A blog about sewing machine repairs,but mainly my hobbies which include old school role playing games, science fiction,films, horror, and general geekery. Sit down and stay a spell.
So of course Pluto has been in the news every single night this week with some incredible and awesome images from the New Horizen's probe. According to NASA,
"After a decade-long journey through our solar system, our New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Pluto today, about 7,750 miles above the surface -- roughly the same distance from New York to Mumbai, India - making it the first-ever space mission to explore a world so far from Earth. For details and the high-res image, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/1L5MiF5"
Now everyone is jumping on the band wagon of using Pluto as a possible adventure location, now this Outer World has been appearing in Sci Fi going back to the Nineteen hundreds. And there already has been a ton of material written by HP Lovecraft regarding Yuggoth.
Yuggoth... is a strange dark orb at the very rim of our solar system... There are mighty cities on Yuggoth—great tiers of terraced towers built of black stone... The sun shines there no brighter than a star, but the beings need no light. They have other subtler senses, and put no windows in their great houses and temples... The black rivers of pitch that flow under those mysterious cyclopean bridges—things built by some elder race extinct and forgotten before the beings came to Yuggoth from the ultimate voids—ought to be enough to make any man a Dante or Poe if he can keep sane long enough to tell what he has seen...
According to Wiki: Yuggoth is the planet where the extraterrestrialMi-go have established a colony. The Mi-go's city sits at the edge of a pit wherein dwells an ancient and horrifying entity feared by the Mi-Go. They periodically abandon the city on those occasions when it rises from the pit and can be seen directly.
The being Cxaxukluth, along with Tsathoggua and his parents, migrated to Yuggoth from Xoth. A dysfunctional family in their own right, Cxaxukluth's progeny abandoned their patriarch and sought refuge deep in the bowels of Yuggoth, owing to Cxaxukluth's cannibalistic tendencies. Soon thereafter they fled Yuggoth, though Cxaxukluth still dwells there to this day. This also includes a very special metal,
On Yuggoth, the Mi-go mine a strange metal known as tok'l. Tok'l-metal is used in the manufacture of the Mi-go's notorious "brain cylinders", but it also has other ritual uses as well.Nithon is a cloud-laden moon of Yuggoth. It is covered by fungi and has luminescent clouds that block all sunlight
Thog and Thok are twin moons of Yuggoth. Very little is known about these moons, though Thog is said to be a pitch-black world. On the surface of Thog is the fabled Ghooric Zone—a green-litten subterranean cavern containing a putrid lake where "puffed shoggoths splash"
There already is a great OSR module that includes a perfect adventure set up to have your PC's end up on the wrong side of a brain cylinder. This is a pay as you go module as well called YS1 The Outpost of the Outer Ones From Jeremy Reaban. Its available right over HERE
An old school module with a very straight forward and yet complicated plot. There already is a review for it right over HERE
Now when it comes to using a ready made pop up Pluto for your old school space games or space opera, you might need a map and Captain Future by Robert Hamilton has you covered with a great old school retrofuture Pluto! Add in adventure locations and perhaps a Lovecraftian monster or two and your ready to go!
If humanity moved onto Pluto looking into the remains of the Mi Go cities then they might be in for disappointment because of the fact that Yuggoth itself isn't on Pluto but might have been in deep orbit near pluto. According the H.P. Lovecraft wiki's entry on Yuggoth;"
Yuggoth has its own mini-solar system including Zaman, Nithon, the binary planet Thog and Thok, and the Ghooric Zone. It orbits at ninety degrees from the plane of the elliptical. It is the natal home of an "Elder Race" of Yuggothians who died out (perhaps due to the cannibalistic habits of Cxaxukluth?) before the planet became an “outpost” of the Mi-Go territory. Relics of the Elder Race exist including, according to The Revelations of Gla'aki, a city of green pyramids, and a pit that might be “the Pit of Shoggoths”. A dark inhospitable world; its surface is ravaged by high winds, while its "seas" and "rivers" consist of a warm, oily substance that flows sluggishly under basalt bridges. Cities, towers, and mines exist on both land and sea." So this begs the question where did the Mi Go?! As the favored ones of the Old Ones & the Outer Gods they might have had advanced warning to leave the solar system decades ago. Mankind is going to be scrubbing all of Pluto, it's moonlets, and other objects for any signs of the Mi Go. There's far more dangers in the darkness of those worlds then they might be expecting. The cult of Hastur at the top eschelons of certain corporate positions has bounties on any Mi Go that humanity runs across but this only known in certain occult circles.
