51 Mythos Dooms

BEST OF 51 MYTHOS DOOMS ROLEPLAYING KENNETH HITE MYTHOS 51 DOOMS TEXT KENNETH HITE “The increasing thunder must have affected my ILLUSTRATION LUKAS THELIN & MAGNUS FALLGREN dreams, for in the brief time I slept there came to me apocalyptic visions.” ORIGINAL PUBLICATION FENIX 6/2012 – H.P. Lovecraft, “The Lurking Fear” f Lovecraftian gaming offers anything, Ithaqua, the Yithian destruction of the time windows into alternate dimensions? Only it is opportunities for apocalypse. The stream could awaken the Flying Polyps, or the Keeper knows for sure. With time-travel universe of the Cthulhu Mythos is so rival cults could summon Cthugha and Has- and non-Euclidean gates in the campaign, the dangerous, so replete with opportunities tur simultaneously. Lots of room for multiple investigators can visit either one! Ifor catastrophe, so hostile to the very concept dooms, in other words. Use this column not As a final possibility consider setting a of human existence, that it almost drives one just as a menu for destruction but as an ongo- one-shot or trilogy scenario in a Mythos- to Derlethian heresy in an attempt to explain ing inspiration for your ongoing Cthulhoid doomed future – or an alternate past! What if how we got this far. This can be exaggerated, campaign, in whichever system you prefer. Cthulhu rose in 1925, or Wilbur Whateley’s of course. Most Mythos threats are long-dead These dooms needn’t close off play, in other twin escaped in 1928, or the Deep Ones of (except for that one survivor …), impossibly words: they can drive it. Innsmouth completed their shoggoth, or obscure (except for that one tome …), or simp- Any of these dooms could be merely the the Dark Haunter escaped from Federal Hill ly uninterested in mankind (except that one plan of some cult, sorcerer, mad mathemati- Church in 1935? Some of these dooms leave cult is trying to attract them …), so the human cian, or dream-worker encountered in your some humans alive: run an entire campaign race and indeed the planet Earth has a brief scenario. You don’t even have to necessarily in the ruins of human civilization, using respite before Something awakens, emerges, introduce the monstrosity involved: a few the- Cthulhu Apocalypse, CthulhuTech, Eclipse or approaches. Perhaps as long as a century. matic hints, a mysterious bas-relief, and an Phase, or your own favorite dark Mythos hor- Since almost any Mythos entity might eerie dream or two can be enough. One eerie ror system! Possibly some Yekubian cube or trigger the apocalypse, this column offers a dream can become a whole series of night- Yithian projector remains intact in a remote choice of dooms, one for every entry in the mares, revealing the true extent of the hor- ruin – if only the investigators can recruit a Trail of Cthulhu core rulebook. Feel free rific cataclysm looming over mankind. Are cult, decipher the necessary tomes, and bring to mix and match: Dagon’s rise might free they visions of the hellish future, or perhaps about the end of the end of the world … 34 ROLEPLAYING KENNETH HITE own much-exercised temporal-lobe systems AZATHOTH COLOUR OUT OF SPACE protect them. Of course, they launch their “Then, crushing what he chanced That forgotten, blasted patch of ground kept own crusades and jihads where they can: expanding, deep under the Arkham Reser- killing “Cthulhu” becomes a holy duty of all to mould in play, voir. Now, it explodes out of the Reservoir, religions as memetic conflict turns physical. The idiot Chaos blew Earth’s dust away.” growing steadily and implacably by 13.14% Riots become uprisings, vendettas become each year. In 28 years, Worcester County civil wars, cities become battlefields, nations – H.P. Lovecraft, The Fungi From Yuggoth erodes. In 40 years, all of Massachusetts become killing grounds, the world becomes disappears into gray, fibrous death. In as R’lyeh. Azathoth already fell to Earth, at Tunguska 108 years, the whole surface of the world in Siberia in 1908. Or rather, the impact of dies, and a new Colour congeals from the that event was Azathoth’s attention, the bow ionosphere. DAGON wave of his immanence. Nuclear enlighten- Dagon returns to his ancient cult site in ment, nuclear experiment, nuclear attack, Philistia – now, the Gaza Strip. He crushes and nuclear terror followed: the human CTHUGHA tanks, swats helicopters from the sky. His race signing its name in the irresistible Fires are easier to start, harder to extinguish. attack on Jerusalem triggers a nuclear re- book of Azathoth. Then the ever-increasing The oxygen content of the air is the same as sponse from Israel. Nine months later, every disasters: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, ever; something about fire itself has changed. woman downwind of the explosion – for Fukushima, Indian Point. Azathoth grew Badly maintained cars explode, cheap stoves instance, the