On Mon, 2 Aug 1999 MercutioV@aol.com wrote:

Mercutio: We�re all out of witty banter.

And all full of control characters, apparently.

 Instead, it was just a total moment of blankness, soon
 interrupted by the lounge singer's music drifting into her
 ears.

Mercutio: And of course, we all know there�s nothing more
horrifying than that.

It could have been Barry Manilow.  That would have been worse.

 Part 9

 The King in Yellow

Mercutio: Lose 1d3/1d6+1 Sanity Points for reading this part.

Heh.

 He pulled it from the shelves, then flipped to the
 opening page.

 THE KING IN YELLOW

 Hrm.  Catchy title, yes.

Mercutio: Well, DUH. If they named it something obvious like �You
All go Insane and Die Horrible Screaming Deaths� it would NEVER
get preformed.

Or Postformed. :)

 Kensuke finished flipping to a blurry photo of a
 wall painting.  It was hard to see, but it showed a variety
 of winged creatures with bat-liked wings.  Some of them were
 humanoid with no face.  Others had long snakey bodies and
 wings that seemed inadequate to carry them.  And some...

Mercutio: Hikaru?

It's not a picture of Hikaru. :)

 Ritsuko wondered if Rei would ask where Maya was.
 Instead, after the moment of hesitation, Rei merely nodded
 and took a seat at the examination table, stripping her
 clothes away.

Maya: Hmmpf. Sempai never asked ME to strip nekked and get on
the table....

Bailesu:  And now you know why you didn't get any in the canon.

 Ritsuko frowned as the phrase echoed in her head,
 bringing up unwanted memories from a long time ago.  Her own
 mother certainly-

Mercutio: .....was insane?

Hikaru: ......knew how to sleep her way to the top?

Bailesu:  That would be telling.

 "Or would you like to keep me stuck here a while longer
 while you call all your preadolescent girlfriends?"

 "Asuka is hardly preadolescent."

Maya: She�s fourteen, moron. Last time I checked, that was
DEFINITLY preadolescent.

Nope.  Adolescence starts with puberty, which she's developed enough to
clearly have experienced.

 Secondly, as the man collapsed, you could see him
 standing next to a monolith.  It was a five sided cylinder,
 painted in orange-brown and blue with strange runes.  Most
 were unfamiliar to Kensuke, but he could see one clearly;
 the astrological symbol for Jupiter was marked on each side,
 just below the top.

Hikaru: That�s rather pointless. Hastur has exactly ZIP to do with
Jupiter. Neither do any of the GOO, really.

That's merely what they want you to think.

 "HEY!  Cut it out, ya beer-swilling bitch!"  Touji
 raised his own 'sword' in challange.

Mercutio: You know, I�m just _waiting_ for the day that Touji
just hauls off and bitch-slaps her.

He would try and then she would break his arm.

 Rei stirred from her bed, an annoyed look on her
 face.  She paced the room, slowly, then stepped out to her
 balcony.

Hikaru: Rei has a balcony? Since when?

Since we gave her one.

 "This is where I go back on and break it up.  Then
 Cassilda enters..."  Shinji's arm wavered about, then locked
 on a point on the far side of the stage.  "There."

Mercutio: This backstage area has the biggest field of view I have
EVER seen.

It's a junior high.  There's not a lot of fancy stuff backstage to get in
the way.

Hikaru: Please, this is a High School. Just start opening lockers
at random and you�ll find at _least_ some pot.

Not in a Japanese Junior High.

Mercutio: You�d think Misato would be a tad upset that her �good�
friend knew she was walking around with a big target hanging
around her neck and failed to say anything until now.

She has other worries right now.

 shot.  This is what the A-Team would have done.  Although
 they would likely have put the Elder Sign on their van and
 run him over.

Mercutio(Mr. T): �I pity da fool who ain�t down with the Elder
Gods! They�re hella tough!�

Helluva tough.  Get it right :)

Mercutio: When were YOU ever at a Guns & Roses concert?

Maya: <sweetly> Where do you think me and Ritsuko met?

So, whose time machine did you borrow to do this? :)

 "And what of you, Sissila?" he said to Misato.
 "Your lover lies wounded.  Indeed, both your earnest suitors
 have fallen, searching the field for you."  She could see
 Kaji had a nasty gut wound and was down, while Makoto was
 limping at the fringes of the fray.

Hikaru: Hey, refresh my memory, but wasn�t SHE the one who
wounded Kaji?

Kicking, not stabbing.  He now has a stab wound to go with his bruise.

Mercutio: <deadpan> Because, of course, the play�s the thing
to catch the conscience of the King.

Rim shot.

 "Kensuke is dead.  And so are you," the King wheezed
 out.  "You are Rei Ayanami, not Cassilda.  She died long
 ago."  He made a gesture at her.  "Go back where you came
 from, for you are only an expression of my will!"

 "By changing the plot, you freed me to do what came
 naturally, instead of repeating what came before.  You were
 not the only one to serve a god, Hastur."

Hikaru(Hastur): �At least I served a brand-name god! YOUR
God had to be made up just for this story!! Ha ha!!�

Actually, Lenilda is from Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborean cycle.

 "Pathetic humans!  This little toy won't hold me for
 long!"  Kensuke shouted, pounding against the door to his
 cell.  "You cannot bind me in flesh again!  I am He Who
 Cannot Be Named, and what cannot be named cannot be bound!
 I will starve this meatsack!  It will die, and then I will
 be free!  And my slaves will bring you down even if that
 somehow does not come to pass!  I WILL DESTROY YOU!"

