From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andrew John Farrow [andrew.j.farrow@btinternet.com] Sent: Friday, October 06, 2000 3:47 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Re: Benford's _Eater_, was Gambling with the Earth Til Eulenspiegel gave us the low down on benfords " eater " - in a similar vien - is the hercules text - sorry no ISBN again :-( , but have lent book out and dumb fecking idiot wont aswer phone . but it won an award in sci fi literature so should be easy to track down . . > > S > P > O > I > L > E > R > S > > S > P > O > I > L > E > R > S > > basic plot - SETI discover an alien signal that starts to beam a massive down load of info on all kinds of topics - pretty cool cook book stuff , one device blows a guy up by demonstrating maxwells demon - in the guys bedroom and kitchen . YUK ! the entire book is in pretty realistic style - the military predictably want a weapon out of it , the russians are miffed cos they have no access to it . wierd cultists and religious typles start all kinds of mayhem . in the end , nah ! read the book to find out - it is worth it . but trust me , its got DG written all over it . yours - andy . From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of box_nine@ix.netcom.com Sent: Friday, October 06, 2000 4:18 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Benford's _Eater_, was Gambling with the Earth Andrew wrote: >the >hercules text - sorry no ISBN >again The author's Jack McDevitt. The book's out of print, but you should be able to dig it up through used booksellers, online or off. Steven From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Hans-Christian Vortisch [greytiga@zedat.fu-berlin.de] Sent: Friday, October 06, 2000 6:12 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Tonguetwister Hej everybody The Delta Green Agent Armament Archives need native speakers for language checks! If you speak one or more of the following languages and would like to give me a hand with the template names, please contact me off-list. In most of the cases it is just a few official names which need to be checked for spelling. French (should be right, but you never know), Spanish, Italian, Russian, Portugese, HUngarian, Irish, Hebrew, Polish (not much to check yet, but perhaps you can help me anyway). Cheers HANS From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andy Robertson [andywrobertson@clara.co.uk] Sent: Friday, October 06, 2000 6:26 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Re: Gambling with the Earth If you actually destroyed the Earth's physical litearlly > From: Steve Dustin > .> >Actually, I think we proposed an idea of how to kill Cthulhu that involved > >blowing up the Earth--obviously an extreme solution. :-) > > Wouldn't the Big C just reform 15 minutes later, and the game suddenly > become 'Cthulhu in Space'? > If you actually destroyed the Earth physically, you could make big C, um, *uncomfortable*. He has plans for this locale, or else he would not be hanging around the dump. Sounds like exactly the sort of petty thing the Shan could do. And so, of course, would do. The Glove Cleaner From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Edward Lipsett [translation@intercomltd.com] Sent: Friday, October 06, 2000 7:22 PM To: Kurotokage Delta Green; Delta Green Subject: DG: [Fwd: [FANYI-L:2493] Tibetan Language Kit (Mac)] This is a cross-post from the FANYI Chinese mailing list, for those of you who might be interested. > "Andrew C. Dawrant" wrote: > > Tibetan Language Kit (Mac) Home Page > > Shin Buddhist Comprehensive Research Institute, Otani University, > Japan > > Self-description: "The TLK is a 'plug-in' for your Macintosh computer > running MacOS versions 7.6 or later. It provides the fonts, keyboard > layouts, and script information needed to enter and display Tibetan > text. With the TLK installed, you can enter Tibetan text in word > processors, databases, and other Macintosh software that handles > multi-script text." > > [The software is freely available from Tibetan Works Project, Shin > Buddhist Comprehensive Research Institute, Otani University, Kyoto, > Japan - ed.] > > URL http://www.otani.ac.jp/cri/TLK/index.html > > * Resource type [news - documents - study - corporate info. - online > guide]: > Documents > * Scholarly usefulness [essential - v.useful - useful - interesting - > marginal]: > Essential > ------------------------------------------------------------- > The Asian Studies WWW Monitor ISSN 1329-9778 > URL http://coombs.anu.edu.au/asia-www-monitor.html > Announce your new/improved Asian Studies' Web sites via > http://coombs.anu.edu.au/regasia.html ===== It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful. - Vincent van Gogh ===== Edward Lipsett Intercom, Ltd. Fukuoka, Japan translation@intercomltd.com http://www.intercomltd.com Fax: +81-92-712-9220 From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of void if removed [turner23@thehub.com.au] Sent: Friday, October 06, 2000 7:32 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: drugs again(spoilers!!!! countdown!!! don't be reading dis stuffs.) > Sounds like exactly the sort of petty thing the Shan could do. And so, of > course, would do. > The Glove Cleaner glad you mentioned that..... recently i started a u.k based game, with the characters being local intelligene people who stumble onto the detainment island. one of my players did a very very interesting thing. when confronted with his fellow team mate being shan infested, he held the gun against the person and made them drink an entire decanter of scotch. i was quite suprised by this. hadn't even thought of it before. so naturally i blocked his offer like a bitch. then he got chloroform. that i relented on. but i thought i would open up the can of worms for your consideration...... what effect does having the host body being gone on substances have on the shan tenant? oh, then after making his knowledge roll, then his idea roll he remembered hearing about the a.o.t.t.e. and how they solved the problem of hosts.... so instead he pops the unconcious players eye out and then uses a mega wattage medical light to shine it down the trail of the optic nerve.... or directly on the brain, for those that will.... agent fiend players. where would we be with out them..... From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andy Robertson [andywrobertson@clara.co.uk] Sent: Friday, October 06, 2000 7:26 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Re: I accuse..... Crow's Theology - Ted Hughes Crow realized God loved him--- Otherwise, he would have dropped dead. So that was proved. Crow reclined, marvelling, on his heart-beat. And he realized that God spoke Crow--- Just existing was his revelation. But what Loved the stones and spoke stone? They seemed to exist too. And what spoke that strange silence After his clamour of caws faded? And what loved the shot-pellets That dribbled from those strung-up mummifying crows? What spoke the silence of lead? Crow realized that there were two Gods--- One of them much bigger than the other Loving his enemies And having all the weapons. The Iron Man is good - but Hughes wrote so much else. I still remember the impact of CROW - FROM THE LIFE AND SONGS OF CROW Heard it on the radio, one time; and I'd never read a word of Hughes before. The Glove Cleaner From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Rob Shankly [ludo@bigpond.com.au] Sent: Friday, October 06, 2000 11:34 PM To: The Delta Green List Subject: DG: A useful service Recently posted by the SJG Dailly Illuminator: http://www.ace-alibi-nh.com/ An on-line service which offers to creat alibis- set up the details in advance and they will act as a receptionsists in the "hotel" where you are "attending a seminar", etc. Alternatively, they will call and leave messages for you, thus adding vermisilitude to a story that you have cooked up to explain absence from work etc. - I'm not sure this would be secure enough to assist DG members, but it might be used by someone they are investigating... -- Rob Shankly ludo@bigpond.com.au Better living through reckless experimentation. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Ian McMurtrey [imcmur1@towson.edu] Sent: Saturday, October 07, 2000 1:48 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Hybrids & horrors On Sun, 1 Oct 2000, Andy Robertson wrote: > But any comments on the hybrid-colonial-entity idea? > > I rather like it, which is why I'm fishing for a response: > > Perhaps when a planet's ecology reaches a certain level of sophistication, > hybridisation becomes the rule: species tend to fuse; animals tend to join > together in colonial entites. Perhaps it's just a natural development? > > There have already been two rounds of combination-and-fusion. The first > produced eukariotic cells from bacteria, and the second created > multicellular organisms from single celled ones. The third one, I > theorise, would produce complex hybrid colonial organisms from pure > species. > > The design of living things might thus, quite naturally, as part of > evolution, be set to go to a whole new level of meta-organisation, and > produce new forms as much more effective than the animals of today as an > amoeba is more effective than a bacterium or hydra is more effective than a > volvox.