Through Night On Grim Parabolas

Ernie Button

THE HOME WORLDS

The Home Worlds are like tiny jewels sprinkled on a vast black cloth. Around each world is a shell, upon which the stars, suns and moons all move, orbiting around the planet at the core. But outside the shell there are no lights, only the Nox - black and formless, the raw material of reality. Enormous gulfs separate the Home Worlds from each other, journeys so far that even light cannot reach.

The Home Worlds might have never known each other. But long ago, on each world, there came into being the Gods. From small thought-forms, ancestor spirits, and local deities, they gradually coalesced until each world had just one almighty God, an enormous egregore born from the longings of millions of mortals.

The Gods called out to each other across the Nox. With great effort they could communicate, but not affect each other directly. For a time they formed a cosmic pantheon. But then they reached too far. Across the cosmos they touched other minds -- the Gods of terrible worlds, where brutal empires had already devoured everything within their reach.

THE WAR BEGAN

The Gods of the Home Worlds pulled back, but too late. They had revealed their existence to the Gods of the Red Worlds. Ravenous for new conquest, the Red Gods commanded their mortal subjects to build weapons that could cross the expanses of the Nox.

So the first stillships were created. They were self contained ecosystems, like giant terraria or tiny world-shells. They encompassed not only their own animals, plants and people, but also their own laws of magic and their own miniature gods. Everything they would need to survive eons in transit. When they were ready, the Red Gods flung their stillships across the cosmos, on parabolic arcs bound for the Home Worlds.

Such was the power of the stillships that if they reached the Home Worlds, it would be too late. So the Gods created their own stillships and flung them to intercept the invaders. The great war had begun. It has been going ever since.

Richard Bober

BOTTLE SHIPS

War in the Nox is conducted on the scale of millennia. Stillships maneuver around each other for great ages, then come together in brief flares of violence. Victory is decided not by who has the strongest weapons or the cleverest plans, but by who can maintain discipline and purpose on such a daunting timescale.

For every stillship lost in battle, many more are destroyed by ecological catastrophe, or overtaken by mutineers, or simply forget their purpose and drift off into the darkness. Since the first generation of ships, the Gods have learned much about how to sculpt societies for endurance over the long term. Overly rigid models tend to collapse easily. Military structures break down into bloodshed, while repressive theocracies often defect. The strongest stillship cultures are able to transform themselves repeatedly without losing sight of their ultimate goal.

Pasqual Ferry

HEROES

To abet this, the Gods provide each stillship with mortal Heroes. While the miniature world is still being sculpted, the Heroes arise. Guided by the Gods, they take part in a ritual struggle imbued with mythic significance. This ur-myth is imprinted deep into the psyche of the people of the stillship. Once the ship launches, the Heroes are put into suspended animation. They will awaken only in times of crisis, when the stillship needs to be brought back to the right path.

Like all mortals, the Heroes' lives are brief candles. They must ration their days and years carefully, spending most of their time asleep. New Heroes can only be made in the crucible of battle against another stillship, when the ancient purpose is fulfilled and new myths may be born in the flames.

Sourdoughs of Carcosa

Alchemy, in the D&D sense, is practically unknown on Carcosa. Potions generally do not exist. What fills the same niche is baking - a complex, spiritual and potentially dangerous practice.

Fungi on Carcosa are imbued with magical properties, particularly the brain-parasitic fungi from Yuggoth. Another branch of the same family tree (or family mycelium, rather) are the magical yeasts. Baker-shamans jealously guard their yeast starters, passing them down through generations. Under rare moons they come together in a bakersmoot, to trade and breed new strains.

On Earth, wheat has had an incredible impact on human culture. Arguably, wheat domesticated humans rather than the other way around. Some ancient alien theorists even speculate that emmer wheat was given to humans by extraterrestrials to jump-start agrarian civilisation. But on Carcosa, wheat is rare. Most human tribes are hunter-gatherers or fungal agriculturalists. Wild wheatfields grow only in remote locations, and those who know them keep them secret.

Yeasts and wheat come together in the alchemical ritual of baking. The resulting loaves can be consumed for a variety of effects, depending on the particular strain of yeast. Unlike potions, loaves take around 10 minutes to consume and are typically shared between a group of characters. Here are six samples:

1. Purple Nutbread. Made from kamut wheat, nuts and the yeast strain "The Incomparable Scion". Those who eat this bread together will be fused into a fleshy monstrosity, with all the abilities of all characters plus 1d6 beneficial mutations. They will dissolve from each other under the new moon, although sometimes ending up with mismatched limbs, eyes, etc.

2. Loaf of Fealty. Orange bread made from spelt and the yeast strain "Son and Daughter". To activate this bread, one person must break the loaf and drip their blood onto it. Those who eat the bread become bound to serve the one whose blood was offered. The eaters grow stronger, faster and more hale, while the blood-offerer becomes weak and sickly in proportion. These effects are permanent.

3. Cavitaceous Loaf. Pale grey bread, made from einkorn wheat and the yeast strain "Lacuna". Looking into a slice caused disorientation; there seem to be more holes than there should be room for. Eating it temporarily grants the ability to see round holes in all solid objects. Allows one to shoot enemies through walls, extract organs without breaking the skin, or hide objects in places where nobody else can reach them. Some shamans have gone mad after heavy use, and just before disappearing, raved about "the little ones" and referred to the extradimensional holes as "burrows".

4. Bone Bread. Made from emmer wheat, bone powder, and the yeast strain "Knowing the Gate". The eaters will temporarily gain the powers and knowledge of whatever creature's bones were used in the baking. Mixing different bones together risks terrible psychic scarring.

