MIscellaneous Call of Cthulhu Stuff

[Ancient History]

Thinking of expanding the old Ancient's Polygraph and taking a gander at what new material I've to add. Here's the stuff so far.

Keeper's Option: Hollywood Cthulhu

Inspirations: Ancient Images by Ramsey Campbell, Chiaroscuro (2000AD Prog 1507-1517), Flicker by Theodore Roszak, John Carpenter's Cigaratte Burns

The theatre was darker than a dead moon night, and warm as the breath on the back of your neck. Every heart in the room beat to the flicker of the reel as the curtain went up; an old man with a violin down front began a slow and keening draw as the title screen came into view, letters twenty feet tall that burned unnaturally for a few minutes as some lumbering shadow blotted them out, a grotesque hand or paw that almost seemd to reach through the screen...
Roll camera and...action.

The 1920s was the beginning of film making as we would recognize it today - feature length productions financed by studios, emerging technologies dynamically changing the way movies were filmed and seen, the young industry dominated by Los Angeles, and by the end of the decade the emergence of "talkies" replacing theatre organs and orchestra pits. But what happens if you point a camera at Cthulhu, or put Pickman behind a film camera in a graveyard at midnight? How do investigators react to the shoggoth on the screen, or the flickering after-image of Nyarlathotep that only has existence while the reel is running?
Keeper's Option: Hollywood Cthulhu is a collection of optional rules for incorporating early film into your campaign, offering narrative suggestions and mechanics for exposing player characters to the Mythos magic of the silver screen.

The Mythos on Film
Part of the impact of seeing a Mythos entity in real life is the sudden and terrifying knowledge that the thing is real; the horror and mind-rending revulsion is as much a result of the terrifying realization that the investigator's comfortable view of the world is fundamentally wrong. Images of Mythos entities and lore can capture only a fraction of this, though that fraction may be the straw that broke the investigator's brain. Actual films of horrific acts and creatures can do a better job - but will still somewhat pale to the real thing, no matter what the skill of the director or cameraman. At the same time, the storyline of a film can concentrate significant knowledge in its minutes or hours, and viewers may come away with a glimmering of greater understanding as well as the shakes. To reflect these attributes, Mythos Films may be given a similar set of attributes and presentation as Mythos tomes, reflecting both their educational and spine-tingling possibilities. The general format is given below, followed by more specific guidelines.

Film Title Year of Production, Director: Director's Name (Film Format; Running Time)
Film synopsis.
Sanity Loss 0/1; Skill Percentile Increase%, Time to Study, Spells: As Appropriate

Films without Mythos elements typically have no Sanity loss and no increase in Cthulhu Mythos skill percentiles. Keepers may chose to give particularly exceptional films sanity loss of 0/1 or 1/1d3; and very well made films made give a few percentiles (usually 1-3%) in the new skill Film Lore. An actual occult ritual captured on film might provide a few percentiles of Occult. The "study time" refers to the amount of time necessary to gain a complete understanding of the film - for a simple film, a single viewing or two may suffice, while for a deeper or more involved film multiple viewings and ancillary research and contemplation may be required. In some circumstances, an entire spell or ritual may be filmed - though given the restrictions of research and limitations of early technology, few of these spells are complete or accurate. An example of each is given below.

Under Arkham 1930, Director: Gracie Jones (35mm; 2 reels/45 minutes)
This early horror film is essentially an unauthorized treatment of Robert Harrison Blake's "The Stairs in the Crypt." Considered by many a daring experiment in horror, the combination of lighting and make-up produces effects that effect viewers even today.
Sanity Loss 0/1d2; Film Lore +2%, 3 hours to study and comprehend, Spells: none.

Beneath the Sands 1925, Director: Gracie Jones (35mm; 3 reels/67 minutes)
A shoe-string epic, Gracie Jones's first feature film has a skeleton crew out in the middle of the Mojave - for sets, he had cast and crew excavate a portion of De Mille's lost "City of the Pharaohs," which had been built for The Ten Commandments and then covered in sand. The plot is mostly taken from Jones' increasing obsession with Egyptian Masonry, and culminates with an actual Egyptian rite in a buried chamber made up like an Egyptian tomb. The culmination of the rite includes another of Jones' stunning effects, a nearly transparent figure of the recently deceased actor Joshua Moorhead.
Sanity Loss 0/1; Occult +1%, 5 hours to study and comprehend, Spells: Remortification

If a Mythos entity or ritual is captured on spell, the different rules apply. The appearance of a Mythos entity has no more than half the SAN loss of an equivalent real-life scene. For example, seeing a star-spawn of Cthulhu typically causes the loss of 1d6/1d20 SAN - a film of a star-spawn of Cthulhu would cost no more than 1d6÷2/1d20÷2 - less, depending on how much actually appears on screen. Barring extremely lengthy films (6 hours or more), Mythos films will not generally allow a Mythos percentile increase over 2 or 3 percentiles - and even that would require weeks of repeated viewings. For an example:

The Demon Star 1933, Director: Gracie Jones (75mm; 2 reels/43 minutes)
An early "lost" film, Gracie Jones' final offering proved too heinous and outre to be a commercial success; it was shown only once, for a limited engagement at the Piedmont Theatre in Boston in 1933, at the end of which thirty members of the audience and six out of seven staff - including one of the two projectionists were dead, the theater reduced to cinders and the only known copy of the third and final reel of the film ashes. The only sane survivor was Frei Kaliko, a reviewer for the Transcript who left during the changing of the reels. His abortive review describes the first half of the film as a boring, tepid and muddled affair influenced by scientifiction.
Sanity Loss 1d10÷2/1d100÷2; Cthulhu Mythos +3%, 8 weeks to study and comprehend, Spells: Call Azathoth

Captured by the Camera
A conceit or illusion of film is that it captures something ephemeral and transient - and, by some accounts, spiritual. Empirical rationalists may scoff at the idea, but certain superstitious individuals - or those deep in the dark sciences - are more wary and respectful of the ability of film to capture things - ideas, emotions, fragments of spirit. Certain entities that are more idea or concept may be captured - or summoned - in this fashion, the frozen image of the film their anchor on this plane, or their prison. Ghosts and wraiths are popular subjects, but Keepers might also consider a new mask of Nyarlathotep, a flickering black-and-white image that steps out of the silver screen but ceases to exist once the projector stops...of course, knowing the Black Pharaoh, the film may only end when he allows it to. Fire vampires and other creatures of light and darkness may also become ensnared by a sufficiently canny sorcerer using the Enchant Film spell.

