I finally sat down the other day and really read a Lovecraft story, Mammoth Cave, also known as The Beast in the Cave. Was surprised to learn he was only fourteen when he wrote this tale! So I decided to make a thread listing a variety of Lovecraft influences in Bethesda games, and here it is. I'm sure these influences can be found in other games, as well as other media altogether, so feel free to add these as you'd like as well.

It struck me though. The Beast in the Cave features a pale-skinned creature with snow-white hair, which the protagonist kills toward the end of the tale. Before he killed this creature, he could only hear its footfalls (he was in total darkness), and apparently the creature alternated between walking on two feet, and walking on four feet. After killing it, he managed to find the tour guide he'd gotten separated from. He and the guide were then able to return to the creature, and were able to see it with a torch.

At the very end of the tale, the protagonist describes the creature he'd killed as having once been a MAN!!! ... There is an implication that this MAN once lived aboveground, perhaps. Because it's impossible for him to have been born underground.

And to me, this sounds like a reference to the falmer of Skyrim, who also once were an aboveground-living race, called snow elves.

Yes!! Beth actually puts lots of Lovecraftian elements into their games. Oblivion and Fallout3 were rife with them. Notably, Oblivion had the “Shadow over Hackdirt” quest, and Fallout3 had all the stuff with Ug Qualtoth (Dunwich building, which is itself a Lovecraft reference).

Khajiit really likes Lovecraft’s work. He gets a bad wrap in modern society because he is seen as something of a racist.

The Krivbeknih in Fallout 3 is like Lovecraft's Necronomicon in a way. Except that you have an option to destroy the evil book in the game.

Indeed! It is a reference to the Necronomicon.

Fallout 4 continues the Lovecraftian tradition with Dunwich Borers. Like the Dunwich Building in Fallout 3, it is filled with ghouls. As you go down you find clues to something terrible that happened there before the war. Finally down at the bottom you have a hallucination of a mass sacrifice. You find an altar there, and Kremvh's Tooth, a sacrificial blade of Ug-Qualtoth.



But is it really destroyed. Or has it just been transported somewhere else, or is it just reforming itself even as we speak?

After all, that is not dead which can eternal lie...

Got a couple of full Lovecraftian games coming out:

http://frogwares.com/discover-the-sinking-city/

http://www.callofcthulhu-game.com/en

Hermaeous Mora always made me think of my own mental image of Cthulhu . . .

And yeah, I got a free copy of his works, and will have to read them again . . .

My mental image has been totally ruined by this.

Wtf

I am reading The Amulet next, started reading it yesterday afternoon.

I can't believe this guy's writing ability as a teenager. It just boggles me. I mean, he must have spent a LOT of time reading and writing. Some of the words he uses, and the way he uses them, make me want to break out a dictionary or encyclopedia. He didn't have to write in such a way, at such a young age. It's obvious to me he was aspiring to become the very BEST of his craft?

Going back to The Beast in the Cave though, at the very end, it's almost like he betrays his actual age by finally emoting, when the protagonist realizes he's killed a MAN!!! The way Lovecraft wrote that very last word displays all kinds of enthusiasm, more aptly-said from a teenager than an adult.

Ya, he and Poe are probably Khajiit’s favorite authors.

Lovecraft always tried to save that big reveal for the very end. At some times it even gets pretty convoluted as he dances around that big shocking Truth so he can save it for the finish. But mostly it creates a resounding finish. The HPLHS society has done a lot of his stories as radio dramas, and they did that to outstanding effect with their version of Shadow Over Innsmouth.

You will also notice that HP hates woodwind instruments, especially pipes and flutes. If there is evil afoot, you can bet it will be heralded by musical piping. Daemoniac piping. He loves daemoniac things. He must have had a daemoniac neighbor who played the recorder all night...

For some of HPL's greatest hits, I recommend the following stories:

At The Mountains of Madness (probably his longest, and my personal favorite)
The Call of Cthulhu
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (my second favorite)
The Color Out Of Space
Dreams In The Witch House (I love the HPLHS radio drama of this, and how they used quantum physics)
The Dunwich Horror
Haunter Of The Dark
Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Shadow Out Of Time
The Thing On The Doorstep
The Whisperer In Darkness
Herbert West - Reanimator

For some of his best B-sides (well, smaller stories):
Cool Air
From Beyond
The Hound
The Lurking Fear
The Nameless City (you can see an early form of a recurring idea in his fiction - that of the Hollow Earth and the nameless horrors dwelling within it)
Nyarlathotep
The Outsider
Pickman's Model
Rats In The Walls
The Shunned House
The Statement of Randolph Carter
The Unnamable

Ha! That's awesome. Thanks for making that list, SR.

