in Arabic, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Rituals: any
Written by Abd al-Hazred (sometimes “Abdul Alhazred”) circa 730 CE, this is the original version of the Necronomicon. No copies are known to exist
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
When age fell upon the world,
and wonder went out of the minds of men;
when grey cities reared to smoky skies
tall towers grim and ugly,
in whose shadow none might dream
of the sun or of Spring’s flowering meads….
A book of the macabre poetry of Edward Pickman Derby published around World War I and rebound in unmarked boards with a technique that a librarian or bookbinder would place around the 1950s. The pages still bear marks of damage by fire and water. It weaves New England legend and startling insights into lyrics of surprising power. It takes only an hour or so to pore over. The largest single work, “Azathoth,” describes a dreaming encounter with the Daemon Sultan whose mindless pulsings give shape and action to the universe, and whose messenger Nyarlathotep mockingly facilitates the human impulse to find meaning in the world.
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Rituals: [The Call of Dagon Storm and Stillness Swarm Whispers of the Dead (Cthulhu)]
“AND • ONE • CAME FROM • ZOTH • AND GAVE FORTH • THE • STAR SPAWN • THE • CHILDREN • DAGON AND HYDRA • WHO • SERVE • THE • HIGH PRIEST • OF • ZOTH • THE MAKER OF WORLDS • THE FATHER OF ALL”
This transcription and translation of the odd conical stone tablets recovered during the Innsmouth raid of 1928 represents almost two years of work from some of the best cryptographers in the world. It is one of the first modern, translated unnatural documents successfully identified as such: 44 typewritten pages, creased and coffee-stained, and yellowed with age, shoved in a modern Navy file folder marked SECRET and P4 EYES ONLY. Anyone with Bureaucracy or Forensics in excess of 30% can tell the report is Navy from sometime in the 1920s or 1930s, and that the papers are old, while the file-folder is from sometime after 1950. Some of the pages are soot stained and partially singed, as if by fire. The pages tell a Deep One creation myth in plain English, transposed and translated from pictoglyphs meticulously hand-drawn on the onion skin pages. It is a stilted account that can be summarized as follows… Cthulhu traveled from a star called Zoth to our world in the distant past. This being created life, and in particular, several large entities, Cthulhu’s spawn, two of which are called Dagon and Hydra. From these smaller entities, the Sons of Dagon or Deep Ones issued. All life in the “upper world” came forth from the oceans, and as such, is beholden to Cthulhu. When Cthulhu wakes, the surface world will be subsumed.
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
“SUBJECT: Have you been to a farm, doctor?
You think the cows know they’re kept?
You think they don’t feel safe?
SOMETHING.
OWNS.
US.
Two-hundred and twenty-one pages of medical forms, psychotherapy transcripts, personnel files and more, all concerned with Dr. Daniel M. Freis, from the time of his incarceration to his death. It is contained in four accordion files. None are marked with any sort of security designations. Captain Robert Feitelberg, supervising psychiatrist, diagnosed Freis with depressive complex and paranoid schizophrenia. Freis was heavily medicated during his time at the hospital (on a host of drugs like thorazine, chlorpromazine, and others), but strangely, electroshock therapy was never attempted. “EST NOT PERMITTED INTELLIGENCE ASSET” is written on each page of Freis’ admission documents, and is signed “CDR COOK.” The tale woven by the madman is coherent and consistent, and unlike many schizophrenics odd delusions, does not seem to shift and change over time. He parroted the same tale in 1955 that he was screaming on his deathbed in 1970. It can be summarized as follows… Freis claims that he works for an agency in the U.S. government, which he does not name. He says the agency has discovered that mankind is a “kept” population, used for breeding and food by a far more advanced species, the “Deep Ones,” that live in the Earth’s oceans. These creatures are immortal and wield weapons far more powerful than any human technology. The upper world is simply a “pen” in which they keep their livestock humanity."