New Spell: Enchant Film
This relatively recent spell is based on a much more ancient spell, Enchant Image, where wizards of old would capture certain Mythos entities within a painting or other work of art by means of a camera obscura. This older spell suffered from the imperfection of the process, and the entities were wont to escape before their designated release, but the film medium allows a nearly perfect capture of the creatures' image, and thus a better prison. The ritual requires proper lighting, a camera, and specially-crafted film, and three hours and 4 magic points to set up - then the sorcerer may cast a Summon or Call/Bind spell and attempt to bind the entity to the film; this requires the normal requirements for the summoning ritual, and a successful POW roll to bind it to the film. If the binding fails, the entity is free to do whatever it wishes. The magical processes make it impossible to create a print of a film without destroying the old one, though some sorcerers may do this if the old print is damaged or degraded - this requires another 4 magic points to transfer the bound entity to the new print.

A Mythos entity bound to a film appears only as images on the film itself, and re-appears as a flickering black-and-white version of itself whenever the film is played - but only while the reel is rolling. While the sorcerer is alive, they may issue the entity orders while in this state; others may play the film and release the creature, but none can command it. Further, the shadowy chiaroscuro Mythos entities gain a vulnerability to fire (fire attacks do double damage, no armor applies to fire attacks), no matter whether they had such a weakness before; film fire-vampires and the like typically combust a few moments after appearing on screen. The only way to permanently destroy a Mythos film monster is to destroy the film - if the creature is defeated but the film remains, it reappears at full hit points, magic points, POW, etc. when next the film is played.

Keeper's Option: The Source Text and One-Tome Campaign
The Shiatra Book of the Damned! Even the dread Necronomicon is derived from only part of its lore… (paraphrase of an old Dr. Strange comic)

Keeper’s Option: The Source Text and One-Tome Campaign
Occult knowledge tend to be taken with the idea of transmission from an ultimate source of knowledge, that all alchemy may be traced back to an emerald tablet, or that there existed at some point a perfect knowledge or understanding of hidden things which has since been lost, save for certain records – and those records in turn have been transmitted down the centuries in different forms, the lore dispersed, diluted, or just referring back ultimately to that one perfect source text from which all secret knowledge is derived.

The idea can be adapted for a CoC chronicle fairly easily – the idea being that the literary tradition of the Mythos tome traces back to certain fundamental source texts is not a far stretch. The Necronomicon already has popular appeal as “the” greatest source of Mythos-lore, it is not much of a stretch for it to be the literary forebear of the Nameless Cults and other works, which were written after the author consulted some version of the dreaded tome. Sorcerers and scholars could spend their entire lives and careers seeking out such grails…although if the Keeper/players are purists, the Necronomicon itself may be a little too common, its history too well known to be the mysterious and mythical source text.

The source text need not be an actual physical book, either – the Shining Trapazehedron, for example, could contain in crystalline form the entire knowledge of the Yithian culture, and everyone from Abdul Alhazred to Von Junzt learned their spells and damnable secrets by gazing into its depths, their human minds able to take away only a tiny fraction of their accumulated dark wisdom; or the Emerald Tablet could have been created as a secret research project at the Library of Alexandria, where all the diluted Mythos knowledge of the world was first collected and set down for all time...and then somebody accidentally summoned Cthugha and it was lost from human memory.
In any event, standard CoC statistics for a source text fall a bit flat because of the breadth and depth of its knowledge (can you remember the disappointment when the Necronomicon only gave +16% Cthulhu Mythos percentiles, or didn’t include a particular spell?) At the Keeper’s Option, the following rule may help represent such an ultimate text.

Keeper’s Option: The Source Text
As the source of all Mythos lore (or at least a sizable chunk of it) the Source Text has similar statistics to other Mythos tome: language, sanity cost, Cthulhu Mythos percentile modifier, and study time. The difference is that the last three factors are modified by a *, indicating that they are cumulative in effect. That is, for every study period in weeks that a character reads and reflects on the contents of the source book, their CM percentile goes up and their sanity goes down – this reflects continued study and attempted mastery of the source text. In this way, a character can progress relatively rapidly in Mythos knowledge (and descend into gibbering madness just as fast) by simple possession of the tome.
Spells are handled a little differently. Since the Source Text conceivably holds every spell, instead of increasing their Cthulhu Mythos percentile the character may choose to learn a number of spells of their choosing equal to the percentile points they would have gained; the study period still costs sanity however. At the Keeper’s discretion, characters may mix-and-match learning spells and gaining Cthulhu Mythos percentile points with each study session.

Sample Source Text:
The Tabula Sacer (Latin, c. 800 B.C., “The Etruscan”)
In Latin, the term “Sacer” – from which the word “sacred” was later derived – meant something set apart from the normal order of things, and included objects, places, and beings that were both blessed and accursed. The “sacred” or “accursed” tablet dates back to the early period of the Roman kingdom, around the time of the Law of the Twelve Tables, and their origin is semilegendary—supposedly they were the laws of the Old Ones, above or separate from the gods themselves, as recited to their sole priest, an accursed and outlaw Etruscan who preached blasphemy. Many men wished to end the Etruscan’s life, but he was the property of his strange gods and none dared touch him. The Etruscan circulated the tablets – actually a collection of thin marble sheets—in small groups, appearing in strange places at strange times to bestow them on certain patricians in the Po valley. Madness, sorcery, and death tended to follow them, until the leading men of Rome contrived to banish the Etruscan, collected his blasphemous tables, and entomb them. They did not stay buried for long, and fragments of their wisdom escaped through the Etruscan’s students and followers, down through the centuries. It is said Abdul Alhazred is the last human to have studied the complete collection, still inviolate in some Near East outpost of the Roman Empire, where they had been moved after the fall of the Western Empire. These tablets, they say, are the dark source of all lore of the elder things…and the seed, perhaps, of all the secret cults that honor the things from the dark between far stars, and beyond the angles of the world. Sanity Loss: 1d4/1d10*, Cthulhu Mythos +10%*, 20 weeks to study and comprehend*.