It’s a good list, can confirm

At the Mountains of Madness is my personal favorite too along with The Shadow over Innsmouth.

Of shorter ones I really like The Cats of Ulthar.

The only story which didn't interest me and at some points I needed to force myself to read it until the end, is The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath though the "surprise"at the end is worth reading it until the end.

I recently started listening to the HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast, or Podcraft. It is pretty good. The two people doing it are indie filmmakers, who among other things worked with The Hp Lovecraft Historical Society - or HPLHS in their movies Call of Cthulhu and Whisperer in Darkness. I remember them from the behind the scenes features (which are in some ways more fun the the actual films!). They have also done some of their own stuff.

I went back and started with their original podcasts, and have been working my way forward. They are examining all of Lovecraft's stories in they order they were written. I don't recommend doing it that way for someone new to Lovecraft, because his earliest works were pretty rough. It takes a while to get to the real gems. But as someone who is already familiar with Lovecraft's writing, it is really fascinating. It has given me a whole new appreciation for his work, as I am not only noticing the firsts (like the first time the Necronomicon is specifically mentioned), but also I am seeing common threads in his writing I never noticed before.

Each podcast takes one or two of Lovecraft's stories and basically walks through them, with a guest reader narrating certain parts. They talk about what is going on, tell some bad jokes, and sometimes have some really clever and insightful remarks. They also add in background like when the story was written, what was going on in Lovecraft's life at the time that might have influenced the story, and things like that. It is this latter stuff that has really added a whole new dimension for me.

Some of the readings are dodgy (not the best voice actors). Some are outstanding, especially when Andrew Leman from the HLPHS is doing them). I find I really enjoy the female readers. That in itself adds a whole new dimension to the stories, as Lovecraft was far from female friendly (there are almost never any female characters in his stories!). The stories they picked for a female reader were good choices though, as in these the protagonist is not named, or given any background or history (he does that a lot). So they could be anyone. I am sure Lovecraft would be rolling in his grave. But considering who he was, I think he would enjoy rolling in his grave...

Khajiit has recently started listening to podcasts so this sounds right up his alley! Thanks for sharing!

Today is the anniversary of Lovecraft's death.

In his house in Providence
dead Lovecraft waits dreaming

And such a shame he was not to know of the recognition he'd gain over the next decades.

Oh Subbie... got somethin’ fer ye!

*Edit*
Of course, after posting, I realized that you had probably already heard he was wanting to do it, lol

I had not heard this news. Though sadly, just because he still wants to make it, does not mean he will be able to. Tbh though, I am glad he did not make a version with Tom Cruise. That would have been awful, not matter how well he did the rest of the movie. I would love to see him team up with Sean Branney and Andrew Leman from HPHLS, and do a low budget version. Their Call of Cthulhu and Whisper In Darkness movies were great, albeit cheap.

Now watch, he will make it with Nic Cage instead... Though granted, the Color Out Of Space movie he was in was good.

Lol, when I read that about Tom Cruise I was like “ew”

"Yet with strange aeons, even death may die"



On the subject, I like CoC: Dark Corners of the Earth. Haven't played it but I've watched a playthrough of it. Kinda neat game, if only it had been developed for the PC and not just ported.

Wow, nothing is more appropriate than some thread necromancy on a Lovecraft topic!

Cheshire Khajiit: Thread Reanimator

The Old Ones walk the earth...

Neat! And yikes! Yikeat!

Cthulhu Chan

Kinda reminds me of the vampire ladies in the Darkstalkers fighting game series!

Yes it does.

Elder Storm

Spooky!

Up from the depths it rises. Run! Run, I say!

A mountain walked... and other things.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn is in the Urban Dictionary, under just the word Fhtagn

Isn't the Urban Dictionary great?

Scientists have discovered strange life forms under the Antarctic ice. An expedition from Miskatonic University is being dispatched to investigate.

Lol oh noez!! Shoggoths!!

HP Lovecraft writes Olive Garden's menu

The Olive Garden near me closed recently. Now I know why.

Syl should have hired him to write the menus for the House of Dementia. And may be she did?

A heads up:

The Last Case of Benedict Fox comes out April 27th. As you can see from the trailer, it is a 2D (2.5D?) side scrolling action platformer in the vein of Castlevania Symphony of the Night and Metroid, and so may not be for everyone here, but it looks to have a very strong Lovecraftian feel to it. Khajiit is very interested in this title.

