WHAT'S THE POINT OF AN UNKNOWABLE HORROR THAT IS VERY KNOWN
The knife-edge of cosmic horror is that single moment of realization wherein an inky black vista yawns wide before you, utterly engulfing the entire world you knew and rendering it insignificant whilst being utterly unknowable by it's very nature - not only have your illusions been shattered, you're not getting a new one - this being the cut, severing you utterly, leaving you floating, alone. And that's pretty neat.
In the abstract our insignificance is relatively easy to grasp, but the illustration, or demonstration, the rendering literal of such a fact, is the cutting moment that severs us utterly. Survivors are wounded and left detached with nothing to cling to.
The unknowablity of the outside directly correlates to it's cutting ability - the less comprehensible, systemisable, the fewer links and logical consistencies it produces, the further enhanced it's wounding capacity.
That's why we need to stop focusing on the surface level aesthetics of cosmic horror, the recognisable characters and entities and forces - we're way past that point now. These surface trappings are graspable by anyone with an internet connection and some time to kill - both their fictive biographies and their genesis in the waking world. They are stripped and bereft of their edge, blunted for easy consumption.
comparable to how punks had sharp studs and now fashion loves blunt square studs. atrophied and nonthreatening, fucking pointless. PUN UNINTENTIONAL
Stop leaning on the old names and techniques - players/readers will guess Hastur! Cthulhu! Yog-Sothoth!, a flight from the actual simmering mindless pointlessness that cosmic horror attacks you with. What's more, they'll shit themselves twice as hard when you cut the guide ropes and push them away from the shores of knowledge and into the black ocean of the unknown.
Fuck 'em, let them drown.
I love day drinking.
Showing posts with label notRPG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label notRPG. Show all posts
Monday, 2 July 2018
Wednesday, 14 February 2018
Bloom
The sun shone. The greens, yellows and purples intensified, warped by the greenhouse glass. The plants inside coiled thick, although the cunning order of it was plain to him – a complex weaving of species from across the globe, flowers blooming from the wrong plant to the untrained eye. A riot of plant life, exotic species flourishing in the controlled environment. He moved amongst them, pruning and binding where needed, at peace. This finished, he set about watering, carefully controlling his distribution, ensuring all received what they required. This done, he slid open the door, closing it behind him, shutting away his precious flowers. The warmth outside was drier, more comfortable. He set about caring for to his outdoor plants, tending to them with a practiced hand. Finally finished, he turned to survey his work.
There was an intruder in paradise. He approached, no small amount of discomfort present. Crouched, he examined the outsider. A thorned, sickly-green plant in the middle of the empty bed. Dead centre. A small, tight bud resided at the top of the squat growth. He was sure he had weeded, and this was nothing he grew. Nothing he'd seen. Cruel thorns twisting together into fractals repeating into impossible spirals, too fine for his eye to follow. His frown intensified. There'd been nothing there the day before, he tended the patch daily for such weeds. He swallowed his misgivings and elected to leave it until he'd researched it - a new species could be interesting. He levered himself up, and breathed, filling his lungs with the morning air. His serenity returned as the sun washed over him, over the garden. After a few more minutes enjoying his craft, he wandered back inside to dig up his botanical guides.
The many tomes lay open around him, like fat alchemical treatises, cut-away diagrams and illustrations staring upwards. Nothing. His searches online had been fruitless. He sipped his drink, considering the ugly invader. The idea of something new, something novel was uncharacteristically appealing to him. Something unique - something for the show next year. He grinned, took up his camera, and snapped several pictures of the intriguing growth before measuring it with his ruler. The stem was leafless, only bearing those still-unnerving fractal thorns and a single, unopened bud. Perhaps an import? Most of his guides, whilst comprehensive, focused on the more popular exotics or the local flora. That could explain the lack of search results online, his normal avenues of information similarly inclined. He examined the pictures over his simple dinner, chewing without tasting.