Added Option: Keepers concerned about unbalancing their campaign with a Source Text can keep the book cumulative but reduce the rate by which a character can gain lore, though this requires a bit of additional bookkeeping. For every study period beyond the first, the character requires one more week of study and gains one less Cthulhu Mythos percentile, to a minimum of 1. This “diminishing return” can still give rapid gain in CM knowledge, but lengthens the character life span.

Example
Squamous Smith, Mythos P.I. (San 80, Cthulhu Mythos 10%) has come across the legendary “thirteenth table” – the Tabula Sacer. He takes closes his business and emerges 20 weeks later, stubble-bearded and with a haunted look in his eyes (San 75, Cthulhu Mythos 20%). He drives into town to stock up on coffee and night light bulbs, checks his mail, then returns to his old cabin in the woods to continue. After 21 weeks, a gaunt Smith comes forth again (San 68, Cthulhu Mythos 29%), wiser and with a curious fear of spiders and a compulsion to eat flies. Townsfolk start to whisper as he loads up and retreats to his hermitage again – to emerge 22 weeks later (more than a year after he started!) with white streaks in his hair (San 60, Cthulhu Mythos 37%).

Alternate Option: Keepers may also balance a Source Text against general Mythos tomes by letting them only add points to Specialized Cthulhu Mythos Knowledge Skills instead. These specialized source texts go in-depth in only a single subject, but are comprehensive in their information. Spells are also limited to those related to the subject.

Sample Source Text:
The Severn Sheepskin (Cymric, c. 100 A.D., Gram son of Gram)
This large, tanned skin was discovered in Goatswood of the Severn Valley, the remains of some prehistoric and massive relative of the sheep family, now obviously extinct. It lays out in great detail the worship of the Black Goat of the Thousand Young, a nature deity worshipped by the native Celtic inhabitants of the Severn Valley before the coming of the Brythonic peoples, and according to the legendarium of the Severn Sheepskin itself those people in turn learned it from an older, pre-human race that inhabited the wood. It is currently located in Temphill, and not available to view to the general public as a matter of decency. Sanity Loss: 1d2/1d6*, Shub-Niggurath Cycle +20%*, 16 weeks to study and comprehend*.

The One Tome Campaign
A one tome campaign is a series of investigations in a setting, usually one limited by geography, where there is only or primarily only one Mythos tome (though multiple copies and editions, partial, complete, annotated, fragmentary, expurgated, etc. of that single tome may exist). Narrowing the literary field in this fashion has many advantages. By reducing the number of literary macguffins, the Keeper concentrates interest in one particular text (i.e. interest is not diffused in “gotta collect ‘em all” or “Oh drat, another copy of Mysteries of the Worm” syndromes). The tome can be tailored to the campaign, limiting the scope of options available to all characters to the contents of the book – thus, if a particular NPC sorcerer casts a curse, the only counterspell for that curse might be recorded in the same book that the curse itself comes from.

In many ways, the use of a unique and original Mythos book for a one tome campaign is both challenging and rewarding to Keeper and players, because it allows them to escape from the overly familiar bits of the Mythos and actually learn something new, or at least approach old Mythos monsters and mechanics from a fresh perspective. Source texts are a great tool for Keepers to help in populating the history of their campaign, by deciding not only what a character knows or can know, but how they know it and where they learned it. For geographically limited campaigns, the one tome may be the only Mythos book in the entirety of the area, with the attendant repercussions if it is lost, found again, or destroyed.

For example, consider a campaign set in a small, impossibly ancient town on the shore of an inland lake—all that remains of an ancient sea, compared to which the oceans of the world are still young puddles. Some years ago at the town founding was discovered a tablet with strange characters that a local scholar translated as the Apocalypse of Dagon—which told of an ancient race, kin to humanity, that lived beneath the sea in ancient times, and whose remnants exist still, until the day that they emerge from the briny deeps to reclaim the world. The tome may be lost for a time, but its discovery may coincide with the emergence of ancient, hulking Deep Ones from the ancient lake…and it is up to the investigators to piece together the clues and recover the book, whose spells may be the only thing that can stop the coming Apocalypse from destroying the town, and the entire world! Of course, if someone destroys the book, the PCs are then in a race against time to go find a substitute and return before the prophecy unfolds.

Useful Non-Mythos Tomes
Not every revelation needs to come from a big, leatherbound, ancient and crumbling tome of Mythos lore. Many of the best realizations are not told to the players at all, but ones that they arrive at themselves after working through the assorted data and clues they come across during the course of an investigation. To that end, some of the best tomes in a CoC game are not properly Mythos tomes at all even if they offer some slight percentile increase, or a spell or spell-fragment, but unusual collections of stuff that someone had diligently put together. In this thread, I'll discuss a few possibilities and offer some examples.

1) The Grail Diary
Inspiration: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

The Grail Diary is the journal of a scholarly quest, a compendium of every clue, fact, and legend the researcher has put together in pursuit of their goal. Often travel-stained, with many small bookmarks, missing or inserted pages, the Grail Diary is a working compendium, with information added and arranged or re-arranged as it suits the researcher's needs. A well-put-together Grail Diary provides the researcher with easy consultation to their discoveries, and a trail that others can follow to figure out where the researcher has been...or where they were going.

In creating a Grail Diary for a campaign, the Keeper really only needs two things - the "Grail," which may be a place, item, or entity, probably associated with the Mythos; and the diarist, the researcher who actually wrote the tome. The "Grail" is the object of the diary, and the diarist determines the format and scope of the work. For example, an eminent archeologist with little or no Cthulhu Mythos rating may seek out the Shining Trapazohedron, and his diary may be filled with implicit Mythos encounters and legends - but as the archeologist knows little to nothing of the Mythos, he will not have put these together and made terrible revelations from them.