(sp?) Volvox. > We see the forerunners of these in the most competitive organisms on > earth-the human nations, and the ants and bees. Actually, I did have some comments on hybridization. I apologize for not submitting to the list until after the thread was burnt out, but things have been busy. So it goes. My comments sort of depend on how you take the word "hybridization." Cellular hybridization has been a fairly commonly used technique in the study of a number of cell and viral processes, and has been around since 1965, when a couple of guys fused a human and mouse cell together. The fusion of these cells is referred to as a heterocaryon, and heterocaryons of cross species are routinely synthesized. Mitotic division of a heterocaryon produces two hybrid daughter cells. The chromosomal maps of many human genes were elucidated by the relative chromosomal instability of these hybrid cell lines, because by dwindling down a line's number of human chromosomes, their particular biochemical functions could be assigned by a determination of their protein products. It's also useful in determining the dominance of one set of chromosomes over another and a useful trick in circumventing ordinary cell processes of viral uptake. Cell hybridization also represents a profound technical advance in immunology, because without hybrid cells, there would be no hybridomas, and monoclonal antibody research wouldn't have advanced as far as it has today, research that has been useful in protein structure determination, disease diagnosis, and therapy. Very cool trick. The mechanism is not well-understood. The problem with hybrid cells, of course, is the same reason why they were useful in early chromosomal mapping; chromosomal instability. It's not known why, but chromosomes are randomly lost in these cell lines, possibly chewed up by some sort of nuclease cross-recognition. There are also problems with pathogenic cell fusions: a thorough infection of respiratory syncitial virus, for instance, can make some pretty short work of your lungs by fusing large chunks of the cellular material there. Hybrid cells lose function by chromosomal deletion; too much function lost and you have a dead cell. The term "hybridization," however, as it is used by population biologists and what I will loosely refer to as the molecular biology community (cell biologists, molecular biologists, virologists, biochemists, immunologists, etc.), is very different, although it may refer to processes similar macroscopically. Population studies use the term "hybrid" to describe the offspring of mating pairs from two or more genetically diverse populations. Usually these populations are isolated geographically, and it is not uncommon to see speciation in these organisms. The model organism for these studies is typically the salamander, although there are studies of geckos, frogs, turtles, and so forth. Lovely herpetology. The question of these studies, really, is what happens when two genetically distinct species mate and produce offspring. The answer is that divisions between species are not always clear. One might wonder, then, what sort of role cross-species mating might have played early in the evolution of life. Do you suppose it is mere coincidence that all multicellular life is descendant from radial symmetrical forms? The colonial flagellate hypothesis was first proposed by Haeckel in 1874, and has been recently well-supported by ribosomal and pathway studies. But Haeckel, of course, could never have known the dire machineries that the Elder Things released into the idyllic, floating world millions of years ago. After all, viruses wouldn't be determined as a disease causing agent for another twenty-four years. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of LizardRoi@aol.com Sent: Saturday, October 07, 2000 2:52 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: A useful service In a message dated 10/6/00 9:46:52 PM Pacific Daylight Time, ludo@bigpond.com.au writes: << An on-line service which offers to creat alibis- set up the details in advance and they will act as a receptionsists in the "hotel" where you are "attending a seminar", etc. Alternatively, they will call and leave messages for you, thus adding vermisilitude to a story that you have cooked up to explain absence from work etc. >> Well, they aren't online yet but the firm of Hudson, Moneypenny & Goodnight perform similar services for DG West. Absolutely discrete. Mark McFadden From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Graeme Price [graemep@immagene.MCG.EDU] Sent: Saturday, October 07, 2000 12:04 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: drugs again(spoilers!!!! countdown!!! don't be reading dis stuffs.) Void if etc. wrote: S P O I L E R S P A C E ! ! >recently i started a u.k based game, with the characters being local >intelligene people who stumble onto the detainment island. one of my >players did a very very interesting thing. when confronted with his >fellow team mate being shan infested, he held the gun against the person >and made them drink an entire decanter of scotch. >i was quite suprised by this. hadn't even thought of it before. Indeed, as resident "expert" on mythos biology I also found this interesting. The following possibilites occur. First the infestee gets drunk and loses first his inhibitions, then conciousness, and (eventually dies from alcholic poisoning... dependent on the amount he has imbibed). In the initial stage, the loss of self control could lead to the Shan gaining more and more control over the host. Obviously once he's unconcious the shan is no longer in control as the host is nothing more than a snoring bag of vomit waiting to be aspirated. If the poisoning gets to the point where the host is going to die (or actually does die) then the shan no longer has a reason to be in the host... unless the situation outside the host is going to be overtly hostile. The reason that sunlight seems effective in forcing the shan to, ahem, bug out is that it panics it. The slow onset of poisoning may give the shan more time to react rationally - the alcohol affects the host not the shan (which in any case probably has profoundly different biochemistry to the host). Note that from the examples given in CD, the shan can enter any organic matter. In this case it might pay for the host to stay in the (now deceased) host and wait until things had cooled off enough to leave safely. Note that this has it's risks: whilst unconcious or dead the shan is obviously not getting any sensory input from the host and so is effectively blind and deaf. This is a little bit nasty... the host dies and the shan doesn't appear - what do the inevstigators who just killed the host do next (cruel/devious Keepers could call for a San roll here, as it would appear that they [in effect] just tortured and killed an "innocent" man)? >so naturally i blocked his offer like a bitch. According to my innate sense of natural justice as a Keeper, this seems a little bit unfair on a player with a good idea. Bur anyway.... >then he got chloroform. that i relented on. but i thought i would open >up the can of worms for your consideration...... A similar situation to that above follows, depending on how much the shan knows about chloroform. Essentially the shan has 2 options - stay or leave. It becomes a toss up between the two. >what effect does having the host body being gone on substances have on >the shan tenant? Really doesn't matter to a high degree. The hypothesis I'm working on is that the shan isn't in contact with the host's bloodstream, so the drugs cannot directly affect the shan itself. What they _can_ do is mess up the host and prevent the shan from controlling him (or controlling him effectively). The shan (if it sits tight) will regain control of the host when he sobers up (or comes down, or whatever) and will probably be pissed off with the host.... cue sanity destroying acts of carnage and/or torture. Indeed, a rational response to first discovering you are shan infested is to hit the bottle and/or take mind altering substances, so the shan will probably have dealt with this before in earlier hosts (unless it is a relatively unexperienced shan). It may well be that the only thing worse than having a shan is having a shan with a hangover! >oh, then after making his knowledge roll, then his idea roll he >remembered hearing about the a.o.t.t.e. and how they solved the problem >of hosts.... so instead he pops the unconcious players eye out and then >uses a mega wattage medical light to shine it down the trail of the >optic