How would you go about making a campaign centered around systematically

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There's actually a book dedicated specifically to that topic.

It has outlines for taking down a bunch of "Elder Evils", which typically starts with low level adventures where the players might find a strange mark, followed by encountering cultists, then fighting servants and aspects of the Elder Evil, and ultimately, potentially, fighting and destroying the Elder Evil itself.

>>48348590
>filename
He did get married. Can't fault him on that point.

>>48348672
Sounds promising. Long as it sets up the Elder Evils to be genuinely powerful while still vulnerable. The goal is to be very Darkest Dungeon without the bait and switch at the very end.

>>48348590
Well, what I would do:
>Evil Cosmic Horrors awaken from slumber, declare earth their new toy
>Humans go 'oh no how awful panic panic'
>Cosmic horrors attempt to destroy humans
>Turns out human military is much more powerful than they expected
>Also, humans now have a common enemy
>Not an easy war, but humanity quickly stops being afraid of star-spawns when they realize that 'cosmic monsters' were a lot scarier before the advent of nuclear arsenals.

>>48348805
Story goes that whenever he would make anti-semetic comment in front of his friends and wife (New England at the turn of the century, racism was just whatcha did I guess), his wife would politely remind him 'who he's sleeping with' since she was Jewish herself.

>>48348590
Cosmic Horrors can't be destroyed, the insignificance of humans is kind of the whole point.

>>48351505
This. If you make cosmic horror able to be destroyed, it's not cosmic horror anymore.

>>48351505
>>48351527

>Cthulhu knocked the fuck out by a boat
>Yog-Sothoth, an embodiment of time, is thwarted because his kids are retarded and guns kill things dead
>Innsmouth fish people are kinda chill with letting humans be humans, and their giant fish god can in fact be killed hence him hiding

The main thrust of HP Lovecraft's work is that NOTHING is inherently more important than anything else, and while that means we are but specks in the wind, so are other things. They might be bigger specks, but they are the same as us: aliens in an uncaring and listless universe that gives no shits about your and your species' existence.

Is Cthulhu spooky? Yes.
Is Yog-Sothoth evil beyond understanding? Yes.

But that's relative to our current form. Even in his earliest work, Lovecraft mentions that humanity will eventually reach a level of understanding 'where we shall welcome them as kindred brothers', meaning we're gonna be big players in the universe eventually as well.

Also, reminder that every one of Nyarlhoteps forms will drive something insane at it's mere glimpse, and since he can take the form of a human, there is something out there that is driven mad at the thought of our fleshy little bodies.

>>48348590
Just HFY my shit up.

>>48351469
>H.P. /pol/craft married a jew, didn't see any conflict there
Christ, seriously? How stupid was he?

>>48351778
Stupid enough to get laid pretty consistently.

His racism was less the 'gas em' variety and more the passive 'golly my race is just so good' from what I've been able to figure.

>>48351564
Yes but none of those events changed anything because humanity is fucked anyway. It's like in Hellboy; short term victories ultimately changing nothing. Also, there is a clear very obvious order of importance in lovecraft's work. The horror comes from humans only fitting in at the bottom-mid scale. Just like how, irl, a sun or moon has greater scale or more impact than a human.

>>48348805
He did say himself that he never had any interest in sex. Apparently when he was 6 or 7 he read about it all in a book and hearing it so scientifically ruined it for him.
>"When I was six or seven I was of course curious about the allusions which I did not understand in adult books, and about the prohibitions imposed by elders upon my conversation. Being of a scientifick and investigative cast, I naturally followed up the mysteries step by step in encyclopedias and other books - for with my temper no one dared seriously restrict my reading. Ending with the medical books of my physician-uncle, I knew everything there is to be known about the anatomy and physiology of reproduction in both sexes before I was eight years old; after which curiosity was of course impossible. The entire subject had become merely a tedious detail of animal biology."
They may or may not have actually fucked, but he likely didn't enjoy it.

>>48351826
That's not to say that humanity COULDN'T change things.
Again, just because they haven't doesn't mean they couldn't.
The Whateleys are a good example. They almost changed the fate of a god, and while they failed since that would have been super bad for everything NOT worshiping Yog-Sothoth, the fact remains they almost did something cosmically important.
Nothing is more important than anything else, simply more powerful.

Also, I hope I'm not stepping on your understanding of his works. I'm a big fan of his stories and writing and enjoy discussing it with other fans since my friends don't read him.

