'Lo again.

Just a bit of C&C on "Children of an Elder God #8."  Well, C&C and some 
random bits where I just make jokes.

Reliefs in the floor showed people being hurled into the
well by ceremonially dressed priests who wore tentacled
headdresses and a contorted, inhuman mask.  Bits of yellow
paint still clung to the masks, and a band of purple stone
ringed the well for six feet.

While the tentacled headresses sound about right, yellow masks are, as far 
as I know, exclusively linked to the King in Yellow branch of the Hastur 
cult.  Ghathanothoa's cults tend to wear headresses and kilts, or bodypaint 
and nothing else.  They also tend to fixate on mirrors and other image 
producing devices, bas reliefs, and often associate with lliogor.

Yes, I can provide references.

	"The gems are all laid out where various stars are,"
Hino said.  "It's a star chart."  She took Anderson's lamp.
"There's Polaris.  Algol.  Aldeberaan.  Betelgeuse.  Sirius.
Fomalhaut."  The light jerked about, illuminating various
'stars'.  "There's the big dipper, Orion, Gemini...I'd guess
this shows the sky in a few months; some of these stars
won't be visible much at night until fall.  Especially
Fomalhaut.  I'm gonna take some photos...now I'm curious.
Gimme the camera, Johnson."

Interesting collection there.  Let's see...  Well, Polaris is Lovecraft's 
favorite, associated with Hypnos and the Dreamlands.  I can't place 
Algol...in Arabic it means "The Demon's Head."  It might be connected with 
Nyarlathotep, but I don't think that's quite correct.  What you list as 
"Aldeberaan" is normally spelled Aldebaran, and is a star in the Hyades in 
Taurus.  There lies the Lake of Hali and Carcosa, so obviously this points 
to Hastur.  Betelgeuse is, I think, the home of the Elder Gods according to 
Derleth.  Fomalhaut is Arabic for "Mouth of the Fish," and Cthugha live in 
the heart of this star.  You should capitalize Big Dipper (instead of "big 
dipper').  It's associated with Nyarlathotep and the mi-go.

I can't recall the Mythos connections of Sirius, Orion, and Gemini.

                 Children of an Elder God

                          Part 8

                   Under the Sea

o/~ Under the sea, under the sea. o/~
o/~ Darling it's better, down where it's wetter. o/~
o/~ Take it from me. o/~

	"Ibuki-san," said Rei evenly, "I want to kill her."

Maya: That's fairly normal.  Just wait for a few more episodes.  Once you 
learn more of her backstory, you'll feel more pity and irritation instead.

	"You're going to what?"  Shinji said, sitting on his
futon.

	Asuka leaned against the doorway.  "I'm going to
teach you to control your dreams.  You need to learn."

	"Is this some hypnosis thing?"

Asuka: Nah.  If it was hypnosis, I'd have you bark like a dog or become my 
personal love slave.

	Asuka zoomed over to Kaji.  "You'll be my diving
buddy, won't you?"

Hey, it's like having his own personal Ataru Moroboshi.

	He turned to her questioningly, and she stared at
him.  Her right hand rested on the sigil, her left drifted
freely.  Then it came around, and pulled his right hand over
to touch it.  For a moment, he felt a strange thrill, as if
the wall had tried to jolt him.  She guided his hand along
the contours of the sign.  The wall was pitted and eroded,
but the sign remained vibrant, and seemed even brighter,
somehow, where they had touched it.

Heh.  The Elder Sign drained some of their MPs to power its protective 
nature.

	"I think we should throw Kaji out in the ocean
without his swim trunks," Hikari said.

	Misato grinned.  "Perfect."

	It was fortunate that Kaji could run quickly.

However, Asuka was very disappointed.

	"Aoba brought it.  I think he planned to make some
okonomiyaki with it, but Asuka had other ideas.  Now, how
she knew he would bring a grill...don't ask me."  Ritsuko
shrugged.  "I won't complain."

Since you are calling Maya Ibuki and Makoto Hyuga by their first names, you 
should also call Shigeru Aoba by his first name.

<random>SEE! the psychic cookware bond of Asuka Langley and Shigeru Aoba!  
SEE!  Shigeru Aoba channel the spirit of Ukyou Kuonji!</random>

	Anyway, I hope to see you!  Give me a call at
555-975-9066, or you can email me at Akane@Ozaka.Net.  Well,
I'm going parachuting.  See you!

						Hugs and Kisses,

						Akane Toshiba'

'PS: I'm also a spy for a cult that's worshipping horrible entities from 
beyond time and space.  Good luck with Misato before we slay you all to sate 
your mighty lord's thirst for blood and souls.'

