So, I have a few months before my party gets into The Champion's Belt (seeing as my players are all fellow college students at home for the summer), so I'm thinking a lot on how to make it really good. Now, I've already established that the quote from H.P. Lovecraft's "The Festival" that accompanied both the Ecology of the Spawn of Kyuss and was the header for Dungeon 135 is the opening line of the Apostolic Scrolls. Say it with me, now...
For it is old rumor that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from its charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes are secretly dug where earth's pores ought to suffice, and things have learned to walk which ought to crawl.
So I'm reading a book on the Necronomicon (and how it has been appropriated by real occultist who've written their own fake versions), and I stumble upon this awesome quote from it by Clark Ashton Smith, one of Lovecraft's contemporaries.
Many and multiform are the dim horrors of earth, infesting her ways from the prime. They sleep beneath the unturned stone; they rise with the tree from its root; they move beneath the sea and in subterranean place; they dwell in the inmost adyta; they emerge betimes from the shutten spulchre of haughty bronze and the low grave sealed with clay. There are some which are long known to man, and others as yet unknown that abide the terrible latter days of their revealing. Those which are most dreadful of all are haply still to be declared. But among those that have been revealed aforetime and have made manifest their veritable presence, there is one that may not openly be named for its exceeding foulness. It is that spawn which the hidden dweller in the vaults has begotten upon mortality.
Perfect! The exceedingly foul thing that cannot be openly named is the Apostle of Kyuss, and the dweller in the vaults is Kyuss himself!
So, has anyone else betaken writing up portions of the Apostolic Scrolls (or plagarized better authors, as I have)?
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I haven't written my own excerpts from the Apostolic Scrolls but i think that you're on a good way with researching Lovecraft and other authors that handled the Cthulhu-mythos (C.E. Smith, Robert Bloch, Brian Lumley, August Derleth etc.). The mythos is all about foul evil being hidden for ages to someday claim the rule of the world. You'll find thousands of quotes that would fit perfectly into the scrolls. Some passages from books by Poe or Algernon Blackwood might suit your needs too...
I had not yet considered trying to write these, so thanks for the heads up. My players are currently on the 3FOE so I have a little time yet, but here is my first start, working off of the quotes you have given, and building upon a number of other quotes from HP lovecraft. I have made them seem like they are written by many different authors, much like many ancient prophecies.
The Apostolic Scrolls
That is not dead
which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons
even death may die.
Ages glide
Ages wilt
Empires rise
Empires rot
Worms open the breast of the Earth
For all the world to see the blight within
Spires rise
Spires fall
Ages to come
Age of Worms
The soul of the devil-bought hastes not from its charnel clay,
but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws;
till out of corruption horrid life springs,
and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it
and swell monstrous to plague it.
Great holes are secretly dug where earth's pores ought to suffice,
and things have learned to walk which ought to crawl.
Many and multiform are the dim horrors of earth,
infesting her ways from the prime.
They sleep beneath the unturned stone;
they rise with the tree from its root;
they move beneath the sea and in subterranean place;
they dwell in the inmost adyta;
they emerge betimes from the shutten spulchre
of haughty bronze and the low grave sealed with clay.
There are some which are long known to man,
and others as yet unknown.
Those which are most dreadful of all are till to be declared.
But among those that have been revealed aforetime
and have made manifest their veritable presence,
there is one that may not openly be named for its exceeding foulness.
It is that spawn which
the hidden dweller in the vaults
has begotten upon mortality.
My eyes bewitched by the glassy orbs
which stared loathsomely into them, refused to close;
though they were mercifully blurred,
and showed the terrible object but indistinctly
I tried to raise my hand to shut out the sight,
yet so stunned that my arm could not obey my will.
I became aware of the nearness of the carrion thing,
whose hideous hollow breathing I half fancied I could hear.
For although nepenthe has calmed me,
I know always that I am an outsider;
a stranger in this Age and among those who are still men.
This I have known ever since
I stretched out my fingers to the abomination
Within that great emerald prison;
stretched out my fingers and touched
a cold and unyielding surface of bored viridian stone
High above a spire arisen,
In dim lit circle the palace,
Near the black oily river
The mists always swirl
The Jade morass seeks to shelter,
That place, very old,
And the high shelves full of rot and volumes
Reached back endlessly through rooms
High above the spire rose
To attain heaven for him
To attain heaven for him
I made the five concentric circles of fire on the floor,
and stood in the innermost one
chanting that monstrous litany
the messenger from Tartary had taught
The walls melted away,
Swept by a black wind through gulfs of fathomless grey
with the needle pinnacles of unknown mountains below
There was utter blackness,
Then the light of myriad stars
forming strange, alien constellations
I saw a green-litten plain below
on it the twisted towers of a city
A great building of stone in an crack within the earth
I felt a hideous fear clutching at me
I screamed and struggled,
From whence I could never return
I beheld such a sight as I had never beheld before,
which no person can have seen save in the inferno
The building stood on a narrow point of land
one hundred fathoms above
a seething vortex of mad waters
From the Citadel there fell a precipice of earth
Whilst ahead the hideous waves were rolling in
Gnawing away the land with ghastly monotony
There rose and fell breakers ten fathoms high
Upon the Sea so deep
Above ghoulish black clouds of grotesque contour
twisting and spiraling as unwholesome vultures
The waves were dark and black
and clutched at the yielding rock of the bank
And from the spire, which rose
a hundred Fathoms into the maelstrom
There rose a pillar of beryl light
Which writhed as a serpentine line into the sky
The axis upon which the world now turned
Faster, faster gathered the clouds
Thunders rolled deafening, maddening
Then came a culminating crash whose power
Shook the land, sea, and sky alike
The darkened world torn asunder
To attain heaven for him
To attain heaven for him
Tell me what you think?
O.o...
Friggin awesome. I'm on... er... the first session now, but I'm going to so start making the apostic scrolls now.
Incredible. That sounds perfect. I'm making a copy in a nice creepy font to use as a handout when my group gets their meat-hooks on it (which might be this evening, if they don't waste much time).
Sol, your draft looks pretty awesome. I might drop the opening Alhazred couplet (because my players know Lovecraft fairly well) and replace it with an opening of my own design (I've already mentioned that "Even Life eternal is not time enough to see All the folly and despair of Man's humanity" is the opening of the Scrolls), but I'm going to steal this for my own use. Good work!
Thanks. I will have to work some more on this one at some point. My palyers have just finished their 9th session, but have only completed the TFoE, so I have an little bit of time before they see the scrolls.
The Bible has some interesting quotes on worms: http://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=worm&qs_version=9
This stuff would make for some good rantings by Rain Barrel Man, with a few words changed.
"I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day. My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust; my skin is broken, and become loathsome. My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and are spent without hope." (Job 7:4-6)
"If I wait, the grave is mine house: I have made my bed in the darkness. I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister. And where is now my hope? as for my hope, who shall see it? They shall go down to the bars of the pit, when our rest together is in the dust." (Job 17:13-16)
"For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me." (Job 19:25-27)
"The womb shall forget him; the worm shall feed sweetly on him; he shall be no more remembered." (Job 24:20)
"Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee." (Isaiah 14:9-11)
"And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh." (Isaiah 66:24)
"And the people gave a shout, saying, It is the voice of a god, and not of a man. And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost." (Acts 12:22-23)
Thanks Sol thought that was awesome and if you don't mind I'll use it in my campaign. My PC's are just coming up to Zyrxog's lair.
