray
from the boundaries of the nearby Enchanted Forest. Zoogs and the
cats of Earth's dreamlands made a truce many centuries ago but this
band, seeing a lone cat, succumb to the temptation to attack their
traditional enemy.
The dreamers hear the sound of the battle, the yowls of a surprised
cat, and the hissing battle-cries of the Zoogs. They arrive on the
scene as Meggs is overwhelmed. The victorious Zoogs tie his jaws and
paws together, and drag forward fuel, in preparation for the roasting
alive of their hated foe.
Zoogs are small and flitting and mean. Their 'weird eyes' can be
discerned long before their small, slippery brown outlines can be made
out. It has taken six of them to overwhelm one cat, and it would take
a dozen to contemplate attacking more than one human. Zoogs like to
be sure of these things. The Zoogs flee any attack by the dreamers,
but linger resentfully in the nearby woods, and follow them when they
depart.
It is assumed the dreamers rescue Meggs. If they do not, ignore all
reference to him, and his allies, in the remainder of the scenario.
Meggs is very grateful for being rescued. The dream-Meggs is
considerably more intelligent than his waking form, but he believes
dreamers can understand his speech. He is considerably frustrated
when he realizes they do not. Meggs thanks them, then begs both for
food and for aid for his mistress. When this fails, he attempts to
lure them into the castle, to the shrine, and the folio of paintings
that can give them some clues as to the situation.
He travels with the dreamers if he believes they are helping his
mistress. Meggs has many contacts amongst the cats of dream and
reality, and if separated from the dreamers, can still reach them
almost instantly at night, by leaping up to the moon, and then down to
earth's dreamlands again.
INSIDE THE CASTLE CALLED SLEEP
Major chambers are laid out below. Some organs are left decorously
undescribed. The castle lies in the realm of fancy, not biology.
They are in the same order as they occur in the body, but not always
in exactly the same place.
There are numerous entry points, particularly when the castle is
destroyed. Even when whole, entry can be made at the ends of the
ruined wings. An hour is barely adequate to explore the castle.
Travelling through an area being wrecked requires a Luck roll to avoid
falling masonry. If this Luck roll fails, a successful Dodge or Jump
is required, or the dreamer suffers 4D6 damage. This area works its
way up or down during the time the investigators are exploring. Halls
and corridors lie destroyed or whole around this boundary, and any
description of the castle must recollect this. All the halls are
empty and bare, and the castle echoes with the sounds of the
cataclysm, occasionally interspersed with a low but persistent
moaning.
The Corridors
There are long, red and purple painted, gloomy hallways that branch
off into smaller, pink painted passages at regular intervals, with the
occasional entry into ivory halls whose lofty roofs are supported by
tapering and fluted columns, and yellow corridors so small that they
can only be negotiated sideways. These winding and seemingly endless
hallways form a deceptive maze which map-making or Knowledge skills
are required to successfully negotiate, if Meggs is not leading them.
The Chamber of the Stomach
The walls and ceiling of this huge and well lit hall are covered with
mosaics and frescoes, of feasts; of eating and drinking, making merry;
Saturnalia. The light is very yellow. The dreamers feel bloated when
they are in the room, and ravenous once they have passed through.
The Chamber of the Womb
This is a chamber with twelve vaulted recesses in its roof. These
recesses are covered with a Michelangelo-like painting, of countless
cherubs flying amongst brilliant blue skies and stupendous clouds.
The walls are of pink-veined marble so thin as to be translucent. The
pink-tinged air is thick, drowsy, and tastes of salt. It seems to
flow around and uphold the dreamers, until they feel as if they are
floating. This is a strange sensation, but refreshing. Each dreamer
gains 1D6 SAN on their first visit to this chamber.
The Multiplicity of the Lungs
This starts as two lofty corridors leading east from the entrance of
the head, or very many small and confusing passages leading west from
the lower regions. The corridors branch off again and again, becoming
smaller and smaller until no human can fit into them at all. They
surround rooms that also become smaller and smaller towards the center
of the castle. The chambers are painted a deep, egg-shell blue, and
the corridors white. The blue-tinged air is ice cold and
feather-light, like champagne. Dreamers are able to move faster than
normal - their DEX increases by half. They feel light but fragile.
