Cthulhu Armageddon - The Weird West in a Post-Apocalypse World

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Neo-Paladin
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Re: Cthulhu Armageddon - The Weird West in a Post-Apocalypse World

Post by Neo-Paladin »

As promised, here is England.

The British Isles

By the time of the Rising, Great Britain was in decline. Cutting ties with the European Union had weakened their economy and the growing divide between social classes and political factions was starting to cause unrest on an ever-larger scale.
The future looked bleak.
Then, three things happened in rapid succession and everything got so much worse.
First, a thick, impenetrable fog closed in on Ireland, cutting off every type of traffic to and from the island. Any signal sent in the direction of the fog bounced off, twisted into such a way that it gave those who heard it nightmares for weeks.
Of those daring souls who entered the fog, only one-fifth returned, mad and twisted and blind, their bodies mutating into horrifying, frenzied abominations before dying in a puddle of ichor and blood.
Second, a few days later, while the country was still reeling from the flood of horrifying news coming in from all over the world, a nuclear explosion of massive proportions eradicated much of southern Glocestershire, the Goatswood, Severn Valley and the town of Brichester.
For eons, the insectile ultraterrestrial Shan, the Insects of Shaggai, had existed there, maintaining a temple-ship that had once crashed on Earth and was powered by a shard of Azathoth which the Shan both worshipped and feared.
The dimensional instability caused by the Rising and the partial merging of the Dreamlands with the material universe disrupted the bindings on the temple, causing the shard to actualize itself in a massive outburst of pure nuclear energy. The Shan managed to flee the area in time, which is still haunted by remnants of the initial outburst, tiny shreds of Azathoth taking the forms of living atomic explosions.
The Shan, now bereft of their sanctuary, saw only one chance to secure their place in the rapidly-changing world. Taking possession of those government figures who were still somewhat in control, they cracked down hard on anyone who stepped out of line.
Influencing or possessing major figures in government, law enforcement and the military, they were well on their way to create a military dictatorship in which they would be free to abuse the enslaved population to satisfy their addiction to sensation and sadism.
And then King Arthur returned. Yes, that one. In the hour of Britain's greatest need, he awakened from slumber and strode forth from his unmarked, unknown grave.
He was glorious astride a magnificent horned steed like the unicorns of lore, clad in polished armor, Excalibur held aloft as he rode against the possessed military.
Yes, people noticed that the horn on his steed seemed to throb and the spot where it met the horse's skull oozed black ichor. People realized they could not look upon the sigils emblazoned on his armor for long without getting nauseous.
And the light issuing from the fabled sword was unwholesome and glaring at times...
But at least he fought off the invaders, empowered by the people who flocked to his banner and by an unnamed, hooded figure whom his followers eventually took to be Merlin himself, returned just like his liege.
The Shan gathered their slaves and host bodies and fled north after several crushing defeats.Northern Britain and Scotland belongs to them now and the humans who live there are just playthings for alien masters.
Camelot was raised from underneath Colchester where it had rested for hundreds of years and became once again the seat of Arthur and the de-facto capital of the liberated parts of Britain.
All churches were rededicated to the one divinity Arthur had followed in life, the divine being that granted him everlasting life, the goddess Merlin had introduced him to, the one whose avatar's moonlight-pale hand had gifted him with a blade forged from shrieking void-touched steel and Dreams of rulership and dominion.
Shub-Niggurath.
Britain is a prosperous country, the soil is fertile and the people are untouched by disease or hunger. Livestock is plentiful and so are children...easily enough to offset the death toll of the monthly sacrifices. Arthur and his new Knights of the Round Table regularly ride out to hunt and slay those who have turned into bestial mutants from the Black Goat's influence and the people praise them for it, biting back the bitter tang of fear and despair. For those who do not cheer are often the next ones to be offered on the bloody altar of Her druids.
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Re: Cthulhu Armageddon - The Weird West in a Post-Apocalypse World

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The best one of these left. I love all the twisted religious and Arthurian elements!
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Re: Cthulhu Armageddon - The Weird West in a Post-Apocalypse World

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Thanks, that really warms my heart. Though the idea of Arthur as a worshipper of Shub-Niggurath is not entirely mine, I read that suggestion somewhere in a published adventure.
Next up either Eastern Europe or Italy.
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Re: Cthulhu Armageddon - The Weird West in a Post-Apocalypse World