So, I finally found my Lovecraft book: The Transition of H.P. Lovecraft: The Road to Madness. No joke: I think the book is haunted. It keeps disappearing! Bought it whenever I started this thread (which I see was August of 2018), and since then the book has just *poof* vanished twice or three times. It'll vanish, then I'll find it in some odd spot. None of my other books do this!

Now that I work in a bookstore I could've just bought a second copy (and at a discount) and maybe the forces that be knew this. Because I found the original I bought in 2018, this time on an odd shelf underneath my housemate's entertainment system, of all place. Karen, my housemate, says she didn't move the book and I believe her because other than an occasional newspaper or magazine article, she's not a reader.

Anyway, I wanted to type my thoughts on a few of the short stories I've read. None of them have anything to do with gaming, so technically I'm off-topic. Oh well.

---------

The Book: This one's really creepy, partially because it's unfinished. It details a story of a man who found a 'worm-riddled book' in some outdoor location, near a river where "the mists always swirl." Super creepy.

After reading the book, the protagonist goes mad, of course. He (get this) locks himself into an attic filled with candles. As he loses touch with reality, he can't even remember if he's got a family. He begins hearing 'scratching' at the windows. Pretty soon he finds himself 'foating above the city', but then abruptly awakes back in the candle-filled attic.

And that's how the story ends. It's only 3 pages long!

-------------------

The Transition of Juan Romero. The protagonist this time is day laborer, a white man who works amongst Mexicans and Native Americans, and so on. They're all working in a goldmine. 🪙 A few of the laborers he works with are superstitious, which can often be shrugged off. But one of them, Juan Romero, just happens to eventually stand out.

Juan is fascinated with a 'Hindoo ring' which the protagonist wears. He seems to know there's some sort of magic within this ring, or something. The ring is beset with Hieroglyphics.

A part of the mountain they're mining gets blasted with too much TNT, and things go wrong. By the way Lovecraft describes, an entire portion of the moutainside falls away, leaving behind a huge cavern. Juan becomes attracted to something deep within the cavern that night, some sort of menacing rumble which throbs from deep beneath the ground. AT this moment, the Hindoo ring is glowing.

Juan goes running off into the cavern, while the protagonist initially follows. Something happens to Juan down there. Lovecraft gets sort of vague about what it could be. But later the next day, Juan is found by some of the other men. Still alive, but unconscious. And the protagonist's Hindoo ring, it's now missing from the protagonist's finger.

Next one I'm gonna read should be REALLY interesting. It's called Dagon!

The Book really showcases the Lovecraft style of writing. It is all mood and setting and feeling, and short on things like character and plot. That was the way he liked it. What he wanted to do was create an experience for the reader, to get them to feel as they read his work. Which is what art is supposed to do after all. He really did not care about anything else.

I just looked in my audiobook version of his works. The Readme has a list of his stories in the order that they were written, as well as another list breaking them down by genre. The Book was done in 1933, so it is near the end of his career, when he had really crystallized his own style.

The Transition of Juan Romero is one of those stories of his that deals with the Hollow Earth, and the idea that there are huge, open spaces down there, where all manner of dark and horrific monsters brooded and plotted. It is an early stab at the concept. My readme file says it is from 1919, so it is really early in his career. He would go on to develop the idea much more The Festival, The Nameless City, and The Mound. He really hits it out of the park with At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Out of Time.

Dagon was ok. Not one of his best to be sure, but one where he started to really show his own unique style of writing. I remember a podcast talking about it, and they brought up that at the time someone had criticized the plot, saying that it didn't make sense. Lovecraft shot back at them that he knew it was right, because he had dreamed it that way. That was often how he got his inspiration. He wrote what he dreamed. It is definitely in keeping with his decision to focus on mood and feeling, rather than on plot and characterization.

Okay, that helps what you just said: "all mood and setting, short on character and plot". Never thought of it that way, but that's a very succinct way of putting it. I was assuming since a lot of these shorts were published in pulp magazines that he was dealing with a lot of short deadlines, as well. Wow, that was written in his latter years.

Do you think he meant for The Book to end so abruptly like that from the protagonist's viewpoint? Or was it maybe an editorial thing? Maybe the publication would only accept so many words (assuming the story went into a magazine), so he had to trim The Book down and make it end like Thereafter I was more cautious with my incantations, for I had no wish to be cut off from my body and from the earth in unknown abysses whence I could never return. ?