	Hmm, he thought.  Secret Admirer...I need to find
out what kind of flowers she likes.  Although I probably
should send flowers and beer instead of chocolate...

	He laughed and started making plans.

Actually, this is actually an idea I like.  I detest Kaji.  And, I haven't 
found any Evangelion fan fiction that makes any attempt at developing the 
potential in a Makoto and Misato relationship.

Not that it would actually fit with Eva continuity as presented in the 
anime, but still...

<note to self>Write Jim Lazar and ask where Makoto and Shigeru are in Garden 
of Eva</note to self>

	"WHAT?"  He stared in surprise.  "In Antarctica?"

	"I was the only survivor.

Misato: Except for all those Elder Things and shoggoths and such...

	"I do not smell like fish!"  Asuka started chasing
Shinji around the apartment while Misato simply laughed.

Asuka:  Ritsuko, on the other hand...

	"Dunno.  I wouldn't be surprised if she did magic on
the side.  She's..."

Rei:  Of course I do.  Blasphemous knowledge does have practical 
applications.  DREAD CURSE OF AZATHOTH! *zap!*

	"At least if you're gonna date someone twice your
age, find someone responsible,"  Hikari said.  "Like maybe
Katsuragi-san's assistant or the guy with the guitar."

Actually, that's fairly good advice, not to mention another interesting 
fanfiction idea I haven't seen done.

Note that suggestions on the lines of "Write it yourself" will be ignored; 
I've got more than enough things to keep me busy.

	For a moment, he had a mental image of Rei hiding in
the dark under the sheets of her bed, reading Vogue by
flashlight and giggling to herself, then carefully hiding
the magazine and faking emotionlessness when Akagi-san came
in to check on her.  He laughed loudly at the thought.

	Rei glanced over at him, but said nothing.

Rei:  <thought> Indefinite Insanity: Random Megalomaniacal Laughter.  The 
San Loss is getting to him.

	As they walked, Shinji began to feel curious as to
what exactly he had glimpsed.  I suppose I could ask her, he
thought.  Somehow, he just couldn't quite do that, though.
He tried to think of something to talk about.  "How many
more Angels do you think there will be?"

	"Ten."

That meshes with the list on the CoaEG page (which needs updating, BTW).  
Hastur, Yig, Tsathoggua, Y'golonac, Shudde-M'ell, Cthugha, Daoloth, 
Nyarlathotep, Cthulhu, Azathoth.

	The Red Knight threw a few more logs on her fire,
then got back up to finish brushing her horse, which was
tethered to a nearby tree.  She was passing through a light
forest which ran up and down the thinly occupied hills
between Zakarion (her destination) and Thorabon (her
starting point).  Thorabon was a dying sea port along the
coast of the Southern Sea, east of Dylath- Leen, where she
had recently made herself not welcome by burning all the
slave traders' ships in the harbor.

If I had my Dreamlands book with me I could check this for geographic 
correctness, but I don't, so I can't.  Is Thorabon a canon location?

Enjoyed the cameo by the Men from Leng.

<random>What if NERV had accidentally hired some Tcho-Tchos?</random>

	The sun finished setting, and the red sky faded to
darkness.  One by one, the stars came out, and Asuka settled
down to watch them and listen to the sea. I wonder what Rahab
will be like, she thought.  That was the name of their next
target, the Angel of the Sea.  Probably going to be a great white
whale, she thought.  She drifted off into a nap, dreaming of
Shinji's father as Captain Ahab.

Makoto:  Off the port bow!  'Tis the White Angel, Moby Daoloth.  The dubloon 
is mine!

	"In the nineteenth century, a man named Colonel
Churchward claimed to have deciphered a set of tablets which
told the story of a continent named Mu in the Pacific Ocean,
which had once held a great civilization, then sank into the
ocean.  He was generally laughed at because of two reasons.
First, his method of translating them basically involved a
lot of mysticism since it was a supposedly dead language,
and secondly, he couldn't produce the tablets."

Why would Shinji know this?  He has no interest in the occult or paranormal, 
and is not noted for a particular interest in reading, and certainly not 
reading sci-fi, fantasy, horror, history, or Forteana, the topics likely to 
contain this trivia.

	The ceiling was low, which bothered her; it was
going to be hard to move in here without whacking her EVA's
head into the ceiling frequently.  To make matters worse,
she could make out a huge shape on her Hypersonar which
occupied the far end of the cavern.  Hypersonar couldn't
handle it well; it was too complex, a tangle of tubes and
arms and legs and spheres and bulbous malformed hunks of
seemingly pointless flesh, all mounted around a large sphere
which might have been an eye, but which was featureless to
hypersonar.  It had no infrared signature at all.