Post by Davies »

Neo-Paladin wrote: Fri Dec 18, 2020 1:59 pm Thanks, that really warms my heart. Though the idea of Arthur as a worshipper of Shub-Niggurath is not entirely mine, I read that suggestion somewhere in a published adventure.
Next up either Eastern Europe or Italy.
Pagan Publishing's The Golden Dawn features 'Sheela-na-gig', which has that plot element.
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Re: Cthulhu Armageddon - The Weird West in a Post-Apocalypse World

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That is the one, yes, thanks.
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Re: Cthulhu Armageddon - The Weird West in a Post-Apocalypse World

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Italy

For hundreds of years, the Catholic Church had gathered all manner of heretical, forbidden artifacts and texts, sequestering them away in the Vatican Archives. Thinking them secure, the Vatican was sitting on a ticking time bomb. And when the Rising happened, that bomb went off.
Exactly as planned. While there were many priests and bishops within the Church who were truly well-meaning, their efforts were undermined constantly by those elements within their own organisation who been servants of the eldritch all along.
Two cults had been there from the very beginning – the followers of Cthulhu, whose leader, Tomas de Torquemada, still rested, neither dead nor alive, deep within the catacombs underneath Rome, and the servants of Yog-Sothoth who believed that Christ had actually either been an avatar or a direct descendant of Him Beyond Time and Space.
The cults had actually gotten along quite well during the hundreds of years before the Rising, their shared desire to amass more occult lore and gather influence both easily satisfied by the power of the Church.
Even when said power was waning, the Church was still strong enough to facilitate the cults' occult endeavors.
The Rising brought with it a swell of psychic and extradimensional energies that had a disastrous effect on the Vatican and the surrounding areas, as the energies were amplified by the many artifacts stored under the city streets.
Blasphemous books read themselves into the minds of innocents, flooding them with occult knowledge and madness, memetic horrors slunk from the shadows of non-euclidian statues to hunt and dimensional rifts tore open in the middle of streets, swallowing civilians and spitting them back out horrifically changed.
The cultists in the Vatican rejoiced and went on to gleefully murder anyone not part of their conspiracies while the city outside tore itself apart in blood and lunatic joy.
And just as they were getting ready to gather their forces and get ready to dispose of their respective rivals – after all, the promised time had come, there was no longer a need to share power – the madness and magic running rampant reached critical mass, shattering the walls of time and space enough for a stray thought of the Outer God Yog-Sothoth to escape.
No one goes to Rome anymore. Time has decayed into razor-sharp slices of moments that can disembowel a human before trapping them in an eternal now without the release of death. Effect comes before cause and no soul can escape, suffering fresh torments in the eternal hell of their final day, over and over and over again.

The rest of Italy did suffer as many other countries did, but, fascinatingly, the breakdown of reality in and around Rome seemed to ease the stress on the spatial continuum in the rest of the country. It is still very dangerous, with raiding parties of Deep Ones harassing coastal towns, ghouls fleeing Rome setting up camp in various cemeteries, Dreamlands overlap and resource scarcity, but space and time are remarkably stable.
Given what happened to Rome, people's beliefs were understandably shaken. Numerous small cults have filled the void, with some communities reverting to the worship of the Roman gods – often just masks for either deities of the Dreamlands or the Mythos – while others revere the powers that brought man's downfall directly. It is wise to look for signs of worship to learn whether a community is safe or if you might end up on an altar...
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Re: Cthulhu Armageddon - The Weird West in a Post-Apocalypse World

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I'm only half way through the book(first one) and it's already looking like an awesome setting for an MnM game.
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Re: Cthulhu Armageddon - The Weird West in a Post-Apocalypse World

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mrdent12 wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2021 1:19 am I'm only half way through the book(first one) and it's already looking like an awesome setting for an MnM game.
Thanks!
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Re: Cthulhu Armageddon - The Weird West in a Post-Apocalypse World

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I loved the novel and the setting. It was a really fun book. Just need to find time to read through the second book in the series, but life just keeps getting in the way. Awesome job with the books and setting mate. I can tell you put alot of thought into it.
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Re: Cthulhu Armageddon - The Weird West in a Post-Apocalypse World

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I'm doing up a big blog article on this world now, I think people will like it.

