Tag: cthulhu fhtagn

“There is a hole in your mind…”

More accurately, there seems to be a hole in my Delta Green collection.  Delta Green is, of course, the modern government conspiracy/investigation setting for the Call of Cthulhu RPG; and it has an internal narrative in its back-story.  I bring this up because I have just picked up the latest book (Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly: book-book, not gaming supplement-book), and it’s clear that there is a gap in the narrative: apparently, some stuff went down when I wasn’t looking.  I think that I must have not bought a particular book or something, but I can’t figure out which one.  Minor mystery, but slightly aggravating.

Here’s what I do have:

There’s a couple of short stories on The Unspeakable Oath site and all that, but I don’t think that they’re the missing links.  What am I missing?

So… Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly.

It’s the latest Delta Green* novel, which got funded via Kickstarter.  The electronic version is supposedly going out today to backers, with the hardcopy being available in about a week or so: I totally missed this one, so I ain’t getting either until they make either available to regular buyers.  Can’t wait: I rarely buy book tie-ins, but my appetite for Mythos stuff is nigh-insatiable.

Above a certain level of quality, of course.  Some of you probably know what I mean already, and the rest of you are fortunate not to.

Moe Lane

PS: Ken Hite’s Cthulhu 101 came in the mail last week.  Damned funny and damned useful: there’s stuff in there that I missed.

PPS: “Philosophy,” a DG story, via The Unspeakable Oath.

*For those unfamiliar with the game: Call of Cthulhu meets secret government anti-Mythos conspiracy.  Made out of Crystalline Awesome with tightly-woven WIN inserts.

WHO LET MODO GET INTO THE HPL STASH?

Dear God, the last thing that I need to read in the morning is Maureen Dowd referencing Lovecraft:

The influential horror writer H. P. Lovecraft knew better than to be too literal in his description of monsters.

In the short story “The Outsider,” Lovecraft’s narrator offers a description that matches how some alarmed Democrats view Tea Partiers: “I cannot even hint what it was like, for it was a compound of all that is unclean, uncanny, unwelcome, abnormal and detestable. It was the ghoulish shade of decay, antiquity and desolation; the putrid, dripping eidolon of unwholesome revelation; the awful baring of that which the merciful earth should always hide. God knows it was not of this world.”

Aside from everything else, that’s a faintly silly choice of Lovecraft stories to reference.  To quote Ken Hite… quoting HPL: Continue reading WHO LET MODO GET INTO THE HPL STASH?

The Matter of Ghouls.

Specifically, Lovecraft’s ghouls.  I hate to say, but… they just ain’t that scary to me, sorry.  Or mind-blastingly evil.  Mi-Go?  Sure: brains-in-a-can and deep space frightfulness.  Deep Ones?  No problem, especially since Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity did a revamp.  Great Race?  Yeah, those SOBs are pretty freaky-deaky when you realize that they’ve got a real problem with personal head space.  But… ghouls?

OK.  You eat dead people.  Hold on, am I dead?  No?  Well, then, you just keep on with gnawing on that head then, buddy:  he’s obviously past caring and it’s nobody I know. I mean, seriously: read “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” again.  You can recruit those guys as a ally race in that one.

They got real nuanced after “Pickman’s Model,” is all I’m saying.

Moe Lane

Definition of “Why am I surprised, again?”

So I buy a copy of Cthulhu’s Reign, which is a collection of stories which are all about H.P. Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones’ return to, and conquest of, Earth… and about halfway through it I catch myself thinking Man, these stories are really, really depressing.

No.  REALLY?  You think?

In other news: where’s my blessed copy of Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity?