She-Fiends of Yaramaj

She-Fiends of Yaramaj

Being an account of the violence that plagued that city, as recorded by Kostio, subprefect.

The First Incident

    It was in the third week of my assignment to the city guard of Yaramaj that the first incident occurred. The incident was unusual only in the fact it was brought to our attention at all, and that the one reporting it was such an outlandish individual. She was a green-eyed giantess of a woman, with flaxen hair bound it two great braids that reached to her waist, clad in a rude tunic sewn from a tiger’s pelt.

Gonshu.

Beneath and behind azure Xathar rears the citadel of Ibak.
Beneath and below azure Xathar strive the e'Kos, the Glrnar, the Ulfire men.
Beneath azure Xathar their blood runs and pools, obsidian black.
Beneath azure Xathar the denizens of Gonshu doth writhe and grasp.

And all their nightmares are as dreams of paradise.

Notes on Dagon and the Deep Ones

The first Deep Ones were created by the  Antarctic Elder Things millions of years ago as a byproduct of immortality experiments on terrestrial lifeforms, most were destroyed  but some escaped into the wild and multiplied. This explains the Deep Ones unnatural longevity and their genetically programmed aversion to the Elder Sign.

Dagon and Hydra were part of this "first batch" and so they are tens of millions of years old, huge, vastly intelligent, and have who knows what kinds of mutations. There may be others of the "first batch" in suspended animation in the undersea ruins of Elder Thing cities.

Deep Ones breed among themselves but it rarely produces viable offspring (otherwise the ocean would be teeming with immortal Deep Ones). Due to their unnatural nature they can breed with many other forms of life often producing the strange oceanic horrors of legend but their preferred breeding stock has always been humans because the offspring is intelligent and generally transforms into something very similar to to a pure Deep One. In eons past Deep Ones bred with various primitive hominids but the results were not acceptable to their ideas of racial aesthetics and generally destroyed, that said there are probably remote clans of apelike Deep Ones still out there somewhere.

Shortly after their escape from the Elder Things, Dagon and the other first batch Deep Ones fled to the area around sunken Rlyeh because the Elder Things avoided it, feral Shoggoths also dwelt in the area for the same reason and so an alliance was formed, over time the Deep Ones learned of the shoggoths vulnerability to hypnotic suggestion and began to exploit it. The shoggoths are not complete slaves to the Deep Ones but they generally are easily manipulated by hypnotic suggestions and a reverence for Dagon.

Dagon, the Deep Ones, and their allied shoggoths worship Cthulhu. Although Cthulhu's telepathic emanations are blocked by water being in close proximity to Cthulhu's tomb and the surrounding monuments holding theGreat Old Ones mental emanations allowed Dagon to make mental contact with him on some level. During the brief times when Rlyeh was temporarily thrust above the water Dagon spoke directly to his master gaining even more occult knowledge and becoming more devoted.

Over time the Elder Things died out and the Deep Ones could safely leave the Rlyeh "reservation" and they established cities based on the ruins of many of the Elder Thing cities. But Rlyeh is a holy place to the Deep Ones and they often make pilgrimages to the sunken city hoping to sense the presence of their lord and master.

Ruminations of a Bronze Age Gamer part 1

Whenever I look at this box art I want to be that guy who's taking a reading with the scanner thing, I'm betting he's the only one who has a fucking clue.

Party Time at Psi Iota House

My first semester as head of the biology department at Sizemore University was passing smoothly and quite pleasantly. It was a small, secluded campus, sequestered in the scenic hills near Riceville, Tennessee. It was certainly not on the leading edge of scientific advancement, but it provided me with the placid atmosphere I sorely needed. The facilities were adequate; the campus’s original life sciences department had been destroyed in an explosion the year before. A tragic accident in the chemistry lab that so severely injured my predecessor, a professor Leland Dudley, that he was forced to retire. It pained me to benefit from such unfortunate events, but the job was so agreeable to me that I soon forgot my qualms. I was provided with an area in the vocational building that had been an auto repair facility, small, but large enough for the few students I had, outfitted with full lab facilities.

Peanut Lovingood’s Last BBQ

The night my life went to shit, I was on a one lane back road winding around north of Riceville. I knew where I was goin’. I used to take the back way to Knoxville when I’d haul weed back and forth during the 70’s. I glanced over and made sure the book was still safe in the passenger seat. A musty old green thing with gold-embossed letters on the cover: The Excruciations of Khons. It was one of the books Abigail Butler had me move into the vault when she took over as head librarian at Sizemore University. We had both started there about a year ago, but I’m sure she made a hell of a lot more money than I did as a maintenance man. She had some kinda problem with those "occult" books. I figured her for one of them bible thumpers, what with the slicked back long hair. Long denim skirts and horned rim glasses. Anyways, her aversion to those books presented me with an opportunity to make some cash. Them books was hard to get, so I let be known I could help a man out getting em’ for the right price. Wasn’t long ‘for I got a call from some fruitcake from Seattle. He wanted the copy of Excruciations, said it’d "open doorways" and make him stronger as the moon got full or some other such bullshit. I didn’t care though. ‘cos he was meetin me at the Knoxville airport with enough money to keep me drunk in Mexico until my liver gave out.

The Red Stained Lips

From the journal of Kirkman Eubanks Forester. An alleged mentally sick person

My carefully laid plans to summon YrrdrGdnol from blackest Ghonshu had come together without a hitch. Assembling the induction coils had been simplicity itself, (if Jorgenson had done it 1890, how hard could it be for me in 2009?) instructions for the ritual where easily obtainable off the internet, and finding a suitable location had been quite easy. (The archway from the abandoned Old Holiness Brotherhood compound in the foothills south of Sweetwater was perfect for my purposes, and the irony of using such a location was delicious). Even obtaining a child for the required blood sacrifice had been easy. I found her wandering unattended in Wal-Mart while her mother tried on cheap Chinese sweat pants in the dressing room. I simply seized her by the hand and walked out with her. People these days don’t watch their children as they should.