>>48351469
Lovecraft died too soon. I would have loved to see his reaction to the nuke.

>>48351564
>Cthulhu knocked the fuck out by a boat
See, this is how i know you're the kind of ignorant shitposting cunt who mouths off about shit they don't know anything about.
The boat did nothing. It passes through him and then he immediately rematerializes, because he's not really made of normal, solid matter.
You're the kind of cunt who endlessly whines about how much they hate a film they've never seen or a book they've never read. Or even googled. You're just idiotically spouting incorrect arguments you've seen other people make.
Get your head out of your arse.

>>48351947
Okay you fucking cunt-face, listen the fuck up.
I was civil. I was patient.
I fucking LOVE my Lovecraftian cosmic horror.
I read that shit since sixth grade. I read that shit when my aunt died. I read that shit when I was stuck in traffic with my father during a 17 hour trip across the country.
So let me address your shit piece by piece:

The boat does in fact hit Cthulhu and BURSTS HIS HEAD.
"The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but Johansen drove on relentlessly. There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler would not put on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern"
Because fuck you if you think I would resort to sitting on GOOGLE and talking without having any idea of the thing I have spent YEARS reading, here's the fucking passage from Call of Cthulhu.

YOU are wrong. Cthulhu is hit because he has fucking physical form you braindead bangel fucker.
You are right that he does reform after, but the fact remains that Cthulhu got HIT. He was solid. He was material.

After that, the world, which up to this point was basically designed to end the moment Cthulhu reawoke, doesn't. Keeps chugging.
The author then goes on a little rant about how cultists probably want his balls on a silver plate but that's beside the point: The boat did do something.

My head is firmly where it belongs.
Go fuck yourself.

>>48352013
Ant bite my finger. Ants as powerful as humans.

>>48352256
We absolutely lack the means to stop the ants spreading all over the USA.

>>48352256
You can die from being stung by a jellyfish smaller than your fingertip.

And the point was that everybody is unimportant in the face of the universe - ant, human, Cthulhu are equal.

>>48352256
Fatal allergies to ant venom are a thing.

>>48351947
>>48352013
Anon, was getting BTFO part of your plan?

In internet nobody knows you're a ant.
>>48352281
There is projects for destroying species.
>>48352300
>>48352256
Humans eradicated species in the past, but poison make us all equal.

>>48352410
Something something boat, no survivors

>>48352439
mean
>>48352367
not >>48352256

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The only reasonable weapon against nihilism is the power of friendship

So I'd run it like pic related. With lots of fucking laserbeams. Powered by friendship

>>48352439
Species get eradicated all the time in nature. Look any previous grand extinction events.

Oh, I'm not annoyed, just confused by how you're reading it.

The thing is, yog sothoth will wake up anyway. This is something that's going to happen and is well known by all races. Yes, humans do show the ability to use magic and ascend, becoming eldritch abominations themselves (see; the thing at the doorstep) but as can be seen from Wilbur, asenath, the Deep Ones and more, humans have to stop being human to acquir such power and even when they do have it, is is infinitesimal. Either slowing down or speeding up the clock minutely. No large changes will occur though;even the polyps, yithians, migo, elder things and the mound folk will despite their science and power, fall and fail.

Knowledge destroys you in Lovecraft due to its power but no matter what you learn, the highest powers will still be above you.

Also, Cthulhu and his star spawn children are both physical matter and something more exotic. Damaging his physical form still leaves the non-physical parts of him intact.

Aby irritation I have is purely towards yog sothothery + hfy fans. Honestly, what's the point?

>>48352511
>Species get eradicated all the time in nature. Look any previous grand extinction events.
And it's mean that humans and ants equal?
No. Humans can destroy ant, ants can't destroy humans.

>>48352570
NOT YET HUMAN, BUT SOON OUR DAY WILL COME!

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Gentlemen.

>>48348992
Yeah I hated the ending, just give us a bone and let us kill the evil not go "lol nothing you did mattered because it will wake up anyways."

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>>48352669
Get that shit out of here, pic related is how you take on the unknowing horrors of space.

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>>48352683
I killed 32 heroes to get to here, I've spent countless fortunes, killed horrors from the abyss infinitesimal times, Dismas is carrying HIS OWN FUCKING HEAD FOR MORE DAMAGE AND I DIDN'T KILL IT FOR GOOD!?

