Mensajes de Brián

Vaya por delante que a mí también me gusta mucho Harlem Unbound. Injugable, en mi opinión, pero muy buen suplemento.

El tipo debe ser competente, pero también es uno de esos visionarios que aspira a redimir el mundo de todas sus iniquidades. Y pensar que se va a acercar a Delta Green me pone un poco nervioso.

↕ 1 hora ↕

Una nota de color ... en más de un sentido. Veremos si se mete en cosas de Delta Green o lo traen para centrarse en Godlike y en nuevos proyectos como el JdR The Black Company.

Espero, eso sí, que Delta Green siga al margen de los manierismos infantiloides en los que han caído otros juegos y se conserve su neutralidad ideológica (que ya con Caleb Stokes a veces está padeciendo un poco).

↕ 1 día ↕

Azathoth

by EDWARD PICKMAN DERBY

CLOUD-WREATHES of bitter smoke entwined my head

As I partook full deep of daemon fumes

That bore my soul far from my chamber dark

To Lethargy's bleak shoreline where Hypnos

Doth beckon weary travellers to light

And spend the atrementous night with him

Till dawn, when once again they disembark

Upon their voyages to distant lands.

As I lay o'erwhelmed by that damned drug,

Sweet opium, whose gentle fingers closed

My tired eyes and stroked my burning brow

With deft caresses, and whose fiery lips

Spoke soothing lies and kissed my slackened mouth,

I tumbled down a fathomless abyss

While sleep drew phantom covers o'er my thoughts

And rendered me oblivious to the world.

My eyes were tightly shut and I enjoyed

The soporific state in which I'd plunged

When rudely did the opium command

My senses reel and stagger as I met

Within the yawning cave behind my eyes

A tow'ring spectre clad in sable robes

Which covered all his form and dreadful face

And trailed upon the broken flaggings where

His piercing stare affixed my gaze and I

Feared lest I melt before those smold'ring slits.

'Twas Morpheus, Dream Lord, that I beheld,

Who beckoned me with tantalizing words

To follow him still further down the shafts

That lead to pits abysmal in the soul

Where yawning maws of black subconscious fright

Lie gaping, waiting hungrily for me

To step within and be devoured whole.

I greatly feared these gulphs, the like of which

I'd little guessed might lurk below-within!

More fearsome yet to stay behind alone

And so I followed him in utter still

Down labyrinthine corridors which turned

And convoluted steeply as we trod

The rocky, nitrous caverns of my mind.

LONG HOURS wended we our way until

The wraith his silence broke and said to me,

 "Here must our ways divide, for I have led

 Thee to the deepest cavern of thy soul

 As I was bid by Him whom thou shalt meet."

But as I framed abortive pleas to stay,

That ghost did vaporize before my stare

And vainly then my fingers clutch'd the air

Where once he stood.

THE STYGIAN dark did next

Instill me with such terror that

I quaked Until at length my feet I could not keep.

Knees buckling, I collapsed headlong and lay

On smoothened cobbles, damp and chill, yet I

Clung hard to consciousness and peered all 'round,

To no avail amid the sightless gloom.

Nor might be spied that rough-hewn entrance where

My shadow'd host did gain admission to

The monstrous umbra-world where now I lay.

That lengthy trek had vitiated me

For I succumbed to Lethe's somnolence

Prostrated there upon the sodden flags

Inside the futile fortress of my skull.

AWAKE AGAIN, sleep's shadows having pass'd,

My head began to ring with noisome notes.

Then sight returned, unwelcome in this dawn

Within the chamber, which before was dark

As pitch and silent as a sepulchre.

I peered around and drew myself upright,

Erect above the foetid floor that I

Might see from whence the daemon piping came

And who might make such eerie melodies.

The vault encompassed me for leagues on leagues

Beyond my feeble senses' grasp as it

Extended all around in vast expanse;

Scarce could I see the groined domes and spires

That tower'd o'er my head. Naught could I see

Of walls to gird my prison gallery.

But in this hall of Titans did arise

Precipitous as from a forest floor

A monstrous Babel carved of solid rock;

But of this monolith Cyclopean

Nor sign nor glyph nor stele once betrayed

What land or place or universe in which

That Charon of ill dreams abandoned me.

Thou fool! to summon spectral Morpheus

To lead thee to this cursed place of truth!