nerve.... or directly on the brain, for those that will.... This probably _won't_ work due to simple anatomy. IIRC, the optic nerve penetrates into the cranium though a fissure in the back of the orbit (eye socket) which is a somewhat narrow opening. The optic nerve is surrounded by a whole wad of muscle and blood vessels, and the back of the orbital cavity is doubtless lined with membranes and connective tissue, all of which will obcure light (remember light doesn't travel down the nerve, electrical signals generated as nerve impulses by light responsive cells in the retina travel down the optic nerve). Besides, "popping out" eyes isn't as easy as it sounds (at least not without damaging the patie... er, victim) and certainly counts as torture - San roll time! (It's good to be The Keeper!!) Finally, there's the issue of what component of "light" it is that causes the shan grief, and whether or not it's part of the visible spectrum. This is all in the ICE CAVE - now if only I had the URL handy. Later Graeme graemep@immag.mcg.edu From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Greg Muir [gregmuir@flinet.com] Sent: Saturday, October 07, 2000 8:42 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: RE: Re: Re: Gambling with the Earth > cant remember how they stopped it . but if you didnt give a feck what > > happened to the cthoinians - sounds like a cook book reciepe 2 me . > > Actually, I think we proposed an idea of how to kill Cthulhu that involved > blowing up the Earth--obviously an extreme solution. :-) But I > think we were > So if you blow up Cthulhu with a thernonuclear device he comes back in 15 minutes, but now he's radioactive. Shit, I wonder what he'll come back like after you use the entire *Earth* to blow him up. "He comes back 15 minutes later, this time with an open shirt and gold chains, ready to get down." --- Greg Muir "Beer -- It's not just for breakfast anymore." From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Greg Muir [gregmuir@flinet.com] Sent: Saturday, October 07, 2000 8:43 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: RE: DG: Re: Re: Gambling with the Earth > > Wouldn't the Big C just reform 15 minutes later, and the game suddenly > become 'Cthulhu in Space'? > > KKKKTHOOOOOOOLOO IIINNN SPAAAAAACCE... > > Don't know why I had to do that. Must just be my brain aberration acting > up. Y'know, the one I got from standing in line at 'It's a Small World'. > Damn you, don't use my witty replies before I do! :) Greg Muir "Beer -- It's not just for breakfast anymore." From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Ian McMurtrey [imcmur1@towson.edu] Sent: Saturday, October 07, 2000 11:02 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: More Comments on Haeckel Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, or Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (2/16/1834 - 8/9/1919), although often associated with the promulgation of thoroughly debunked theories such as vitalism or Lamarckism, erroneous conclusions, and occasionally accused of scientific fraud, actually did contribute usefully, perhaps greatly, to the study of evolution, and in his works you can find the coining of the terms "ecology", "phylogeny", and "phylum." A contemporary of Darwin, the phrases "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" and "politics is applied biology" can be attributed to Haeckel, and he was widely read for his day. Many of Haeckel's remarks on the relation of biology and social phenomenon, particularly ones that involve Haeckel's concepts of racial biology, were employed by the Nazi party as a scientized endorsement of racist ideology. Although I have not come across any evidence to suggest Haeckel may have had association with German Socialists movements, the foundation of the German Order and the Thule Society (1912) and the German Worker's Political Circle (1918) are within his lifetime, and the German Worker's Party formed a month after he was put into the ground. It's not impossible that Haeckel could have been influenced by Rosicrucians or Freemasons later intimate to those organizations while at the University of Jena. There's little doubt that the "ancient masters" the Thule Society sought to contact were the Old Ones, the beings in some way responsible for changing the course of the evolution of all life on Earth. Haeckel's ideas were freely propagandized by the Nazi party... and Hitler himself was a member of the German Worker's Party. But what did Haeckel see when he saw the gastrula common to the development of all multicellular life? What motivated Haeckel to propose that all multicellular life was descendent from a common radially symmetrical ancestor? Interestingly, Haeckel was one of the first scientists to propose that the nucleus of cells was the source of inheritable information. Was it that Haeckel already had some idea of the techniques the Old Ones used to create all life on Earth? Or was it the idiot chaos of Ubbo-Sathla that he saw? Did Haeckel _know_what_to_look_for_? If that's the case, _how_? Was Haeckel exposed to a secret translation of the G'harne Fragments? Or had he been corrupted by someone else who had read such a translation? Haeckel probably didn't know. The translation of the G'harne Fragments the Nazis used during Aktion Eisschloss had probably been acquired by a military expedition to G'harne, very different from Windrop's expedition. But perhaps it was not: perhaps someone else, maybe the Kaiser's cryptographers or someone else much earlier, translated the G'harne Fragments. Or maybe it wasn't the G'harne Fragments at all, but the Book of Eibon or the Necronomicon, and whoever it was read about the Old Ones' binding and obliteration of the sentience of Ubbo-Sathla and understood... and perhaps later had a few brandies with Ernst Haeckel. Well, some thoughts on that, anyway. Personally, I'm torn on the issue whether the Elder Things deliberately created metazooic life on Earth as an experiment one billion years ago (which, eventually, went uncontrolled), or if Ubbo-Sathla vomited it out one bright Sunday afternoon three billion years ago and the whole aerobic respiration thing is just accidental. I like the idea, however, that the manipulation, three billion or one billion years ago, deliberate or accidental, altered indigenous organisms, because I think the slow spread of an infectious plague which changes the course of terrestrial evolution is cooler than Ubbo-Sathla slithering out a bunch of prepackaged aerobes. Seems more efficient to me, more insidious. YMMV. Well, off to bed. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andy Robertson [andywrobertson@clara.co.uk] Sent: Sunday, October 08, 2000 3:10 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Re: More Comments on Haeckel ---------- > From: Ian McMurtrey > To: dgrpg@delta-green.com >> > There's little doubt that the "ancient masters" the Thule Society sought > to contact were the Old Ones, the beings in some way responsible for > changing the course of the evolution of all life on Earth. Extremely interesting. There are more loony ideas among C19 scientists han you can shake a stick at . . and the search for the footprints of Those Outside among these ideas is open. acquired by a > military expedition to G'harne, very different from Windrop's expedition. > But perhaps it was not: perhaps someone else, maybe the Kaiser's > cryptographers or someone else much earlier, translated the G'harne > Fragments. Let's never forget modern science is a direct descendant of Magic - or Theology. > . Personally, I'm torn on the issue > whether the Elder Things deliberately created metazooic life on Earth as > an experiment one billion years ago (which, eventually, went > uncontrolled), or if Ubbo-Sathla vomited it out one bright Sunday > afternoon three billion years ago and the whole aerobic respiration thing > is just accidental. The only thing I would say is that I never consdered Ubbo-Satha as a GOO separate from earthly life - rather, it is the whole life-system of Earth, considered as a whole. At present split into many parts, that's all. I go wth you on the ET creating multicelluar life: but the simple life that was there before "was" Ubblo-Satha. The Glove Cleaner From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andy Robertson [andywrobertson@clara.co.uk] Sent: Sunday, October 08, 2000 2:56 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Re: mandrakes (Is the server down? Or are we all dead?) http://members.nbci.com/eldritchdark/wri/short/the_mandrakes.html Somebody mentioned the Mandrake root, or mandragore, which is shaped like a man, which grows in the blood of the murdered, and which cries out when wizards pluck it from the earth. This story by Clark Ashton Smith is worth a look. The Glove Cleaner From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Davide Mana [doctor.dee@libero.it] Sent: Sunday, October 08, 2000 3:43 