>>48352541
To scream NO, FUCK YOUUUU at an uncaring universe

>>48352683
My interpretation was differant. It wasn't so much that it will wake up anyways, but rather our family must guard that place and eventually one of them will sucumb to the madness that stems from it and attempt to awaken the evil again before his descendant comes to stop it.

I thought the point was more that your family is trapped and can neither leave the evil alone nor permanently defeat it.

>>48352722
What would happen if he piloted it?

>>48352750

It would whimper and fail. Central is an idiot.

>>48352726
That would be fine but the humans always win in HFY. Interestingly, I think Ligotti + UA I'd the closest you can get to having both.

>>48352723
Ha no major spoilers ahead. The Earth is just a crust that was built on top of the egg. That's right, you are fucking one fucked up egg that hasn't hatched yet. When it does it will rip Earth apart like a wet sack of shit. Your quest is in vain but fitting your boot in your traitor of an Uncle's asshole just might be worth all that pain because fuck that guy.

>>48352750
>XCOM equipped with Gunmen
The aliens can see Shen's boner from orbit. Alternatively, Shen Jr is Niagara Falls.

>>48352765
Like fuck he is, you can only hope to be half the man Punished Bradford is. He will fuck you up and it will be by the numbers.

>>48348590
It depends what you are aiming for because by definition you cannot have a nihilistic and cosmic horror setting where everyone stays alright and also destroys all the cosmic horrors beacuse part of the point of nihilism is that you actions are functionally meaningless.

There are only three options: A. its not a real nihilistic cosmic horror setting. B. The protagonists cannot truely destroy the cosmic horror only hold it off for a time. Or C. where the players can destroy it but only by becoming quasi-cosmic horrors themselves.

>>48352804
HE. WAS. CARRYING. HIS. OWN. FUCKING. HEAD. FOR DAMAGE.

>>48352742
It never mentions if other family members before the Uncle fell before, it just seems that he was the first to finally crack. In fact it kinda seems that the family forgot about just what way way fucking below them as he did have to spend a fuck ton of time, effort, and money just to find the gate.

Besides it wasn't madness that drove him on, it was his lust for power and what he did to get what he thought he wanted only a sane man could set up all those plans and pull them off. That and your family can leave, you had to be called back remember?

>>48352848
It's both. In the ending it does mention that basically the stars will align (not sure if metaphor or not) and the heart will awaken shattering the earth.

But it also says
"So seek solace as one befitting our lineage" [Focuses on a pistol and letter]
"And take up your vigil, haunted by that sickening prose..."

So maybe that is just the game finding an excuse to relapse, but it infers that you guard the manor for so long before sending for another of your family to come guard it from what you ancestor awoke.

>>48351838
According to his wife he was a consciousness and thoughtful lover who was "more than adequate." His male friends figured he found it so unpleasant and took so long to climax that, by dint of perseverance, he always gave his wife an orgasm but she insisted that he'd taken the time to learn how to please her specifically out of husbandly duty.

>All these people implying I'm not gonna be waiting for the heart with several 16 pounders and enough TNT to make Hiroshima look like a gnat's fart
I do not like losing.

>>48352013
You are literally fucking retarded. It doesn't mean shit all that Cthulhu's head went pop because he's a Elder One. He doesn't care if he has to wait another hundred thousand years before he comes and wreaks our shit because time is something ignorant humans like yourself worry about. If you want to wank over something go to r/HFY. Maybe you can pick up some basic reading comprehension while you're there.

>>48352828
If you were expecting a victory in a game which literally screams out the pores about how Yog-Sothothory it is and then act upset you didn't win, you must have either no idea about the genre or just be entitled.

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>>48352926

Why is there so much available information about Lovecraft's sex life.

I'd hate to know just how much is available about Tolkien's.

>>48353098
There's archives available of a letter he sent to his son in which he had the Talk with him.

>>48353098
Unfortunately Sonya burnt their private letters, so we'll never know how if he ever talked dirty to her.

>>48353121
That's Tolkien, not Lovecraft.

>>48353121
Tolkien, or Lovecraft? Because I hate to imagine either.

>>48353137
>>48353149
I meant Tolkien. Don't think Lovecraft had a son, did he?

>>48351564
Also who the fuck describes yog-sothoth as evil. This sounds like Derleth shit.

>>48353137
Not just her either. It's unfortunate a lot of Lovecraft's friends held really progressive views for their day, because a lot of them threw his correspondence out when they realized what a gigantic racist/classist he was.