Example:

The Alhazred Diary of Dr. Francis Morgan in short-hand and English, 1928
The bulk of this book began life as a five-inch college notebook, covered in closely-written writing - some short-hand notation, the rest regular English script. The cover and binding of the note-book are almost gone, and stitched and added to it are numerous additional pages, newspaper clippings, photostatic reproductions from books of Arabic art and archeology, and painfully hand-copied illustrations on on fine blue-lined graph paper in drafter's ink. The diary chronicles the history and legends of an artifact known as "The Lamp of Alhazred or Al-Hasjiid" down through the centuries, and finally notes that it was sold to someone in the Providence area near the turn of the century. Dr. Morgan appears to believe the legends about the lamp may hold a grain of truth, due to the strange mathematical and philosophical aspects of its construction, and certain herbs that may have been mixed in with the oil, or even the unique metallurgy of the lamp itself, but was never able to obtain the lamp itself to experiment with - though he did collect several fakes, forgeries, and lamps inspired by the bronze artifact.

Using the diary: The diary is an excellent excuse to crib notes on Abdul Alhazred to use in a campaign, such as the excellent William J. Hamblin's Notes on the Necronomicon. Characters researching the Necronomicon may run across the diary in a local library (the Miskatonic University Library for preference, but any local library in Lovecraft Country might have received it on Dr. Morgan's death), and thus provide impetus for a side-quest or more immediate goal in the form of the Lamp of Alhazred.

2) The Dream Journal
Inspiration: My Education: A Book of Dreams by William S. Burroughs

The Dream Journal is a record of nightmares, astral journeys, and strange impressions that come so clearly in certain stages of sleep, and fade quickly upon waking unless written down immediately. As an aid to memory, inspiration for creativity, or simple record, they are common devices kept by many people, and can be found among all walks of life in all countries. To most CoC players, the Dream Journal will seem an obvious place to look for lore about the Dreamlands - and while that is a possible area for a Dream Journal to address, it is not the main strength of this form of tome. Many Mythos entities and events leave their mark in dreams - there are simply some who are sensitive or intelligent enough to catch clairvoyant, precognitive, or telepathic flashes from some far-away Mythos entity straining against their bonds, such as with The Call of Cthulhu, terrible journeys such as The Dreams in the Witch-House, or dredging up memories of some terrible rite that occurred ages ago. These memories are dutifully recorded, and so the clues to an investigation may be placed in the unlikeliest of spots to reward the investigator that takes the time to go through every available tome.

Dream Journals need, as above, a dreamer and a Mythos subject. The dreamer's education and disposition determines their familiarity with the Mythos, and the subject determines what they dreamed about. Normally, only a few dreams concerning the Mythos on certain important dates are mixed in with the usual dross of the unconscious mind, but some particularly sensitive dreamers who dream regularly of Mythos-stuff go mad. Major dream journals of important dreamers like Randolph Carter are minor or major Mythos tomes in and of themselves, with comprehensive knowledge of the Dreamlands.

Example:

The Nephite Chronicle by Ephraim Gottlier, in English and Reformed Egyptian, 1841-44
Ephraim Gottlier was an obscure but devoutly faithful Mormon in Nauvoo, Missouri, following Joseph Smith. He bought a patch of land cheap because it contained a small Indian mount that was rumored to be haunted, and worked as a farmer. At night he dreamed of a land beneath the mound, of strange peoples and terrible treasures and books of golden plates. Gottlier couched his dreams in terms of the preachings of Smith, and believed he recalled the days of the Nephites who had once inhabited this country before the Indians. He recorded his dreams, but was caught up in the succession crisis after Joseph Smith's murder, and was found dead one day out by the mound.

3) The Book Catalog
Inspiration: Between Boards: New Thoughts On Old Books by Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine B. Stern

The Book Catalog is a list of books, typically covering such vital information as the title, author, year or era of printing, notes about the edition, sometimes some additional information on the book or its contents - and, for seller's catalogs, a price. For the dealer in rare and collectable books, the Book Catalog is their communication to the outside world, distributed through bookshops, bookfairs, and dealers, mailed in circulars to certain collectors, libraries, and other potential customers. A catalog also says something about the issuer - their tastes and areas of interest, the depth of their scholarship revealed in certain little snippets of obscure data that put the works in a more interesting light than title, author, age, and condition might suggest. Good catalogs also inform potential collectors about the various editions, whether or not they buy them, and may suggest additional titles in the same general area that they did not know before.

Catalogs of mainly or exclusively Mythos books are rare, unless they are predominantly false Mythos tomes or the library of a specific collector of Mythos-lore, but even the most mundane Book Catalog may contain a volume of Mythos interest. Keepers can seed a book catalog into an investigation in order to help characters track down a book, as a red herring, or to introduce the seller as an NPC. The important facets of a Book Catalog are the seller - who must be at least somewhat knowledgeable in the books he's trying to sell - the "theme" of the Catalog (a specific library collection, early Americana, the occult, etc.), and finally what Mythos details, if any, are mentioned or included in the catalog. Like all books-about-books, Book Catalogs allow players to gauge something of the contents of Mythos tomes before risking their sanity.
Example

Golden Goblin Press 1913 Catalog (issued by Golden Goblin Press, Winter 1912)
A small-print publisher of some of the most outre and authentic occult texts of the late 19th and early 20th century, Golden Goblin Press sent out a 6-page 1913 catalog to list their wares and try and reduce some of their overstock. The offerings for sale are not all Mythos tomes, but include the 1909 translation of Nameless Cults and preliminary orders for the 1913 translation of The Revelations of Hali by Bayrolles. Included is a selection of texts purchased in bulk from another small-press occult publisher in San Francisco which had gone bankrupt; the highlight of this section are fifty unbound copies of The Revelations of Glaaki.

4) The Book of Magick

Most Mythos magic in Call of Cthulhu games works on the idea that the Mythos, in all of its many-tentacled glory, is the "real" or true supernatural force or forces, and that the majority (if not all) of traditional and non-traditional occult practices are so much superstition and hokum. "Real" alchemy could never transmute lead into gold or distil the fifth essence, "real" conjurings do not summon demons, elementals, faeries or other spirits, "real" spells have no effect beyond whatever psychosomatic effects or ill chance those afflicted on them attest to such rituals. The lack of actual effect by such spells and stuff has not prevented the circulation or belief in those practices, however.