Oh and Cthulhu Armageddon is on sale this month for 99c: https://www.amazon.com/Cthulhu-Armagedd ... 01KUOM7SI/
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Re: Cthulhu Armageddon - The Weird West in a Post-Apocalypse World

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Please post a link when the blogpost is up.
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Re: Cthulhu Armageddon - The Weird West in a Post-Apocalypse World

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Should be a fun blog post read once up. I'm working slowly towards getting a game going even if a one off, but its a matter of time to make all the builds and what not thats lacking.
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Re: Cthulhu Armageddon - The Weird West in a Post-Apocalypse World

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Neo-Paladin wrote: Sat May 29, 2021 3:15 pm Please post a link when the blogpost is up.
Definitely! It may be a two parter.
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Re: Cthulhu Armageddon - The Weird West in a Post-Apocalypse World

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Here's my article! http://unitedfederationofcharles.blogsp ... eddon.html

PART 1:

How Cthulhu Armageddon came to be

Cthulhu Armageddon is a special case of world-building because it's not completely my world. Instead, it is an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's cosmology created in the 1920s until his death in 1937. H.P. Lovecraft was an early believer in "open source" writing and often cross-pollinated with other others as well as encouraged them to use his concepts as well as ideals. Some of his fellow writers in the so-called Lovecraft Circle included Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian) and Robert Bloch (Psycho).

For those unfamiliar with HPL's writings, essentially the concept is that the world is sitting on top of a bunch of incredibly powerful aliens that have been sleeping since ancient times. These Great Old Ones are the size of Godzilla and possess vast reality-altering powers. There are also numerous offshoot races of humanity that worship them that are each more horrifying than the last, living among humanity in secret or in the dark forgotten corners of the Earth.

Above both are the Other Gods who are the lords of the Dreamlands where everything is possible and they are, at best, casually indifferent, and, at worst, amused with humanity the same way a child might torment an insect. Magic is real but eventually drives users insane and is tied to the terrible forces above. Eventually, the Great Old Ones will awake "when the stars are right" and destroy humanity.

Lovecraft's work was very imaginative and influential despite not giving him financial success in his time. In simple terms, it was just too darn weird. Many writers from Brian Lumley, J. Michael Straczynski, and Stephen King have found it to be inspirational. Others have found Lovecraft to be troublesome or even offensive due to the fact, in simple terms, dude did not like minorities.

Some writers like myself, Matt Ruff, Ruthanna Emyrs, and Victor Lavalle have even addressed that as we've adapted his works. Nevertheless, his works helped inspire everything from movies to television to music to video games. I was introduced to it by the Call of Cthulhu tabletop roleplaying game.

The ideal for the Cthulhu Armageddon world came from a combination of factors that have competed for attention ever since. The first was the idea as a logical endpoint for Lovecraft's writings. Eventually, the stars would be right and the world would be destroyed. However, humanity is remarkably good at surviving mass-extinction events and it occured to me there was potential in stories about the remnants of our once proud race struggling to survive in the shadow of literal giants. Sort of Call of Cthulhu meets Fallout: New Vegas if you will.

Even more so, as I wrote out the world, I started to get a sense of a Wild West feel to the place. Perhaps it was the Mad Max and New Vegas influences but hundreds of tiny little communities, lawlessness, tribal communities, and an eternal frontier invoked the idea for me. Thus, Cthulhu Armageddon became the Weirdest Western of them all. Even if it takes place in the Esoteric East.

Themes and Mood

Cthulhu Armageddon is a somewhat existentialist work that follows the fact there is no judgement or morality beyond the principles the protagonists choose to follow themselves. The gods are real but they are amoral and uncaring to the works of man. Life is cheap and arguably pointless since humanity's civilization has been washed away and extinction is a very real possibility. It is a stark and uncompromising world where the definition of "human" is also changing and what that means. The protagonists must define what provides their life meaning in the very probably few decades that humanity has left and whether it is better to live eternally as a monster or to experience merciful death as a man.
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Re: Cthulhu Armageddon - The Weird West in a Post-Apocalypse World

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Timeline

Pre-Earth History

Human history is similar but different. Long before Earth, the universe was created by Azathoth the Blind Idiot God, who was there alongside Yog-Sothoth, and the Other Gods. Incarnations of physics and the universe's laws, they transcended human understanding or even alien. Mutation and capriciousness created many races across space that evolved, lived, and died. Consciousness, however, created the Dreamlands that spawned ideas of gods.