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: [Fiction] Dream Reaper - Part 1 [I know you guys out there are used to first class offerings like Dave Farnell's 'Angel'. Well, here's some pretty pulpy low-grade stuff to bring your tastes back to cheaper Weird Tales standard. Enjoy! DM] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dream Reaper - Part 1 They took us out of deep freeze and put us back to sleep because there was something weird going on on the other side and they wanted us to take a peek. Chances were, it was seeping through to our side, too, or the paper-pushers would not have bothered to momentarily forget about the last shootout and give us rubber badges and carte blanche again. But we jumped at it anyway. It was good being back in the field. It did not stay good for long. There was a board nailed over the gutter. It read 'gurgling stream'. The water was dark, thick and slow, chunks of gray rock surfacing along its course. Around us, the landscape was flat and bathed in the unflinching light of a copper-ball-like sun. A pair of clouds ran far on the too-near horizon, clearly in a hurry to vacate the premises. The air was still and smelled funny. A plank was placed over the stream, and on the other side there was a blank wall with 'baroque ornamentation' scrawled over, and a rusty iron gate with a 'garden' plate. Our steps lifted small clouds of dust. "What kind of place is this?" My voice sounded muffled, somewhat dampened. Val shook her head and turned, taking in the little there was there to take. In the mid-distance, a huge, highway-style billboard carried the 'hills vista' script in washed-away block capitals in a white field. We both felt the distinctive lack of pattern, a broken feeling permeating the whole area. The stuff dreams were made of was wearing off. She crouched down and took a handful of the cinder-like soil, rubbing it between her fingers. "You ever been to Ib?" she asked me, standing up and passing the hand on the leg of the trousers to clean it. We both wore ill-fitting, rough hewn one piece suits and sandals. "Is it like this?" I asked. Ib is not exactly high on my list of dream spots. She sucked her cheek in. "Not this bad, but similar." She stepped over the plank and stood by the gate. "The same feeling of consumption, of fading away." On the other side of the wall there was a large upturned crate, with smaller boxes around it. The dining room, I guessed. The other wall was blank again, two skewed squares drawn on it, each framing the word 'window'. "What of the people that lived here?" she asked. A chunk of something crumbled under my foot. "I just hope they were out when whatever it was hit this place." I bent and picked up a smallish square of paper, folded. 'rosebud'. There were more scattered around. We got out again, not that there was that much difference between that and the inside. The clouds were gone, the sun was in the same position. The gutter had completely bogged down. Val closed her eyes, her breath slowing, getting more regular. "There's no carrier," she said after a few seconds. It was easy to see the thing did not please her one bit. "This place is slowly unwinding away into nothingness." I pointed to the blank wall. It now read 'squiggly thingees' "Not that slowly." The billboard was barely visible, hazy for the distance. 'humps', it read. She nodded. "We better wake up." Her tone was urgent. I could only agree. We took a walk along the riverbank. Geese were doing their bit down by the water, while joggers and mothers with kids in perambulators passed us by. It was a good place to talk over matters of some import, as nobody would pay us more than some cursory attention. Val dropped her jacket on the rail and leaned on it, watching the brown water running. A quarter of a mile upstream, a blue-tinted barge was moored to a rickety landing-stage. Someone had scrawled 'E. SALGARI' in red paint on the side of one of the boat's floaters. It reminded me of the stretch of dilapidated 'Land we had visited the night before. I sat on a bench there and took another look at the skimpy file they had dropped on us. Our betters called the effect 'disruption'. "That's crap," she said, reading my mind. "Disruption was what that freak Moore-class bastard did two years back to the seaside quarter of Thalarion. Here the structure just wound down like a spent spinning top. The pattern was not disrupted, it was just plain taken out of the picture altogether." "Which is not an easy thing to do." A shrug. "The backlog's just too much." She popped a chewing-gum in her mouth. "It's no longer possible to kill the dream by killing the dreamer: most of what's being dreamed right now belongs to dead dreamers anyway." I nodded. A blonde in blue stretch pants and tank-top passed us by at a cantering pace, accompanied by the buzzing of a walkman. "So," I asked, standing up again, "What are we dealing with exactly? A rogue dreamer?" "More like a dreamkiller." It felt cold all of a sudden. "Did not know we had such a thing in our book." She visibly shivered. "Neither did I" [End of Part 1] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Ian McMurtrey [imcmur1@towson.edu] Sent: Sunday, October 08, 2000 4:06 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: More Comments on Haeckel [minor spoilers] On Sun, 8 Oct 2000, Andy Robertson wrote: > ---------- > > From: Ian McMurtrey > > To: dgrpg@delta-green.com > >> > > There's little doubt that the "ancient masters" the Thule Society sought > > to contact were the Old Ones, the beings in some way responsible for > > changing the course of the evolution of all life on Earth. > > Extremely interesting. There are more loony ideas among C19 scientists > han you can shake a stick at . . and the search for the footprints of Those > Outside among these ideas is open. Haeckel was a proponent of vitalism, believing that organic material somehow "crystallized" from inorganic material. He might have had some strange, albeit undefined notions as to what this vital force was. Maybe there was some mythos contact there. Although you can't assume every vitalist has been corrupted by the mythos or occultism, mayhap Haeckel was looking for the Masters of Thule. > acquired by a > > military expedition to G'harne, very different from Windrop's expedition. > > > But perhaps it was not: perhaps someone else, maybe the Kaiser's > > cryptographers or someone else much earlier, translated the G'harne > > Fragments. > > Let's never forget modern science is a direct descendant of Magic - or > Theology. I'm not so sure about theology, but I suppose there are analogies of technique between modern chemistry and alchemy, although I would be hesitant to say that chemistry was a "descendent" of alchemy, simply because I honestly would not know what implications were being communicated. Magic means a lot of things to a lot of people, you see, and I'm not so sure that just because a self-proclaimed sorcerer invented the mercury barometer, you could say that "science has it's roots in magic." To me, you see, they are wholly separate issues. Now, occult traditions, I can see that: even scientists occasionally participate in those. I imagine many Universities in Germany, particularly older ones, had occult traditions, and Haeckel could have encountered them at the University of Jena. I don't think Haeckel himself translated a copy of the Book of Eibon or anything; Haeckel was a biologist with students and publications and was devoted to his work. It's not likely he would have had the time for that. But black robes and masks and chanting? Haeckel was imminently opposed to the Christian God, and saw evolution as an elegant alternative to mindless faith. He saw himself as a proponent of the new order, where a scientized rationalism equated a social utopia. Haeckel had his illusions. I wouldn't be surprised if he had his secrets, either. > > . Personally, I'm torn on the issue > > whether the Elder Things deliberately created metazooic life on Earth as > > an experiment one billion years ago (which, eventually, went > > uncontrolled), or if Ubbo-Sathla vomited it out one bright Sunday > > afternoon three billion years ago and the whole aerobic respiration thing > > is just accidental. > > The only thing I would say is that I never consdered Ubbo-Satha as a GOO > separate from earthly life - rather, it is the whole life-system of Earth, > considered as a whole. At present split into many parts, that's all. I > go wth you on the ET creating multicelluar life: but the simple life that > was there before "was" Ubblo-Satha. Hm. Hm. Hm, hm. Having just used the same Clark Ashton Smith link you provided for "Mandrake" to read "Ubbo-Sathla," I must admit my error. Ubbo-Sathla _did_ slough off a bunch of microbes, an which basically makes all life on Earth accidental. But maybe Elder Thing hybrid cell experimentation and Ubbo-Sathla's microbe sloughing isn't incompatible; after all, they are a couple of billion years apart. Ubbo-Sathla as a Cronus figure is also interesting; good lord, he's an Outer God! Encyclopedia Cthulhiana 1st ED remarks: "A few of the Great Old Ones, such as Nygotha, Yig, and Zuchequon, seem to have originated upon this planet, and may be the spawn of of Ubbo-Sathla." I'd always wondered where Nygotha came from. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andy Robertson [andywrobertson@clara.co.uk] Sent: Sunday, October 08, 2000 4:57 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: More Comments on Haeckel > > > > Let's never forget modern science is a direct descendant of Magic - or > > Theology. > > I'm not so sure about theology, but I suppose there are analogies of > technique between modern chemistry and alchemy, although I would be > hesitant to say that chemistry was a "descendent" of alchemy, simply > because I honestly would not know what implications were being > communicated. Yes, they are quite separate in essence. But they are both attempts to understand the universe and so *historically* they are confused. That is what I mean. The same people and the same institutions handled both forms of knowledge. Here are a few interesting examples: 1) As the Lizard King remarked at one time, Newton was *primarily* a magician - I believe that the scientific works he is remembered for now made up about a quarter of his output. There's a good book "The Last Sorcerer", about Newton's obsession with alchemy, Roscrucianism *et al* http://www.consciousmedia.com/consciousmedia/0201483017.html 2) THE DIVINE COMEDY. A religious poem, right? If you have read THE INFERNO you will remember that they go down through circle after circle of hell, till they get to the very bottom, the plain of ice where Lucifer gnaws Brutus, Judas, and two others whose names I have forgot .... and then Virgil and Dante have to climb *down* the body of Lucifer ..... and (and this is the interesting thing) halfway down they find "up" and "down" exchange places, because they have passed the center of the Earth and are now climbing *upwards* again. And they climb up to the Antipodes, the mountain of Purgatory, from whose top they ascend through the spheres into heaven .... The medaeval theologian/physicists knew that the world was round and understood perfectly well what would happen, in terms of up/down, to a person climbing down to its center - And therefore, if the INFERNO is a spiritual journey, it is *also* a Journey To The center Of The Earth. It is a religious poem and a Physics tract (or maybe an SF story) both. --- *** --- There was, at that time, no difference between alchemy and chemistry, between astrology and astronomy, or, indeed, between physics and theology - since the history, form and shape of the physical world were explained in religious terms. The "Primum Mobile", the outermost shell of the sky, was moved *by its love for God* - and this was *Science*. --- *** --- This is not directly DG relevant, no: Except that one may look afresh at the places where Science sloughed off the old errors, and wonder what may have been lost needlessly, lost by mistake - or what may breed in the scars. And also, learn a little humility, and reflect that our current ideas may be as wrong as Dante's > > Hm. Hm. Hm, hm. Having just used the same Clark Ashton Smith link you > provided for "Mandrake" to read "Ubbo-Sathla," I must admit my error. > Ubbo-Sathla _did_ slough off a bunch of microbes, an which basically makes > all life on Earth accidental. But maybe Elder Thing hybrid cell > experimentation and Ubbo-Sathla's microbe sloughing isn't incompatible; > after all, they are a couple of billion years apart. > My main point is that many of the GOO are what might be called "emergent phenomena". They are not localisable as this or that tentacled blob: they are meta-organisation of reality. This is why I believe it is sometimes appropriate to treat ecologies, religions & nations as "nascent" GOO. The Glove Cleaner From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of SuperDave [chaucerwatch23@yahoo.com] Sent: Sunday, October 08, 2000 10:58 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: [Fiction] Dream Reaper - Part 1 --- Davide Mana wrote: > Well, here's some pretty pulpy low-grade stuff to bring > your tastes back to cheaper Weird Tales standard. [SNIP] > She popped a chewing-gum in her mouth. "It's no longer possible to kill the > dream by killing the dreamer: most of what's being dreamed right now > belongs to dead dreamers anyway." (Big grin.) Yes! They're back! Happy, happy. Joy, joy. Dave __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos - 35mm Quality Prints, Now Get 15 Free! http://photos.yahoo.com/ From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of LizardRoi@aol.com Sent: Sunday, October 08, 2000 11:44 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: [Fiction] Dream Reaper - Part 1 In a message dated 10/8/00 1:50:28 PM Pacific Daylight Time, doctor.dee@libero.it writes: << Well, here's some pretty pulpy low-grade stuff to bring your tastes back to cheaper Weird Tales standard. Enjoy! DM] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Dream Reaper - Part 1 >> Awright, so when are they coming to L'A? I'm seeing mini-series, maybe a spinoff to cable. Hey, if we put the right syndication package together you can stay in Europe like 'Highlander'. L'AX has flights there, you're just two stock shots away. One of a jet taking off behind the trademark restaurant at L'AX, another of a jet touching down someplace metric. There's an airport at the Vatican, right? Do these kids have any props? That was a repeating crossbow last time, right? What brand of 'fags' (we'll have to talk to PR about that) do they smoke? I'm thinking product placement. Come to think of it, if they are going to smoke they better stay in Europe. Can you talk to them? You know, for the kids? They could become role models you know. I'm trying to remember here, it was a while ago, my intern misplaced my notes...they boink, right? It gets confusing with them sleeping together all the time. I don't *remember* any saxophones, but it's been hectic. Anyway, do they do it or are we going for a Mulder\Scully thing? Also, and this is off the top of my head, they need cooler cars. Never mind the expense or subtlety, we'll do it with product placement and a percentage of Burger King toys. Live large, get something ending in -ini or -ati or -ari. Something stylish. And a convertible. Oh yeah, do you have a logo for the organization yet? Because the silkscreen people wanted something to work with. Anyway, keep up the good work. We're so happy we can hardly count. Mark McFadden From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Davide Mana [doctor.dee@libero.it] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2000 5:25 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: [Fiction] Dream Reaper - Part 2 Dream Reaper - Part 2 We landed in Hlanith under a pouring rain and it was clear the Dreamkiller story had been around a while on its own and grown in the ripe pickings of word of mouth and disinformation. So much for slow communication in low-tech societies. People in the streets talked about it, huddling around market-stalls and under the canopies of public wells. You could feel the low steady murmur rising from taverns and think-tanks along Charlatans Street like waves of a distant sea, rumbling. Or maybe it was just the rain. And the customers at the Croc were whispering about it over flagons of spiked wine. We went upstairs and I had a pair of braziers brought up to dispel the cold while Val, one hand undoing the laces of her street dress, with the other divided the sheaf of freshly transmitted reports into two neat piles. We spent the rest of the evening sifting through hearsay. Ten hours later the usual combination of unsolicited information, irrational hunches and professional follow-ups put us on Val's beetle car to an out of town destination. It was hot and the countryside was silent, the road deserted. She had Grace Slick on her stereo but I was not listening, browsing through the file a scooter-boy had dropped at my apartment at lunchtime. "A painter?" she repeated, eyes on the road. I nodded, the thin folder in my lap regaling me with a shot of the man, white hair and very black brows shadowing gray eyes. She glanced at it briefly. "Nasty," she said. I gave her the lowdown, summarizing the twenty or so pages of the report. Former seminary student in the '50s (but he wrote 'spretato' - defrocked priest - in his somewhat informal CV). Self-styled occultist through the '70s, nailed a pair of times for breach of peace and obscenity as he led hip 'black masses' in the chestnut forests west of town. The usual 'Satan, Speed and Strumpets' affairs that the Turin upper class seemed to relish back then, and probably still did under another management. A stint in the Socialist party in the '80s, nominated for