There were more now. Four of them, creeping above ground almost reluctantly. The term 'Invasive Species' burned across his mind. He spied on them from inside the greenhouse, almost afraid to go outside. His garden was being tainted. Defiled. He shook his head, attempting to clear the mounting panic. He'd dig them up, burn them. Just like any weed. Why they worried him so much was beyond him. Mindful of the thorns, he retrieved the thick gardening gloves and trowel from their place of pride in the greenhouse. Equipped for battle, he strode out to face the invader. The trowel bit, shifting the well-tended earth away from the outermost stalk. Worry grew to confusion to dread as he kept digging, no end in sight. Two feet down, he stopped. The stem continued downwards, beyond the extent of his excavation. The bed scarred by the hole. He resolved to pull out the plant, and grabbed the stem, frustration seeing the course. Pain ripped up his arm, and he fought to swallow a scream. What remained of the inside of the glove was stained red, the rest of it still stuck to the stem, pierced a thousand times over. His hand was a mess of thorns and torn skin. He whimpered and beat a retreat from the plants, abandoning his trowel. Rivulets of blood slid down the stem, gripping the thorns as they went.
Removing the thorns was no less painful, and he fought the urge to vomit several times. Irrespective of his twistings and manoeuvres, they tore indiscriminately at the flesh upon attempted removal. Several excruciating hours were spent whimpering, thumping the desk and gritting his teeth, the time stretching far beyond its hours. Seconds crawled like crippled ants. By the time he had cleaned and bandaged the ruined hand he was exhausted, and slept. The painkillers guided sleep to him swiftly, and he dreamt of beaked rabbits with the voices of old women. They spoke Spanish fluently, and it meant nothing to him.
He awoke with the throbbing still present, although receding. His hand had bled in the night, seeping through the bandages and staining the sheets. He acknowledged this blearily, his usual morning-clarity missing. Something to deal with later. He stumbled across the house, made himself his morning coffee. Only luck saved him from grabbing the mug with his wounded hand. He sipped it clumsily with his off-hand as he moved to the greenhouse, operating on auto-pilot, planning his normal routine, forgetful of or unwilling to address yesterday. He glanced through the glass to check the sun, and was near-floored by the ruin. The garden was over-run with the plant. Those thorn instilled a new fear within him, and the sunflower sized stems were impossible. Nothing grew that quickly. They pressed eagerly against the glass, seeking an entrance. He shook. The fear blossomed into true terror. The rug was pulled from underneath him and he was left floating over a void. Dazed, he stumbled around the greenhouse, clumsily sloshing water over his beloved exotics. He over-watered the succulents. He did not see. Routine complete, he floated back across the house, and slept atop his bloodstained sheets.
The greenhouse was dark, and smelt of rot. The glass was entirely covered in endless waves of the loathsome plant. He stumbled unseeingly through the tangle of shelves and beds, throwing water over himself as much as the dead plants. The bandages were a blend of dark, crusted red and pus-yellow stains, unchanged since the injury. His face was unshaven, eyes wild. The animal stink of fear rose from him. The greenhouse was a grave, a mausoleum, a testament to organic rot. He hummed a broken tune.
A pane had broken, and the monstrous fractals hung in hideous tangles. This he did not see. He knelt before the only living thing in that dark glass cage, plant matter pressing in from every direction. A thorned, sickly-green plant in the middle of the only upright bed. The bud was large, heavy with sap, angled towards him. He stared, his face slack. The flower bloomed.
There was an intruder in paradise. He approached, no small amount of discomfort present. Crouched, he examined the outsider. A thorned, sickly-green plant in the middle of the empty bed. Dead centre. A small, tight bud resided at the top of the squat growth. He was sure he had weeded, and this was nothing he grew. Nothing he'd seen. Cruel thorns twisting together into fractals repeating into impossible spirals, too fine for his eye to follow. His frown intensified. There'd been nothing there the day before, he tended the patch daily for such weeds. He swallowed his misgivings and elected to leave it until he'd researched it - a new species could be interesting. He levered himself up, and breathed, filling his lungs with the morning air. His serenity returned as the sun washed over him, over the garden. After a few more minutes enjoying his craft, he wandered back inside to dig up his botanical guides.
