Spaceships, Sixguns, and Cyclopean Horrors

[Steerpike]

Spaceships, Sixguns, and Cyclopean Horrors

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For centuries humanity wallowed in its blissful ignorance, fighting its idiotic and futile little wars, until under the auspices of illumination and science they took to the stars and the Great Beyond and made the ends of the universe their frontier. Out in the black abyss of space they found whole star systems of planets, asteroid belts and clouds of stellar gas rich in the elements they'd squabbled over so wretchedly on their insignificant Earth. Feverish with excitement and swollen with their own technological magnificence and the promise of spoils beyond their wildest dream, humankind began its great Diaspora, scattering itself across the galaxy. Mining colonies and thriving boomtowns spread to the systems of Arcturus, Baalbo, Xoth, Betelgeuse, and Hydra. Blood was still spilt, spattered across the dusty, cratered plains of distant moons in showdowns beneath the high noons of binary suns.

But ore and gas was not all that humanity found amongst the stars.

Something else was waiting.

As they dug into the depths of ancient and alien worlds, humanity found traces '" ruins, the husk-cities of departed civilizations, inhuman and unfathomable. Still they delved; ever their reach exceeded their grasp. Until, plundering some tenebrous little world beneath the dying light of seven ebbing suns, the Crawling Chaos emerged from his prison'¦

Face down a shoggoth in a crumbling temple of Lrogg on the fourth moon of L'gh'yx (Uranus). Saddle up your worm-mount and hijack a Ghisguth-drawn caravan on the fiery plains of Haddath. Converse with the Insects of Shaggai in one of their phantastic hive-cities. Fight rangewars over herds of crustacean cattle. Uncover the secrets of the Yith with the Necronomicon in one hand and a six-shooter in the other. Brawl in the saloons of New Arkham City. Blip into hyperspace to escape the unthinkable jaws of the Great Old Ones themselves.

Systems

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Betelgeuse (Glyu-Uho)

The ancient battleground in which the Elder Gods and the Great Old Ones fought their apocalyptic and unfathomable war, the system of Betelgeuse '" rendered 'Glyu-Uho' in Naacal '" contains innumerable worlds pocked with the scabrous remnants of ancient and often non-Euclidean cities scarred with the uncanny wounds of primordial conflict.  The principle inhabited world of the Betelgeuse System is Yarnak, a shattered world rebuilt by initially optimistic if perhaps foolhardy settlers.  The recent revelation that the red giant of Betelgeuse may nova in less than two hundred years has dampened the original fervor with which the system was settled.  Now, the great arcologies of Yarnak are already being evacuated, leaving behind hollow hives as the inhabitants flee to the Miskatonic System or beyond, to Xoth or Arcturus or even back to the dilapidated homeland of humanity, the decaying Sol System.  Apart from these emptying super-cities the ruin of Bel Yarnak, or Dis, is the planet's central feature: a once resplendent place of silvery towers with streets lit by moon-opals and flaming purple gemstones, transformed into dull iron by some ancient eldritch cataclysm.  Still, however, looters comb the catacombs beneath the city, especially in the Black Minaret at its heart: the ragtag scavenger-scum ubiquitous to the frontiers of the Great Beyond, searching for alien artefacts to pawn in the enormous shanty-towns outside the burgeoning colonial settlements.

Hyperspace in this region is disfigured with terrible reality-fissures (especially around the Gray Gulf), making the system difficult to navigate.  In real-space, the corpses of slaughtered cosmic beings provide a different hazard, although many of these primeval cadavers have formed the foundations for outposts and even cities, as in the case of Godseye, a domed settlement with tunnels burrowed into the ancient flesh of its dead host, dedicated primarily to occult study: a city of scholars and researchers.  Common belief holds that these great corpses are the remnants of those Great Old Ones the Elder Gods destroyed during their apocalyptic battle, before exiling the remaining beings into the trance-like state in which they currently slumber.

Fomalhaut

A dread system shunned by explorers, merchants, travelers, and indeed all humans, Fomalhaut, the 'Mouth of the Fish,' is the home of several Great Old Ones and other powerful cosmic entities, including the nefarious Crawling Chaos and the elemental Cthugha.  It is from this sinister system that the reaver-comet Ktynga hails, the rocky vessel of the ravenous fire-vampires currently preying on the Arcturus System.  Those few human settlements found on the fringes of the system were quickly abandoned once the nightmarish Outer God Nyarlathotep was discovered.