the City Council. A later charge for possession of cocaine. Val was grinning. "Every crackpot of the country sooner or later crawls in this town," she remarked, ignoring the fact that we were thirty miles away from home. We entered the faux medieval gates of the village and looked for a parking in the square beyond. Then we negotiated the two blocks to the Town Hall and the annexed kindergarten, closed for vacations and currently hosting our man's personal. A smiling woman in a yellow dress gave us brochures at the gate and wished us good day, going back to the cheap shop-girl romance she'd been reading. Not exactly crowded, this place. The Dalai Lama in oils and acrylics was smiling at us from the opposite wall, a little worst for use but still recognizable. Val made a face. "I expected something wilder," she said. "Our man found God early in the '90s." Another grin. "Better than finding the cops at home and face knavery charges like his Socialist pals, eh?" We passed in the first room. We confronted a few Himalayan landscapes painted in a rather didactic hand. The guy was evidently no Roerich. "He spent some time in Nepal," I informed her, taking my cue from the brochure. "Between '92 and '94." "How handy." More surreal fare came after that, a dozen or so canvases on rickety easels, landscapes and vistas getting increasingly twisted as the artist was improving his technique. A pair of highly explicit flagellation numbers greeted us in the second room. "Old habits die hard," Val commented. The place was crowded with more of the same. The caricature-like women, all flaring hips and thrusting bosoms encased in spiky leather and abusing each other with abandon in pairs and threesomes contrasted strikingly with the naif-stile paintings on the kindergarten walls, purple bunnies and smiling red apples teaching the kids the basics of spelling. "This guy's got problems all right," she sentenced. "Who hasn't?" Val chuckled. "Not me. Not of this kind at least." "But you have to admire the technique," I observed. She wet her lips, chuckling. "Very funny," she said. Then she stopped, stared and went back to the large canvas we had just passed. "Look at this place," she said, pointing. It was a darkly draped room, with two large windows overlooking moonlit hills in the distance. Between the two windows, something looking a lot like a dog-headed satyr was engaged in a stand-up routine of the non-stage variety with a piercing-riddled woman of Oriental beauty. The baroque curls and leaves of the wall's ornamentation at her back were barely visible in the black-on-black background. We exchanged a look. We found two other paintings directly connected with the disruption site, one catching the mansion by the stream-side and its gardens in the light of two moons, and a dining room scene that made us cancel our plans for a dinner on the expense fund on our way back. I put down a pair of tenners and the woman in yellow smilingly sold me a freshly-printed catalog. The paintings were part of a ten pictures cycle, done in mixed media, inspired by dreams on a moonless night (it said it so right there) and executed earlier that year. Black and white shots of the other seven failed to do them justice; all were labelled as 'Privately Owned'. The three remaining paintings could be acquired by burning about one million each. Cheap, all things considered. The time-frame was uncertain, but we had clearly a case going. Then we froze. A huge canvas dominated the wall by the exit, the vista of a tall green marble tower and surrounding hanging gardens. The moon hung enormous in the blue sky, a pale, almost transparent warty-faced orb on which it was almost possible to make out cities and roadways. A single multicolored bird hung in the foreground, a thin purple tongue snaking out of the tubelike beak to steal nectar from a huge orchid-like flower. There was something unusually lyrical in the painting, as if the crudeness of the hand had been bent and subjugated by the beauty of the subject, the painter forced to restrain his penchant for the vulgarly sensational by the power of his model. Val sighed. "Oh, shit." I did not recognize the place, but it was clearly something drawn from experience. Somewhere in Lomar, by the size of the moon. Val was clearly more familiar with it. "Olathoe," she whispered, lightly touching the sculpted frame. "The bastard hit Olathoe." [End of Part 2] From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Juergen Hubert [snjuhube@pop.rrze.uni-erlangen.de] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2000 7:35 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: German comics (Was: Re: DG: Rupert the Bear) LizardRoi@aol.com wrote: > I remember reading that comic when I was young! If I recall correctly, one of Lurchi's friends was a big, fat, humanoid toad that now screams "Deep One" to me... One interesting thing about that comic is that it doesn't follow the modern comic style where the speech of the characters is written into the pictures themselves. Instead, it follows the old German style: Pictures and text are kept seperate. The pictures are on top, and the exposition below - in rhyme form. The person who pioneered this style was, of course, Willhelm Busch. His most famous work, "Max und Moritz" (created in 1865) describes the antics of two young boys who could be distant relatives of Beavis and Butthead. The moral of the story could be summed up as "Don't be naughty, or a miller will crush you in a mill and your remains will be eaten by ducks to the cheers of the community." None of those sissy American cartoon morals - more on the lines of the traditional German fairy tales, dark and bloody... So how to make all this Mythos-compliant? Well, all those verses might contain lots of hidden messages - and remember that these comics are aimed at children! Get them while they are still young... And Willhelm Busch considered himself (and was considered by others) an artist, and thus is open for the Hastur/Carcosa angle. He studied art in Antwerpen and Munich, and had many contacts in the artists' communities there. His biography mentions that he read many of Schopenhauer's works, but since I don't know much about philosophers, I don't know what to make of that fact... Here is the only English-language page about Busch that I could find: http://www.rivertext.com/busch.shtml - Juergen Hubert From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Peter Devlin [darkzen@dircon.co.uk] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2000 10:07 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Waltzing Matilda Quote The following: > > > > Johnny Turk he was ready, he'd primed himelf well > He showered us with bullets, and he rained us with shell > And in five minutes flat, he'd blown us all to hell > Nearly blew us back home, to Australia > > And the band playd "Waltzing Matilda" > As we stopped to bury our slain > We buried ours, and the Turks buried theirs > Then it started all over again > > > is a quote I recognise from The Pogues album Rum, Sodomy And The Lash. The track was 'And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda'. DG relevance? None I can think of immediately other than Shane McGowan would make an entertaining Friendly NPC. And the tune could well be a warning signal for agents. CYA "Think for youself, schmuck!" - Hagbard From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Peter Devlin [darkzen@dircon.co.uk] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2000 10:08 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Countdown/Drugs/Shans (SPOILERS) For the chap who asked for reports on using Tong Shugoran etc in games, read on. This may be of some use even though its not set in USA. Glaswegian roleplayers should NOT read this. Much of the happenings are glossed over for brevity. Beware - Countdown spoilers! Beware - Countdown spoilers! Beware - Countdown spoilers! KEEPER INFORMATION We have just kickstarted an UK-based campaign which uses Shan, PISCES, GAP, Tiger Transit, the drug Reverb, "At Your Door" and the Lloigor. The opening premise went thusly: Mr Bankford is a Scottish MP who was personal secretary to Victoria Broadhead, the crusading Conservative Shadow Cabinet member from Countdown. He became host to a recently born Shan tenant as part of a move to discredit crusaders against Severn Aerospace. On a return flight to Glasgow from London, Mr Bankford and his tearaway student daughter Bonnie were delayed on takeoff, resulting in the two being together post sundown. The Shan-infested Mr B decided to get busy with his daughter for kicks, and accquiesced to her request to go clubbing in Glasgow. Whilst out partying the two tried a new street drug called Bounce (Reverb actually) and the Shan recognised a potential new kick for his kind where sensations are sooo prolonged. This made him/it sloppy... Unfortunately Bonnie had just bought the drug from a very strange young man; Charlie