Those who linger long here first act as if intoxicated and then
experience severe headaches.
The Chamber of the Tongue
This low roofed, gloomy chamber is floored with a thick, velvet indigo
carpet that wriggles voluptuously beneath the investigator's tread.
As they pass through the front of the chamber, they have a sour taste
in their mouth, through the middle a sweet taste, and through the back
of the chamber, a bitter taste. It leads to corridors branching north
and south to the Echo chambers, and west to the chambers of the Giant
Crystals and the final Chamber of the Brain. Stairs up lead to the
triangular tower.
The Echo Chambers (Ears)
These whorl-corridors lead upwards and outward through 360 degrees and
cannot be circumnavigated by human dreamers. Listen rolls here detect
sentences, endlessly re-echoed. The final phrase of each is repeated
until it dies below the threshold of human hearing. The words are
peculiarly muffled, but distinct, journeying as they do across time,
and from the far world of waking.
Man (Deep Irish brogue):
"I would expect a dog to be so faithful, but not a cat."
Man (Polish accent. Tenor. Brisk, professional, old):
"It is the sleeping sickness. There is no cure."
Man (Irish brogue again):
"I shall pray for her soul."
Female (timid, old, Irish):
"This is your mother, and Miss Hazelhurst, to visit you, Mary dear."
Female (crisp, old, affectionate Yankee):
"Please wake up, Mary. Five years is too long. Five years...".
The Giant Orbs
These mammoth, opaque, black crystals sit just beneath the Chamber of
the Brain. They are roofed over. Touching them incurs a vision.
First is seen the face carved into the back of the porphyry shrine.
The face smiles knowingly. Then, as if passing through the thin
barrier of stone behind the image, sight falls into a great pit, into
blackness plunged beyond penetrating, almost beyond thought. From its
very nadir, comes wave after wave of intense and infinite weariness
that must nevertheless be fought, fought to the very end, or in this
depth the dreamer-castle will not die, but be lost to the thrall of
the god of sleep.
The Chamber of the Brain
A putrid stench wafts from this chamber through the rest of the
chambers of the head. A low moaning babble fills it.
This vast hall is filled with countless heaped bodies in every stage
of decomposition. The floor is slick with rot, the fine draperies and
furnishings slimy with decay. This sight costs 1/1D6 SAN.
Each corpse is the same woman, and represents a fragment of Mary's
character, thought, intellectual or dreaming resources, that she
musters to fight the sleeping sickness. Each decaying aspect is in
some measure alive, tortured by the disease that has corrupted Mary's
sense of "I", and thrown her separate thoughts onto a ghastly,
self-aware, semi-existence. Hence the low and continuous moaning.
Even the dust of the hall moves sharply from beneath the
investigator's feet.
Each dawn the corpses rise, although without coherent voice. They
spontaneously generate from amidst their throng a new thought-Mary to
supervise the restoration of the castle. With terrific effort this
Mary manages to do so. She cannot be distracted from her task for
more than a moment (and the result is the same speech as that
described in the visit to the waking Mary). At dusk this Mary "dies",
to join the rest of the heaped, but definitely stirring, corpses.
The Twin Domes
The southern dome is empty, filled with a dim, supernal light. The
northern dome encloses the four chambers of the heart.
The Four Chambers of the Heart
These four lofty, arching chambers are a hall built within the
northern dome. Beneath their own roof is a third room, a strong
walled, low roofed and heavily fortified vault with only one small,
pitch black entrance that humans have to crawl through, one by one. A
drowsy blue light plays about the roof of this vault, that contracts
into a dense and impenetrable miasma about it when destruction
threatens. Within this vault is guarded the shrine.
The Shrine
After crawling through the entrance for longer than they afterwards
care to remember, the dreamers find themselves standing in the meadow
of their vision, at the end of the avenue of fallen pillars leading to
the shrine. The shrine stands before them, surrounded by asphodels
nodding in the fresh mountain breeze, and the view is as lofty and
pleasant as before.