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>>48348590
The problem with that is that the story just turns into another dime-a-dozen Stop the Ancient Evil slugfest.

What makes cosmic horror horrifying is that the Ancient Evil doesn't really get stopped.

>>48353098
Tolkien's almost the polar opposite of Lovecraft. He and his wife were pretty much an OTP. They met as kids, and she eventually even broke off a prior relationship when he proposed. (Keep in mind he was Catholic, so they actually waited a long time before actually commiting)

>>48348590
Magicka.

>>48352570
Ants on this planet out mass all humans on this planet. And will definitely outlive us as a species.

>>48351778
He said of her that she was 'well assimilated'.

>>48354207
I was under the impression they all took the piss out of him for it? "Oh Howard you funny old racist" kind of thing?

>>48348590
That thing certainly need a bit of "If THEY fear me, what horror i become?"
Easy achivable through scene with mundane boring stuff like a line in a shop.

>>48351862
This is right. You can see it most clearly in works like Shadow out of Time.

Only the Great Race of Yith is great because they alone have conquered time. Everything else, eldrith horror or man, loses to time.

It's something I think he picked up from Dunsany. Time was depicted as the devourer of gods in Gods of Pegana.

>>48351947
>>48352013
>>48352410
>>48352440
>>48353057
>Boats

Anon, please. It's clear the big C got wrecked. He's described as reforming as he sinks back down but that's it. He lost. He's got to spend a few more rounds recharging.

He took it form Medieval descriptions of Satan. There were stories of Satan being struck by swords only for him to reform T-1000 style because demons were conceived of as being sort of like clouds and sort of like water. You can find it in the Malleus Maleficarum.

>>48352541
>knowledge destroys you

Unless you were an elite. It's something a lot of people miss when they read his work. Compare Dr. Armitage and especially Randolph Carter. There's a hierarchy. Doctors are able to banish away monsters like Armitage or befriend Yog-Sothoth (no seriously Carter does that in Through the Gates of the Silver Key). Then you have normal guys that freak out because man is but a mote in the eye of tentacled gods. And at the bottom you have racist caricatures who OGGA BOOGA ME WORSHIP the great old ones because.

The ultimate ignorance is in worshiping these creatures. The ultimate knowledge is in understanding how they work and making it work for you.

Lovecraft does NOT show that knowledge is dangerous. Only that one needs to git gud scrub.

Yog-Sothoth describes all thinking beings as being put facets of larger thinking beings and I believe this reflects Lovecraft's philosophy nicely. There's always something greater until you hit an absolute Aleph point of consciousness.

>>48354168
You I like. You get it.

I'm impressed that people rate Azathoth higher on the power scale than Yog-Sothoth. The key and the gate would totally kick the daemon sultan's ass.

>>48351802
He actually thought nonwhite people tended to be horrible almost always. That said, he became much less racist over time, probably at least partly because of his friendship with Robert E. Howard, who, while not necessarily NOT racist, was less racist than average for his time.

>>48355236
He had Conan lead a group of black pirates which makes him look like Martin Luther King against modern day /pol/.

>study the manuscripts, learning just until you feel like you're going to have a breakdown
>have someone else do the same, each of you filling in gaps in the other one's knowledge, adding people until collectively you have an understanding of the stars and how they must be aligned
>figure out which star is most essential for the Old Ones returning, and then just keep the cultists from resurrecting Cthulhu until we can develop FTL travel (which should be possible if we're ignoring physics enough for the Old Ones to exist at all and may someday be possible IRL lol idk)
>also make a weapon that can blow that star up
>blow that star up
>stars never align correctly
>old ones BTFO

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I think the players just need to be more or less super heroes with access to something exra-ordinary that can harm, drive back, or counter the cosmic entities they face.

>>48355316
>Sound of a star blowing up awakens old ones
What now?

>>48356323
We use our secret weapon. Rocket propelled fishing boats

Years ago someone on /x/ posted an idea of how to deal with Cthulhu

>The stars are right and Cthulhu wakes up
>can't stop the motherfucker
>Humanity has a humanity fuck yeah suicide moment
>detonate all the world's nuclear arsenal on the same point (Cthulhu)
>Earth goes out of it's orbit, humanity is destroyed but that way the stars will never align again so Cthulhu is banished forever
>a small species of naked apes destroyed a god

>>48351826
Knowing where anything is on the scale kind of misses the point of HPL stuff.
The universe is meant to be murky,chaotic and too deep to discern real placement.