Scully, is a Lloigor symbiote who had escaped from a very secure hospital some weeks previously. The hospital is in a very depressed area where violent crime, suicide etc runs at 300% national average, and the hospital is, indirectly, PISCES funded for the study of the bizarre psychoses which seem to be geographically limited to the Lloigor infested area. Once a week Scully has been feeding women Bounce prior to his Lloigor materialising to kill them in a messy fashion (the Lloigor symbiosis is drawn from John Shirley's novel Wetbones, a recommended read). The two Bankfords left the club with Scully. The elder Bankford AND his Shan tenant were killed wetbones style whilst Scully and the mentally shattered Bonnie went off on a blood and drugs bender. Enter PCs. PISCES need to know what happened to Bankford and the Shan so a team is put together to act as unknowing Judas Goats. No Shan will risk its life against an unknown foe, so the PCs are out there to draw fire. An MI5 field agent (ex-Marine) is chosen to run the mission, with the teaser that if he performs well he gets a promo to the Gods. Three cops from Special Branch make up the official members. Two geek surveillance experts are also drafted in. Lastly, an MI6 person is also added to the mix (see Russian bits below). Bounce is so new that the police are not on to it. Forensic analysis on the four previous splatter victims (all party girls, all as yet unidentified, all details kept from the press) show traces of an unknown alkaloid as does the blood analysis from Bankford. Bounce is being made by Dr Harry Chen, a scientist at GAP Scotland who has pilfered some of the mysterious orchid that GAP have been growing at a facility near Aberdeen. Upon discovering its properties, the unscrupulous Mr Chen decided to pay off his prodigious gambling debts by supplying it to the Triads. He bought a rundown farm (see "At Your Door" for this plot twist) and began growing Black Lotus in secret, stealing GAP Growth Supplement #23 to augment his hydroponics i.e. Mother's Milk. In the meantime, head of Security for GAP Scotland, Simon Donaldson, has discovered Dr Chen's extra curricular activities. Donaldson is a retired CIA field agent who served in Vietnam and Berlin, and was a friend to Jospeh Berg and Tiger Transit. He was recruited to secure a new Scottish test facility, a job he enjoys as it leaves him plenty of time for golf and clay pigeon shooting. Donaldson muscled in on Chen, taking a cut of the money for his 'retirement'. However, a call from Tiger Transit has left him in the middle. Rumours of a new alkaloid drug sold by Scottish Triads have reached the Eastern US seaboard. Donaldson has been told in no uncertain terms to deal with the problem of this apparent 'theft'. Donaldson's solution was to contract a group of ex-Eastern Bloc thugs to kill anyone involved with Bounce, himself excluded naturally. The leader of the Russian crew is Grigor Lukovsky, a Spetznaz trained uber-terrorist. Lukovsky happened to be at the same nightclub as the Bankfords on the fatal evening, and was caught on security camera, hence the MI6 Russian expert's involvement. A group of London gangsters have also come to Glasgow to make a deal with the local Triads to get a supply of Bounce.The Russians have been conducting surveillance of the Triads and know they need a drastic solution involving high explosives. WHAT THE PLAYERS HAVE DONE SO FAR (QUICK SUMMARY) Scully was eventually captured and unsuccessfully interrogated. PISCES are sending a skilled interrogator to assist (Tobias Knight). PCs have yet to realise that Scully's ravings about being 'made to do it' have a basis in fact. They think he's insane. Bounce / Reverb has yet to be identified. When Scully was captured he had a small quantity with him. So far they think this is simply another club drug of no consequence. No PC has taken it yet. No autopsy was done on Mr Bankford. PCs were given an autopsy report by the security services. The Special Branch cops tailed the London gangsters to find out why they were in Glasgow. After one meeting with the Triads the senior, most corrupt cop (the fall guy for PISCES should things go wrong) decided to deal himself in on whatever action the London boys were getting. He discovered it was a new non-illegal drug. He even muscled in on the second Triad meeting, where the Triads refused to deal and sent them scarpering. Just as well. Lukovsky and co had infiltrated the meet and planted explosives all over the place. As the London boys left the restaurant was levelled by massive explosion. A backup sniper killed 3 of the 4 London thugs and just missed the cop too. Lukovsky and sniper were captured, the rest of the Russians escaped. WHAT'S NEXT Interrogation of the surviving gangster, and or the two surviving Triads pulled from the rubble, should prove illuminating and lead to Dr Chen. However, the surviving Triads believe they were the victims of a London mob hit, and will send lots of baddies after the senior cop and the surviving gangster. I'm thinking Scarface-style interrogation using chainsaws. Lukovsky and sniper have not proved forthcoming. Lukovsky is immune to most truth drugs and eats pain for elevenses. Lukovsky's bomb-mad 2IC has not made moves to rescue him. Instead the Russian crew have left video stills of the construction of a thermonuclear device using material pilfered from the Dounreay nuclear reprocessing plant. There is also a demand for 10 million pounds sterling or else. Lukovsky has been abandoned as has the mission for Donaldson. Donaldson is in a fix and will have to make Dr Chen vanish soon to cover his own arse. The further interrogation of Scully will be fun. The players have yet to realise that he is the key to their mission of discovering who and what killed Mr Bankford. So far, four sessions with not a mention of the Mythos in any way, and a confused bunch of players who still think they are playing modern action genre circa Die Hard, Se7en, Hard Boiled, Mission Impossible etc. With time they will be able to work their way back up the chain to GAP and Tiger Transit. That is, if Scully and the Lloigor, or PISCES and the Shan, don't get them first. CYA "Think for youself, schmuck!" - Hagbard From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Eckhard Huelshoff [EHuelshoff@t-online.de] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2000 10:02 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: The Shroud of Turin Good Afternoon. It seems that the Shroud of Turin is much older than expected: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_exnews/20001004_xex_scientists_r.shtml General information about the shroud can be found at: www.shroud.com To be honest: I always thought that the face on the shroud looked a bit like one of the Beatles. ECKHARD From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Dirk R. Festus Festerling [festusdirk@yahoo.de] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2000 10:39 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: German comics (Was: Re: DG: Rupert the Bear) --- Juergen Hubert schrieb: > LizardRoi@aol.com wrote: > > > Salamander"> > > I remember reading that comic when I was young! If I > recall correctly, > one of Lurchi's friends was a big, fat, humanoid > toad remembered correctly. the humanoid toad was called "unkerich" (unke being a german name for a kind of toad/froglike creature), yellow skinned with red dots, wearing a black belt and black boots, both german military style(general issue before ww ii, just for parade use in the federal forces), and a blue peaked cap with red sides (caps like this were issued to officers and higher non-commissioned officers of the prussian army in the second empire and worn on less formal duties not requiring the helmet with the spike on top). there was a humanoid frog too. green skin and of course (it was supposed to be shoe commercial) laced brown shoes. sadly i can´t remember the name. > The person who pioneered this style was, of course, > Willhelm Busch. His > most famous work, "Max und Moritz" (created in 1865) > describes the > antics of two young boys who could be distant > relatives of Beavis and > Butthead. The moral of the story could be summed up > as "Don't be > naughty, or a miller will crush you in a mill and > your remains will be > eaten by ducks to the cheers of the community." None > of those sissy > American cartoon morals - more on the lines of the > traditional German > fairy tales, dark and bloody... > > So how to make all this Mythos-compliant? Well, all > those verses might > contain lots of hidden messages - and remember that > these comics are > aimed at children! Get them while they are still > young... > > And Willhelm Busch considered himself (and was > considered by others) an > artist, and thus is open for the Hastur/Carcosa > angle. there was (or maybe still is) a german adventure for coc "die froschkönig-fragmente" (the king-of