Call of Cthulhu Friday: Ramsey Campbell

Ramsey Campbell wrote some of the most prolific and lasting Cthulhu Mythos tales in the latter half of the 20th Century. Although he has long since tried to distance himself from writing Lovecraftian setting stories, he himself freely admits that his favorite tales he produced are those dealing with those soulless god-beings of the Mythos.

As a more modern horror writer, Campbell is heavily influenced by of course Lovecraft, but also Howard, Robert Bloch, Robert Chambers (of “The King in Yellow” fame), and Richard Matheson (“I am Legend” and about a dozen Twilight Zone episodes). As a child of the 60’s and 70’s, these were most often the times his best tales take place in (80’s too). Shagadelic, baby! Yeah! These decades actually worked well as a time period for old school horror. Among free love and The Drug Revolution, Cthulhu and his minions could crawl in the psyche of mankind with impunity.

I think Campbell greatest contribution to the Mythos is The Severn River Valley setting. His earliest Mythos works were originally set in Lovecraft’s Massachusetts, but it was August Derleth who suggested that he come up with a new setting for Mythos tales. So Severn Valley was born, based on an actual river and area of England (The Severn is shown in the photo above) that he spent time in during his youth (including local towns and city areas still in ruins from The Blitz of WW2). His Brichester fills in for Lovecraft’s Arkham, and The town of Clotton is his Dunwich. Many of Campbell’s Severn Valley tales take place in these two locations and immediate environs. Campbell’s Necronomicon is The “Revelations of Glaaki,” at the time of the tales being reprinted in 12 volumes by Brichester’s Ultimate Press, who among other things are also producing pornography (finally the Mythos and sex meet, albeit in a printing shop). Brichester U. fills in for Miskatonic U. To give you a groovy hippy era vibe, Brichester has a variety of mod establishments, including a science fiction bookstore, tennis courts, and a vegetarian student hang-out called “Peace and Beans.”

All sorts of interesting things are going on in Severn Valley. “The Tomb-Herd” is a particularly chilling crowd. There are the tree-like Dark Young of Lovecraft fame running around in the woods (one of the few creatures in his works that Campbell did not invent), a god-monster living in a lake and blighting the homes around it with its cult, and the spacecraft of alien insects encamped in a clearing. There is even a sort of “Innsmouth taint” in one area, but instead of taking on the appearance of a toad, the rural villagers bring to mind the look of fat-faced rabbits (both amusing and chilling).

Campbell came up with quite a few of his own gods for the Mythos, including Eihort, a sort of multi-eyed elephant shaped blob that lays its young into a victim, who is driven mad and finally dies during a thunderstorm, tiny Eihorts bursting forth from his body. One of my favorites is Y’Golonac, a fat, headless being with eyes in its hands. Y’Golonac is usually found sitting behind a massive brick wall in a cavern, waiting for his name to be read aloud from “Revelations.” When it happens, he takes over the reader’s body and wreaks havoc. The Render of the Veils is especially scary, a being who shows you what the world really looks like, and when you see that you go forever mad. His priests call him forth with a blindfold on, which must be a treat to experience. It really is a clever take on why you can never see your God. I used all three of these gods in my 90’s CoC games.

“The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenents” and “Cold Print” are the anthologies you want to read to enjoy the Severn Valley Setting. But besides his Mythos tales, Campbell has also done extensive work in other aspects of horror, drama, and fantasy. In the 70’s he completed three of Robert E. Howards unfinished Solomon Kane tales. He has written novels about serial killers, demonic alien invasions, and even novelizations of Universal Horror classics. Just a few years ago, after working a several month stint at a Borders Bookstore, he penned a novel about a bookstore staff trapped and hunted by evil forces while working an all night shelving shift (The Overnight, 2004). Clearly, just like Stephen King and Lovecraft, Campell had the ability to make the mundane and normal seem sinister.

Though I had not heard of Campbell in the 80’s, by the early 90’s I had discovered him (I think because of some of his entities showing up in a Call of Cthulhu supplement), and devoured his Lovecraft inspired stuff in a matter of months. He had a huge influence on my Call of Cthulhu games in the 90’s, and my very last few games I ended up doing in the late 90’s were going to be set in Severn Valley. But for some reason I went with Arkham instead. Pity, but maybe one day…

I plan to post more about Campell and his creations in future CoC Friday posts, but in the meantime, if you haven’t read him…go check out those anthologies!