The Plutonian Drug is one of the cooler early efforts by Clark Ashton Smith & fits right into the Old School Solar system nicely. The connections are there for the other H.P. Lovecraft's circle of writers & the Plutonian drug lays down some very deep connections indeed. The Plutonian Drug, published in Amazing Stories for September, 1934 isn't that well known outside of fans of Lovecraft & CAS.
Not only do we get a quick overview of how dangerous space exploration is but we get a quick nod to a Moon expedition in 1975! "'It is remarkable.' said Dr. Manners, 'how the scope of our pharmacopoeia has been widened by interplanetary exploration. In the past thirty years, hundreds of hitherto unknown substances, employable as drugs or medical agents, have been found in the other worlds of our own system. It will be interesting to see what the Allan Farquar expedition will bring back from the planets of Alpha Centaurt when -- or if — it succeeds in reaching then and returning to earth. I doubt, though, if anything more valuable than selenine will be discovered. Selenine, derived from a fossil lichen found by the first rocket-expedition to the moon in 1975, has, as you know, practically wiped out the old-time curse of cancer. In solution, it forms the base of an infallible serum, equally useful for cure or prevention.'" This might be a homage to HG Wells First Men in the Moon later made into the classic '64 film.
This story outlines not only one of the CAS early efforts but the planet where the Mi Go of HP Lovecraft's Whisperer in the Darkness had a colony. By the time we get to CAS novella 'The Plotonian Drug' the Mi Go & Yuggoth have moved on. There are lots of little details about space exploration & the science of the time that get into the myriad of hazards of the 'Old Solar System'.
Mi Go artwork by Khannea SunTzu
Now I haven't gotten into the artifact that is the Plutonian Drug. Its a drug that unhinges the individuality of a person from their personal time space continuum, it shows them all of their selves along the lattice of existence. If this wasn't enough it also makes the person vulnerable to space & time traveling entities such as the Hounds of Tindalos or Dimensional Shamblers.
"'Plutonium,' explained Manners, 'as its name would indicate, comes from forlom, frozen Pluto, which only one terrestrial expedition has so far visited — the expedition led by the Cornell brothers, John and Augustine, which started in 1990 and did not return to earth till 1996, when nearly everyone had given it up as lost. John, as you may have heard, died during the returning voyage, together with half the personnel of the expedition: and the others reached earth with only one reserve oxygen-tank remaining.
This vial contains about a tenth of the existing supply of plutonium. Augustine Cornell, who is an old schoolfriend of mine gave it to me three years ago, just before he embarked with the Allan Farquar crowd. I count myself pretty lucky to own anything so rare.
'The geologists of the party found the stuff when they began prying beneath the solidified gases that cover the surface of that dim, starlit planet, in an effort to learn a little about its composition and history. They couldn't do much under the circumstances, with limited time and equipment; but they made some curious discoveries — of which plutonium was far from being the least.
'Like selenine, the stuff is a bi-product of vegetable fossilization. Doubtless it is many billion years old, and dates back to the time when Pluto possessed enough internal heat to make possible the development of certain rudimentary plant-forms on its blind surface. It must have had an atmosphere then; though no evidence of former animal-life was found by the Cornells.
'Plutonium, in addition to carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, contains minute quantities of several unclassified elements. It was discovered in a crystalloid condition, but turned immediately to the fine powder that you see, as soon as it was exposed to air in the rocketship. It is readily soluble in water, forming a permanent colloid, without the least sign of deposit, no matter how long it remains in suspension.'
'You say it is a drug?' queried Balcoth. 'What does it do to you?'
'I'll come to that in a minute — though the effect is pretty hard to describe. The properties of the stuff were discovered by chance: on the return journey from Pluto, a member of the expedition, half delirious with space-fever, got hold of the unmarked jar containing it and took a small dose, imagining that it was bromide of potassium. It served to complicate his delirium for a while — since it gave him some brand-new ideas about space and time.
'Other people have experimented with it since then. The effects are quite brief (the influence never lasts more than half an hour) and they vary considerably with the individual. There is no bad aftermath, either neural, mental, or physical, as far as anyone has been able to determine. I've taken it myself, once or twice, and can testify to that.