This view is paper-thin and unreal, held in Mary's heart as a thin
thread of return to sanity. Dreamers who stray from the line of
fallen pillars and the shrine feel the reality diminishing, and feel
the boundaries, the membranes, of dream close about them, thronging
thick with unvisioned nightmares. If they do not return at this hint,
they wake.
The shrine is built also of the white crystal porphyry, and forms an
open veranda with twelve steps leading to it. On the veranda sits a
large folio book, its pages idly flapping.
On the back of the veranda wall, facing out over the mountain valley
towards the river, is a carving within a round frame very much eroded
by weather and age. A Geology roll recollects that porphyry is a very
difficult mineral to carve with an exactness, and yet the image is
detailed, and without flaw. It is "a beauteous bearded face, [a]
curved smiling face, Olympian brow, and dense locks waving and poppy
crowned".
Beneath the carving, which is so life-like that the dreamers expect
the locks of hair to blow in the wind, is a curious thing, a large,
key hole. There is no obvious door. The hidden lock cannot be
picked. The key hole was shaped by Mary's subconscious as her only
means of escape.
A successful Dream Lore roll decides that the carving depicts Hypnos,
the capricious and baleful god of sleep, whose outward guise is "young
with a youth that is outside time," but whose real features are
reputed to be born of nightmares.
The Folio of Paintings
Early sketches show details, such as a fallen pillar with grass
growing about it, a single lily, parts of the shrine, and views across
the mountains and valley. Meggs appears in several of them, at a time
when his dream self was fat and full of happiness. A note beneath a
view of the shrine reads, "This is the place of which I have first and
most remembrance".
As the book progresses, its sketches become lively paintings. A view
of the woods to the south is captioned "the Enchanted Forest". A view
of the city and river has written beneath, "On a clear day, in the
distance to the west, can be seen the deep flowing river Oukranos, and
the mystic and impenetrable city of Thran, on the fringe of the
scented jungle of Kled".
Another picture depicts two elderly women in black, both beaming. The
dress of one of the women is much darned; the dress of the second is
of good quality stuff. They sit on a park bench beneath an overcast
and sullen sky whose horizon is disfigured by the smoke belched out by
sooty, brick mill-piles. A sluggish, black river winds by. The
ugliness of the picture shocks the investigators, as they realize they
are looking upon the waking world. There is nothing ugly in the land
of dreams. The sketch is labelled with an exactness that strikes the
reader as sarcastic, "Mother and Miss Hazelhurst at the delightful
Mills Gate Park, Arkham, Massachusetts. Mother has just remarked on
the beauty of the day."
The next painting shows a smiling, bearded man, splendidly dressed in
crimson, silver and purple hues. He has set aside his
pshent-headdress, revealing a prematurely bald head. He sits beneath
the shade of a damask canopy fringed with cloth-of-gold, down hill
from the shrine. Bowls of fruit, wine in a ruby flask, and crystal
glasses are laid out invitingly. Behind him, mellow rays of sun fall
sweepingly between a glorious vista of clouds. Alongside this sketch
is written, "Once a year Aubeg, the king of Ilek-Vad passes by, on his
pilgrimage to the temple of loveliness at Kiran over the crystal clear
Oukranos. It is he who told me that people can only enter within
Thran's alabaster walls if they tell the sentries three dreams beyond
belief."
The second to last painting is a loving depiction of the carving on
the back wall of the veranda. A note beside the painting reads "The
name of this god is forgotten, but surely he is all that is good and
beautiful, whose worshippers created so lovely a dwelling place". But
there is one noticeable difference. Nowhere is the key-hole depicted.
The wall beneath the carving is a smooth, unyielding surface of stone.
The final painting shows Mary sleeping on the sheltered steps of the
shrine. The carven face of Hypnos overlooks her, bland and
insufferably guileful, and watchful Meggs sits before. Beneath the
sketch runs the faint, pencilled phrase, "Watchers till she wakes".
Although this is apparently in Mary's style, any close examination by
an investigator with an Art skill decides it is a cunning forgery.
The hand that drew it is undeniably masculine.
--------------------
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