Friday Fiction: The Dunwich Horror

The Dunwich Horror is one of horror author H.P. Lovecraft’s most famous stories. It takes place in the mouldering decrepit parts of Massachusetts where the ravines seem to run deep and the trees appear to leap up to ring the stone-topped hills from strange sounds emanate, and few if any of the villagers appear to work their boulder strewn pastures. Here stands Dunwich, a refuge for those fleeing the witch trials of Salem, decayed and shunned in equal measure, where no man of the cloth has set foot for centuries. The Bishops and the Whatelys, the leading families, such as they are, send their few scions to study at Harvard and elsewhere, and some do indeed return to Dunwich. Yet the worst of these scions, and most precocious—both physically and mentally—is Wilbur Whately, who leaves of his own accord, in search of knowledge that will enable him to make contact with his true father. A mere fifteen when he goes in search of this knowledge, it will ultimately be his undoing and his death will have terrible consequences for the village of Dunwich and the men who accompany Doctor Henry Armitage to deal with the aftermath of Wilbur’s attempts to obtain information from the eldritch tomes kept in the stacks of the Miskatonic University library.

Originally published in April 1929 issue of Weird Tales, The Dunwich Horror has been published many times since and in more recent years adapted into films, graphic novels, audio dramas and radio plays, and even a stage play. One of the latest adaptations is none of these, but an illustrated version of the short story. The Dunwich Horror is published by Free League Publishing, a publisher best known for roleplaying games such as Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings, and Alien: The Roleplaying Game. It is not the publisher’s first such title. That would be The Call of Cthulhu, the classic of American horror literature and the short story that is arguably H.P. Lovecraft’s most well-known. It has since been followed with At the Mountains of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft’s most famous and only novel, published as two parts, Volume I and Volume II. As with these classics, the Free League Publishing edition of The Dunwich Horror is fully illustrated by French artist François Baranger and presented in a large 10½ by 14 inches folio format.

Much like Lovecraft himself, Baranger draws the reader long up the Miskatonic River to its headwaters amongst the dark hills that surround the village of Dunwich. There is a sense of isolation and decay, shrouded in mist and a gloom of long nights and secrets, the latter brightened by hilltops blazes around which men and things cavort and conspire. Perhaps the most marked sign of decay is the depiction of the traditional New England covered bridge, the wooden walkway leading to it twisted and broken, the bridge itself missing planks and the remaining construction already rotting above the dank waters. As the seasons come and go, the folk of Dunwich comment and chart the strangeness of Wilbur Whately himself and the ongoing construction at the family home. Twice the gloom is broken by fire atop the hillsides, the brightness marred by the unholy reasons for them being lit, once for the birth of Wilbur, then again for his search for answers. It is this search that takes Wilbur to Miskatonic University and here is perhaps the only light in the story, an austere bastion of knowledge caught in the pale winter sun as the looming figure of Wilbur Whately approaches the Orne Library.

Yet this is the only moment of contrast in the depiction of The Dunwich Horror by François Baranger, a moment of calm between Wilbur’s unseemly growth and the thirst for knowledge that will not only kill him and so revealing the ghostly true nature of his form, but also unleash a monstrous horror upon the blighted farming folk of Dunwich. The second half of the novel—the first half being described as a prologue—details for the reasons for reader’s return to Dunwich, the dangerous nature of Wilbur’s researches and the unearthly presence in the village, unseen as it lumbers from one scene of destruction to another. This time though, we are in the company of Doctor Armitage, he and his colleagues equipped with the dread knowledge necessary to banish what that presence might be. The head librarian has already paid the price in the cost to his composure in conducting that research, making clear the insidious effects of looking too much into things that man was not meant to know. The short story and Baranger’s illustrations draw in closer and closer, leaving the expansiveness of the horror’s wake, behind to climb the hill where the fires were once lit. Here in one terrible moment, just as the first half of story revealed Wilbur’s true form in inhuman twistedness, both Lovecraft and Baranger shows us the real ‘Dunwich Horror’.

The third of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories to be adapted by François Baranger, his depiction of The Dunwich Horror is one of brooding claustrophobia and leaden shadows, seeming only to up when the tale looks skyward and to the monstrosity unleashed by Wilbur Whately’s branch of the family. As before, the likelihood is that the reader of this book will have read H.P. Lovecraft’s story before, probably more than once, but François Baranger brings the story to life in sombre tones and startling revelations that match the text perfectly as it reveals much about the Whatelys and the mythology Lovecraft was creating. This new depiction of The Dunwich Horror is perfect for dark nights upon which new readers can discover this classic horror story, whilst old fans can come back to stalk the crepuscular valleys and hills of this corner of New England and be reviled at its secrets once again.