Azathoth is both all powerful but also an utter invalid
Yog-Sothoth is less powerful than Azathoth but he is everything

How the cosmic order works is not intuitive and the vast majority of it is hidden from mankind. It's a side of nature we've never encountered.

What the lasting impact of humanity is an unknown. Where we are is an unknown. We can fight gods one minute and get kicked in by petty imps the next. By the time we learn what our place really is we will be ether fundamentally different beings or dead.

Earth is just a small island on a dark sea.
The best any lovecraftian character can do is deal with shit as it hits the shore
Because mapping those waters is suicide

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>>48352508
If I had to send a team of magical girls against a cosmic horror, I'd go with the Sailor Senshi. The final villain of the third story arc, out of five, was one, so they already have experience in that area, and have only got stronger since then.

>>48355236
>>48355262
Robert E. Howard seemed to be of the 'White Man's Burden' mindset, where he considered White Anglo-Saxon people to be the most advanced culturally, but not inherently better and just needed to act as a guide for other races, like in Africa. Also, a lot of Conan's fellows were foreigners of off-white shades who often had skills that were different, but still super useful, than the locals who were sort of germanic-slavic white people.

Fairly certain HP thought all black people were backwards savages until they were exposed to 'superior European culture'.

>>48354168
Yog-Sothoth's spawns, who are connected to him through unknown means but can hear his will, are evil and malicious.
I can only assume anon was going the 'like weird glowy-orb space dad, like half-goiat cheese-smelling son' route.
Kinda like his morals are objectively bad for most things we consider good and therefore we can classify it as evil? idk, just trying to get into the mindset without, like you said, going full Dereleth.

>>48356323
That's not how it works. They cannot take physical form as long as the stars are out of alignment.

Also
>sound in space

>>48356751
Too vulnerable to train gropers, old men in caves, family friends, and tentacles.

>>48358012
https://youtu.be/8CT_txWEo5I
https://youtu.be/GWCJkG31h0c
not sound but...

>>48356751
If it was defeated it wasn't a cosmic horror. Those are the rules.

>>48354853
I believe it was more a wanting him to be remembered for his work, not for how ridiculously stupid his beliefs were sometimes. To the point where even Lovecraft knew how weird he was. He had an actual phobia of people of color, to the point where he could intellectually be aware there was no reason to be but emotionally he couldn't help himself.

>>48360405
Nyarlathotep confirmed for not cosmic horror. Good to know.

>>48360405
>>48360638
Cthulhu too.

>>48360646
Cthulhu wasn't defeated. They make that pretty clear in the story. The stars weren't right, he got woken up early.

>>48360658
Depends on what your definition of "defeated" is.

>>48360676
I mean, yeah. He was beaten in the sense that he got his head exploded and realized he had to go back to bed, but not in a preventing the inevitable apocalypse sort of way.

>>48360658
Ever lost in a sporting event or a specific contest, fight, or event? And yet here you are. You don't have to kill someone or make it so they can never try again to have defeated them.

>>48356765
Howard's writing can occasionally surprise you with a 'wow that sounds super racist', but it's a surprise and mostly comes off as dated sounding assumptions.
Stuff you get kinda used to if you read or watch most anything from the 1930s and back. Like even Lincoln will come off as racist in this matter sometime.
Howard was somewhat progressive for his time, though not very.

HPL was racist even for his time. I like some of his work, and think he made some very important contributions to the development of literature, but neither forgive nor forget his racism. It's present even is his stories.

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This thread is still up? Damn, I guess competing with the Lovecraft general is easier than I thought

>It's a bunch of Cthulu-wank and whining about muh Inevitable death and muh purposeless universe

Figures.

>>48360836
>even Lincoln will come off as racist in this matter sometime.
Lincoln went on about how America should never break and he'll do anything to keep it together, then a year later tried to convince a group of black people that freed slaves and other black people should leave and form their own colony, He didn't even consider them "real Americans." Dude was pretty fucking racist, and I do mean for his time. And no, this isn't some Confederate apologia. Slavery is fucked up, and yes the Confederacy was concerned slavery and not "state's rights." It's just that for much of the Union, it wasn't about slavery. Howard was far more progressive than Lincoln.

Leiber is my favorite writer from back then, and most of the issues I see with him are occasional sexism that's pretty consistent with his time, but I get the impression that if asked he would've been expressly for equality for women and such.