entire female population of closer. The missiles detonate in their silos, destroy apartment blocks. Third World cities Cairo -- delivers a baby with gills and flip- the reactors explosively melt down, and burn down just after their forests do, but the pers. After this spawning manifests, Dagon all organic life inhales radioactive cesium, developed world buys itself time with inert emerges from the Persian Gulf and stalks strontium, iodine, growing new life out of gases, new alloys, steam turbines, atomic toward Tehran … their cells’ death. Their death howls, the air power: anything but burning fossil fuels. But whistling out from boiled eyes and burnt when even a match-head can torch a room throats, become flute music heralding the and the masses starve everywhere, it only DAOLOTH nuclear idiot Chaos. takes a spark … It is uploaded onto five global television networks, YouTube, 58 major media websi- tes, and a third of all smart phones on New BYAKHEE CTHULHU Year’s Eve. A forty-second image of Daoloth, These insectoid, necrotic creatures travel th- “The time would be easy to know, rendered in bright magenta and cyan by an rough deep interstellar space in great flocks, anarchist mathematician, himself lynched tens of millions of creatures folding space- for then mankind would have become on January 3. But that doesn’t heal the two time with membranous, metalloidal wings. billion people blinded, and it doesn’t cure And now a flock descends on Earth. Their as the Great Old Ones; free and wild the 175 million driven insane, and it doesn’t wings disrupt and wash out atmospheric and beyond good and evil, with laws prevent six hundred or so people from uplo- signals: everything from radios to auroras ading their own visions of the Render of the goes wild and unpredictable. Their hideous and morals thrown aside and all men Veils in the next forty days. visages drive cities mad; their insatiable ap- shouting and killing and revelling in joy. petites for dead flesh and dense metal tear the heart from industrial civilization and Then the liberated Old Ones would DARK YOUNG OF devour it as it rots. Mankind has a new apex teach them new ways to shout and predator – and it prefers carrion. SHUB-NIGGURATH kill and revel and enjoy themselves, Finally, a use for M. Night Shamalyan’s film CHAUGNAR FAUGN and all the earth would flame with a The Happening! Chinese massacres of Tibetan protesters holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.” pour blood into the streets of Lhasa, built of – H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu” DEEP ONES stones where Chaugnar Faugn once drank “No use balkin’, fer they was millions of deep. Chinese generals know only that they must spill more blood there; the dreams they It began with those in power, killing enemies ‘em daown thar. They’d ruther not start awakened tell them to. Civil war grips China, of the state, or their relatives, or anyone ne- a wave of blood-draining killers pours into arby. Then the rich and famous start hitting risin’ an’ wipin’ aout human-kind, but ef India, nuclear exchange kills millions more. people with cars, throwing them out of buil- they was gave away an’ forced to, they Other mountains demand other sacrifices, dings, infecting them with designer diseases. more blood for long-forgotten footprints of Neurologists spot accelerated limbic system cud do a lot toward jest that.” the Horror From the Hills: in the Pyrenees, activity in social spree killers, associated – H.P. Lovecraft, “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” the Ruwenzori and Atlas, the Pamirs and with brain areas evolved while mankind was Urals and Sangre de Cristo and Andes. Any aquatic. Crime burgeons, becomes a ratings • Step one: Get and read a copy of man you encounter might seek only to drain winner, becomes a sport with endorsements, John Wyndham’s novel The Kraken your blood onto a shard of rock he carries, to becomes mass spectacle and Olympic fea- Wakes (published in the U.S. as Out of gain favor and surcease from the time-lost ture. Religious fanatics, ironically, hold off the Deeps). horror of Chaugnar Faugn. the “Cthulhu complex” slightly longer: their • Step two: apply what you have read. 36 51 MYTHOS DOOMS DHOLES DIMENSIONAL SHAMBLERS ELDER THINGS A dreamer opened the Way from Pnath to A rogue archaeologist working for the dicta- The Antarctic creatures had learned from the the waking world, or a meteor from Yaddith tor of Turkmenistan discovered the Rune. shoggoth revolt: every species they created fell to Earth. Is there a difference? The dholes The dictator used it on all his enemies: un- thereafter would have an emergency shutoff crawl up through ancient graveyards, and stoppable beings dragged them Away, never subroutine, hard-coded into its genetics and burrow beneath volcanoes.

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