The Hydra Constellation

The largest Ptolemaic constellation, Hydra is a snaking series of systems principally inhabited by the burrowing, squid-like chthonians on the planet of Haddath.  A troglodytic and monstrous breed, the chthonians nonetheless share the Eye of the Hydra (the center of the serpentine constellation) with human civilization, predominantly the Neo-Atlantean merchants who maintain substantial commercial outposts on Haddath and elsewhere in the Hydra constellation.  An order of ascetics who seclude themselves in needle-like monasteries on the tiny planet of Titus are also notable: eccentric monks who allow their muscles to slowly atrophy as they float through the low-gravity cells and sanctums of their baroque hermitages.

The Miskatonic System

One of the central systems of colonized space, the Miskatonic System consists of nine planets orbiting around a single Class G star not dissimilar to Sol; four of these planets boast major settlements and three of the remaining planets have partially settled moons or man-made satellites.  Along with the Sol, Arcturus, Xoth, and Betelgeuse, the Miskatonic System is one of the most densely populated star systems of the Great Beyond.

The largest bastion of civilization in the Miskatonic System is located on planet Dunwich, where the cities of New Arkham, Kingsport, Moloch City, and Innsmouth can be found: rough, vice-ridden places thronged with a mongrel populace, unwashed and uncouth.  These cities rise in bulbous conglomerations of concrete and steal, smeared with blood and dirt, wreathed in spectral blasts of steam from the seething factories.  A hundred thousand little gangs bicker violently in the labyrinthine depths of the undercities, below the smog-lines, slowing degenerating into pallid, almost subhuman creatures with protruding brows and black, beady eyes.  Above the wraiths of industrial effluvium lie the relatively pristine dwellings of the artists, scholars, occultists, and corporate overlords, the intellectual and financial elite of Dunwich whose world is one of domed gardens, art galleries, esoteric and beautifully illuminated books in resplendent libraries, opulent temples, and luxurious pleasure-houses that rival the Cytheran fleshpots on Venus.

Three other planets, their names culled from near-forgotten mythologies, sustain thriving societies.  On Sarnath, the Ulthari '" or Catfolk, a race of powerful psychics native to Cykranosh and L'gy'hx '" keep humans as food, slaves, pets, and soldiers, clans of the ruthless felines warring with one another for territory or sending bands of cat marauders into the ether, piratical reavers with human fodder.

Sol

Decadent, excessive, overripe, and largely abandoned, the Sol system is humanity's home territory and includes the moldering ghost-planet of Earth as well as twelve other planetoids.  Earth itself has become a wasteland, a glassy netherworld punctuated by the husk-cities of dead civilizations, the sky palled with ash, the seas boiling with the inhuman rage of the slumbering entities therein awakened.  Cythera, or Venus, is more lively, its foppish and hedonistic citizenry living out their debauched lives in the flying crystal palace-cities of that world, great transparent edifices like huge jewels drifting across the unwholesome and noxious plains below.  On Mars, prospectors of the whitish platinum-gold of that world pan the desiccated river-beds or caverns and return to ragtag shanties, swathed in furs and goggles, toting clunky revolvers and cruel, serrated knives, riding horny-plated and quasi-saurian vortlups and guided by the lanky and skeletal four-armed giants known as the Aihais.  Mercury remains too hot to colonize, although occasional explorers delve into the long-abandoned Yithian cities that can still be found on the scorched surface: though not nearly as comprehensive as the Great Library of Pnakotus of Earth the archives of these ruins still contain some of the Yithian scroll-tubes, etched with cosmic secrets and occult mysteries.

Humans are not the only inhabitants of this decaying system.  On Uranus, commonly known as L'gy'hx, the insectile Shan and the scuttling indigenous cube-folk fight bloody religious wars in the name of Azathoth and Lrogg (rumored to be an aspect of the Crawling Chaos Nyarlathotep itself).  On the frigid dwarf planet of Yoggoth, or Pluto, a colony of the membranous fungoid-crustacean Mi-go lead a precarious existence on the lip of the Pit, abandoning their black and many-terraced cities with their canals of pitch liquid when the horror within periodically emerges only to return, tentative, after the beast's retreat.  In the tempestuous skies of Saturn, or Cykranosh, the black-quicksilver servitors of the toad-like Great Old One Tsathoggua, the sinister Formless Spawn, molest the floating hydrogen-mines and atomic refineries that bob like bulbous iron gnats in that planet's sanguineous empyrean.  Beneath the crimson surface of Mars the hideous entity Vulthoom and his blind, flesh-eating cultists glut themselves on captive settlers snatched from the cold, red savannah above.  On distinct Tond and blue Yaksh, or Neptune, the amorphous flying polyps linger still, brooding in their windowless basalt towers.