The Book of Magick then is a work of non-Mythos magick or parapsychology, purported manuals that include descriptions of other realms or cosmologies, recipes and spell formulae, lists of spirits, instructions for ritual purification, preparation, and tool crafting, the lore of fantastic animals, minerals, and plants, the stories of particular magicians and their deeds, prayers and much more besides - though it is a rare volume that contains all of the above, many books of magic, particularly those that belong to a certain tradition of hand-copied grimoires rather than prints and reproductions, have a certain hodge-podge quality to them. Few Call of Cthulhu characters are "real" occultists in the sense that they use or own Books of Magick, though some who cover their Mythos magick with a veneer of traditional occult practices may keep a few such books for show and the look of the thing, and most investigators disregard such books, unless they seek to increase their Occult skill percentile. And yet, the Book of Magick precisely because it is overlooked, because there are so many sources freely available such as at the Esoteric Archives and other sites, and because Lovecraftian Mythos magic has slowly been intertwined or adopted into certain magical processes, such as the Simon Necronomicon, present an underused resource available to many Keepers.

The Book of Magick, to differentiate it from a true Mythos tome, must be mostly bunk - the spells are ineffective, the theory unassociated with the actual cosmology of the Mythos, the actual Mythos information in there somewhat garbled and wrong...and yet, there must be a bit of effective or worthwhile material in there for an investigation. Just because a book is mostly false does not mean an NPC cannot believe it to be true, and thus a Book of Magick can provide insight into a character's level of Mythos knowledge and motivations. An NPC may, operating under false assumptions, deal with, attract, or release Mythos entities through the use of some poor-man's version of a Mythos spell. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, as the saying goes, and even a Book of Magick may occasionally include some important snippet or fact that sheds light on an investigation.

For Books of Magick, the author and their level of knowledge is less important than the theme of the book, the underlying Occult tradition that it relies on; in this the Keeper may be obliged to crib liberally from existing grimoires (woodcuts of occult squares and figures make great player hand-outs). The other bit is what Mythos lore is in the book - generally no more than a single spell or important detail should be present, or else the book is effectively a minor Mythos tome and should be stated as such. Some Books of Magick can increase the character's Occult percentile as well, commensurate with the length of time it takes to read and study the work.

Example

The Book of Dagon (purportedly 1321, actually c. 1866, by "Mozes de la Rosencruz," in English and Hebrew)
One of a number of medieval grimoires reportedly re-discovered and translated in the spiritual renaissance of the last half of the 19th century, the relatively obscure Book of Dagon uses a variation of the Kabala mixed with elements of Philistine worship to present a sort of Jewish idol-cult, an occult undercurrent to traditional Biblical theurgy roughly synonymous with many aspects of Satanism, in that it operates simultaneous to and below and counter to the main worship of God, with the fish-god Dagon as the "Devil Figure." The Kabala system presented includes garbled aspects of Mythos lore, particularly Deep One lore, and most of the occult system presented is similar to more traditional Kabala texts, only applied to purposes in praise of Dagon or personal ends - sexual satisfaction, locating hidden treasures, sending out "the spirits of the devil-bought" against enemies, etc. Among the dross are instructions that create an amulet that provides a weak form of protection against Deep Ones and related Mythos entities - the requirements are the same as for the Create Elder Sign spell, but the resulting fish-amulet only works against Deep Ones, and even then there is only a 50% chance of it working. "Mozes de la Rosencruz" was a pen-name for a minor Jewish occultist, Johnathan Finn or Finnigan living in London, who had a small congregation known as "the Worshipfull Society of Dagon." Finn eventually disappeared in the late 1890s, leaving behind six pregnant parishioners, a mountain of debts, and an invitation to lecture in Innsmouth, Massachusetts. His ship capsized in a storm during the crossing, and both Finn and the "original text" he supposedly based The Book of Dagon on was lost.

5) The Mythos Textbook
The Mythos Textbook is an academic treatment of some aspect of the Mythos, from a strictly (or at least mostly) orthodox viewpoint. A Mythos Textbook need not be a literal textbook, but can be a white paper, journal article, academic essay, pamphlet, or any similar such work that presents information on some aspect of the Mythos in as cogent and scientific a method as possible. The text is primarily dry and informative, and speculation or interpretation are generally within the normal limits for the exact form and field of the Mythos textbook - a scientist, given conflicting data, may be conservative in their theories and estimations, but before the comfortable "wild fringe" that many Call of Cthulhu players and Keepers are familiar with there is a middle ground of scientists open-minded enough to suggest the presence of certain races or civilizations currently unknown, or propose hypothetical solutions that may account for some of the erroneous features they come across. A biologist examining a fossilized bone from a Deep One, for example, may propose that it belongs to a new, undiscovered species, while an archeologist faced with a Deep One gold pectoral may declare it a clever modern fake.

The key to a Mythos Textbook is the disbelief that the author has in the Mythos, who does their damnedest to fit the Mythos myth-cycle or artifact they are studying into their world view. Keepers may choose to have such a tome provide bonus Cthulhuology percentiles rather than Cthulhu Mythos percentiles, and there are practically never complete spells in such publications. Investigators, who are familiar with the Mythos, can read between the lines of these text and perceive clues that may aid their investigation - taking the faithfully-recorded "anthropological" lore and sifting through it, taking as fact what most scientists would consider fantasy. Mythos Textbooks are also great for bringing the Mythos into a more urban or academic setting, as the key to start off an adventure, and as a means to flesh out an otherwise sparse Mythos library.

Example

The Miskatonic Prison Farm Recordings (1928, various artists, mostly English)
The Great Depression settled into the Miskatonic River Valley, and as one of the make-work projects Roosevelt passed folklorists and journalists were sent out to the backwoods in an effort to record the songs and folklore of the local people, to preserve this American heritage that was quickly fading away as people moved to cities and radios criss-crossed the nation. Prisons were a favorite location, as many of the inmates had been insulated from the newest productions, and pioneering folklorists went bravely into the prison farms with their recording gear to catch the songs of yesteryear. The Miskatonic Prison Farm served many local communities, and its long-term inhabitants were a curious and degenerate mix of local families from Dunwich, Arkham, Kingsport, Innsmouth, Aylesbury, and Black Bay. Their folk-songs and superstitions were dutifully recorded, and the curious record stored in both the Library of Congress and local Miskatonic University.