Friday Fiction: At the Mountains of Madness Volume II

At the Mountains of Madness is horror author H.P. Lovecraft’s longest and one of his most famous stories. It takes the form of a series of letters, written by Doctor William Dyer, a geologist from Miskatonic University, who in late 1930 led an expedition to the Antarctic which would end in disaster, madness, and death following the discovery of the remains of prehistoric lifeforms unknown to science, buried in the permafrost and the remains of a cyclopean city behind a mountain range the height of the Himalayas—previously never seen before, the city long abandoned for terrible reasons which are ultimately revealed at the denouement of the story. Specifically, Doctor Dyer’s letters have been written in an effort to prevent a second, and much more important and widely publicised expedition which is being mounted to the Antarctic from following in the same path. The story has a strong sense of atmosphere and environment—the ice and snow, and extreme low temperatures play a major role in the narrative, serving as a starkly frigid backdrop against which its events take place and its equally stark revelations as to the horrid and horrifying events in the past and their dark influences upon the origins of mankind.

Originally serialised in the February, March, and April 1936 issues of Astounding Stories, At the Mountains of Madness has been published many times since and in more recent years adapted into songs, musicals, graphic novels, radio serials, and more. The very latest adaptation is none of these, but an illustrated version of the novel. At the Mountains of Madness is published by Free League Publishing, a publisher best known for roleplaying games such as Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days and Forbidden Lands – Raiders & Rogues in a Cursed World, this is not the publisher’s first such title. That would be The Call of Cthulhu, the classic of American horror literature and the short story that is arguably H.P. Lovecraft’s most well-known. As with that classic, the Free League Publishing edition of At the Mountains of Madness is fully illustrated by French artist François Baranger and presented in a large 10½ by 14 inches folio format.

At the Mountains of Madness Volume I only took the protagonists as far as the upper reaches of the Elder Thing city, it closing at the point where the protagonists are preparing to enter the city’s subterranean depths. Baranger’s final illustration was subtly ominous, the stonework of the wall around the entrance to the tunnel below the Elder Thing city casting a skull-like shadow… It is Baranger’s gorgeous artwork that stood out in the first volume and again, his superlative illustrations capture the frigid, shattered, and alien of the Elder Things on the other side of the Mountains of Madness in the second volume, At the Mountains of Madness Volume I. If the first volume was dominated by wide panoramas of the Antarctic wastes, his artwork balances that here with a sense of height that dwarves the explorers, Doctor William Dyer and the student, Danforth. As they delve deeper into the city and Dyer begins to translate the hieroglyphic murals, the art changes to match, illustrating it in time to Lovecraft’s text as both men learn the long history of the city and its strange inhabitants. Thus there is a switch back and forth between the city in ruins and the city as a living place for the Elder Things, sense of stillness in the former and movement in the latter. No more so than in the terrible confrontation between the Elder Things and the Cthulhu Spawn, an eldritch battle over which great Cthulhu looms. In the text, Dyer notes the sense of awe at the alien city and again that is matched by the Baranger from the first page to the last.

The tone changes as the Elder Things devise and develop the terrible protoplasmic intelligences known as Shoggoths. Even their appearance seems to overawe the Elder Things, imbuing the alien creatures with sense of sympathy and even fear on their behalf...! This though turns shock as the two men first discover the remains of the missing Gedney and his dog—whose disappearance was detailed in At the Mountains of Madness Volume I—and the strange giant albino penguins! Then find out what happened to the Elder Things that were woken in the first half and who were responsible their nemesis—the dread Shoggoth! The final scenes are a rush, as the Shoggoth threaten engulf Dyer and Danforth and the two men make a desperate escape from the city and to their aeroplane. Only in the final scene, do we focus at all upon either of the men, a look of sheer terror upon Danforth’s face as he takes one last terrible look at where he has just come from!

The text for this second volume of At the Mountains of Madness, as with the first, are taken from the standard version of Lovecraft’s story. Although there is no change to the text in terms of content, there is in terms of emphasis, there in places being sentences and paragraphs being placed in a larger font. This is often jarring and does not match Lovecraft’s story, feeling unnecessary given that Branager’s illustrations are there exactly to deliver that emphasis.

If the reader was disappointed to have to wait for At the Mountains of Madness Volume II is after At the Mountains of Madness Volume I, then that wait has been worth it. At the Mountains of Madness Volume II is a stunning book, but then again, so was At the Mountains of Madness Volume I. François Baranger fantastically depicts and contrasts the present and the past of the city beyond the Mountains of Madness in this second volume, just as the second volume as a whole, contrasts the stark alienness and openness of the Antarctic with the oppressive heights of the ruins of the Elder thing city. Of course, At the Mountains of Madness Volume II is not a standalone book, yet its artwork almost transcends the necessity for the first volume. Together, At the Mountains of Madness Volume I and At the Mountains of Madness Volume II combine to retell H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness in a glorious fashion that will delight readers who already know the story and readers who are new to his cosmic horror.

