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 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. -------------------- The Chaosium Digest is an unofficial discussion forum for Chaosium's Games. To submit an article, subscribe, or unsubscribe, mail to: appel@erzo.berkeley.edu. All articles submitted to the Digest remain copyright their respective authors, unless noted otherwise.