The Necronomicon Cipher and others
One of the great benefits of the prominence of eldritch tomes in Mythos gaming is that tomes lend themselves well to any plot or idea involving books in general, and any book-related scenario may be adapted to a Mythos game with minimum difficulty and often a few fun little twists thrown in. Keepers and players both have at their disposal a vast amount of material (fiction and non-fiction) related to books, literature, writing, art, and communication to draw on when engaging in their games.

The Necronomicon Cipher
Cryptography, for example, the art and science of hidden or secretive writing, has a long history both practical and occult (viz. alchemy, etc.) Lovecraft made some use of cryptography, notably in "The Dunwich Horror" with his Aklo letters, but there are other possibilities. A book cipher, or code, is a cryptographic scheme where messages are relayed according to certain words or letters present in a book. For example, the famous Beale ciphers used a particular version of the United States Declaration of Independence as its key; both encoding and decoding the message would require a copy of the exact same edition. Extending this to the Mythos suggests some interesting possibilities...

From 1850 to 1876, the chief librarians of the Miskatonic University Library and the University of Buenos Aires Library engaged in a cryptographic correspondence via telegraph, using their respective copies of the 1630 Spanish edition of the Necronomicon as the "key." The Miskatonic side of the correspondence was discovered amidst the collected records of the Arkham Telegraph Office, which was damaged by fire in 1891 and torn down to make way for the installation of a local telephone switch. The archive of old telegrams elicited some interest due to speculation of involvement with the Argintinean Civil War, but translation by a Miskatonic University graduate student John Leann Bishop proved they mostly concerned anthropological conversations between the two literary men, who shared similar interests in local witchcraft traditions in their respective territories, as well as an amateur enthusiasm in cryptography. The rarity of the Necronomicon and their exclusive access to it provided an excellent code book, and a convenient one for obscure words and terms such as "Cthulhu," "Yuggoth," and "R'lyeh." Bishop published the translation of the telegram transcripts as part of his master's thesis, and travelled to Argentina to find the other side of the conversation, but was never heard from again.

A key aspect of Bishop's thesis, titled The Necronomicon Cipher, were a series of fifty-two telegrams, sent biannually on May-Eve and Hallowe'en, which uses the same book code but references a page in the Necronomicon that does not exist in the Miskatonic copy - a blank facing leaf at the rear of the book. Bishop speculated that this might have referred to a "secret page" in the chief librarian's personal possession, or possibly was connected with the Black Goat Letters, though fellow student James Whateley disproved this after Bishop's disappearance.

In a setting that features "real" magic through grimoires like the Necronomicon, the lessons of illusion taught be real-world magicians are sometimes forgotten for the darker and more fantastic spells in the gamebooks. While players don't always appreciate it when an NPC is "faking it" with a Necronomicon, they seldom complain when their characters try it themselves to fool gullible cultists or marks later.

The Necronomicon "Force Book"
A "force book" is a prop or gimmicked book, often created in near-identical pairs, and designed to facilitate certain tricks of mental magic. With the proper construction and set-up, the illusionist can more or less control which page the mark turns to in the book, and guess which word they read on that page; additional tricks include presenting "missing" pages via sleight-of-hand, causing images or text to appear and disappear, and many other simple illusions. Not all of these illusions are typically accomplished with a single gimmicked book, any more than a magician who performs card tricks relies on a single deck of cards - part of the illusion is controlling what the player characters see and hear, what they perceive rather than the actual reality of the situation.

Jack "The Amazing Jaxon" Jackson was born in Arkham, the son of a half-black cleaning woman that worked at the university. A precocious child, Jackson's access to the library and his ability to pass for white allowed him a better education and socialization than he might have otherwise obtained, but the reality of his mother's precarious financial situation and his race ensured he would be denied many opportunities in his life, eventually becoming apprenticed to a bookbinder at age 12 to bring some money in - but in 1906 at the age of 16, Jackson ran away with a visiting circus. He worked as a magician's assistant and other odd jobs, eventually developing a talent for "psychic" games and fortune-telling, passing himself off as a gypsy or Italian sorcerer. Eventually, he got a girl in trouble and abandoned the circus to work the stages of Boston and New York as "The Amazing Jaxon." To distinguish his act, Jaxon drew on the witch-lore of his native Arkham and the fragmentary rumors of the Necronomicon he had picked up at Miskatonic University to craft several prop "Necronomicons" which were supposedly the source of his powers. The crowds enjoyed the novelty of the magic books, and Jaxon continued to develop new illusions and more elaborate versions of his force book.

The rise of spiritualism in the 1920s has seen Jaxon, now in his early thirties, transition from pure stage magic to running seances and demonstrations of occult rituals, still using his now elaborate "Necronomicon" as the central piece to his act. He was forced to leave Boston and New York after the police got to close to him for selling spurious antiquarian volumes of magic to gullible, rich eccentrics, and now at long last has returned to his old haunts at Arkham...but why, no one can say. Perhaps Jaxon has become involved with people who are too familiar with the actual Necronomicon, and will kill him to obtain it...which of course he does not have...or he plays a dangerous game trying to sell his prop books to these groups. Perhaps he simply wants to consult the actual book, to gain further material for his act before he takes it on the road, or material to create more authentic-seeming Fale Mythos Tomes. Or, just maybe, Jaxon is not a charlatan, but his stage magic and props are an act to hide the cunning and ageless intelligence that possessed him when the young Jaxon first caught a peek of the true Necronomicon...

I've been having collected letters on the brain lately - sorting through the correspondence of HPL, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, Donald Wandrei, Robert H. Barlow and others. There are a couple potential ways to play with this in your Call of Cthulhu game...the easiest would probably be:

Moonlight in Cemeteries: The Letters of Richard Upton Pickman and Justin Geoffrey, 1919-1926
This slim chapbook, issued in 1933 by Blackgate Press out of Natick, Massachusetts in a limited edition of 300 copies, collects for the first time the correspondence of transcendental artist of the macabre Richard Upton Pickman and the young, morbid poet Justin Geoffrey. The two had met in a small Boston bookstore in 1919, quarelling over a certain rare volume of Goya prints, and after they had settled the matter began an exchange of letters on an almost monthly basis, ranging over many topics of art, antiquity, and mysticism. The letters presented here are mostly unabridged, but complete save for a dozen or so letters that were lost during Geoffrey's trip in Europe and during the last few months before Pickman disappeared, as well as several postcards which were not collected in this volume; perhaps more regrettable is that the majority of Pickman's curious and horrible marginal illustrations and doodles were omitted from the printing. Boston censors were quick to ban the sale of the chapbook in decent bookstores, but seekers of the strange and terrible can still find it in a few bookstores in Arkham and Lowell. However, the failure of the chapbook to sell through in good time suggests that Blackgate Press will not seek to issue any further volumes, even though they have purchased the rights to several other collections of letters from these two great masters of the dark and fantastic.