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Rituals: Consciousness Expansion
“9 9 2 0 .2 2 9 9 8 9 2 1 2 .3 3 3”
The original Courtis Paper, often called the “White Sheet,” was a single sheet of handwritten mathematical formulae. Those without Science (Mathematics) of at least 50% or higher can glean nothing from the Courtis Paper; it looks like gibberish. To those with sufficient training in mathematics, it implies amazing, underlying secrets of reality; with 500 hours of study a SAN roll is made. If it is failed, the target learns the ritual (see below) and loses 1D4 SAN. If the SAN roll succeeds, the target is overcome with a feeling that they have just missed the truths that make the universe run. Targets may try again and again, as long as they have the appropriate training.
in French, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Rituals: [Call Forth Those From Outside (Haedi Nigritiae, Nyogtha) Call Zombies Charnel Meditation The Closing of the Breach (Haedi Nigritiae, Nyogtha) Obscure Memory Release Breath Zombie]
Lest some would label it blasphemy, I have chosen to explain certain actions and beliefs, and let God be the judge of us all.
Written in 1703 by Francois-Honore Balfour, Comte d’Erlette, this book was promptly banned by the Church. Luxuriating in necromancy, necrophagia, and necrophilia, it describes a ghoul cult throughout Europe.
in Gothic, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Rituals: true
Created by an unknown translator, ca. 800 CE, this translation of Al Azif was much bleaker and less allusive than other versions. It was the prize of the Karotechia library. Delta Green destroyed most of the copies and German translations during Operation LUNACY; the only known remaining copy (the original) lies untranslated in the GRU SV-8 archive under Khodinka Airfield in Moscow.
in English, Study time: weeks. Occult + Unnatural: 6 SAN Loss: 1D8
Rituals: [Call Forth Those From Outside (Great Race) The Dho-Hna Formula The Elder Sign]
In 1882, two Cambridge scholars excavated 23 pottery shards from unmistakably Triassic strata at Eltdown, Sussex. In 1917, Rev. Arthur Brooke Winters-Hall, a local antiquarian and fairy-lore enthusiast, privately printed his prolix, murky “translation” of the shards’ oddly regular markings, hinting at the histories of the Elder Things and the Great Race of Yith.
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
The transformation must involve the regulation of multiple genes (to encode things such as gill structures, claws, webbed feet, etc.) which would need to be switched on and off in the correct order to facilitate the change from ostensibly human to AH. To illustrate what I mean, I have given the following hypothesis: it is possible this gene regulation is controlled by a single ‘master activator’ gene - for the sake of argument I will call this gene ‘X’. If transcription and translation of X is triggered by whatever mechanism (this age-related change could be equated with either puberty or the menopause in humans; however, whilst these changes are hormonal, the trigger for transformation in hybrids is unknown), it would trigger the first step of the transformation (switching on genes V, W, X, Y, and Z).
Twenty years of reports on laboratory analysis of samples recovered by Delta Green agents. Most samples simply defy conventional analysis. If the reader succeeds at a Medicine, Science (Biology), or Science (Chemistry) roll (whichever is highest), the SAN loss rises to 1D8.
in German, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Written by Gottfried Mülder in 1847. Mülder accompanied occultist Friedrich Wilhem von Junzt on his 1818–1819 journey to Inner Asia and used hypnotic recall to dictate this memoir of their journey. A pirated American version was published in Baltimore in 1849 as Secret Mysteries of Asia, With a Commentary on the “Ghorl Nigral,” referring to the blasphemous text (only one copy of which exists in the world) that von Junzt studied in a lamasery in YianHo. Gottfried Mülder’s descendant Hermann Mülder published a new limited edition for the Karotechia in 1939. It can serve as a source of unnatural lore regarding east Asia, Leng, Mu, the Xin, and the Tcho-Tcho.