[ooc]Another random project that started on the Sub-Genre Hybrids thread in the Meta forums... it's sort of meant to be a hybrid of Firefly and the Chthulu Mythos.  I'm aware that there's already a futuristic Mythos setting out there (Cthulu Rising) but from what little I know about it it's quite different from this.  Comments, criticism, and discussion are welcome.[/ooc]

[SA]

My lord, it's so damned gloomy!

To be honest, this feels like an expansion pack for Cadaverous Earth.  It lacks none of the eloquence (the visuals are visceral as always), but its relentlessly dystopian air seems to drag it down where in CE I found it perversely tantalising.  It certainly works as an homage, but as for a setting of its own, I'm not feeling it.

Having said that, the cube folk pique my curiosity, and "prospectors of the whitish platinum-gold of that world pan the desiccated river-beds or caverns and return to ragtag shanties, swathed in furs and goggles, toting clunky revolvers and cruel, serrated knives, riding horny-plated and quasi-saurian vortlups and guided by the lanky and skeletal four-armed giants known as the Aihais" is an image that must be realised on canvas.

[Biohazard]

You have made my week, possibly a greater period of time. This is epic.

[Steerpike]

[ooc][blockquote=Salacious Angel]My lord, it's so damned gloomy!

To be honest, this feels like an expansion pack for Cadaverous Earth. It lacks none of the eloquence (the visuals are visceral as always), but its relentlessly dystopian air seems to drag it down where in CE I found it perversely tantalising. It certainly works as an homage, but as for a setting of its own, I'm not feeling it.[/blockquote]This is interesting - its a criticism that's been leveled at my work before.  I'm not sure how much of this to attribute to the source material: Lovecraft is a pretty nihilistic or at least pessemistic sort of writer.  I wonder, though, if perhaps I don't perceive certain concepts as gloomy or dark where others do.  Could anyone point out examples of particularly dark material?  Or do you (SA) or anyone else have any suggestions on how to improve the setting by lightening the tone?  In other words: how should I (or how do I) relieve the omnipresent gloom?[/ooc]

[SA]

I've noticed that you're very (very, very) good at describing unpleasant things, but your use of positive elements (usually the aesthetic) is usually ironic, or to create an air of decadence and moral corruption.  In the end, it feels like nothing truly good ever happens in the setting.

Once again, that's the same feeling I get from Cadaverous Earth, but that setting feels original and twisted, filled with that ol' Steepike flavour.  Besides (and for me this is very important), Cadaverous Earth came first.  I positively revel in the blackness of CE, but do we need it again?

As to lightening the tone, how about telling us about the bits that are like Firefly?  Sure, I get the whole western in outer space thing, but that neo-Old West vibe feels drowned out by the nastiness.  What's good, noble and worth fighting for in your Lovecraftian future?  Where's the beauty, the kindness, and the common purpose?  How about entities that are both impossibly alien and truly compassionate? Not Lovecraft, sure, but you're easily a better writer than he is anyway.  Go nuts.

Now, those things might not actually exist in your setting, but if that's the case then I'll stick with CE.  Can't get enough of those cestoids.

[Ghostman]

Excellent opening that's packing more win than you could fit in an extradimensional phial. While I don't agree with Frisky Pixy that there's any need for truly benevolent cosmic entities, I do think that you could go a long way throwing some more neutral ones into the mix. Things that are bizzarre but trying to neither devour your mind nor feed your liver to their juvenile larvae.

[Steerpike]

[ooc]Cool.  I'll see if I can develop some noble values for the human/ghoul/catfolk crews of these ships, evoking some of the themes of Firefly.  I'm also planning on keeping beings like the Shan fairly neutral.  A lot of entities will probably be more uncaring than outright malignant, too.

I'm really glad the Cadaverous Earth's stagnant darkness works for you, SA.  I'll see about balancing out the nastiness in this one as I slowly add to it; hopefully it can transcend homage.[/ooc]

[SA]

martian prospector w/ vortlup & aihai

i drew this for lulz

[Steerpike]

[ooc]MORE SA artistic goodness!  That's all kinds of awesome...[/ooc]

[Ghostman]

:whoa:  Wonderful drawing Frisky! With art skills like that you could do a Shoggoth justice.

[Kindling]

Completely off topic, but, Ghostman, out of curiosity, is this you? www.myspace.com/dafreakyghost

[Ghostman]

Completely off topic, but, Ghostman, out of curiosity, is this you?

Nope.

[LD]

Just mentioning that I would be interested in seeing an update to this when you have time. (Particularly an in-depth look at the technology of the world)?

[Steerpike]

I may do an update eventually.  This one has been on the back burner.