In the e-Mail: @hplhs’s The Rats in the Walls.

The CD for The Rats in the Walls (including props) will be coming by regular mail, but the HPL Historical Society sends over the MP3 version when the physical copy ships.  And if you’re a fan of radio plays of this sort; the physical copy is worth the extra price, largely because it does come with props that are absolutely designed to be used in tabletop games. The HPLHS is very gamer-friendly, and it shows.

Tweet of the Night, Hey You Should Get This @HPLHS DART Free Download edition.

Seriously. You should. The HPLHS has some good artists in it and it’s free. I mean, geez, now I have to turn my phone back on to get it on there for the trip.

 

https://twitter.com/reberclark/status/933220845971034112

@HPLHS’s new Dark Adventure Radio Theater: The Rats in the Walls.

Not coming out until November, but the HPL Historical Society puts out some good radio plays.  I look forward to listening to The Rats in the Walls, which I recall being a thoroughly over-the-top story about poisoned ancestry and dark deeds and people fainting at what other people’s family do.  And, of course, the rats. The rats in the walls…

Just finished @HPLHS’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

As to the novel itself, I am persuaded by Ken Hite:

Which is perhaps the most frightening thing, to me at any rate, about this piece. A (patchwork?) first draft, written in well under two months in 1927 and abandoned wrongly and foolishly by the author, is the second-greatest horror novel of all time. (Lovecraftian italics very much intentional.) The mind reels at how good a novel, and perhaps how many more years of Lovecraft’s life, he and we were cheated of by HPL’s “renunciation” of this work. It sat in pieces in his files or wherever for the next decade, while *four separate publishers* asked him if he had a novel they could see. Talk about lost and saved in a library.

…The radio play does it justice.  It’s two hours long, but The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is worth it if you at all enjoy audio-only horror.  This one may be my single favorite HPLHS Dark Adventure Radio Theater, and I rate this series highly.  They really do get the atmosphere right in this particular production.

HPL Historical Society giving away digital copies of DART’s The Call of Cthulhu.

That would be the Dark Adventure Theater Radio adaptation of The Call of Cthulhu, and I hadn’t gotten that one yet.  Which is nice: nine times out of ten, when I see one of these specials or giveaways it’s for something that I already own, so I can’t take advantage of it or anything.  Mind you, the physical CDs typically come with physical props that could be used in later gaming — HPLHS is absolutely aware of the various Call of Cthulhu RPGs — so I may pick up one later anyway.  But for right now I can still listen to it.

They’re doing it for Lovecraft’s birthday, so get it soon.

Time for @HPLHS’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and bed.

I have been, ah, persuaded that going to bed too late and making up for it with naps in the day is probably not good for me, so I’m trying to keep more regular hours.  Which has led to… more naps in the day, but apparently that’s just my body taking advantage of more regular sleep patterns to demand still more sleep.  It’s probably like a spring unwinding, in that special ‘not like a spring unwinding at all’ way.

Anyway: time for some Dark Adventure Radio Theater (The Case of Charles Dexter Ward), then sleep.

In the E-mail: @HPLHS’s “The Haunter of the Dark.”

Specifically, the Dark Adventure Radio Theater The Haunter of the Dark.  The actual CD goes out next week, but if you pre-ordered it, check your email.  They’re sending out links.

The Haunter of the Dark is HP Lovecraft’s last known story, one of his best stories, and also one of his most influential ones. Lots of people have taken no little inspiration from HPL’s Starry Wisdom cult and/or Shining Trapezohedron; there’s just something about the concepts that spark ideas in modern Mythos writers. And let me take this opportunity to recommend, once again, The Starry Wisdom Library: The Catalogue of the Greatest Occult Book Auction of All Time to all serious Lovecraft fans or gamemasters.  It is a marvelous resource for anyone writing or gaming in this genre, and (just in case the title didn’t make it obvious) it draws directly from The Haunter of the Dark. Check it out. Check it all out.

In the e-mail: @HPLHS’s Dagon: War of Worlds. (DART)

DART stands for “Dark Adventure Radio Theater,” in case you’ve missed somehow that I buy the HPL Historical Society’s radio dramas whenever I happen to have a combination of a bank account balance and the sweet, horrible cravings.  I picked up Dagon: War of Worlds (which has been a bit expanded from Lovecraft’s original story) when I could no longer keep myself from pre-ordering The Haunter of the Dark. I bought the physical CDs, of course — they come with props — but the HPLHS sends over the mp3s of the shows when you buy a physical copy, so Dagon’s unzipping as we speak.

The anticipation consumes me.  What terrors will be revealed?  What dizzying vistas shall I… um, hear? We’ll soon find out…

New DART pre-order from @HPLHS: The Haunter of the Dark.

This is gonna be one of the good ones. The Haunter of the Dark is a great story and the HPL Historical Society always does a good job with their Dark Adventure Radio Theatre entries. I look forward to it.

Also in the mail: Miskatonic University Monograph: Codex Beltrán-Escavy.

The full title is Archaeological Interpretations of Myth Patterns in the Iconography of the Codex Beltran-Escavy (Miskatonic University Press), and at ten bucks it is one of the best Call of Cthulhu RPG props I’ve ever seen that isn’t actually explicitly a Call of Cthulhu RPG prop.  The conceit is that the pamphlet is a scholarly monograph describing and analyzing a pre-Columban Codex depicting a hitherto unknown deity; while the scholars themselves are apparently blissfully ignorant of what is actually being portrayed in the pictographs, any halfway competent Mythos scholar (and/or person who plays Cthulhu Mythos games) will instantly catch on to the Codex’s true meaning.  You can easily craft several adventures around this monograph, with it as the central prop.

The artwork is also very nice. There are color drawings and a fold-out centerpiece.  The HPLHS really worked on this one.