'Just what it does to one, I am not sure. Perhaps it merely produces a derangement or metamorphosis of sensations, like hashish; or perhaps it serves to stimulate some rudimentary organ, some dormant sense of the human brain. At any rate there is, as clearly as I can put it, an altering of the perception of time — of actual duration — into a sort of space-perception. One sees the past, and also the future, in relation to one's own physical self, like a landscape stretching away on either hand. You don't see very far, it is true -merely the events of a few hours in each direction; but it's a very curious experience; and it helps to give you a new slant on the mystery of time and space. It is altogether different from the delusions of mnophka.'"
The novella picks up the ball of time travel & twists it in a very personal direction but its what happens when it wears off that the fun begins. This brings up the real potential here for adventurers who are more then likely to try this ancient horror from the past with a whole host of old school adventure complications for a campaign! Were the Mi Go using this drug to cause those trapped within those brass brain cases to travel down their own personal time continuum for some alien purpose? Adventurers are going to face destruction from a wide variety of sanity destroying sources! On the whole the whole affair might be similar to the Fungi From Yuggoth poetry cycle that HP Lovecraft wrote back in '29.
"It is a certain hour of twilight glooms, Mostly in autumn, when the star-wind pours Down hilltop streets, deserted out-of-doors, But shewing early lamplight from snug rooms. The dead leaves rush in strange, fantastic twists, And chimney-smoke whirls round with alien grace, Heeding geometries of outer space, While Fomalhaut peers in through southward mists.
This is the hour when moonstruck poets know What fungi sprout in Yuggoth, and what scents And tints of flowers fill Nithon’s continents, Such as in no poor earthly garden blow. Yet for each dream these winds to us convey, A dozen more of ours they sweep away!" The Fungi From Yuggoth By HP Lovecraft
The Plutonian Drug from Clark Ashton Smith should be used with some restraint within old school campaigns because it can both enhance or wreck a carefully laden pulpy setting easily. Doses of the stuff are easily going to go for 10000 gold pieces each and only obtainable through a qualified scientist or wizard. Dungeon masters should read the original story carefully before using it within a campaign and adventurers who obtain the stuff would be paid about three to four thousand gold pieces themselves. Those who are exposed to it must save vs poison or experience its sanity shattering effects for themselves.
Time is a subjective illusion & we've seen that the Mi Go have been playing with time for eons. But is the drug we've seen in CAS's Mnemoka (1955) Fragment. Might be same time altering substance or belong to the same family as we've seen CAS's The Plutonian Drug. The effects almost entire seem to be based around the subjective nature of time itself. The other Lovecraft race that made war & had conflicts with the Mi Go were the Yithians. The Shadow Out of Time has a fragment about it but HPL's At The Mountains of Madness goes deeper down that rabbit hole. The Mi Go & the Yithians war never stopped & they've been fighting it on multiple fronts for eons. All of this leads back into the idea that perhaps the royal houses of Atlantis and Lemuria had a bit of outside help & left behind servant races to take care of their interests upon Earth after the second Biblical Flood. This gets into the universal cultural constants we see in many lost worlds especially those of A.Merritt. The time drugs are not the only theme that we see used repeatedly. The forces of light & darkness's war is heating up but why!?! Tune in tomorrow & find out!
The Plutonian Drug is one of the cooler early efforts by Clark Ashton Smith & fits right into the Old School Solar system nicely. The connections are there for the other H.P. Lovecraft's circle of writers & the Plutonian drug lays down some very deep connections indeed. The Plutonian Drug, published in Amazing Stories for September, 1934 isn't that well known outside of fans of Lovecraft & CAS. Not only do we get a quick overview of how dangerous space exploration is but we get a quick nod to a Moon expedition in 1975! "'It is remarkable.' said Dr. Manners, 'how the scope of our
pharmacopoeia has been widened by interplanetary exploration. In the
past thirty years, hundreds of hitherto unknown substances, employable
as drugs or medical agents, have been found in the other worlds of our
own system. It will be interesting to see what the Allan Farquar
expedition will bring back from the planets of Alpha Centaurt when -- or
if — it succeeds in reaching then and returning to earth. I doubt,
though, if anything more valuable than selenine will be discovered.