The many tomes lay open around him, like fat alchemical treatises, cut-away diagrams and illustrations staring upwards. Nothing. His searches online had been fruitless. He sipped his drink, considering the ugly invader. The idea of something new, something novel was uncharacteristically appealing to him. Something unique - something for the show next year. He grinned, took up his camera, and snapped several pictures of the intriguing growth before measuring it with his ruler. The stem was leafless, only bearing those still-unnerving fractal thorns and a single, unopened bud. Perhaps an import? Most of his guides, whilst comprehensive, focused on the more popular exotics or the local flora. That could explain the lack of search results online, his normal avenues of information similarly inclined. He examined the pictures over his simple dinner, chewing without tasting.
There were more now. Four of them, creeping above ground almost reluctantly. The term 'Invasive Species' burned across his mind. He spied on them from inside the greenhouse, almost afraid to go outside. His garden was being tainted. Defiled. He shook his head, attempting to clear the mounting panic. He'd dig them up, burn them. Just like any weed. Why they worried him so much was beyond him. Mindful of the thorns, he retrieved the thick gardening gloves and trowel from their place of pride in the greenhouse. Equipped for battle, he strode out to face the invader. The trowel bit, shifting the well-tended earth away from the outermost stalk. Worry grew to confusion to dread as he kept digging, no end in sight. Two feet down, he stopped. The stem continued downwards, beyond the extent of his excavation. The bed scarred by the hole. He resolved to pull out the plant, and grabbed the stem, frustration seeing the course. Pain ripped up his arm, and he fought to swallow a scream. What remained of the inside of the glove was stained red, the rest of it still stuck to the stem, pierced a thousand times over. His hand was a mess of thorns and torn skin. He whimpered and beat a retreat from the plants, abandoning his trowel. Rivulets of blood slid down the stem, gripping the thorns as they went.
Removing the thorns was no less painful, and he fought the urge to vomit several times. Irrespective of his twistings and manoeuvres, they tore indiscriminately at the flesh upon attempted removal. Several excruciating hours were spent whimpering, thumping the desk and gritting his teeth, the time stretching far beyond its hours. Seconds crawled like crippled ants. By the time he had cleaned and bandaged the ruined hand he was exhausted, and slept. The painkillers guided sleep to him swiftly, and he dreamt of beaked rabbits with the voices of old women. They spoke Spanish fluently, and it meant nothing to him.
He awoke with the throbbing still present, although receding. His hand had bled in the night, seeping through the bandages and staining the sheets. He acknowledged this blearily, his usual morning-clarity missing. Something to deal with later. He stumbled across the house, made himself his morning coffee. Only luck saved him from grabbing the mug with his wounded hand. He sipped it clumsily with his off-hand as he moved to the greenhouse, operating on auto-pilot, planning his normal routine, forgetful of or unwilling to address yesterday. He glanced through the glass to check the sun, and was near-floored by the ruin. The garden was over-run with the plant. Those thorn instilled a new fear within him, and the sunflower sized stems were impossible. Nothing grew that quickly. They pressed eagerly against the glass, seeking an entrance. He shook. The fear blossomed into true terror. The rug was pulled from underneath him and he was left floating over a void. Dazed, he stumbled around the greenhouse, clumsily sloshing water over his beloved exotics. He over-watered the succulents. He did not see. Routine complete, he floated back across the house, and slept atop his bloodstained sheets.
The greenhouse was dark, and smelt of rot. The glass was entirely covered in endless waves of the loathsome plant. He stumbled unseeingly through the tangle of shelves and beds, throwing water over himself as much as the dead plants. The bandages were a blend of dark, crusted red and pus-yellow stains, unchanged since the injury. His face was unshaven, eyes wild. The animal stink of fear rose from him. The greenhouse was a grave, a mausoleum, a testament to organic rot. He hummed a broken tune.