Letters or excerpts from letters included in a volume such as that above are terrific handouts for players; and there are over a dozen volumes of letters from HPL, REH, CAS, et al. to use as basis or inspiration for contents. If you have access to an old typewriter and old paper, so much the better - copy out a good section of a letter, add in the hints for the latest CoC scenario, then pound out a quick copy on your machine. Terrific props, and good reading.

Looking at my carefully-arranged row and boxes of books - I haven't bought any shelves yet - I am reminded of that simplest and most fundamental of tools, oft neglected by investigators and Keepers, the barrister's bookcase.

The Thirteenth Shelf
Lawyers and clerks are occuptations noted not only for scholarship, but professions where books are pretty much mandatory to the entire process, and the need to transport relatively large quantities of books with some efficiency and without destroying said volumes - and let's be honest, moving books always risks their damage or destruction - and without the need for heavy, cumbersome, difficult-to-move bookshelves. The result was the simple barrister bookcase, a sectional cabinet where each shelf was a separate box that could be stacked together. Typically fronted with panes of glass or wooden doors, it was very common to quickly dissemble these cabinets and ship them fully loaded. Naturally, barrister bookcases are eminently practicable for both investigators (who may not entrust their collection of research materials to their home libraries, for fear of theft or because they will need to access them immediately), and for cultists (smart cultists are always ready to pick up and go, preferrably through the carefully prepared escape tunnel with a few key items).

A typical example is the twelve-shelf barrister bookcase of Evram Arkham, Esq., a successful country lawyer who works much of the Miskatonic Valley, though he occasionally goes as far afield as Boston or New Hampshire. An orphan, Evram was given the city's name in the orphanage where he grew up, read law at the county seat, and passed the bar. His practice is mainly in rural matters - contracts, land disputes, and wills - and he has had to move his chambers many times as needs present. Most prominent of his possessions is a twelve-shelf barrister's bookcase, with a heavy base, which he had personally commissioned with his first fee after passing the bar. What none except Arkham know, of course, is that the base is itself a hidden bookshelf - a sliding panel allows the top to be lifted away, revealing a small collection of ancient tomes, ledgers, and manuscripts which Arkham has been asked to keep or hold for certain of his clients. Arkham himself rarely glances at these materials, but he might be somewhat shocked if he did...

New England Mythos War Trophies
In similar vein to New England Mythos Marvels and New England Mythos Artifacts.

1) The Berber's Book
In 1784, William Bishop of Black Bay, Massachusetts was a cabin boy aboard the brigantine Betsey when that ship was captured by the Barbary Pirates in the openings of what would become the First Barbary War. Bishop was enslaved in Tripoli according to the local laws, and as printer's son, fluent in English, French and the pidgin dialect Sabir earned money as a scribe and librarian to one of the city's prominent astrologer, a hoary old Berber and reputed alchemist known as ibn Zirid who would row out into the dark harbor on moonless nights with his slave to study the stars. Bishop survived for in this state for eleven years as the United States struggled with the ransom demanded for the slaves. Bishop returned to his native Massachusetts with a Berber wife, who always went veiled, a young child, and with a parting gift stolen from his master - a vellum manuscript with a bone spine but without covers, stolen from his "master" ibn Zabib. Bishop and his family were alienated in Black Bay following his return, so he sold his father's press and moved his family elsewhere - genealogical records are unclear of where exactly they went. The Berber's Book was discovered recently in Black Bay, within the wall of the old building that had been his father's print shop.

Physical Description
The Berber's Book consists of thirty-six vellum sheets, thirteen inches tall by thirty-two inches wide, folded in half by a spine made from strips of whale bone to form a book of seventy-two pages, without covers. The majority of the book consists of astrological or astronomical drawings, insterspersed with Greek characters and short pasages in 9th-century Arabic. Modern scholarly analysis suggests it is an occult work, perhaps a contemporary of the Picatrix. It contains references to several mythical planets, stars, or bodies beyond those known in the solar system.

Powers
A character fluent in Arabic who makes a successful Astronomy check or Cthulhu Mythos check may use to Berber's Book to draw a horoscope for any date, provided they have a telescope and a very accurate timepiece, revealing which cosmic conjunctions will occur on that date - though not where in the world they will occur. For example, the character may learn that Xoth and Yuggoth will be in opposition, suggesting a portentuous time for invocations to Cthulhu. This may help cultists plan their ceremonies, or give investigators a clue as to when their enemies will be active.

2) The Yellow Stick
At the time of the Creek Civil War (1813), a rogue group of "Yellow Sticks" led by the dwarfish shaman Mannaqqah left - some say, were driven out - of the traditionalist "Red Stick" camp and made their way to the Thousand Islands on the border of the Untied States and Canada. On a certain islet they killed a pair of fur trappers, and the local authorities raised a small militia against them in a Revenue Cutter Service vessel. The militia found the now rocky, barren island denuded of trees and unseasonably locked with ice, which was thick enough for the men to descend from the ship and walk onto the shore in safety. The last to fall was Mannaqqah, who held his "Yellow Stick" high, chanting above a crude stone cairn in from of a small bubbling spring or puddle. On his death, the unseasonable ice quickly melted. The rogue Indians were scalped, the scalps turned in for a bounty, and the Yellow Stick was taken for a shilleagh by an Irish mechant marine that had fought alongside the militia. The stick has a small reputation of being haunted, and references to it can be found in many obscure books of parapsychology, superstition, and occultism in New England.

Appearance
At first glance, the "Yellow Stick" appears to be a weathered rifle stock of pale saffron-colored wood, a little over a meter high, with a flat, wide surface on one end narrowing to a point, so that the whole appears as a sort of crutch. Arborists who examine the piece however will decree it is not wood, but some similous fibrous vegetable matter with a high mineral content. When held in the correct light, the wood will seem to sparkle, from gold dust in the deep veins of the wood. It is unadorned except for a curious, cursive triskelion character, which is very rare in Native American art.