AT LAST I thought to choose a random path

And trod with leaden pace the way that reached

That ominous, all-dwarfing megalith.

Yet though the towering spire seemed miles away

It took me but an hour to gain its base

Where ink-black obelisks of living stone

Made orbit. Each monument was graven

With strangely fashioned runes and ornate glyphs

Of scarlet deep. They seemed to dance as I

Stared dumb at them and at grotesque reliefs

Which circumscribed these mammoth shafts. Much did

I marvel at the hand and implement

With strength enough to sculpt this adamant;

More at the fevered mind that did conceive

The strange, fantastic beings who were limned

Upon that menhir grim, so human as they seemed

In rudiments of physiognomy,

But certain features devil-wrought upon

Those great black shafts did hint of traffic foul.

They bore a look more like to fish than men.

Frogs' bubble-eyes protruded from their heads

And on their necks lay loathsome bronchiae

Which made me shudder with disgust. Their limbs

Were webbed, tentacular they seemed

And covered all around with rank seaweed

And ichthyic scales of squamous, nauseous sheen.

I PASSED those monoliths until I stood

Before that single structure which commands

The shadowed plain I lately had traversed.

What purpose it might serve, I dared not guess

Till, straining, I made out upon the crest

A throne of vast and curious design.

What bulk might crown that dais I knew not,

Yet I stepped closer to the regal chair

And smelled a noxious foetor which did waft

From poison pools of putrefying ooze

Whose runnels puddled thick beneath my feet.

That ichor foul did trickle down the shaft

Of that great throne which bore its own reliefs

Like those upon the sullen pillars round

The monstrous seat. My eyes crept upward next,

Close following those noxious trails of slime

Until I saw the source from which they came

And shrieked until I thought the very cords

Of speech within my throat would burst apart;

Well nigh I swooned from terror as I saw

Poised yards above me on that sculpted throne

A being hideous beyond belief. I gazed in frenzied horror on the thing

Whose shape defied all mortal visionings

Nor did it twice appear identical,

Though certain features, damnably distinct

Remained; the trunk did palpitate and pulse

And seethe with obscene life as o'er the edge

Of his dark throne he cast a flabby limb.

I backed away as swift he tumbled down

To sprawl upon the cobbles where I'd stood.

I trembled when I realized I knew

This Being's name, as though I'd always known—

This Azathoth that I beheld slack-jawed.

As I regarded his gorgonic form,

I fought an inner instinct old as time

That bade me cast myself abject in awe

Before this Hooded Thing of blasphemy.

Great Azathoth! The Lord of Everything

Who reigns supreme among the Secret Gods,

Amorphous in his dumb omnipotence,

The universal centrifuge's core.

The billiard planets round him ricochet,

Chaotic Demiurge that boils up like

Unto a geyser foul and spewing blight.

Though o'er the cosmos blind domain he wields

He knows it not, naught else, nor anything

And by mere frenzied thrashings doth create.

But in the nitrous chasms of my dream

He stood revealed, concealed in human shape

Though only vague resemblance could he ape.

By limb and limb his biped form he took:

Twin arms, twain legs, a torso and a head,

But each alike distorted and grotesque.

His makeshift body seemed without support,

Splayed awkwardly upon unstable legs.

Unwieldy and ungainly as he was,

He still kept pace with evil flute and drums.

In loathsome, corybantic revelry

He capered, flopped, and slid with viscous grace

Until he loomed above me like a wave,

In whose shadow I stood all paralyzed.

Great tentacles protruded from his side

To terminate in red and sucking mouths

Mad writhing 'round his bloated abdomen.

Upon each flabby hip he wore an eye,

A bulging mass of burning veins and lobes.

I broke and ran to flee the Daemon-King,

But he pursued me through the monuments.

His hordes of mindless dancers next appeared

To join the eerie nightmare saraband.

The flutes of Azathoth their strains baroque

Sent wafting through the aethyr of the place,

And as I watched great Azathoth join chase

Still sightlessly across his unseen realm,

A group of imps, who blew on reedy pipes

Did scurry from behind the Blind God's throne

And tripped him up with cudgels, sticks, and clubs

To send their Lord to fall and writhe in pain

Upon the stones and roar in mindless wrath.

He reared himself above those tiny fiends

Who laughed at him as 'round his bulk they pranced.