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
A collection of videos and photos, many filmed and taken in the 1990s and converted to high-resolution digital formats, that document an apparently random series of inexplicable horrors. Members of an unidentified East Asian street gang are turned inside out by something that can’t quite be seen. Arthropod-like entities seem to shimmer, half-visible thanks to special emulsions that the videographer prepared to record extradimensional emanations that otherwise could not be captured on film. A DEA team slaughters an entire family as wormlike monstrosities rise from the bellies of men, women, and children. Moldy ghouls with vaguely canine forms carry on a meeping debriefing with FBI agents and NYPD detectives in a closet of some abandoned subway station, hinting at the movements of sorcerers below the Earth and in dreams. And on and on. Viewed through a lens of healthy skepticism and denial, the videos and photos must be the work of a gifted but deranged special-effects artiste.
in German, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Rituals: [Preserve Living Brain Raise From Essential Saltes Reanimation Formula]
Several old boxes filled with yellowing, typed and hand-written manuscripts, crumbling file-folders, and journals are stacked in the bunker of Delta Green leader Donald Poe. These represent the life’s (and unlife’s) work of Dr. Gunter Frank, an infamous Nazi scientist who collected, translated, and expanded upon the hideous discoveries of strange luminaries like Dr. Javier Muñoz and Herbert West, M.D., and their assistants and colleagues. Dr. Frank cheated terminal cancer and lingered in a sort of ghastly half-life for more than 50 years in the Karotechia’s refuge in South America. When Delta Green and MAJESTIC assaulted the compound in 2001, they destroyed Frank and his grotesque works. These boxes are all that remain. Poe suspects they would rewrite medical science if made public. He means to burn them to ash before that can happen.
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Copies of the report on the 1928 Navy-directed raid on Innsmouth, Massachusetts were once circulated to dozens of offices within the United States intelligence community. The newly-activated Delta Green hastily recalled them in 1942, but not all were returned. The operation was re-designated PUZZLEBOX in 1942 by Delta Green. All previous markings on it were struck out and destroyed. The report—compiled by ONI Capt. Alphonse Dumars—is a thick, old, accordion case-file stuffed with ancient, dried, onionskin papers, yellowed photographs, marked with the stamps of SECRET, P4, and DELTA GREEN EYES ONLY, with a Naval Operations registration number. Anyone with Bureaucracy, Forensics, or Military Science (Sea) in excess of 30% recognizes American Naval security markings, circa 1940. The file describes, in detail, a coordinated, secret government strike on the New England town of Innsmouth Massachusetts by the U.S. Navy and Marines, to capture or kill “seditious and alien elements.” The file is full of horrific and unbelievable photographs of amphibious, non-human creatures, incredible after-action reports, and a half dozen interrogations of townsfolk, captured and detained somewhere in the American west. It includes reports from the 42nd Battalion of the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard cutter General Greene, the Navy submarine O-9, the Bureau of Investigation (a report written by J. Edgar Hoover), and the Treasury Department intelligence summary including the testimony of Robert Olmstead. The file never directly states it, but it clearly indicates the existence of a previously unknown, intelligent, non-human race (referred to as Deep Ones or the sons of Dagon), who have been intermingling with humanity for years (and perhaps centuries), and who exist beneath the ocean in unknown numbers.
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Rituals: [The Call of Dagon Charnel Meditation Create Stone Gate Dust of the Thresholds The Elder Sign Fascination Meditation Upon the Favored Ones Obscure Memory, The Powder of Ibn-Ghazi, Speaking Dream The Voorish Sign Withering]
Remains mummified in era immediately after B. Pharaoh most eff. in rendering powder harmful to E.E.; proportions of KNO3, S, Boswellia resin CONSTANT at all costs. Keep dry. Remember Helsinki effect.
This thick stack of ledger-style notebooks was written over many years by Dr. Joseph Camp, the man who reorganized the Delta Green conspiracy in 1994. He intended it as his personal guide to “hypergeometric technology” that proved useful in fighting against unnatural forces. It details the use and ingredients of many powerful rituals, but gives little context for them and explains little about unnatural forces or entities. This grimoire was intended for Camp’s sole benefit and is riddled with his personal shorthand and allusions. Mastering its rituals can be very difficult.
in English or French, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Song of my soul, my voice is dead; Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed Shall dry and die in Lost Carcosa.