>>48360863
>watching Community literally right now
>this post is made

>>48353083
To be fair, the game up until that point has a definite duality in nature; failures and losses get you lines about how desperate and overwhelming everything is and how failure is looming, but the victories and saving graces bring lines of hope, of a light at the end of the tunnel, of rallying and pushing back the darkness. Your guys can go crazy from the stress, or the pressure can bring out their hidden valor, making them act as heroes and turn the tide for the venture. The hamlet grows and recovers, your troops get stronger and more skilled, and though everything is still overwhelmingly shitty, there's always a sense of hope, that you only need endure the hardships so that you may press on and finish the task.
That was the appeal to me; it was a good mix of typical Lovecraftian horror, only with a system to fight back that didn't ruin the spirit of the horror. It was a scenario of "what if the Call of Cthulhu party was a group of people who were armed and prepared to deal with the eldritch from the start, rather than a bunch of average joes with no idea what was happening?" Stupidity gets your troops killed, but intelligent foreplanning and care can get you through to the end.
The ending lost that duality. It focused only on the despair and meaninglessness of the whole thing, without any of the hope, foolish though it may be, that had been present throughout the rest of the game. It abandoned it's own unique formula to pursue the same song and dance of every other lovecraftian derivative.

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>>48360985
Said it far better than I ever could have.

>>48360985
I would say that 'the ending' applies to the entire last leg of the game. The Darkest Dungeon itself cheats and changes the rules constantly.

>>48351469
>Turns out human military is much more powerful than they expected

>"Well," O5-13 said, rubbing his head sheepishly, as the Nameless One, Devourer of Worlds, and the Terror of the Ancient Erekesh Civilization lay in a smouldering, bloody pile on the sands of the Ancient Desert of Reality. "I feel like a bit of a donkey. It turns out we've been panicking all this time and all it took was a couple of 105mm artillery shells to the head."
>"Do you think we should ever tell them that we had them running in circles sprinkling holy water and blood around for no reason?" O5-12 wondered.
>"Best not to let them know. Otherwise we'll look like idiots."

>>48353057
But what does it matter if every time he forms we smack his ass back down? He would never wreck our shit, humanity confirmed master race in space baby, hail to the king.

>>48360658
The stars were right. Its why the city rose out of the ocean in the first place. The whole build up throughout the story was because the stars were right

Big C got punked. He got wounded and went down and started regenerating. All that was missing was a "CURSE YOU POWER RANGERS I'LL GET YOU NEXT TIME".

Also, remember Armitage and Carter. They won anon, they won.

>>48348590

"the thing to remember heroes, is that for all its claims to the contrary the creature is merely powerful and strange. It is an alien and hostile mind embedded into the underpinnings of the universe, a malevolent wrinkle in the fabric of existence. To interact with our world and further its mad nihilistic agenda it has moved its anchors onto our plain. They are to it as your heart is to you, vital to the larger entity and vulnerable on there own. They are well protected and mighty in there own right, but if enough of them are destroyed quickly enough the creature's mind will unravel and it will be unmade."

PC's must overcome some number of dungeons within a reasonable timeframe. If they take too long the earlier slain anchors heal. If you're feeling motivated you could come up with a bunch of ideas and have the plays tell you which ones they think would be fun, and have those be the anchors the pc's go after.

>>48361104
"Field report, lieutenant?"
"Well sir, if I may be so frank, I feel like we may be the assholes in this situation."
"Lieutenant, you're walkin' on some thin ice there. I remind you that the enemy we are engaged in currently wants to devour civilization and destroy the human race. You startin' to sympathize with the enemy?"
"No sir. I just never thought I'd see it."
"See what, lieutenant?"
"The look on a god's face when they meet an A-10. "
"Do you have any regrets callin' in the air support?"
'No sir. Whole coastline smells like dead squid though, sir. Gonna take at least a week to clean up the mess."

>>48351469
>>48361104
Gods help the Gods if Russia gets in on this action full force...

>>48355186
What you are suggesting is objectively not true because the Yithians all die when yog-sothoth awakens and they are terrified out of their minds against the polyps. None of the Elder Gods, Great Old Ones or Outer Gods are mentioned to die of age to my knowledge unless they survive to the point Azathoth awakens.

Delaying Cthulhu is not we Eckington him. He wasn't even meant to awaken at that point anyway and it's explicitly stated hums nifty is still fucked.