When all at once his shape began to change

The imps left off their gleeful chittering.

And, sloughing off the half-formed shape of man,

The Devil-Sultan sank within himself,

A living well of protoplasmic rage.

A shapeless mass amoebic, he lashed out

With pseudopodic prowess to devour

Those fleeing servitors defiant.

Expanding as a bloated setting sun

He doubled his dimensions to engulph

The ones whose mocking jeers had praised him.

Wrath thus aroused, the blind divinity

Set all his pow'rs rampaging, for the room

Illuminated till I could not see,

Black incandescence fusing mightily

The adamantine spires to molten rock.

And yet I was not harmed, held safe within.

A womb, a bladder made all round of gel,

As if for me more desp'rate things were planned

(Or else it was my own half-dreamed command,

Within the stupor of the drug I breathed).

Amid the raging conflagration blaze

Whose shadow-flames obscured all else but he,

Great Azathoth did shrink as he did swell

Until at last my phrenic vault was filled up tight,

Exploding with black light.

AND THEN I stood

Abandoned, silent, and by none pursued,

What had transpired, a mystery, I supposed.

I drifted free throughout the inky void

And knew not if I sank or soared or sped.

A bird of dream, I rode the current where

It chanced to bear or buffet me until

I spiraled down a rampant maelstrom

And dizzied at the speed at which I swirled

Into its eye as flotsam in a flood.

That vampire vortex drew my breath from me

Until I felt my very lungs should burst.

Thund'rous howlings, mad, hysterical,

Mixed soft with subtle pipings followed me.

Deafened now, and yet I saw him rising,

But what I saw was not that elder thing

That I beheld in awe as it sat writhing

Upon that nightmare throne within the crypt;

No more was he that limping travesty

Of man, but rather stood revealed, a mass

Of seething and gelatinous reproach

That roiled like cloudy oil within a pit

Of nethermost Infinity where once

He muttered into life a universe.

All 'round me pitched this sea of blasphemy,

Titanic, vast, a jest to sanity.

Shrill pipings signalled me that soon I'd know

That secret grim which drives the dreamer mad.

I sought to stop my ears, to clench my eyes,

And in no wise the revelation grasp.

Yet from within resistless came the words:

 "Thou art no dreamer but a phantom mist

 "Cast out by Him whose nightmares formed the world,

 "Of Azathoth thou art a dreaming fancy,

 "Thy wisest mortal words a fitful snore

 "By him whose waking banishes all things

 "To utter nullity, as never born."

And then it seemed he must be rousing soon,

Myself an unremembered bit of dream.

The candle of awareness thus blown out,

I started, unbelieving to behold

My own familiar form in bed reclining.

SHAKING loose the clinging bands of stupor

I sprang erect, on bloodless limbs to sway,

As, vision clearing, bloodshot eyes searched out

The poison-wafting brazier still alight.

Stumbling forward clumsily to grasp it,

I made to hurl it from the garret sill,

But paused in terror chill as there resounded

Softly from some adytum of madness

Shrill echoes as of flutes from some far gulph.

↕ 1 día ↕

Lo sé. Me entregaré en la comisaría más cercana...

↕ 1 hora ↕

Y a mí que me gustó la T2, más que la T3 y la T4. . . Hala, ya lo he dicho.

↕ 5 horas ↕

Voy a ver Venus y La historia de lo oculto, que las tengo hace tiempo en la recámara. Voy a recuperar una lista que hice hace tiempo con sugerencias vuestras hechas al vuelo, pero podemos elegir entre las sugerencias de Neddam.

↕ 6 minutos ↕

Esto es tanto como decir que en Ligotti, y en especial en La conspiración contra la especie humana, que se parafrasea passim en TD1, no hay horror cósmico. Y yo creo que sí está muy presente en Ligotti el horror cósmico, y esa obra, que es un ensayo, es a todas luces un verdadero manifiesto de horror cósmico. En mi opinión, por supuesto.

↕ 7 minutos ↕

Yo estoy de muy de acuerdo con esto.

Si ciframos lo lovecraftiano que es algo por el bicho que aparece o deja de aparecer es que no hemos entendido nada a estas alturas.

↕ 18 días ↕

Pues ya estaríamos 5 gatos. Audiencia récord.

↕ 1 minuto ↕