These gods, called the Elder Gods or Small Gods, were more akin to the races that existed. They were less powerful but less inscrutable than the Other Gods. One of the Other Gods, Nyarlathotep, developed a fascination with these beings and became both their guardian as well as minder. It assumed countless visages across time and space, inspiring many gods and taking their forms.

Many of these races went extinct without issue but a small number developed science and magic to the point that they transcended normal existence to become immortal godlike beings. Nyarlathotep cultivated these quests no matter the morality and a handful of beings became the Great Old Ones. Some were gestalt hive-minds of their entire race and others were powerful individuals in their own right. Cthulhu was allegedly the first of their beings or, at least, among the first and led many to settle on the primordial Earth.

Pre-Human History


Earth was unimportant except for the home of several of these beings but attracted a fair number of alien colonists long before the primordial soup cooled. The Elder Things were the first of these races, dwelling on Earth for a billion years as scientist-kings. They created the protoplasmic shoggoths to serve as their slaves and would, in the twilight of their reign, help "uplift" humanity to replace them when the shoggoths rebelled. Eventually, the Elder Things would retreat under the continent of Antarctica's surface before leaving the Earth altogether.

Another race that came to inhabit the Earth were the Great Race of Yith that lived during the time of the dinosaurs with vast cities as well as psychic powers. Destroyed by a ravenous infestation called the Flying Polyps, because their name is untranslatable, they psychically projected themselves into the future to escape extinction. It was their intent to possess a nonhuman race after the extinction of humanity, who they learned of via time travel, but this proved impossible given the events of the Rising.

Early Human History


The humans altered by the Elder Things escaped their captivity and interbred with mortals, some of them learning the secrets of Elder Thing technology. Knowledge is corrupting and a source of madness, though, as early humanity would soon learn. Early humans sought out the resting places of the Great Old Ones and attempted to make contact with them using primitive misunderstood magical rites or their Elder Thing bestowed psychic powers.

These poor fools were inevitably mutated, driven mad, or enlightened. From their brief psychic contact, they learned the Great Old Ones were almost omnipotent in power and would eventually emerge from their slumber to reshape the world in their image: an action that would result in humanity's extinction. This time would be known as "when the stars were right" and created the earliest doomsday cults of the Great Old Ones. Nyarlathotep sent several of his avatars among them to help uplift the resulting doomed race in order to see if they would amount to anything.

Contact with the Great Old Ones resulted in the offshoots of humanity known as the Deep Ones (worshipers of Cthulhu), the Faceless Ones (worshipers of the Other Gods), Serpent Men (worships of Yig-Seth), and ghouls (worshipers of Shub-Nigguarath and Tsathoggua). These offshoots maintained the ability to breed with humans even as they eventually moved to different portions of the Earth or disguised themselves.

Much of the early human history with these offshoots passed into myth and legend with the fall of Atlantis, Acheron, Hyborian Age, and Stygia. Simply put, modern scholars or cultists obfuscated the true history of Earth as legend or mythology. The cultists of the Great Old Ones believing that the end of the world would make them gods beneath the gods rather than exterminate them like any other vermin.

The End of the World ("The Rising")


Much of human history would be secretly defined by the conflict between cults fighting conflicts over which Great Old One or Outer God was the greatest (as if they would notice or care about such efforts). Much of human religion and science would be defined by half-understood glimpses into the greater universe by psychics or fragments of knowledge.

Perhaps the most complete and authentic book on the subject of the world's true history would be authored by Abdul Al-Hazred, called the Necronomicon. It would describe the Old Ones, Other Gods, branches of humanity, the End of the World, and many rituals to channel the power of the sleeping beings.

By the 1920s, it was understood by many governments and academic institutions there were secret forces in the world. The greatest center of learning about this subject would be Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts. Humanity believed after several small occult wars in the shadow of "normal" history that it could survive the coming apocalypse or perhaps outlast it. Humanity was wrong.

When the Great Old Ones rose, humanity was slaughtered en masse by the massive psychic powers of their kind. It not even war as attempts to use weapons of mass destruction were barely noticed by the beings. Worse, the laws of physics and time were broken. The Dreamlands swallowed the universe and not only was the Earth consumed but every galaxy as well as every star. What followed was not the end of humanity but the beginning of a new universe hostile to life as it once was. Humanity has survived 100 years in the shadow of the Great Old Ones. It may not survive much longer.
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