frog-fragments?) using quite popular german "fairytales" and their tellers (brothers grimm and wilhelm-busch, too). for my group, which knows german traditions and rituals but does not necessary like them (i don´t like getting any people hurt, but bombing the oktoberfest some years ago wasn´t that bad an idea. at least that "umpta"-music was stopped for a short while). i got it still at home, so when anybodies interested i can post author,editor, isbn-number and so on. greetings festus __________________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - http://mail.yahoo.de Yahoo! Mail auf Ihrem Handy? - http://mobil.yahoo.de From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Eckhard Huelshoff [EHuelshoff@t-online.de] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2000 10:38 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Waltzing Matilda Quote Good Afternoon. Peter Devlin schrieb: > > > The following: > > > > > > > > > Johnny Turk he was ready, he'd primed himelf well > > He showered us with bullets, and he rained us with shell > > And in five minutes flat, he'd blown us all to hell > > Nearly blew us back home, to Australia [snip] > is a quote I recognise from The Pogues album Rum, Sodomy And The Lash. The > track was 'And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda'. That's probably the best known version. But there also alos versions [ by Christy Moore, the Dubliners and others ] > DG relevance? None I can > think of immediately other than Shane McGowan would make an entertaining > Friendly NPC. Having had the honour to meet him in person I would say that he would be a rather difficult NPC as well: Years or rather decades of drink and drugs aplenty resulted in an extremely slurry way of speaking. His dental condition does not really help to understand him. Anyway I agree that he definitely could make an interesting NPC: * Though an Irish immigrant he won a scholarship for famous Westminster School when he was about 13! [He got kicked out after a year because of skipping classes in favour of drinking in the local pubs] He might have made some contacts to person that now belong to the British establishment. PISCES anyone!? * He has shown some, well, interesting behaviour like jumping out of a car on the M1 at 100 miles per hour to prove his immortality. * He has definitely seen the dark side as you can see from his lyrics and the titles of his songs: 'Turkish Song of the Damned', 'Sick Bed of Cuchullain', 'A Mexican funeral in Paris' or 'The Snake with Eyes of Garnet', to mention some examples. * He's a very well-read man, being especially keen on the works of Lorca, Poe and W.B. Yeats. ECKHARD From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Dirk R. Festus Festerling [festusdirk@yahoo.de] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2000 10:53 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Waltzing Matilda Quote --- Peter Devlin schrieb: > > > is a quote I recognise from The Pogues album Rum, > Sodomy And The Lash. The > track was 'And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda'. DG > relevance? None I can > think of immediately other than Shane McGowan would > make an entertaining > Friendly NPC. And the tune could well be a warning > signal for agents. remembering the cover artwork, too? of course the album was mythos related. as soon as i´m home i have to play that vinyl version backwards, too- should even be easier than listening to the larson paintings. festus semper fnord! > CYA > > "Think for youself, schmuck!" - Hagbard > > > > __________________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - http://mail.yahoo.de Yahoo! Mail auf Ihrem Handy? - http://mobil.yahoo.de From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Michael Layne [theherald@hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2000 1:08 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Re: Gambling with the Earth On 7 October, 2000 AD, Glove Cleaner "Andy Robertson" wrote: >If you actually destroyed the Earth's physical litearlly > > From: Steve Dustin > > > >.> >Actually, I think we proposed an idea of how to kill Cthulhu that >involved > > >blowing up the Earth--obviously an extreme solution. :-) No, an _extreme_ solution would involve the MiB blowing up the universe (again)! (In practice, of course, there would be no real difference to the average member of the Human race between a solution that would blow up the universe, and one which would merely destroy the Earth...) Doomsday Weapon (tm) designers take note: There may be several classes of Doomsday/Endtimes, depending on the extent of the destruction... (Note: the list below is slightly Terra-centric, modify as necessary for your homeworld...):) Class I Doomsday: Destruction of Human civilization on Earth (ex: giant comet impact; Global Thermonuclear War; biological agent kills most of Earth's population; extraterrestrial invasion) Class II Doomsday: Destruction of Humanity, leaving something left of the planet it formerly occupied (ex: more destructive variants of Class I examples; global warming triggers runaway greenhouse effect) Class III Doomsday: Destruction of the planet Earth (ex: Earth is eaten by a mini black hole; collision of Earth with Ghroth; Galactus arrives; extremely destructive nanotech gets loose and eats Earth; Strange Matter experiments experience "a major malfunction") Class IV Doomsday: Destruction of the Solar System (ex: Sol becomes a nova) Class V Doomsday: Destruction of the Galaxy (ex: the black hole at the Galactic Core suddenly explodes) Class VI Doomsday: Destruction of the Universe (ex: check "Callahan's Key" (Spider Robinson), or the DGML discussions of bosons, or check with the MiB on how to do it...) Class VII Doomsday: I don't want to even think about it...:) > > > > Wouldn't the Big C just reform 15 minutes later, and the game suddenly > > become 'Cthulhu in Space'? Yes, maybe... But any surviving Humans (presumably in spaceships (designed by George Pal?)) could then travel to someplace Cthulhu wasn't! (That's the nice thing about space travel -- it allows you to be someplace else when Cthulhu rises!):) > > > > >If you actually destroyed the Earth physically, you could make big C, um, >*uncomfortable*. He has plans for this locale, or else he would not be >hanging around the dump. On the other manipulatory appendage, things could promptly become more than a little troublesome for The Big C, depending on how the Earth was destroyed! For example, if the Earth collapsed into a black hole, Cthulhu might reform 15 minutes later -- on the Event Horizon, to instantly be pulled into the collapsar and compacted to infinite density (something which might prove uncomfortable, even for him!)... 15 minutes later, he would reform once more -- on the Event Horizon, to be instantly pulled into the collapsar and compacted to infinite density... to reform yet again, 15 minutes later, on the Event Horizon, etc., etc., etc., either forever and ever (if the universe proves to be open), or until the Big Crunch... (if it is closed):) Michael Layne DGGF#688 theherald@hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of LizardRoi@aol.com Sent: Monday, October 09, 2000 2:57 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Re: Gambling with the Earth Class VIII Doomsday: succumbing to the T-Rad menace due in a while per Project: RAINBOW Mark McFadden Things are bound to get hinky the closer we get to the singularity. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andy Robertson [andywrobertson@clara.co.uk] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2000 3:20 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Re: German comics ----- Original Message ----- From: Juergen Hubert > I remember reading that comic when I was young! If I recall correctly, > one of Lurchi's friends was a big, fat, humanoid toad that now screams > "Deep One" to me... > > > One interesting thing about that comic is that it doesn't follow the > modern comic style where the speech of the characters is written into > the pictures themselves. Instead, it follows the old German style: > Pictures and text are kept seperate. The pictures are on top, and the > exposition below - in rhyme form. > Well, my friend, that is *exactly* how Rupert does it as well. The page is rigidly divided into a grid of panels: each panel has a couplet below it: and below the *whole page* of pictures and poetry is a paragraph of prose exposition ..... The similarity makes me wonder about the roots of Rupert, which, I confess, I had dismissed. Also, the possiblity exists that these *rhymes* might carry messages. Initial letters, back-formation .... And how old is this comics format? When did it originate? Perhaps the Necronomicon is written in that format!! Or more seriously, perhaps the format holds some *trace* of a method of exposition once employed in a particular sub-class of books of ritual? Unlikely, but not impossible. The Glove Cleaner