The Unspeakable Oath #01-02.pdf

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The Unspeakable Oath issues 1 & 2
Page 1
Introduction to The Annotated Unspeakable Oath
©1993 John Tynes
This is a series of freely-distributable text files that presents the textual
contents of early issues of THE UNSPEAKABLE OATH, the world’s premiere digest
for Chaosium’s CALL OF CTHULHU ™ role-playing game. Each file contains
the nearly-complete text from a given issue. Anything missing is described
briefly with the file, and is missing either due to copyright problems or
because the information has been or will be reprinted in a commercial product.
Everything in this file is copyrighted by the original authors, and each
section carries that copyright. This file may be freely distributed provided
that no money is charged whatsoever for its distribution. This file may
only be distributed if it is intact, whole, and unchanged. All copyright
notices must be retained. Modified versions may not be distributed — the
contents belong to the creators, so
please
respect their work. Abusing
my position as editor and instigator of the magazine and this project, I
have taken the liberty of adding comments to some of the contents where
I thought I had something interesting or historically worth preserving to
say. Yeah, right!
–
John Tynes, editor-in-chief of Pagan Publishing
The Unspeakable Oath issues 1 & 2
Page 2
Table of Contents
Introduction to The Annotated Unspeakable Oath........................................................................2
Introduction to TUO 1.......................................................................................................................... 4
TUO 1: The Dread Page of Azathoth............................................................................................ 5
TUO 1: Good Tidings From Shantak Claus....................................................................................7
TUO 1: New for Cthulhu.................................................................................................................. 8
TUO 1: The Road to Hali................................................................................................................ 10
How To Get There..................................................................................................................... 11
Your First Steps.......................................................................................................................... 13
Sanity Travel............................................................................................................................... 14
What You’ll See.......................................................................................................................... 15
Carcosa........................................................................................................................................ 15
The Whisper Labyrinth:............................................................................................................ 16
The Gallery of Shades:.............................................................................................................. 17
The Lake Of Hali........................................................................................................................ 18
The Palace................................................................................................................................... 20
Packing Your Bags..................................................................................................................... 21
TUO 1: A Tale of Terror: Little Death.......................................................................................... 23
Possibilities:................................................................................................................................ 23
TUO 1: Creating and Using Mythos Tomes................................................................................24
The Diary of Randall Sylvester ............................................................................................... 26
TUO 1: Afterword........................................................................................................................... 27
TUO 2: Introduction to TUO 2.......................................................................................................... 28
TUO 2: The Dread Page of Azathoth.......................................................................................... 30
TUO 2: A Tale of Terror — Grim Portrait....................................................................................32
TUO 2: A Chip Off the Old Blob................................................................................................... 33
Brothers of Chaugnar-Faugn (Greater Servitor Race).........................................................33
Summons of the Sleeper.......................................................................................................... 34
Children of Yog-Sothoth (Greater Servitor Race)................................................................34
Monstrous Children.................................................................................................................. 34
Human Children......................................................................................................................... 35
Spawn of Hastur (Greater Servitor Race)..............................................................................36
TUO 2: The Case of Mark Edward Morrison..............................................................................37
TUO 2: Yeah, But What Does It Look Like?................................................................................39
TUO 2: Message In A Bottle......................................................................................................... 41
TUO 2: Afterword........................................................................................................................... 42
The Unspeakable Oath issues 1 & 2
Page 3
Introduction to TUO 1
©1993 John Tynes
The Unspeakable Oath owes its existence to Jeff Carey, a Cthulhu keeper
of renown and stature (he even appears as a villain in the first scenario
in Chaosium’s ADVENTURES IN ARKHAM COUNTRY book!). At GenCon 1990 I played
in
Jeff’s
“Journey
Into
Darkness”
adventure
and
afterwards
received
a broadcast letter from him sent to everyone he’d met at conventions talking
about various things of interest to gamers. In this letter he suggested
that the folks he was writing to ought to get together a Call of Cthulhu
fanzine of some sort. Well, that didn’t go anywhere, at least as far as
the original suggestion. But I was so taken with the idea that I started
working on such a beast right away. A couple months later, with the assistance
of Scott Aniolowski, Jeff Barber, John H. Crowe III, Keith Herber, Blair
“Shea” Reynolds, Kevin Ross, and the University of Missouri Simulations
and Gaming Club, the 56-page debut issue of THE UNSPEAKABLE OATH became
a reality.
