“Mountains of Madness featuring John Williams” [GURPS 4e]

“Mountains of Madness featuring John Williams” – Google Docs

“Mountains of Madness featuring John Williams” Tenth Anniversary Soundtrack (2021)

 

Mountains of Madness (directed by Guillermo del Toro; starring George Clooney, Octavia Spencer, Gary Oldman, and Kristen Stewart) was one of the highest-grossing films of 2011 on Homeline. Del Toro even managed to score John Williams for the soundtrack, which (as usual) netted Williams an Academy Award nomination.  It’s widely considered to be one of Williams’ better work; the ‘Main Theme’ in particular somehow manages to be simultaneously peppy, pulpy, and deeply creepy, all at once. The tenth anniversary commemorative soundtrack is itself rather nice, with charmingly retro things like physical artwork — and an actual compact disc inside!  The whole thing has “collector’s item” stamped all over it. Well, not literally, because that would be crass.

Unfortunately, some idiot for a cross-time corporation brought the CD with him to an alternate timeline — specifically, Earth Beta (current local year: 2018), which absolutely has a John Williams but does not have this particular version of Mountains of Madness.  Earth Beta also does have compact discs, although thankfully for the Paratime Secret there’s just enough differences in the coding to make it impossible for somebody to simply insert the disc and hit ‘play.’  So far, everybody’s who has seen the CD cover is assuming that it’s a funny and wistful fake.

 

That will change the moment somebody figures out how to make the CD play on a Earth Beta device.  Upon listening to it, even trained musicologists will be convinced (much against their will) that this is somehow a legitimate John Williams score, mostly because it is a legitimate John Williams score from an alternate timeline. Earth Beta has the concept of alternate timelines, by the way. It also has something called ‘YouTube’ (Homeline uses a different, much superior service that was looted from Shikaku-Mon’s Kingdom of Louisiana), which means that theoretically the entire Paratime Secret could be revealed to all of Earth Beta roughly five minutes after an obsessive John Williams fan starts uploading.

 

Maybe the authorities on Earth Beta will not put two and two together.  Maybe it’ll just be a nine days’ wonder, and that will be the end of it.  And maybe it’ll be the catalyst that finally reveals the secret on the first alternate timeline that Homeline ever discovered.  But none of that will happen if somebody gets that CD back first, right?

 

Track List

 

  1. Main Theme (3:45)
  2. The Flight, Part 1 (4:21)
  3. Winter (0:47)
  4. Base Camp (2:20)
  5. Discovery (7:41)
  6. The Flight, Part 2 / Mountains of Madness, Part 2 (6:30)
  7. The Descent (1:15)
  8. History Lesson (7:30)
  9. The City (3:11)
  10. Slow Hunt (2:00)
  11. Tekeli-li! (0:34)
  12. Mountains of Madness, Part 2 (6:10)
  13. Main Theme / Tekeli-li! (reprise) (6:10)

 

The material presented here is my original creation, intended for use with the GURPS system from Steve Jackson Games. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games.

GURPS is a registered trademarks of Steve Jackson Games, and the art here is copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy.

8 thoughts on ““Mountains of Madness featuring John Williams” [GURPS 4e]”

  1. Dammit, Moe. You’re making me want things I could never possibly have, which is the unhealthy kind of aspirational goal.

  2. In this great big crazy world of ours I can imagine someone bringing your track list to life on YouTube.
    What is Homeline’s service called?

  3. … this is your method of extorting money out of the Homeliners, isn’t it? You have probably even gotten juvenat treatments and a canoptic jar set full of spare organs out of previous deals.
    .
    Lucky devil.

  4. For pity’s sake, don’t DO that!

    It was only the fact that I caught the GURPS 4e label at the last second that prevented me from jetting off to Amazon to buy this nonexistent piece of shiny. Unhealthy aspirational goals indeed.

    Then there is your use of the term “Paratime Secret”. Was that a deliberate invocation of H. Beam Piper? And who says this Earth Beta was the first timeline discovered, I’ve heard…wait a minute.

    What Timeline IS this?

    1. I think that they’ve actually called it the Paratime Secret at one point in GURPS Infinite Worlds. Infinity is Paratime, more or less; their rival Centrum is more or less Lensman without the actual Lens to keep them from all being jackwagons.

    2. Also: this is October, so you’re getting a lot of spooky and horror stuff this month. And what’s more horrible than something awesome that you will never, ever get? 😉

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