Lovecraftian Space Adventures

[terje]

Many of Lovecrafts stories feature beings from other planets and some even show us vistas from these worlds. In The Dream-Quest for Unknown Kadath Randolph Carter is brought to the moon by the Moon Beasts, and in Through the Gates of the Silver Key he remembers an earlier life as Zkauba, an insectoid sorcerer on the doomed planet Yaddith. Clark Ashton Smith has written many tales of weird adventures on alien worlds, in The Door to Saturn the wizard Eibon travels to the ringed gigant and meets many strange creatures.

So, here are some links and random thoughts on weird adventures amongst the eldritch stars.

Stars and planets

Cthulhu Mythos celestial bodies

Star faring races

Mi-Go

Shan - the Insects from Shaggai

Elder Ones

Flying Polyps

The Nug-Soth of Yaddith

Star Spawn of Cthulhu

The Great Race of Yith

Methods of travel

Some beings like the Mi-Go and the Elder Ones journey unprotected through the interstellar vacuum on their eather wings. Others like the Nug-Soth traverse the cosmic gulfs in "envelopes" of folded light. The Shan have pyramidal temples devoted to Azathoth that can teleport between planets. Humans may be carried in a Mi-Go brain cylinder (The Whisperer in Darkness), move through hyperspace (Dreams in the Witch-House) or step through a gateway (The Door to Saturn).

Overall very little attantion is given to space travel in itself (nowhere is there mention of space craft, except the galleys of the Moon Beasts but they only show up in the dreamlands), the focus is entirely on the alien planets and their inhabitants.

Adventures

What could motivate human adventurers to journey from our placid island of ignorence and out amidst the black seas of infinity?

Fighting the eldritch horrors - Like Laban Shrewsbury from Derleths The Trail of Cthulhu the PC's may travel to other worlds to find information, spells or artefacts needed to defeat their enemies. Or they could seek to bring the war to the homes of their extreterrestrial nemesises.

To journey where no man should go - Exploration, for profit or curiosity, is a common motivation for adventurers. In a Lovecraftian setting such goals likely leed to certain doom, but the journey could prove to be entertaining nonetheless! Chaotic adventurers who dont mind loosing some of their sanity and humanity may well live forever and prosper in the outer darkness.

Desperately trying to find a way home - the PC's could step through the wrong portal or be whisked across the universe by some jesting godling. Now they need to find their way back home before they attract to much attention from the not-so-friendly locals.

The party could share the same motivation or the PC's could have different goals. The characters might all come from the same place or they could be of different origins and meet one another out amongst the stars.

Whatever the motivation of the adventurers, a lovecraftian space campaign could be run as a sandbox. "So, the gateway in the Temple of Shub Niggurath leads to the library of Celaeno where you should be able to find fine maps of the space ways, the Labyrint of Xodra is rumored to contain a shrine devoted to the Oracle of the Purple Nebula - and then theres that map to the treasure horde of the Ancient Ones in the Moon of Yarguuhl. Where do you want to go?"

[monk]

This sounds awesome. I don't play CoC right now, but I've been toying with the ideas of sending my Lab Lord PCs into outer space a la SpellJammer. Finding some Cthulhoid cults on Mars would be interesting.

[harami2000]

Good calls, and for inspiration, terje; thanks.

*does a quick link to Mythos incursions in Lake Geneva prior to D&D's publication, for reference/interest*

d.

[terje]

Yes it is an intriguing campaign concept isnt it? :-) Thanks for the link harami! I hadnt seen that thred before.

I was thinking about magic and wether I would like my lovecraftian space adventures to be fantasy or sf. Lovecrafts stories show a great variety, some are plainly fantasy, others are just as plainly sf, some fall somewhere in between. Of course one doesnt have to choose, we can mix technological artifacts and arcane spells in the same game. Thats how its done in both Call of Cthulhu and Realms of Crawling Chaos. However, if I were to run a campaign like this now I'd make it a weird scientifiction universe.

The gods are aliens (either individual entities or entire civilisations, it doesnt need to be obvious wich is the case to the pc's) and sorcery is an alien hyperspace technology used to manipulate space and time in order to shape the flow of of matter, energy and information. The sentient machines whereby this is achieved are not situated in the spaces we inhabit but between them, in the multidimensional abysses beyond our einsteinian universe. Spells and rituals are methods to put the human nervous system in a state where it can be linked to and communicate with these hyperspace-entities / -machines.

Clearly this has little or no impact on the rules, but it makes a differense in how the arcane arts are described in the fiction.

[albert]

There is a Mi-go character class in Terminal Space :-)

[terje]

Mar 16, 2011 19:49:55 GMT -6 albert said:

There is a Mi-go character class in Terminal Space :-)

Yes, I think I would use Labyrint Lord, Realms of Crawling Chaos and bits and pieces from Terminal Space.

[bert]

There was a space-cthulhu adventure in White Dwarf 56, called the Last Log. A rather obvious little tale when I played it - the mere fact we were using the CoC rules and not Traveller was a giveaway that something unspeakable was going to happen (why else have a Sanity chacteristic on your character sheet?), and it was pretty much a copy of certain scenes from 'The Mountains of Madness'.

That said, I always felt there was some mileage in the idea and wrote a couple of little adventures involving dimension hopping/time travelling Cthulhu-esque Space Nazis, Pnakopts (they of the manuscripts), Deep Ones and Star Vampires.

If I was revisting this, to create the requisite mystery and horror I'd deliberately use a generic RPG system (Swords and Wizardry 'modernified' might well work, but I was thinking BRP at the time) and add rules, roll up new characteristics and the like as they appeared in play and the suckers players realised what kind of game they were really playing.

Tried to get some folk on RPOL to take part in an ancient Greek game on this prospectus (I won't tell you what silly plot twists I had in mind for that one, I may try and spring it again some time) but sadly no takers.

So, Terje, pm me, if you are interested I have been toying with an idea for a scenario vaguely along these lines for some time we might collaborate on if you could help me iron out a few niggles...