Hikaru: Somehow, you�d think Hastur would be _above_ ranting
like every other lame supervillain ever captured.

If the ants in your garden took you captive, you'd rant too.

 night; everyone had been gone for some reason.  Even the
 piano player had taken most of the evening off to do
 something or another.  A few listless people drank
 quietly or watched a rerun of a soccer game on ESPN5.

Mercutio: Apparently, the Second Impact just served to make
ESPN even MORE pervasive and powerful.

Yep.

 idea.  He wasn't even sure what the play had been.  Jimmy
 didn't get out much.

Hikaru: Y�know, somehow, you�d think �CITY ENVELOPED BY
ORGY OF SEX AND VIOLENCE� would have made the news.

Not with NERV covering it up.

 [In latter days, men shall wield the powers of the gods, but
 lack their wisdom.  They shall walk the halls of the dead,
 where the Great Cauldron of Life waits for the one who shall
 master it.  Yet, they shall lack the ancient lore, and find
 only destruction instead of life, raising a great funeral
 pyre.  That light shall call to he who sings the stars into
 place, who will set to his work.

Hikaru: �Men shall wield the powers of the gods, but lack their
wisdom,� is standard fare for this sort of thing, and once again,
pretty damn obvious. The �Halls of the Dead� refers to the various
areas of Antarctica where the dead cities of ancient civilizations
(Elder Things, etc) lie, and the areas on that continent where Kadath
in the Cold Waste (seat of the Great Ones, the gods of Earth�s
Dreamlands) and the hideous Plateau of Leng intrude to the
Waking World. 

Check.

The �Great Cauldron of Life� refers to Ubbo-Sathla,
The Unbegotten Source, (an Outer God) of whom it is whispered
was the source of all earthly life. His grotto can be entered through
various ice fissures in Antarctica. Contained therein are the Elder

Check.

Now, the �funeral pyre� is obviously Second Impact. Whatever
the Katsuragi expedition was doing, it obviously went wrong.

Check.

�He who sings the stars� is the Outer God Ghroth, a planet-sized
entity who travels the universe when the Stars are Right awakening
the Great Old Ones (�set[ing] to his work�).

Check.

 And the day shall come when the endless weaver shall
 complete his creation and cross the abyss which shielded the
 world from him and once more gaze upon the sun.

Hikaru: Atlach-Nacha, the Spider-God, who appeared wayyyyyyy
back in part one (Matriel), is the endless weaver. He spins his web in
the great abyss that spans the Dreamlands and the Waking World,
and in this particular story is located in the Vaults of Zin below Yoth,
which lies beneath N�kai, which is under K�n-Yan, which itself lies
beneath Oklahoma. (See CoaEG Part 1) Now, this is canonically
incorrect, as Atlach-Nacha is supposed to dwell beneath Mount
Voormithadreth in ancient Hyperborea (Greenland) but I suppose it
can be overlooked. A disturbing fact is that his weaving was supposed
to occupy Atlach-Nacha until the end of the world.

He moved without leaving a forwarding address.  GOO are like that.

With Atlach-Nacha dead, and his Children extinct, no-one is gaurding
his web. It can thus be used as a portal to pass physically between the
Dreamlands and the Waking World.

Yep.

Mercutio: You�d think Gendo would have nuked R�lyeh by now.
He HAS to know where it is; the Johannsen Narrative (which
gives exact map co-ordinates) is pretty easy to get your hands
on, if you know what you�re doing.

As if that would do more than annoy Cthulhu.  And in the Cthulhu universe,
the Johannsen Narrative is not exactly publically available.  Only one man
had a copy, and even the story insinuated the cult was coming for him.

 Dreams made flesh, or flesh made Dream they
 are, come to renew the ancient cycle.  As before, so it
 happens now.  In the end, they too shall yield to despair as
 did those who came before.  In the end, they shall become
 what they fight.  And the Voice of Endless Chaos will laugh
 with them at the shattered ashes of their faded dreams.]

Hikaru: �Voice of the Endless Chaos� = Nyarlathotep. As for
the rest...... well, the five things �in the visage of men� are
obviously GOOD guys, because it speaks of �Tep turning
them to his side, and if they were already there that�d be
unneccesary. As to WHAT they are...... well, that�s anybodies
guess. Myself, I�m going with the Elder Gods.

There's another way to interpret this, but to say more would be telling :)
The clues are there, though.

Mercuito: Oh yar, my cabbalistic breakdown on �Baraquiel.� Well,
firts of all, the spelling is slightly incorrect; it should be either
�Barakiel� or �Baraquijal�; I checked three highly regarded sources
of angelology and found not one mention of �Baraquiel.� Secondly.....
well, I can�t really see how this name relates at ALL to Hastur.

I'm afraid our source isn't highly regarded, but is highly convenient for
us :)

Reviewers Notes: I apologize for the one-month delay in getting this
thing ready; it takes TIME to do seventy-odd pages of MSTing work.
Not to mention all the research I had to do. More congrats to John
and Rod for continuing the momentum on CoaEG, even though
I really hate what they did to Kensuke.

Well, rest assured, many others will be maimed as well. :)

 

John Biles
Emperor of all He Surveys
http://www.tass.org/~rhea/falcon.html

"He who breaks a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of
wisdom."
     -Gandalf