Written by an unknown playwright circa 1895, this evocative, nihilistic play about Carcosa and Hastur was suppressed in France. It cannot be skimmed.Once it’s opened, an Agent must make a Sanity test to avoid reading it completely.
in Latin, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Rituals: [Flawed versions of Raise from Essential Saltes or Zombie.]
Attributed (falsely) to St. Lazarus, this book is supposedly a narrative of dying, being damned, experiencing Hell, and resurrection. Written around 1570 CE by an unknown sorcerer in Germany, it contains lengthy disquisitions on means of preserving and animating the dead.
in French, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Rituals: [Call Forth Those From Outside (Nyogtha) The Closing of the Breach (Nyogtha) The Dho-Hna Formula The Elder Sign Open Gate Pentagram of Power Petrification See the Other Side Speaking Dream The Voorish Sign Whispers of the Dead (Tsathoggua) Winged Steed Withering]
Translated by Gaspard du Nord in 1240 CE— based on C. Philippus Faber’s 9th-century Latin Liber Ivonis and du Nord’s own occult researches—this purports to be the Book of Eibon, the work of the legendary Hyperborean wizard. It discusses Tsathoggua and other Great Old Ones and their origins, and delves into weird alchemy.
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
CIC: Go on.
PFC NELSON: It was funny really. I thought it was a kid. Like a deformed kid. A child.
CIC: You thought what? Who?
PFC NELSON: The thing. Whatever it was. The man from the moon.
CIC: Can you be more clear?
PFC NELSON: This thing was coming at us from the disc! It was walking! It moved like a person! It looked like a person!”
In digital format, 1.4 gigabytes of PDF documents, files, blueprints, photographs and old black and white films which, when absorbed, leave the reader in no doubt as to the reality of the UFO phenomenon. In physical form, two huge file binders, each the size of a Webster’s unabridged dictionary, weighing nearly nine kg.
The documents tell a clear tale…
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Delta Green-related interview transcripts, personnel files, newspaper clippings, and copies of FBI case files compiled by Matthew Carpenter while he served in A-cell. The contents range from 1970 to 1999.
in Latin, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Rituals: true
Translated by Olaus Wormius in 1623, based on a very rare Latin version of 1228 and the lost Greek translation of 950 CE, this is the most common surviving text of the black book. There are possibly a dozen copies extant, though only six are definitely catalogued.
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
They say foul things of Old Times still lurk
In dark forgotten corners of the world.
And Gates still gape to loose, on certain nights.
Shapes pent in Hell.
in Greek, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Rituals: true
in English, German, Italian, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Rituals: true
in Classical Chinese, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Rituals: true
in German, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Rituals: true
in Latin, Study time: months. Occult + Unnatural: 12 SAN Loss: 2D6
Rituals: true
in In English. Requires Science (Mathematics), Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in English, Study time: days. Occult + Unnatural: 3 SAN Loss: 1D4
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in German, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Rituals: Honor Der Führer
A book dictated to Bitterich by an avatar of Nyarlathotep convincingly calling itself an ascended Adolf Hitler. Mein Triumph details how Der Führer was transformed into a demigod by mass sacrifices in the death camps and how the Aryan race can attain similar status by exterminating the lower races. The cover shows a swastika encircled by a snaky monster or demon with its wings spread.
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Major General William J. Donovan, the head of the Office of Strategic Services, wrote this brief document on 12 FEB 1942 ordering the creation of what was to become Delta Green. Lt. Commander Martin Cook from the Office of Naval Intelligence’s P4 (a group focused on paranormal activity, founded after the Navy’s raid on Innsmouth) had proposed to Donovan that P4 be transferred to the OSS. Donovan agreed and made arrangements. All of P4’s documents and personnel were moved into OSS offices, and Delta Green was born. This document’s Unnatural skill bonus is granted not on the basis of eldritch knowledge contained within its text, but rather its revelation that the government was involved in dealing with supernatural activity on an ongoing basis from at least 1942. It is a piece of corroborating evidence of a much bigger truth. The complete text of the order is included on page 203 as a handout for the players.
in German, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in In German or English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Rituals: None.