The description here of Ghathanothoa is slightly off.  First, the use of 
"arms and legs" implies appendages with internal or external skeletal 
structures.  Also, you seem to be describing Ghathanothoa as having a 
central eye.  Ghathanothoa has neither (the only GOO with a central eye that 
I recall is Cyaegha).

>From the CoC rulebook:
"Ghatanothoa is known to be exceedingly horrible, with myriad tentacles, 
maws, and sensory organs, with a definite dreadful outline."

Tentacles, the only type of appendage Ghatanothoa is stated to have, have no 
internal or external bone structure, thus do not qualify as arms or legs.  
You also seem a bit short on maws (i.e. big freakin' mouths with nasty sharp 
pointy fangs).

Yes, that's very picky.  Don't worry, I get worse.

	I'll go for the eye, she decided.  Then her EVA
wouldn't move, and her eyes widened.  "MOVE!" she shouted,
but it moved only in slow motion, ever slowing.  Something
was wrong.

CoC Rulebook again:
"CURSE OF GHATANOTHOA: anyone in visual proximity to a perfect image of 
Ghatanothoa receives this curse."
"Each round that the image of Ghatanothoa is present, the human witnesses 
must receive CONx5 rolls on D100.  Upon failure, the investigator loses 1D6 
DEX, muscles stiffen, and creeping paralysis begins.  An investigator's DEX 
brought to zero, complete immobilization occurs, a petrification process 
normally irreversible."
"In a few minutes, the victim's flesh and sinews rapidly harden to the 
consistancy of leather and bone.  The brain and other internal organs remain 
fresh and alive in this hard, immobile case, aware yet unbearably 
imprisoned...."

So, based on that, why are the Evas effected by the curse, but not the 
children?  I mean, obviously, the Eva have a far higher CON than humans, so 
why don't the Children get paralysed?

	She howled; these were not her memories, not her
senses, not her, but she could not resist them, could not
fight them off.  Much of it was utterly alien to her and
incomprehensible.  Angled time.  The smell of a dying world.
Twelfth dimensional spheres.  A music which permeated the
universe.  A universe dying as the atom which contained it
was crushed in a cyclotron.  An ever surging, constantly
changing blasphemous mass surrounded by a court of idiot
gods and mindless flautists playing a tuneless symphony.

Whoa.  That's so cool...

	Her brain swam with names.  Ythogtha, Illisia,
Toriak, Knn- Yrr, T'yui'oik-H'al'sha, Yuggoth, T'yog,
Zanthu, Idh-yaa, Tlaloc, Ghatanathoa, Ghadamon.  They might
have been people or places or names, she could not remember.
She did not want to remember.  They were not her memories!
They were not!

I'll try to identify these names for the less Mythos literate (although some 
of these have me stumped).  Let me know about the ones I don�t know and/or  
get incorrect.

Ythogtha - One of the "sons of Cthulhu" that came down from Xoth.  Zanthu 
the priest freed Ythogtha from his tomb aeons ago, destroying the primeval 
continent of Mu.  Buried under the Pacific.  Related to Cthulhu (father), 
Ghatanothoa, Zoth-Ommog (brothers), and Cthylla (sister) (relationships as 
nearest human approximate).

Illisia - Somewhere in the Dreamlands (???)

Toriak - I have no idea.

Knn-Yrr - A beast of burden for the men of K'n-Yan.  Bred from humans.

T'yui'oik-H'al'sha - I have no idea.

Yuggoth - Pluto.  The mi-go, the Fungi from Yuggoth, live there, but are not 
native.

T'yog - An alien metal associated with immortality. (???)

Zanthu - Ancient priest of Ythogtha in Mu.  Wrote the Zanthu Tablets, 
destroyed Mu.

Idh-yaa - Mate of Cthulhu, mother of Cthylla, Ghatanothoa, Ythogtha, and 
Zoth-Ommog.

Tlaloc - Mayan (or Aztec, I can never remember) rain god.  Alias for 
Cthulhu.

Ghatanathoa - The featured Great Old One.

Ghadamon - A larval Great Old One native to the Dreamlands.

	"It's a pity we can't FIND the next one," Gendo
said.  "They could turn him loose almost anywhere."

	"Anywhere that people won't notice a few monoliths."

Actually, monoliths are not necessary to summon Hastur.  Set and costumes 
for 'The King in Yellow' are all that's require if one has a copy of the 
play.

Mmm.  Mottled rags...

Please note that I avoided making an Rei/nosebleed comments.  The world is a 
better place for that.

Chris Nichols


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