Selenine, derived from a fossil lichen found by the first
rocket-expedition to the moon in 1975, has, as you know, practically
wiped out the old-time curse of cancer. In solution, it forms the base
of an infallible serum, equally useful for cure or prevention.'" This might be a homage to HG Wells First Men in the Moon later made into the classic '64 film.
This story outlines not only one of the CAS early efforts but the planet where the Mi Go of HP Lovecraft's Whisperer in the Darkness had a colony. By the time we get to CAS novella 'The Plotonian Drug' the Mi Go & Yuggoth have moved on. There are lots of little details about space exploration & the science of the time that get into the myriad of hazards of the 'Old Solar System'.
Mi Go artwork by Khannea SunTzu
Now I haven't gotten into the artifact that is the Plutonian Drug. Its a drug that unhinges the individuality of a person from their personal time space continuum, it shows them all of their selves along the lattice of existence. If this wasn't enough it also makes the person vulnerable to space & time traveling entities such as the Hounds of Tindalos or Dimensional Shamblers.
"'Plutonium,' explained Manners, 'as its name would indicate, comes from
forlom, frozen Pluto, which only one terrestrial expedition has so far
visited — the expedition led by the Cornell brothers, John and
Augustine, which started in 1990 and did not return to earth till 1996,
when nearly everyone had given it up as lost. John, as you may have
heard, died during the returning voyage, together with half the
personnel of the expedition: and the others reached earth with only one
reserve oxygen-tank remaining.
This vial contains about a tenth of the existing supply of plutonium.
Augustine Cornell, who is an old schoolfriend of mine gave it to me
three years ago, just before he embarked with the Allan Farquar crowd. I
count myself pretty lucky to own anything so rare.
'The geologists of the party found the stuff when they began prying
beneath the solidified gases that cover the surface of that dim, starlit
planet, in an effort to learn a little about its composition and
history. They couldn't do much under the circumstances, with limited
time and equipment; but they made some curious discoveries — of which
plutonium was far from being the least.
'Like selenine, the stuff is a bi-product of vegetable fossilization.
Doubtless it is many billion years old, and dates back to the time when
Pluto possessed enough internal heat to make possible the development of
certain rudimentary plant-forms on its blind surface. It must have had
an atmosphere then; though no evidence of former animal-life was found
by the Cornells.
'Plutonium, in addition to carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen,
contains minute quantities of several unclassified elements. It was
discovered in a crystalloid condition, but turned immediately to the
fine powder that you see, as soon as it was exposed to air in the
rocketship. It is readily soluble in water, forming a permanent colloid,
without the least sign of deposit, no matter how long it remains in
suspension.'
'You say it is a drug?' queried Balcoth. 'What does it do to you?'
'I'll come to that in a minute — though the effect is pretty hard to
describe. The properties of the stuff were discovered by chance: on the
return journey from Pluto, a member of the expedition, half delirious
with space-fever, got hold of the unmarked jar containing it and took a
small dose, imagining that it was bromide of potassium. It served to
complicate his delirium for a while — since it gave him some brand-new
ideas about space and time.
'Other people have experimented with it since then. The effects are
quite brief (the influence never lasts more than half an hour) and they
vary considerably with the individual. There is no bad aftermath, either
neural, mental, or physical, as far as anyone has been able to
determine. I've taken it myself, once or twice, and can testify to that.
'Just what it does to one, I am not sure. Perhaps it merely produces a
derangement or metamorphosis of sensations, like hashish; or perhaps it
serves to stimulate some rudimentary organ, some dormant sense of the
human brain. At any rate there is, as clearly as I can put it, an
altering of the perception of time — of actual duration — into a sort of
space-perception. One sees the past, and also the future, in relation
to one's own physical self, like a landscape stretching away on either
hand. You don't see very far, it is true -merely the events of a few
hours in each direction; but it's a very curious experience; and it
helps to give you a new slant on the mystery of time and space. It is
altogether different from the delusions of mnophka.'"
The novella picks up the ball of time travel & twists it in a very personal direction but its what happens when it wears off that the fun begins. This brings up the real potential here for adventurers who are more then likely to try this ancient horror from the past with a whole host of old school adventure complications for a campaign! Were the Mi Go using this drug to cause those trapped within those brass brain cases to travel down their own personal time continuum for some alien purpose? Adventurers are going to face destruction from a wide variety of sanity destroying sources! On the whole the whole affair might be similar to the Fungi From Yuggoth poetry cycle that HP Lovecraft wrote back in '29.