“Let His beneficence shine upon our endeavor, this land be made clean by His hand. Swept towards the growing rot of men’s minds, blooming in a beauteous uncreation. The first, the last, the only, the none. The one.”
This leather-bound folio of loose and yellowed pages contains a complex lineage that purports to trace a royal bloodline from Carcosa to New York City and beyond. Over one thousand names are contained, including nearly anyone involved with the King in Yellow in Impossible Landscapes (including the players’ Agents). On the last page, quite visible despite a splotch of red wax, is the Yellow Sign.
in Latin, Study time: weeks. Occult + Unnatural: 1 SAN Loss: 1
Rituals: None.
“Sed Rehoboam patri Salomoni dixit, ‘O pater, in qualibus operibus potestas operum sedet?’ Et Salomon illi dixit, ‘In herbis et in verbis et in saxis sedet omnis ars et gratia et potestas cognoscentium.’”
in , Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in , Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in , Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in , Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: 1 SAN Loss: 1
Rituals: None.
A 22-minute screenplay based on the Libro Secretorum Manifesta edition of The King in Yellow. Due to the truncated nature of the screenplay, the effects are lessened but still present. It also feels unfinished. Reading the screenplay is enough to open the victim to the ministrations of the King in Yellow. Any Agent who reads it gains a very specific disorder after they next hit the Breaking Point… an obsession with locating a full copy of The King in Yellow
in , Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
A limited 1955 adaptation of The King in Yellow as seen in the Red Book, including stage directions, prop and set notes, and more. Reading the play is enough to open the victim to the ministrations of the King in Yellow. An Agent who reads it gains a very specific disorder after they next hit the Breaking Point: an obsession with locating a full copy of The King in Yellow.
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
A limited adaptation of The King in Yellow as seen in the Red Book, written in 1952. Due to the truncated nature of the teleplay, its effects are significantly lessened. Reading the play is enough to open the victim to the ministrations of the King in Yellow. An Agent who reads it gains a very specific disorder after they next hit the Breaking Point.. an obsession with locating a full copy of The King in Yellow.
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Rituals: [Dance of the Hyleoroi (equivalent to Meditation Upon the Favored Ones) Fascination Healing Balm Rite of Reunion Soothing Song Whispers of the Dead (The Mother of Moons)]
Dubious New Age and Wiccan occultism reinterpret 18th-century witchcraft through excerpts from the infamous Book of Eibon. Every margin is cramped with Karen Valdez’s crazed, handwritten expositions inspired by communion with the apparently alien or insane life-goddess called the Mother of Moons and the hyleoroi, watchful nymphs or spirits of the deep woods, that supposedly serve Her.
in , Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in , Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in , Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in , Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in , Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in , Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in , Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Hundred of yellow legal pads containing failed drafts of an unpublished novel based on a trip to the amazon. The notes also contain the author’s bloody suicide note.
The thing in the ammo box is somehow connected to a hooting sound in the trees.
The thing is from a tropical climate.
Sex and violence are dangerous temptations often confused by those affected.
Whitehead was driven to a life of reclusive madness by the events in the Amazon.
in english, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in Russian, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
A disorganized jumble of papers contains Yelena Kalamatiano’s journals, experimental logs, enemies list, and recipes. These documents represent a lifetime spent pursuing the mysteries of Shub-Niggurath, called the Magna Mater or Great Mother, as part of a patriarchal subculture unappreciative of her gifts: a horrifying subsect of the Skoptsi.