Mythos Manuals I

From Unaussprechlichen Kulten, Revelations of Gla’aki, De Vermis Mysteriis to the dread Necronomicon, the Mythos and its fiction is replete with awful tomes of all too inhuman, alien knowledge, spells or formulae whose invocation all too lead to the summoning of or contact with things and beings beyond understanding, and the ravings of madmen. Their treatment in Call of Cthulhu and other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror has varied over the years. At worst they have been treated as treasures to be plundered from cultists as in some of the very early scenarios, but in more recent times they have been properly treated as horribly insidious works of true knowledge, with even their possession having a subtle effect upon the fragility of man, whether his mind or his very being. Perhaps their first expansive exploration in Call of Cthulhu would have been in The Keeper’s Companion Vol. 1 and The Keeper’s Companion Vol. 2, and the evocative exploration and presentation would have been in the almost mythical Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion. It is strange that given their place within the fiction and their use to both impart knowledge of the Mythos and enforce its corruptive influence, that there has never been a Call of Cthulhu supplement dedicated to just these great works within the fiction.

Tomes of Cthulhu, published by Azukail Games, is not that supplement, but it points towards such a supplement even if cannot be that supplement itself—primarily for copyright reasons, of course. It is instead a generic supplement for roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror which describes some twenty different tomes and their reprints inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft. Each entry follows a standard format. This includes both the name of the work and its author, a description of its format and its contents, plus size and weight, number of pages, primary language it is written in, the amount of knowledge it contains about the Mythos and the effect upon the reader once the book is read, and a suggested period of study time. This is followed by notes and perhaps discussion of copies or reprints. All of which apes the descriptions and formatting of details about the Mythos tomes in Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, but Tomes of Cthulhu shies away from supplying the Game Master with actual numbers. Thus, the suggested amount of knowledge it contains about the Mythos and the effect upon the reader once the book is read runs from Least through Lesser, Moderate, and Greater to Greatest, equating to much as 2% for the Least category to as much as 15% for the Greatest. Take any of the entries in Tomes of Cthulhu and the Game Master should be able to adapt them to the Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying game of her choice.

The entries range from ancient stone tablets to typed reports. A Translation and Interpretation of the Pre-Minoan Tablets Found in the Aegean is an example of the latter, supposedly written in a language belonging to a pre-Minoan civilisation and discovered by adventurer Jonathan Smedlock during a dive off the coast of Crete. The tablets were regarded as fakes and his claims ridiculed, and the tablets were either lost or are in a museum, and Smedlock was last seen in Africa. The translations in Smedlock’s own cheap hardback are based on several other works, none of them on the Minoan languages, and the Game Master is free to insert whichever Mythos she wants in here. An example of the latter is A Report of the Investigation into the Events in the Punjabi Himalayan Region in 1873 by Captain James Sutton is the typed report based on The Journal of Captain James Sutton, a soldier sent to investigate strange goings on in the Punjab in the shadow of Himalayas. The diary records weird, unearthly colours, and draining, grey effect that killed man, beast, plant, and the ground itself. The official report, not wholly written by Sutton, and since mimeographed, gives poisoning as the cause. Most of the other entries in Tomes of Cthulhu are books or reports, but Giants in the Earth by Private Tommy Atkins is a volume of horrifically grim poetry published after the Great War under an obvious pseudonym, the author consequently being confined to Bedlam where he committed suicide. The second, expurgated edition was published in 1959, its often lurid and disturbing replaced with more mundane depictions of the Western Front. The second edition is thus not of interest to book collectors or Mythos scholars, but either version reveals something about the Ghouls that prowled the Western Front.

Several famous figures are given as authors of Mythos tomes. Sir Isaac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Alchimia Principia Mathematica following a possible breakdown, a treatise on mathematics, the occult, alchemy, and chemistry which describes the true nature of the universe, particularly as they relate to time, space, or dimensional travel, even as far out as the Dreamlands. Suggested entities and races covered in the volume, which is written in Latin, include Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, and Great Race of Yith. Notes on an Expedition to the Antarctic by Charles Darwin is perhaps the most obvious entry in its inspiration. In 1831, during the second voyage of HMS Beagle, the expedition was given maps of a southern continent, and the book describes how it sailed south and discovered a cave entrance on the frozen land. Inside there were found pieces of green soapstone worked into rounded, five-pointed stars; carvings and murals on the walls, many damaged, depicted strange creatures and maps, perhaps of the Earth; and the strange, fossilised figure of barrel-shaped creature beyond understanding. Then there was the strange piping voice which shouted, “Tekeli-li!”. It is of course, all very At the Mountains of Madness.