In at the mountains of madness, the thing on the doorstep, the rats in the walls and the shunned house, scientific figures falter and fail. No one can understand the colour out of space. Of the people you picked, one was lovecraft's self insert and the other is incidental.

Lovecraft's stories are fuelled by cosmicism. Humans are not going to succeed in them to any meaningful extent.

>>48356552
None of what you said disagrees with me. In fact, it only strengthens our point.

>>48356812
They aren't evil though. They're depraved from a human perspective, just like Asenath, the Innsmouth Folk and the Followers of Cthulhu are. But in their own view, they are totally righteous and correct in their actions.

This is a lot demonstrated well in the horror at redhook where increased knowledge leads to depravity and amorality. This is a cool moon theme in lovecraft's works.

>>48360689
>>48360658
This implies that Cthulhu had been intending to awaken instead of being woken up info reentry by chittering apes.

>>48360863
What else are you expecting from a series about existential horror?

>>48354168
>>48356812
>>48366922
Reminder that Yog-Sothoth was merely incomprehensible and told Carter that he never makes people do things they don't want to, only offers a chance at knowledge they can't normally acquire through mundane means, and was actually less douchey than his followers in what direct interactions we see of him.

>>48360596
Learning about Lovecraft seems to usually follows these steps

>This is pretty neat stuff
>That's a bit weird
>Holy fucking shit Lovecraft get your shit together
>He was friends with who?
>He took inspiration from what?
>Oh.
>Sorry to hear that. Jesus, now I feel like a dick.
>They wrote what together?
>With the new context that makes more sense/is more horrific/is not as bad
>This is pretty neat stuff

>>48360985
>>48361048
You may notice that, while the gibberlies do appear generally throughout the game, all of them are in some way man-made and mortal. All of them. The game is, actually, quite dark fantasy until the Darkest Dungeon. There's no existential horror, no creatures beyond human understanding and no implication of a grand order. In fact, a lot of the games aesthetic seems more like nuBerserk, dragon age or other dark fantasy with a good variety of standard creatures.

The Darkest Dungeon is the point where this, changes as you said. It's also very fitting that it changeable at this point because around this time is when the Ancestor start to to reveal what he found and it's when you start to getting introduced to enemies that are not explicitly mortal and in fact somewhere between.

And again, the Ancestor even throughout mentions how hopeless and n Doomed you are. The faint glimmer of hope he mentions now and then is, in fact, fulfilled when you defy fate and spit in an undying God's eye, beating it down.

Compared to most Lovecraft work, that's pretty fucking optimistic.

>>48366875
>Afraid of the polyps
No they weren't. They just peaced out into new bodies like they always do.

>When Azathoth awakens
I don't think he ever awoke though unless I'm missing a story here. That everything dies including the great old ones is sort of my point. In a truly cosmic sense they're all as small as humans.

>Wasn't even meant to awaken at that point
Wasn't the whole reason the city rose up was because the stars were right?

>scientific figures falter and fail
Scientists that don't accept the cosmos as it is, not like Armitage and Carter.

>Humans are not going to succeed in them to any meaningful extent

Neither is anything else except the Great Race. That was sort of the point of them. They're the only ones that can body swap to cheat death.

>>48366972
THIS THIS THIS.

>>48367425
No, the city rose because the cultists had been fucking with the idol to resurrect him and he only wakes up because of the ship.

The great race are specifically mentioned as keeping the black vaults holding the polyps under close guard and being terrified of them repeatedly.

Carter isn't a scientist, he's a dreamer and believer in imagination. Armitage is probably the one exception to the rule but the curious case of Charles dexter ward, cool air and others who use science to try to understand the unknown fail. Armitage nearly goes insane a couple of times too when he realises what's happening; keep in mind he never sees the younger whatley.

The great race of Yith do control time and are shown to be very knowledgeable but, they are still unable to prevent disasters, gibberlies and stars dying. Their technology allows them to evade and prolong but never win against their obstacles.

>>48362493
Except him rolling over in his sleep caused sensitives to go irrevocably insane.

A proper awakening means GG, no RE, do not pass go. He doesn't need to do a damn thing, just...exist.