The Lovecraft book I've got puts ellipses at the end. So it's like "whence I could never return..."

Whoa, I love that retort. "It has to be right, that's how I dreamed it!" That's something I didn't know, and now it makes sense, because some of the stories definitely come across as dreamy. The way The Book changes course several times is an example.

I'll read Dagon some point this weekend.

I’ve always liked Dagon. It’s pretty short and I think it can serve as a great entry point for someone new to Lovecraft’s work to really get a feel for his style. It has all the weirdness and creature horror that a lot of his work features without throwing a lot of his more “out there” ideas at you.

Renee: I am sure Lovecraft wanted The Book to end that way. He was not a very financially-minded person. He did not write stories to get paid, he wrote them because he wanted to, and then shopped them around to magazines afterward. There were much more profitable genres that he could have written in, but he vehemently opposed that, and he kind of snobbishly looked down his nose at people who did basically just write for the buck. In the end he could not write something that was not in his nature. For him it was all about the Art.

That is why he was not a big success in his lifetime. He had a niche of fans, but they were small. He really did not start to get popular until the 80s, when his work started getting re-released, and the game Call of Cthulhu came out. Ironically there were writers in his lifetime who were hugely successful that sometimes get named, and I have never heard of them. Once they retired, they just faded into obscurity, like last week's pop star. I think Lovecraft's lasting fame is due to him sticking to his artistic vision, in spite of all the people telling him to write in ways that were more commercially successful.

The podcast Voluminous covers all this in great detail. It is on probably permanent hiatus now, but they have a very extensive back catalog of episodes. It is put on by two Lovecraft nerds who take a letter of his each week and read it in full. Then they talk about it, what was going on in the world at the time, and in Lovecraft's life in particular, and just add another layer of conclusions. It shows all the really good things, and all the really, really bad things about him.

Khajiit: Dagon is one I put in the lower end B-Sides. Again, it is one of those where Lovecraft is working out ideas that would eventually blossom into great things. I don't think we would have gotten The Shadow Over Innsmouth without Dagon. Just like I don't think we would have gotten At The Mountains of Madness without The Nameless City first.

Just came to mind; Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened.


Have been some years since I saw a LP of this game but it was pretty good. Started out as a typical Sherlock detective story but evolved into a supernatural Lovecraft story. If you like detecting and puzzle stuff at a slower (usually) pace with some Deep Ones thrown into it, maybe look into this!

Lopov played a couple Sherlock Holmes games, and yes I remember him mentioning something about Lovecraft.

I did read Dagon a couple days ago, I can see what you're saying Florens. It is sort of just "okay". Maybe it's because of the Mehrunes Dagon connotation I've got in my head, I was expecting a grand demon to be the main focus of the story. But yeah, Dagon does sort of seem half-finished. And like a dream, it shifts around a few unconnected times.

The protagonist starts off saying he's a drug addict at the end of his life. Then he changes subject, and begins talking about being on a boat at the start of the war? Is he a soldier? Or a stowaway?

It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific that the packet of which I was supercargo fell a victim to the German sea-raider

I have read that bit over and over. Maybe it's the language of the times, or something. I can't make heads or tails what's being said here. Maybe "packet of which I was supercargo" is a term which isn't used in our modern times. Or maybe it's a seafarer's term... I dunno!

The story shifts again, and becomes very hellish. Like he's in hell, watching the ocean his boat was floating on turn into this hellish place. Maybe Beth used this portion of the tale to draw inspiration toward the Planes of Oblivion.

Buy yeah, otherwise I don't fully get Dagon. Maybe it's a story written by a morphine addict, his addiction causing all those horrible visions. Or were the visions really supposed to have happened (he was actually in the South Pacific, where he lost his mind)? Don't know.

I like that he mentioned Poe!

A packet is a term for a ship that made a regular route back and forth between two ports. So one that always ran back and forth between say San Francisco to Brisbane. Think of it as a ship version of a bus or train. It is an older term, because we don't really use ships for people's transportation much anymore, except luxury cruises.

A supercargo is likewise an old term for a passenger on a ship.

This is why a lot of people say that if you want to read Lovecraft, first buy yourself a good dictionary... Every time you read him, you are going to learn a new word.

Anyway, I am sure the protagonist is a morphine addict because of this experience he had where he saw Dagon. That is what Lovecraftian horrors do to you. They drive you insane, or make you wish you were insane, as that is a comfort compared to facing the reality you have just borne witness to.