Though far from a complete history, the documents provide a basic outline of Skoptsi theology as well as the location of the Basilica of Our Virgin Mother and the names of prominent cult members in the unincorporated community called “Moscow on the Chesapeake.” (See FINDING THE SKOPTSI on page 88 for details.) At the Handler’s discretion, long-term study could slowly reveal bits of information about the cult and its history. For each such revelation, summarize for the Agents a few lines from the history of the Skoptsi in Countdown or The Millennium. Further research in other sources could piece details together and reveal the full picture.
As Yelena grew older, the loss of Skoptsi treasures called the Black Icons and the cult’s refusal to grant her immortality made her bitter toward the group’s elders. Meanwhile, the boys in the Skoptsi spent their time occupied by their “diversions.”
The papers are part coup and part fantasy of what she would do if given sufficient power. Using her already considerable skills as a sorcerer, Kalamatiano began experimenting with a way to recontact Shub-Niggurath’s spawn, such as the haedi nigritiae, and grant herself immortality. The efforts were fruitless, resulting in nothing save the accelerated depletion of the cult’s already dwindling stable of child victims. However, Kalamatiano did stumble onto a new ritual she calls Estrus of the Mother. It did not grant her immortality, but it transformed her and provided a grotesque tool for enhancing her sorcerous power.
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
The journal is bound in faux leather, a mass-market model purchased from Borders bookstore. Only about half of its 300 pages contain writing. The cover and pages are torn from a variety of animal teeth and claws, likely the same that shredded most of the other books and documents found in the trailer’s office. Most pages are clotted with blood that pooled around the document where it lay on the floor. This makes parsing the document difficult. Ink has run or been overwritten by bloody grime.
Killian’s notes trace investigations into the forces that destroyed her life in her time with Delta Green from 1996 to 2001, the year she fled with her family.
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
A litter of handwritten and printed pages comprise a manuscript version of Nika Leninovna Chilikov’s master’s thesis in child psychology. Only the abstract, first few pages, and bibliography are complete.
Chilikov’s subjects are the children shipped from Maryland to the King-Torino Children’s Refuge. Each is given a simple moniker (“Sub. A,” “Sub. B,” etc.) to protect anonymity. The “Methods” section, which describes each child, makes it clear Chilikov included herself in the study. The consulting Ph.D. on the thesis is Sarah Brice, who worked at King-Torino and signed off on the use of her case files. Brice died of a brain tumor in 2012.
The thrust of Chilikov’s argument is that under certain extreme conditions of educational neglect and physical abuse, housing victims together may actually impede their development of language skills. She explains that strict in-group norms forged in the abusive environment can severely alter behavior and communication. The paper recounts, through a veil of objectivity, Chilikov’s own struggles after accepting the tutelage of Dr. Brice, the violence she endured at the hands of her former friends, and her slow progress in education despite enormous pressure to shut down.
in , Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Conradin’s leather-bound journal dates back to when he was 16 years old. Esau, Jacob, Conradin, whatever you call him, underwent a remarkable developmental recovery. The tortured prose indicates he only learned to decode language at the very end of his developmental stage. Though blessed by strange opportunities, Conradin struggled his whole life to obscure his difficulty with communication, to protect both his father’s snake-oil education empire and his own mission. He treated every interaction and interior thought as a laborious composition exercise, in need of careful research and drafting. Though never quite achieving grade-level literacy, tutoring and Conradin’s personal dedication improved his language skills profoundly over the last decade.
Entries during the college years contain concise, careful paraphrases of complex reading assignments given at Duke and completed by Lee Jarnigan. Interspersed with spelling and grammar exercises is a diary of Conradin’s study of the nameless force that drives him. In his years with his father, he stumbled across Saki’s famous story of Sredni Vashtar and found it beautiful. Sredni Vashtar became Conradin’s first name for his nameless god.
In the journal, Conradin catalogs the strange impulses and certainties that guide him through life. He tries to piece together everything he can remember from Cornucopia House. He theorizes that his neurological damage could serve to obscure the source of that power, that influence. It connects him “to the quiet that let us first hear. With a brain partially segmented by other eldritch sorceries, Conradin retained limited access to the divine and did his level best to translate it into paltry words. Conradin studied Egyptology, history, mythology, and quantum physics, at least insofar as tutors could winnow down the specialist vocabulary into something he could manage. He used his father’s wealth to buy a degree and research the history of his terrifying god on Earth.