Call of Cthulhu Friday: Gaming in Arkham

My very last CoC campaign in the late 90’s was set in 1922 Arkham. This was around the point when that current long-time group had pretty much petered out where I had just Terry and Janet Planet left as regular players. Yep, two players. Terry and Janet had been around in my games since around 1988, 10 years at that point, and I was pretty comfy running games for just the two of them. In fact, around 1989 there was a period of around a year when they would come over to Venice Beach once or twice a month on a Friday night to play a little two player Champions, which was just great times. Sometime in the mid-90’s there was also a point when I was doing campaigns for a group of all women (not by choice), of which Planet Janet and Terry were a part of.

So around 1998 or so I ran what was going to end up being some of the last few games I would be doing before my several year semi-retirement from gaming.

At some point a dude had let me borrow and copy some of his Cthulhu material, including the Arkham sourcebook. I loved reading that book, and all the little 1920’s details that came with it. The big apartment building with interesting NPC’s that the characters stayed in, to the small lunch diner where they “served meatloaf and mashed potatoes in big white crockery,” it was just brimming with period flavor. The shopping district, the city hall, the Miskatonic environs where all cool, and there was even a speakeasy for Terry’s torch singer “Lila” to perform and get caught up in gangster activities (and even meet Al Jolsen who attended one night, who offered her a job when she made a great singing roll if she ever went to New York).

Terry ran her singer, a veteran and survivor of no less than two CoC campaigns (maybe a little light in the sanity department, but she had been a very lucky and well played PC). Planet Janet came up with a new character, a rich English country girl who came to the U.S. to attend Miskatonic. Oh yeah, a buddy of mine and longtime player, Gary, also played here and there, but missed many sessions due to commitments. When Gary did play, he ran an American Indian guy based on the Indian soldier from “Predator.” You know, the dude who seemed to be able to sense the Predator’s presence in the woods (Gary figured he would hear things, but that it would be Cthulhu stuff instead of a dreadlocked Alien).

Anyway, there were just a handful of those games, and most of the ones with just the girls were about shopping and exploring the places in town; mixed with the occasional weird happening. The group tangled with gangsters, evil seamen, and even visited an old Civil War bone yard in a cave that rose from the dead when they took some Necronomicon fragments. They made a few friends in town too, including an English jester dwarf and “Colonel Sausage,” a limbless midget from the local carnival.

Alas, the campaign did not go as long as previous ones. Both Terry and Janet were tough to schedule for get-togethers, and after almost two months of no gaming at one point I said “fuck it” and more or less started my long game-less sabbatical that pretty much ended with my current group a couple of years ago.

But again, I loved that Arkham supplement. Maybe I’ll drag it out one night for inspiration. Although I am kind of leaning on Victorian England or The Old West for my eventual new campaign, Arkham is the classic setting, and a hellacool one.

Cthulhu and Hot Chicks

Naw, that isn't the newest supplement to Carcosa. Great looking girls mixing it up with monsters from beyond the stars? Hey, beautiful women go with anything.

Like most of you I come across tons of great fantasy art online, a lot of it anonymous. I'm not usually compelled to share, but as an old time Call of Cthulhu GM this one stuck out at me.

With weird fantasy art featuring women, many times you say to yourself "OK, what the hell is going on here?" This is one of those that have you trying to figure it out. An almost elfin, long-legged young girl, partially covered in clean bandages, steps over a giant tentacle that extends from the Great Old One in the background. To just say it is hallucination is way to easy.

So what's up? Is she a previously wounded, now-insane adventurer who escapes from Arkham to be with her one true, octopoid love? OK, kind of a stretch, and a little too sexy/disgusting. How about she's an unusally rare form that Nyarlothotep has taken - he will appear as a human appealing to the eyes, no (and, usually some Egyptian motif, right, like mummy bandages)?

I guess we maybe have to call it a scene from the dreamlands, where she might be a lovely sorceress/siren who calls on the power of The Sleeping One to combat her enemies. Hmmm...maybe it is Carcosa after all.