Ich richte mich da nach Trail of Cthulhu, wo es zu jedem Großen Alten Ideen und Facetten gibt, die teils verschiedene Aspekte fokussieren, sich manchmal widersprechen oder ergänzen. Z.B. der Eintrag für Hastur:
• Hastur the Unspeakable dwells near the star Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus, possibly trapped in the gravity well of a dark neutron star. He is an octopoid Great old one similar in form to Cthulhu, with an unbearably horrific face. He has an active cult on Earth, especially among the Tcho-Tcho people and experimental artists.
• Hastur is the embodiment of entropy and decay. Just as intelligence is merely a local manifestation of higher order, Hastur is the mirror image of that, a kind of localized anti-intelligence that manifests as paranoia, despair, futility, unreason, and ennui. Whether Hastur has any “real” existence is impossible to say definitively.
• Hastur is not the god’s true name, but that of one of his cult centers. He is better called the Magnum Innomiandum (“the Great unnamable”) or He Who Is not To Be named. according to occult legend, speaking the name of the god three times summons him, with gruesome consequences.
• Hastur, the King in Yellow, is connected with the Yellow Sign, the dream-city of Carcosa (variously located in the Hyades star cluster and in primordial Mongolia), and the mystical Lake of Hali, as well as the things that dwell therein.
• Hastur is the leader of the Great old ones associated with the Element of Air, and therefore with flight through outer space. His servitors, the byakhee, fly both astrally and physically between Aldebaran and Earth, and to other locations where Hastur has made his presence known.
• Hastur is a sentient (or at least self-willed) meme, or rather a viral complex of memes centered on alienation, ennui, and despair. If, say, an artist depicts futile conversations on the edge of reality, she inculcates Hastur into the belief systems of her susceptible viewers. “Seeing the Yellow Sign” is a kind of perceptual stigmata that occurs as the brain begins to become convinced of Hastur’s centrality.
• Hastur, the Feaster From Afar, is a black, shriveled, manta-shaped flying entity with extensible taloned feelers. Its eyes and aura glow iridescently with no known color, and it liquefies and consumes its victim-worshippers’ brains, draining them through its feelers and merging their consciousness with itself.
• Hastur’s powers are greatest on high plateaus (such as Leng or Tsang) and mountaintops. His cult anciently included shepherds who feared his wrath but learned to placate him and slowly came to worship him.
• Hastur appears as a boneless, scaly, slug-like creature bloated with fluid. Those who promise themselves to Hastur become as such creatures over time as they gain in eldritch power and knowledge.
• Hastur is an Outer God, the incarnation of (or a sentient facet of) the weak nuclear force of radioactive decay, one of the four fundamental forces within our space-time. As such, Hastur is invisible and can only be sensed psychically as a kind of crumbling pressure.
• The Not-To-Be-Named is the consort-god of Shub-niggurath. These two deities, representing decay and fecundity, entropy and gigantism, melancholy and mania, are the historical substrate of all human religion, the Dying God and the Earth Mother. Their true worship still occurs in K’n-yan.
Das sind alles konkrete, harte Aussagen ohne Geschwurbel mit klaren Themen und Elementen, die man sofort für ein Abenteuer oder ein Handout hernehmen kann. Und gleichzeitig sind die ganzen Widersprüche verwirrend und lassen kein klares Bild zu. Was ist wahr, was ist eine menschliche Fehlinterpretation, was eine gezielte Täuschung? Oder ist alles gleichzeitig wahr und der menschliche Verstand einfach nur nicht in der Lage, die Sache in ihrer Gesamtheit zu begreifen. Die Spieler werden immer an den Punkt kommen, wo sie denken, sie hätten eine klare Vorstellung und dann ändert die nächste Entdeckung doch wieder alles.
Ich mag auch, dass sich das Ganze an den literarischen Vorlagen orientiert und sich nicht einfach Kram aus den Fingern saugt, das macht das Ganze konsistenter (oder zumindest so konsistent, wie der Mythos-Kanon halt ist). Und man kommt mit relativ wenigen Göttern klar, die durch ihre Vielgestaltigkeit alle möglichen Nischen füllen können.
Im Kürze wird das Kreaturenbuch dazu erscheinen, das die Herangehensweise für die ganzen Deep Ones, Yithians und Mi-Go fortführt und sie mit verschiedenen Themen, Varianten und realen Legenden verknüpft.
Für mich ist das die beste Art, das Fremde und Unbegreifbare darzustellen.
Thema: Bezüge der Mythos Bücher auf die Kreaturen (Gelesen 1088 mal)