For those who may be wondering, the title is drawn from a spell created
by Keith Herber in a scenario from CTHULHU NOW (“The Evil Stars”)
about a Hastur-inspired rock group. The spell was “The Unspeakable
Promise,”
but
I
kept
calling
it
“The
Unspeakable
Oath”
by
mistake in our games. The name just fit somehow, and off we went.
With the help and advice of a local game shop employee, THE UNSPEAKABLE
OATH found wholesale distribution and was carried by numerous game shops.
Pagan Publishing was launched.
This series contains the complete contents of TUO 1, lacking artwork and two
articles.
The
first,
“Firearms
in
Call
of
Cthulhu”
by
John
H.
Crowe, III, has been superceded by John’s massive reference work THE WEAPONS
COMPENDIUM, available through Pagan Publishing’s mail order catalog. The
second, “Within You Without You,” is a scenario by myself (John
Tynes) that re-appeared, in revised form, in THE RESURRECTED * VOLUME
TWO in early 1994.
All annotations by me are enclosed in brackets, and are ©1993 John Tynes.
The Unspeakable Oath issues 1 & 2
Page 4
TUO 1: The Dread Page of Azathoth
©1990 John Tynes
[This is your basic editor's column. Originally, I'd planned to use it for
convention announcements and miscellaneous garbage after the first issue
was released, but it has remained a very personal soapbox for me and my
views,
however
ludicrous.
It
is
unabashedly
inspired
by
"The
Cosmic
Streetcorner," a column in my all-time-favorite gaming magazine, GATEWAYS.
The title is a take-off on a CoC spell, "The Dread Curse of Azathoth."
In TUO10 it finally lives up to its name and is only a single page long.]
It was a smallish book, somewhere between a Gideon New Testament and an
issue of Reader’s Digest; hardbound, black, with a murky figure on one corner
of the cover. The spine identified the author as Robert W. Chambers. Title?
The King in Yellow.
It was a first edition published, as memory serves, in 1895. How long it
had been in the library of the University of Missouri-Columbia I do not
know, but it is not improbable that it had been in the collection since
publication. Last March, ecstatic at the find, I checked it out and perused
the short stories it contained. At the time I considered keeping it, reporting
it
“lost”
and
paying
whatever
fine
they
asked.
But
in
the
end
I dropped it in the book return slot, and that night I slept well.
A few weeks ago I went back to retrieve it again, meaning to verify some
of my scribbled notes from the previous spring. Requesting “king in
yellow” from the library’s computer directory, I was greeted with “title
not found”. Puzzled, I asked for an author listing for “chambers,
robert”. Scanning the ten or so resulting entries confirmed it: The
King in Yellow was not there.
The old card catalogs beckoned, and I hurried over to the banks of narrow
wooden drawers, reminiscent of the great Yithian library lost under the
Australian sands. Once again, The King in Yellow refused to manifest itself.
A physical search through Chambers’ section on the bookshelves further confirmed
the title’s odd status.
The librarian who came to my aid was perplexed; if the book had been lost,
there would still be a record of it. But there was none; as far as she could
tell, the library of the University of Missouri-Columbia had never seen
it — my memory to the contrary.
Fortunately, two other University campuses were listed as possessing copies
of the book, and so I requested for one of them to be sent here. Unfortunately,
neither was the same first edition. One was an Ace paperback from the late
1960
′
s; the other, a quickie reprint for libraries. The paperback made the
journey here intact, yet within an hour of my picking it up I left it behind
in a large lecture hall. Realizing my misfortune that night, I rushed across
campus and rescued the book from the phalanx of janitors sweeping through
the room. It seemed that The King in Yellow and I were magnetically charged,
each repelling the other.
Imagination is a wonderful thing; it spawned HPL’s organic Mythos, prodding
writers from Robert Bloch to Sandy Peterson to join in. Occasionally, though,
the real world seems to be just as conspiratorially mocking as any of Lovecraft’s
cosmic beings; at such times, imagination leads us to see dangers where
they may not be — we wonder about the strange man in the overcoat who smells
The Unspeakable Oath issues 1 & 2
Page 5

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