A pane had broken, and the monstrous fractals hung in hideous tangles. This he did not see. He knelt before the only living thing in that dark glass cage, plant matter pressing in from every direction. A thorned, sickly-green plant in the middle of the only upright bed. The bud was large, heavy with sap, angled towards him. He stared, his face slack. The flower bloomed.
Tuesday, 17 March 2015
Monday, 2 March 2015
Tuesday, 17 February 2015
Sunday, 21 December 2014
Tuesday, 11 November 2014
University has done a terrible thing
and wrought changes most foul.
A thousand tear
stained stitches
of desperate
thanks gripped
in the hand of
a young man
terrified yet
grappling with
twin sticks.
Dying bird of
poor metal make
plunges in
shearing the hull,
parting the decks
obliterating
plane and ship.
Fire atop the waves.
A thousand tear
stained stitches
of desperate
thanks gripped
in the hand of
a young man
terrified yet
grappling with
twin sticks.
Dying bird of
poor metal make
plunges in
shearing the hull,
parting the decks
obliterating
plane and ship.
Fire atop the waves.
Saturday, 9 August 2014
I played Capsule
Nothing to do with RPGs, skip if that's what you hanker for.
Capsule is a nice little slice of gloom. You're on a capsule. You don't remember anything. You have no view ports, only a lo-fi radar. It's great. I wrote a thing because I enjoyed this game.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/303940/
--
You breathe, and you can taste it in the air. Or rather, you can taste the air. Stale. Recycled. A grim reminder of the ticking clock. The lights are red and dim, and you can feel the whirr of the generator throughout the hull. Straining. Cycling air. Running lights. Keeping the ugly, basic console before you alive. It's monochromatic light is harsh in the twilight of the emergency systems. Displayed on it are two basic symbols : a dot representing your tiny escape craft and the parent craft you are fleeing. A readout at the bottom left shows your distance. It increases rapidly, the initial thrust given by the escape system powering you on through the void.
*
Some time has passed. The air has become progressively staler. You have investigated the tiny, thin shelled pod you have chosen as your eventual tomb. You watched the generator for about - you don't remember how long you watched the generator for. You are looking at the console. It no longer shows the craft you are fleeing. You are a solitary dot on the screen. The distance readout has been replaced with two countdowns. You know the right-hand one is your oxygen. The count is 3 hours, roughly. The other counts down time until your next pulse. The next desperate cry for help in the deep black. The pulses are timed in such a way that the generator can power exactly enough pulses to last for the amount of oxygen given. How thoughtful. You sit. The tiny craft is hot, as the heat is difficult to disperse is space. The generous fins slowly radiate away the heat into pure vacuum. You are hurtling through space, yet you feel still. You wonder how many others found their way to escape pods.
*
More time has passed. You idly check the oxygen timer - you have about an hour and a half. You are imagining the battle your ship fell in. You decide battle doesn't really describe the reality of the fight itself. The ships stand out in the void, screaming emissions in every spectrum, as you are now. They launch drones at each other, which accelerate far faster than a manned ship could. They try and explode near each other. Your ship is lucky or dodges by moving erratically. Failing this, you could be damaged or destroyed utterly. As it was for your ship. Crippled, and being torn apart by the forces once keeping her flying, you fled to an escape vessel to die slowly. Of course, the other vessels in the fleet might be on their way to pick you up now. You lie down. The air tastes bad. The vibrations almost match your heart-beat. You wonder if this was on purpose. Clever engineers.