5. Jale Rye. Made from rye, jale lotus seeds, and the yeast strain "The Eleventh Eye". The baker pours their thoughts into the bread, encoding a specific vision in each loaf. Whoever eats the loaf experiences the vision. Expert bakers can create complex psychic realms. All who partake of the bread can explore them together.

6. Azure Purgative. Blue bread with dolm mould in its cavities. Made from emmer wheat and the yeast strain "Dolm Retriever". All who eat this bread will vomit copiously. Curses, enchantments, parasites and memorised spells will be purged from the body and thrown up. Curses typically manifest as bezoars or unpleasant polyps. The curse can then be transferred to another if they consume its physical manifestation.

It's said that potions are unknown, but this is not entirely true. A few shamans have developed what we would call a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, and which they more bluntly call "the infected fungus". They use this to create liquids with magical properties similar to the breads--a haunted kombucha for the wastes of Carcosa.

Carcosa is a Lovecraft Mega-Crossover

In my review of Carcosa I mentioned that it was like a Kingdom Hearts or Super Smash Bros style crossover for Lovecraft and his associated universes. It's got cosmic horrors drawn from Chambers and Derleth, impossible colours from David Lindsay, a psychedelic vibe from Clark Ashton Smith, dinosaurs out of E. R. Burroughs, and flying-saucer aliens born from 50s' UFO culture.

 "Kingdom Hearts" isn't quite right though - a more accurate analogy would be Disney's Once Upon A Time or CLAMP's xxxHOLiC. The difference being that in Kingdom Hearts, the tonal dissonance between different franchises is played up as part of the fun, whereas in Carcosa there is some effort made to unify all the elements under a single aesthetic.

So let's imagine - if McKinney had not been limited by copyright restrictions (and also, perhaps, his own taste for the classic and obscure) what else on the Lovecraft wavelength could have made it into the world of Carcosa?

D&D demon lords
The demon lords from early D&D seem like they could coexist quite easily with the Mythos deities. Demogorgon and Juiblex are particularly good candidates. On the other hand, more "human-seeming" characters like Iggwilv or even Orcus don't feel right to me. I think it's because they have too much agency. The cosmic entities imprisoned on Carcosa need to be either unconscious, unintelligent or uncaring about the fate of humanity. As soon as you add some schemers to the mix, they make the whole setting about themselves and wipe away that sense of potential I talked about in my last post.

Michael Moorcock stuff
It would be tempting to add Michael Moorcock's demon prince Arioch to the mix - after all, he was originally invented by R. E. Howard - but again there's the "schemer" problem. What I would love to use from Moorcock is the cursed sword Stormbringer. Just stick it in a rock somewhere on your map and see what happens!

STALKER/Roadside Picnic
The Zone (as it's depicted in the film) could be dropped into Carcosa. An area of spatial distortion that perhaps even the Snake Men didn't fully understand, left behind as trash by some paracosmic beings. Moving through it without proper precautions tends to get you cut in half by folds in the fabric of space.

Evangelion
My headcanon for Carcosa is that before humans were enslaved and bred into wacky colours by the Snake Men, they were the masters of a Dune-style space empire. Maybe they also built giant robots out of bits of dead Great Old Ones? And maybe some of these robots crashed on the surface of Carcosa? And maybe if primitive humans dig them up they could get them working again?

No Touch Kung Fu
The presence of psychic powers already gives Carcosa a thematic link to occultism and conspiracy lore. Follow the thread far enough and you can reach the world of wuxia movies and sham kung fu techniques. Humanity, who has forgotten their origins, can retrieve spiritual practices from the Akashic Records (with the help of psychedelic lotus seeds, of course). Techniques like water walking, sleeper holds and suspended animation are within reach of those willing to undergo punishing and bizarre training regimens.

The Book of Sand
I've always been interested in the relationship between Jorge Luis Borges and the pulp writers such as Lovecraft and Howard. They possibly weren't even aware of each other, and in some ways Borges is worlds apart - but some sense of a relationship remains, perhaps because of a shared influence from Poe. Anyway, here's a magic item from Borges:

He suggested I try finding the first page. I placed my left hand on the cover and opened the book with my thumb and forefinger almost touching. All my efforts were useless: several pages always lay between the cover and my hand. It was as though the pages sprouted from within the book.“Now search for the last page.” Again I failed; I only managed to stammer in a voice not my own: “This cannot be.”

The Book of Sand contains words in an unknown language and mysterious illustrations, resembling the Voynich Manuscript. Its pages are infinite, and turning to the first or last page is impossible. Those who own the book eventually go mad, reaching a state where they cannot think about anything other than the book.

Tlön
Also from Borges. If you have the time I highly recommend just reading the story, but here's the cliff's notes. Tlön is a fictional world, created by a conspiracy of philosophers to be enchantingly realistic, detailed with "the minute and vast evidence of an orderly plant". As humanity becomes obsessed with Tlön, it overtakes our own reality (metaphorically in Borges, more literally in Grant Morrison's take on the subject.)

How does this fit into Carcosa? Well, in such a violent and degraded world, the creation of a work of refined imagination is all the more challenging. Disciplines such as linguistics, sociology and geometry are just as arcane as the rituals of the sorcerors. The writers of the Encyclopedia of
Tlön rule over a city-state whose every activity is bent towards achieving the creation (or re-creation) of their masterpiece. Much like a cult, they inspire devotion in their followers who believe they will be able to escape Carcosa and enter the more refined imaginary world of Tlön.