Conradin writes that cults in mythical Atlantis and Lemuria worshiped the Nameless God before recorded history. The earliest Egyptians sacrificed and prayed to it as Bast… a protector against evil magic, against evil spirits and cruel powers. Myths named Bast among the goddesses called the Eye of Re, defender of order against the chaos serpent Apep. The Nameless God warred with the legendary Black Pharaoh, Nephren-Ka, said to be a god himself. But the Nameless God’s hungers consumed even its own worshipers. Its power withdrew. It waited.
Conradin’s sketches represent his beloved deity as a ferocious lioness, a sunlit guardian and hunter among the stars in the sky, made of stars and devouring stars. He writes that it ‘never “she”’ feeds on unnatural power. Power itself is the prey of Bast, the god that hungers, the god that feeds.
Was Bast born into the universe, some strange entity that evolved with it? Is Bast an aggregate of countless weird processes of the absorption of power? An emergent property of the ways in which strange energies that we call unnatural move from state to state, from reality to unreality? Is it, like life itself in some theories, merely a byproduct of the inevitability of entropy? Is it an epiphenomenon of the unthinkable Source of all power in the universe, in all universes, blindly hungering to reclaim itself?
Conradin does not know.
Bast is but one name for a cosmic need to hunt and consume. It manipulates reality and engineers causality. It singles out servants that carry out its work and marks them, scars them, and claims them its own, forever. Servants like Conradin. Servants like the Teeth.
Conradin explicitly describes how to create new Teeth and continue the cycle. That is the sole purpose of Private Side. The latest entries record Conradin’s use of federal resources to hunt for the Teeth. He’s close to discovering their identities but he doesn’t appear to be looking very hard. It’s as if he expects the information to soon reveal itself. The last page of the journal is dated the day before. It reads, “They are coming. You are here.”
in English, Study time: . Occult + Unnatural: SAN Loss:
Abby Venable wrote this report a year or so ago for her twelfth-grade humanities class at Druid Hills High School. She wrote it for an assignment on genealogy and chose her ancestor, a resident of Salem several hundred years ago. This ordinary school paper’s contents may strike the Agents rather differently than it did Abby’s teacher. Rather unusually, she makes the case that her ancestor really was a witch. According to the paper, Abigail Prinn was born in England and raised by a mother who had received a sterling education from private tutors, owing to her well-to-do merchant family’s regard for their very educated queen Elizabeth I. Abigail’s hunger for knowledge, and the changing cultural expectations brought about by the rise of the Puritans, led her to seek information in increasingly shadowy places. When one of her less respectable tutors taught her witchcraft in the White Scar Caves of Yorkshire, Prinn became consumed with metaphysical studies and rituals. She and her husband moved to the colonies in 1680 and settled in Salem. Prinn’s cowed and submissive husband did not interfere in her work. He eventually died in a carriage accident, leaving her a comfortable annuity. Ten years later, her notoriety in Salem led to a trial for witchcraft in which she was found guilty. But to the horror of the assembled citizenry, Prinn could not be burned at the stake. (The paper does not say so, but her heart was already brimstone and her flesh replaced by the tumorous matter of Nyogtha.) An enraged minister seized a burning stake from the pyre and drove it into her heart, at which point she slumped in seeming death and was hurriedly interred in the Charter Street Burying Ground. The paper concludes by noting that in the fall of 1937, Abigail Prinn’s coffin was dug up by unknown persons and the corpse stolen. Left behind was the wooden stake, which newspaper accounts said was stained black as pitch and reeked of brimstone. Abby Venable’s teacher gave the paper a B− with the scribbled note, “Very imaginative”. Next to this, Abby has written in all capitals, “SCREW YOU.”