Tomes of Cthulhu is relatively underwritten in terms of its ideas, because primarily, it is overwritten, repetitious, and very much in need of an edit. It also suffers from being for roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror rather than for a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, and so is not specific enough, which is not unexpected given the fact that the author must tiptoe around the facts that he cannot supply such numbers and he must be careful of what he can and cannot include. In combination though, the result is that any attempt to extract the information from this supplement is not as easy it should or could be. There are some potentially interesting tomes and titles which the Game Master or Keeper could extract from Tomes of Cthulhu, but it is perhaps best used to inspire the creation her own, as that might be easier.

Friday Fiction: At the Mountains of Madness Volume I

At the Mountains of Madness is horror author H.P. Lovecraft’s longest and one of his most famous stories. It takes the form of a series of letters, written by Doctor William Dyer, a geologist from Miskatonic University, who in late 1930 led an expedition to the Antarctic which would end in disaster, madness, and death following the discovery of the remains of prehistoric lifeforms unknown to science, buried in the permafrost and the remains of a cyclopean city behind a mountain range the height of the Himalayas—previously never seen before, the city long abandoned for terrible reasons which are ultimately revealed at the denouement of the story. Specifically, Doctor Dyer’s letters have been written in an effort to prevent a second, and much more important and widely publicised expedition which is being mounted to the Antarctic from following in the same path. The story has a strong sense of atmosphere and environment—the ice and snow, and extreme low temperatures play a major role in the narrative, serving as a starkly frigid backdrop against which its events take place and its equally stark revelations as to the horrid and horrifying events in the past and their dark influences upon the origins of mankind.

Originally serialised in the February, March, and April 1936  issues of Astounding Stories, At the Mountains of Madness has been published many times since and in more recent years adapted into songs, musicals, graphic novels, radio serials, and more. The very latest adaptation is none of these, but an illustrated version of the novel. At the Mountains of Madness is published by Free League Publishing, a publisher best known for roleplaying games such as Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days and Forbidden Lands – Raiders & Rogues in a Cursed World, this is not the publisher’s first such title. That would be The Call of Cthulhu, the classic of American horror literature and the short story that is arguably H.P. Lovecraft’s most well-known. As with that classic, the Free League Publishing edition of At the Mountains of Madness is fully illustrated by French artist François Baranger and presented in a large 10½ by 14 inches folio format. 

However, this is only At the Mountains of Madness Volume I. Running to just sixty-four pages, the text of the story only takes the protagonists as far as the upper reaches of the Elder Thing city, it closing at the point where the protagonists are preparing to enter the city’s subterranean depths. Fortunately, the fact that  the reader will need to wait for the second part to see more of Baranger’s gorgeous artwork is the first volume’s only downside (all right, to be fair, the large format of the book makes it difficult to place on almost any book shelf). This though should not persuade the reader from perusing the gorgeous pages of At the Mountains of Madness Volume I, for Baranger illustrates every page, brilliantly realising many of the novella’s many scenes. These begin in the dusty halls of Miskatonic University, quiet and contemplative, Doctor Dyer putting pen to paper to warn the upcoming expedition, before leaping into the joy and hope of his own expedition as it sets sail from Boston for the South Pole. There, the large folio format grants space to capture the sense of scale to the expedition’s task, to the southernmost continent itself, and ultimately the city of the Elder Things itself, with wide, glorious vistas of the Antarctic and later the shattered, alien city—all bare, starkly white and icy. A later piece inverts this, depicting Dyer and his colleague, Danforth’s flight through the city with a dizzying sense of depth as it threads its way between colossal ruins.

Contrasting this is the closeness of the expedition, working and discussing the discoveries made, almost huddling together for warmth and to maintain a human connection. Here the colours are darker and use muddier tones as the expedition discovers the remains of the Elder Things in the caverns below the ice and later perform autopsies upon them. There is a nod to The Thing in these scenes, dripping menace and mystery as the weird corpses thaw and strange fluids fall to the floor, drop by drop. Baranger’s final illustration is subtly ominous, the stonework of the wall around the entrance to the tunnel below the Elder Thing city casting the a skull-like shadow…

At the Mountains of Madness Volume I is a stunning book. The likelihood is that the reader of this book will have read H.P. Lovecraft’s story before, probably more than once, but François Baranger brings the story to life in rich, gorgeous colour that captures both the grandeur and scale of the expedition’s discoveries as well as the dread claustrophobia of its mysteries and realisations. At the Mountains of Madness Volume I is a glorious way for new readers to discover H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness and for veteran readers to revisit its mystery and madness anew.