Powers
The Yellow Stick is a grounding rod, a passive device that acts as an outlet for unusual forces around it. When brought near the site of a ritual summoning, gateway, or other Mythos event it will tend to draw the effect into its immediate vicinity. Mechanically, when the Yellow Stick is within a mile of a Mythos spell being cast or going into affect, the caster must make a successful POW Test or the summoned entity/gateway/spell effect will manifest within 100 yards of the Yellow Stick. A spell directed specifically at the Yellow Stick or the one who carries it automatically affects the target, even if they normally are given an opportunity to dodge or resist.

3) The Aklo Cylinder
In 1903, graduate students at Miskatonic University's Department of Archeaology conducted an excavation of Blackman's Plot, a small slave cemetary in long disuse which had been the site of the sole Revolutionary War skirmish near Arkham (certain British troops had, it is true, been quartered in Arkham, Innsmouth, and Kingsport, but their presence precluded general armed resistance by the populace, save for those who left to join General Washington's army, or certain other militias). The Dunwich Massacre of 1775 had taken place when the local commander of British troops, Captain Thomas Whitehead, ambushed a meeting of revolutionaries from all over the Miskatonic Valley, who were alleged to meet at certain places at certain times of year; the death toll on both sides had been nearly complete, with only a handful of survivors fleeing into the night. The event was of some small importance, since the loss of commander and troops openly weakened the British hold on the Miskatonic, and eventually the troops were recalled to other areas. The results of the excavation were nearly fifty corpses or parts of corpses (which were eventually re-interred with military honors), hundreds of small Revolution-era artifacts in the ways of bone and metal buttons and the like, and most curious of all a metal code-cylinder, used to encipher and decipher messages. After some research, one James Whateley of Boston connected the curious symbols on the cylinder with those on the Black Goat Letters, and based his doctoral dissertation on it - which, while accepted by the university, was immediately removed from public access. The cylinder is currently in storage at the Miskatonic University Library, with the remainder of the artifacts from the dig.

Physical Description
A heavy metal cylinder, two inches in diameter and six inches long, with eight octagonal rings and two gear-like end-pieces, made of an uncommon alloy of silver and some other metals, which James Whateley tentatively identified with the exceptionally rare "tulu" alloy. Each of the eight faces on each ring contains a Latin alphabetical character, arabic numeral, or strange code-character that Whateley identified as part of the old "Aklo" cipher. Turning either of the gear-like end-pieces causes the eight rings to shift, aligning different faces and combinations of characters in a complex cryptographic system. The whole thing weighs nearly two pounds.

Powers
If used correctly (using James Whateley's dissertation or several hours of fiddling), the Aklo Cylinder allows a character to translate any Aklo message into an approximation of Latin characters or vice versa - though certain phonetic combinations do not translate well.

4) Arkham Scrip
Freed from British rule - and monies - the early colonies issued their own currencies to maintain their economy. The most famous of these are the unbacked paper dollars of the Continental Congress, but states, towns, and even banks issued rapidly depreciating paper money until the Coinage Act of 1792. The Miskatonic Valley suffered greatly for the lack of funds, since trade was disrupted throughout the region and hard coin needed to purchase goods outside the area. The solution, offered by the town fathers of Arkham, was a commodity scrip - paper money that could be used within Arkham and neighboring towns as a medium of exchange and for payment of taxes and fines. The exact commodity that Arkham Scrip was supposed to have been based on is still a matter of debate among scholars and economists, since most are in agreement that it was not tobacco, specie, wampum, corn or any of the other normal goods of the Miskatonic Valley. George Johann Bishop of Innsmouth insists the commodity was dried and salted cod, based on depictions of fish on some of the remaining scrip samples, but scholars believe these are actually forgeries produced by pro-British counterfeiters in Innsmouth to devalue the Arkham scrip. Whatever the case, the scrip remained in circulation for only a few years, eventually being replaced by Massachusetts state paper monies. Very few examples of the perishable scrip remain, though occasional hoards of coin sometimes contain some Arkham scrip.

Physical Description
The typical Arkham Scrip of 1778/9 - the most common issue of which good examples exist - is of good hemp or tobacco paper, about three inches square, and printed on one side with the value of the scrip in Spanish dollars (or, more commonly, 2, 3, 4, or 7 bits) "Which may be Redeemed for Years," with the other side bearing a woodcut, typically of some obscure astrological or occult symbol, rarely with a fish-scale pattern or illustration from an anatomy book. It has been suggested that these latter were added as a mark to help protect against counterfeiting, and were reused plates, but no printer's mark has been found on any surviving sample. The nature of the illustrations suggests that the scrip was printed as large sheets, then divided into individual bills, and that if an entire "sheet" were reassembled the backs would reveal a single printed picture.

Powers
Certain older residents of the Miskatonic took to keeping the Arkham Scrip as talismans against old age, and indeed those who hold them seem to live a little longer than their contemporaries...an average of one year per "bit" value on the scrip.

5) The Bell of Secession
Civil War divded the nation in 1861, and even the sons of Arkham and Dunwich mustered out as part of the volunteer regiments formed in Worcester and Boston. The sons of Innsmouth and Kingsport, however, more commonly served in the United States Navy. The most celebrated of these was Melchezidek Marsh, who enlisted in the Marine Corps. Melchezidek's father could have bought him out of the draft, but the young man insisted on serving, and served with distinction in several raids against the rebels in Florida and New Orleans during the course of the war. Marsh's ability was highly valued by his command, particularly his great strength and ability to swim long distances at night to inflitrate and scout out enemy camps and ships in darkness, and he rose up the non-comissioned ranks, keeping with him a squad of closely-related "Innsmouth Boys." Near the end of the war - properly speaking, it was 1865 and Lee had already surrendered - Marsh and his Innsmouth Boys led a raid against a holdout rebel stronghold in the swamps of Louisiana, set up in a ruined Spanish outpost built on top of a curious and ancient half-sunken mound or island that the local Indians avoided. Strange rumors had surrounded the Rebel unit and it