"It is a certain hour of twilight glooms,
Mostly in autumn, when the star-wind pours
Down hilltop streets, deserted out-of-doors,
But shewing early lamplight from snug rooms.
The dead leaves rush in strange, fantastic twists,
And chimney-smoke whirls round with alien grace,
Heeding geometries of outer space,
While Fomalhaut peers in through southward mists.
This is the hour when moonstruck poets know
What fungi sprout in Yuggoth, and what scents
And tints of flowers fill Nithon’s continents,
Such as in no poor earthly garden blow.
Yet for each dream these winds to us convey,
A dozen more of ours they sweep away!" The Fungi From Yuggoth By HP Lovecraft
The Plutonian Drug from Clark Ashton Smith should be used with some restraint within old school campaigns because it can both enhance or wreck a carefully laden pulpy setting easily. Doses of the stuff are easily going to go for 10000 gold pieces each and only obtainable through a qualified scientist or wizard. Dungeon masters should read the original story carefully before using it within a campaign and adventurers who obtain the stuff would be paid about three to four thousand gold pieces themselves. Those who are exposed to it must save vs poison or experience its sanity shattering effects for themselves.
So of course Pluto has been in the news every single night this week with some incredible and awesome images from the New Horizen's probe. According to NASA,
"After a decade-long journey
through our solar system, our New Horizons spacecraft made its closest
approach to Pluto today, about 7,750 miles above the surface -- roughly
the same distance from New York to Mumbai, India - making it the
first-ever space mission to explore a world so far from Earth. For
details and the high-res image, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/1L5MiF5" Now everyone is jumping on the band wagon of using Pluto as a possible adventure location, now this Outer World has been appearing in Sci Fi going back to the Nineteen hundreds. And there already has been a ton of material written by HP Lovecraft regarding Yuggoth. Yuggoth... is a strange dark orb at the very rim of our solar system...
There are mighty cities on Yuggoth—great tiers of terraced towers built
of black stone... The sun shines there no brighter than a star, but the
beings need no light. They have other subtler senses, and put no windows
in their great houses and temples... The black rivers of pitch that
flow under those mysterious cyclopean bridges—things built by some elder
race extinct and forgotten before the beings came to Yuggoth from the
ultimate voids—ought to be enough to make any man a Dante or Poe if he can keep sane long enough to tell what he has seen...
—H. P. Lovecraft, "The Whisperer in Darkness" According to Wiki: Yuggoth is the planet where the extraterrestrialMi-go
have established a colony. The Mi-go's city sits at the edge of a pit
wherein dwells an ancient and horrifying entity feared by the Mi-Go.
They periodically abandon the city on those occasions when it rises from
the pit and can be seen directly.
The being Cxaxukluth, along with Tsathoggua and his parents, migrated to Yuggoth from Xoth. A dysfunctional family
in their own right, Cxaxukluth's progeny abandoned their patriarch and
sought refuge deep in the bowels of Yuggoth, owing to Cxaxukluth's
cannibalistic tendencies. Soon thereafter they fled Yuggoth, though
Cxaxukluth still dwells there to this day. This also includes a very special metal, On Yuggoth, the Mi-go mine a strange metal known as tok'l. Tok'l-metal is used in the manufacture of the Mi-go's notorious "brain cylinders", but it also has other ritual uses as well.Nithon is a cloud-laden moon of Yuggoth. It is covered by fungi and has luminescent clouds that block all sunlight Thog and Thok are twin moons of Yuggoth. Very little is known
about these moons, though Thog is said to be a pitch-black world. On the
surface of Thog is the fabled Ghooric Zone—a green-litten subterranean cavern containing a putrid lake where "puffed shoggoths splash" There already is a great OSR module that includes a perfect adventure set up to have your PC's end up on the wrong side of a brain cylinder. This is a pay as you go module as well called YS1 The Outpost of the Outer Ones From Jeremy Reaban. Its available right over HERE An old school module with a very straight forward and yet complicated plot. There already is a review for it right over HERE Now when it comes to using a ready made pop up Pluto for your old school space games or space opera, you might need a map and Captain Future by Robert Hamilton has you covered with a great old school retrofuture Pluto! Add in adventure locations and perhaps a Lovecraftian monster or two and your ready to go!