File: ohthathumanbooty.jpg (208KB, 1272x848px) Image search: [Google]

208KB, 1272x848px

H.P.L was a talentless hack that just plagiarized Poe and merged gothic horror with the ideas that Ambrose Pierce and William Hope Hodgson develop in their short tales and novels.
Pierce and Hodgson came with similar ideas that develop into what Lovecraft called Cosmic Horror because they were cosmopolitan people, one was an artist that did travel to Europe and the other a sailor that almost saw all the world. To them the idea of being scared of ghost and old tombs was retarded as fuck so they shoved the concept of the sublime into horror.
Lovecraft was in his path to become a Poe-clone when he made a misinterpretation of Pierce and Hodgson's fiction thanks to his xenophobia fueled by an idealization of English culture.

>>48367893
I don't even think it was because the cultists were fucking around. He thing I always took from call of cthulhu was that he island rose fr no reason. If you read Dragon, which is in some ways a precursor, the main character muses that some freak tectonic shift rose a chunho of seabed from the ground.

He cultists are latent psychics were going nuts because random chance caused r'leah to rise, not the other way around. The stars certainly weren't right yet, tho. I also think ts funny people assume "stars being right" must be something astrological that we'd understand. Who fuckin' knows what that means.

The people who stand behind this "lolno stars were right he got beated by a boat"

>>48368030
I'm quite sure it was cultists. The African, Oriental cultists who have the statue which, when brought into modern society, causes the dreams.

It'd fit thematically too, considering the "stupid chattering apes" can't even revive their fucking God right.

>>48367970
He's not a talentless hack; the Outsider, The Colour Out of Space, The Music of Eric Zahn and The Rats in the Walls were all masterpieces as good as anything Algernon, Poe, Stoker or Machen made.

Even for his time, those writers who knew him were impressed by his work. He's been, world wide, acknowledged as a master of his craft and creator of an entire genre because he mixed elements of go this horror with ancient myths and sci-fi alien elements.

You don't have to like his prose but attacking his imagination, understanding of fear, ability to create tension or his devotion to his craft are stupid.

In fact, I think the sequence in At The Mountains of Madness, when Lake and Attawood are conversing by radio before Lake suddenly goes silent is a perfect example of how to create tension.

>>48367970
You forgot your fedora, m8.


Lovecraft owes more to Chambers than to Poe.

>>48348590
I wouldn't, because I'm not some contrarian hipster pole-smoker.

>>48366897
You said humanity exist at mid-bottom scale and made assertions of the effect our efforts have on the universe.

The point is that you don't know where you are or what will happen when you act. Even the shit that's supposed to be stronger than you are SEEMS to get fucked up in weird ways by simple things.

A large aspect of the horror of his stories is how "wrong" the true order is. Unseeming actions can have unreasonably powerful reactions, lofty attempts can lead to miserable failure.

Knowing you are at the bottom is implies a greater understanding of the universe and supplies a sense of security of place. But there is no safety or security there are chances for ultimate power and/or totally degeneration all around you.

Knowing you can't win gives a fatalistic sense of certainty. But Nyarlathotep shows you can win as long as you do what he asks, which is horrible. Innsmouth may survive through their dreadful rights. There is no rule saying you're fucked. As long as make the right changes and transformations you may continue to "be" whatever that means.

It's the weight of existential angst, there are so many things to be done and too many possible outcomes to ever deal with.


It's the opposite of being anywhere on the bottom, it's living in a universe that deifies our sense of scale and our desire for hierarchies. Huge things exist in tiny places and you are never so small that you can't be noticed by SOMETHING.

>>48370196
You seem to have misunderstood what I meant. Yes, you're complete correct in that humans normally don't know where they fit in the scale of things and that a key source of the horror is that when humans DO find this out, it completely breaks them in most of his stories.

And yes, figures are shown to rise above their beastly ignorance; the Whatelys, the Mad Arab, the folk of Innsmouth, Asenath Gill and others but as you can see with all these figures, they aren't human any more. To survive in Lovecraft's world, one must revoke their humanity and surrender to the whims of, since you brought him up, the big N as an example. But there's is very clearly an order of scale here. The Mi-Gos and the Deep Ones are two of the monsters that interact with humans in actually conversing and living with them. The Yithians too. Even the Elder Ones to a degree.

All of these creatures however are members of hyper advanced races that are still helpless to the whims of capricious, unaware God's who even if they did know would be apathetic. Lovecraft very clearly has a set up, an order set up. It's not a very clearly defined order but certainly the hierarchy could be as loose as animals > humans > aliens gibberlies.

The only way to escape this order or to ascend above is to sacrifice that which makes you human, that which makes you mortal and that which makes you moral.