*
Later. Twenty seven minutes on the clock now. You tried thinking about religion, the afterlife, and what you've really believed all these years. You couldn't really focus, and instead thought about some of the cuter crew members. You consider that you probably should've said something to at least one of them before you found yourself in this situation. To be fair, you weren't to know. You spend some time imagining how that conversation would've went. When you check the time left, you see 10 minutes remaining. You realise your mouth is hanging open, and shut it. You don't feel yourself. The oxygen content is probably far lower than it should be. You giggle, and the sound echoes in your tiny egg. Egg is the wrong word, you feel. Egg implies life, a hatching. Tomb would just get you down, as would coffin. You decide on container. You come to realise that particular thought train took far longer than it should've done. Six minutes. You've given yourself a headache. Nothing to be done about that, really. You feel like you can hear the audible parts of your thought slowing, stretching, deepening. Strands like blu-tac. What? Two minutes. Shit. You're going to die and you're analysing yourself? Pretty lame way to go. You start choking on the not-really air. You'd have thought the clever engineers would've stopped you choking on your own CO2. Bastards. You die.
Capsule is a nice little slice of gloom. You're on a capsule. You don't remember anything. You have no view ports, only a lo-fi radar. It's great. I wrote a thing because I enjoyed this game.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/303940/
--
You breathe, and you can taste it in the air. Or rather, you can taste the air. Stale. Recycled. A grim reminder of the ticking clock. The lights are red and dim, and you can feel the whirr of the generator throughout the hull. Straining. Cycling air. Running lights. Keeping the ugly, basic console before you alive. It's monochromatic light is harsh in the twilight of the emergency systems. Displayed on it are two basic symbols : a dot representing your tiny escape craft and the parent craft you are fleeing. A readout at the bottom left shows your distance. It increases rapidly, the initial thrust given by the escape system powering you on through the void.
*
Some time has passed. The air has become progressively staler. You have investigated the tiny, thin shelled pod you have chosen as your eventual tomb. You watched the generator for about - you don't remember how long you watched the generator for. You are looking at the console. It no longer shows the craft you are fleeing. You are a solitary dot on the screen. The distance readout has been replaced with two countdowns. You know the right-hand one is your oxygen. The count is 3 hours, roughly. The other counts down time until your next pulse. The next desperate cry for help in the deep black. The pulses are timed in such a way that the generator can power exactly enough pulses to last for the amount of oxygen given. How thoughtful. You sit. The tiny craft is hot, as the heat is difficult to disperse is space. The generous fins slowly radiate away the heat into pure vacuum. You are hurtling through space, yet you feel still. You wonder how many others found their way to escape pods.
*
More time has passed. You idly check the oxygen timer - you have about an hour and a half. You are imagining the battle your ship fell in. You decide battle doesn't really describe the reality of the fight itself. The ships stand out in the void, screaming emissions in every spectrum, as you are now. They launch drones at each other, which accelerate far faster than a manned ship could. They try and explode near each other. Your ship is lucky or dodges by moving erratically. Failing this, you could be damaged or destroyed utterly. As it was for your ship. Crippled, and being torn apart by the forces once keeping her flying, you fled to an escape vessel to die slowly. Of course, the other vessels in the fleet might be on their way to pick you up now. You lie down. The air tastes bad. The vibrations almost match your heart-beat. You wonder if this was on purpose. Clever engineers.
*
Later. Twenty seven minutes on the clock now. You tried thinking about religion, the afterlife, and what you've really believed all these years. You couldn't really focus, and instead thought about some of the cuter crew members. You consider that you probably should've said something to at least one of them before you found yourself in this situation. To be fair, you weren't to know. You spend some time imagining how that conversation would've went. When you check the time left, you see 10 minutes remaining. You realise your mouth is hanging open, and shut it. You don't feel yourself. The oxygen content is probably far lower than it should be. You giggle, and the sound echoes in your tiny egg. Egg is the wrong word, you feel. Egg implies life, a hatching. Tomb would just get you down, as would coffin. You decide on container. You come to realise that particular thought train took far longer than it should've done. Six minutes. You've given yourself a headache. Nothing to be done about that, really. You feel like you can hear the audible parts of your thought slowing, stretching, deepening. Strands like blu-tac. What? Two minutes. Shit. You're going to die and you're analysing yourself? Pretty lame way to go. You start choking on the not-really air. You'd have thought the clever engineers would've stopped you choking on your own CO2. Bastards. You die.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)