It is October 1928. London is the capital of an empire that covers a quarter of the globe and contains a quarter of the human race. The population busies itself with its concerns of politics and government, finance and production, work and recreation. But how fragile things are. What ignorance there is. For there are those who are engaged in quite different pursuits. Those who would see an inhuman power come to Earth that would make such activity seem merely a last dance before dying.
The stories in this book evoke a tracery of evil rarely rivaled in horror writing. They represent the whole evolving trajectory of such notions as Hastur, the King in Yellow, Carcosa, the Yellow Sign, the Black Stone, Yuggoth, and the Lake of Hali. A succession of writers from Ambrose Bierce to Ramsey Campbell and Karl Edward Wagner have explored and embellished these concepts so that the sum of the tales has become an evocative tapestry of hypnotic dread and terror, a mythology distinct from yet overlapping the Cthulhu Mythos. Here for the first time is a comprehensive collection of all the relevant tales.
Between the covers of this small, unassuming book lies a tale one hundred years in the making. Banned by the governments of Europe upon its publication, burned by the zealots of religion and sanity, its very name only whispered in the shadows by decadent artists: THE KING IN YELLOW, a play for the damned and the lost. Armitage House is proud to present this notorious work of occult literature for the first time in paperback.
When Liz Drake's best friend vanishes, nothing can stop her nightmares. Driven by the certainty he needs her help, she crosses a continent to search for him. She finds Blake comatose in a Vancouver hospital, victim of a mysterious accident that claimed his lover's life - in her dreams he drowns. Blake's new circle of artists and mystics draws her in, but all of them are lying or keeping dangerous secrets. Soon nightmare creatures stalk the waking city, and Liz can't fight a dream from the daylight world: to rescue Blake she must brave the darkest depths of the Dreamlands. Even the attempt could kill her, or leave her mind trapped or broken. And if she succeeds, she must face the monstrous Yellow King, whose slave Blake is on the verge of becoming forever.
Of all the varied and mysterious Great Old Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos, few ensnare the imagination as easily as Hastur. The image of the silent, deserted city beside a dark, foreboding lake where sinister things lurk is one that stays with the reader. Many of us have walked the twisting streets of that dead alien city in our minds, finding our way into the tall towers to stand before an ancient throne. There sits the King in Yellow, the Lord of Carcosa, who gazes at us from behind his Pallid Mask. It is a journey many of us have taken, whether alone in our dreams or around a table rolling dice with our friends. It is a journey we are about to take again.RIPPLES FROM CARCOSA expands upon the mythology of He Who Should Not Be Named and gathers much of the varied material on Hastur into one place. The first chapter reviews The Great Old One Hastur and his various avatar forms. It examines the Yellow Sign, the play The King in Yellow, the Mythos tome of the same name, and the effects these things have on the human mind.Next within these pages is a trio of adventures pitting investigators against Hastur and his human worshippers. These scenarios can be played as stand-alone adventures or as a linked campaign called Ripples from Carcosa. Investigators are provided for each scenario, but keepers should feel free to allow their players to use their own investigators if they so choose.Finally is information on the Great Old One Hastur and his cults during the Cthulhu Invictus and Cthulhu Dark Ages eras.
Masks of Nyarlathotep is a Lovecraftian exercise in horror and mystery. This Call of Cthulhu roleplaying classic is a series of linked adventures forming one long and unforgettable campaign. Horrifying deeds and dangerous sorcery dog those who dare attempt to unravel the fate of the Carlyle Expedition. Set in 1925, adventures begin in New York, then move overseas to England, Egypt, Kenya Colony, Shanghai, and western Australia. Such extended globetrotting requires wit and planning by the players. Their investigators must have steady finances, good language skills, and a willingness to persevere despite governmental interference and cultist harassment. Meanwhile the keeper must bring to life different exotic locales, recreate the sensibilities of other cultures, and balance non-player-character foes and friends to allow each investigator to earn his or her own destiny--ultimate triumph, perhaps, or perhaps madness and agonizing death.
Summer, 1643 England is at war with itself. King Charles I has fled London, his negotiations with Parliament in tatters. The country is consumed by bloodshed. For Thomas Hill, a man of letters quietly running a bookshop in the rural town of Romsey, knowledge of the war is limited to the rumours that reach the local inn. When a stranger knocks on his door one night and informs him that the king's cryptographer has died, everything changes. Aware of Thomas's background as a mathematician and his expertise in codes and ciphers, the king has summoned him to his court in Oxford. On arrival, Thomas soon discovers that nothing at court is straightforward. There is evidence of a traitor in their midst. Brutal murder follows brutal murder. And when a vital message encrypted with a notoriously unbreakable code is intercepted, he must decipher it to reveal the king's betrayer and prevent the violent death that failure will surely bring.
The long-lost conclusion to The Once and Future King, in which King Arthur faces his final battle against his son. This magical account of King Arthur’s last night on earth, rediscovered in a collection of T. H. White’s papers at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, spent twenty-six weeks on the New York Times bestseller list following its publication in 1977. While preparing for his final, fatal battle with his bastard son, Mordred, Arthur returns to the Animal Council with Merlyn, where the deliberations center on ways to abolish war. More self-revealing than any other of White’s books, Merlyn shows his mind at work as he agonized over whether to join the fight against Nazi Germany while penning the epic that would become The Once and Future King. The Book of Merlyn has been cited as a major influence by such illustrious writers as Kazuo Ishiguro, J. K. Rowling, Helen Macdonald, Neil Gaiman, and Lev Grossman. “Arriving from beyond the curve of time and apparently from the grave, The Book of Merlyn stirs its own pages, saying, wait: you didn’t get the whole story. . . . It gives us a final glimpse of those two immortal characters, Wart and Merlyn, up close, slo-mo, with a considered and affectionate scrutiny. The book is an elegiac posting from a master storyteller of the twentieth century. Its reissue in our next century is just as welcome as when it first arrived forty years ago. . . . Certainly the moral questions about the military use of force perplex the world still. . . . The efficacy of treaties, the trading of insults among the potentates of the day, the testing of weapons, the weaponizing of trade—these strategies are still front and center. Rather terrifyingly so. We do well to revisit what that old schoolteacher of children, Merlyn, has been trying to point out to us about power and responsibility.” —Gregory Maguire, bestselling author of Wicked,from the foreword “Such a small thing, The Book of Merlyn, to hold so much. Joyful and despairing, heartbreaking, yet full of hope. As wonderful and fearful to read today as it was when I first found it in 1978. And the world has as much need of it today as it did then—more, perhaps. But will the world be ready to listen?” —Mercedes Lackey, New York Times–bestselling author of the Valdemar and Elves on the Road series
An old vendetta. A persecuted race. The fight for survival in a world ruled by hatred. In an alternate universe, history has been shaped by the rise and fall of the hemomancers – individuals born with the frightening power to manipulate blood. Encumbered by the crimes of their ancestors, the hemomancers now fight to survive the vengeful human society of the 21st century. Some seek revenge for those who were slaughtered for the profit of hemotech corporations; some wish to return the balance of power to the twelve bloodlines that once ruled over all of Europe; others long only to live a peaceful life among the humans in secret, and leave behind the politics and bloodshed of their brethren. In All Bleeds Through, ten tales of hemomancer persecution intertwine, telling a greater story of an ancient feud and century-long war that threatens to wipe out hemomancy and envelope the world with darkness. As two ancient bloodlines wrestle for triumph, will justice prevail?
The controversial reign of King John is the subject of the essays collected in this book, which offers a challenging reappraisal of a number of its most important aspects.
