The Annotated Ornamental Women

Ornamental Women, my Gothic Fantasy novel (available here, if you have great taste in fiction) is chock full of allusions and references by design. I fundamentally believe that good genre fiction displays the author's fixations and interests in full regalia, so it's no surprise that my book is brimming over with the things that fascinate me. Victoriana fans will be eating especially well with my novel. Below, I'm going to annotate my own text and unveil my inspirations.

Spoilers follow, of course, so you may want to consider reading Ornamental Woman before continuing. Then again, if spoilers don't bother you, what follows will give you a pretty good indication of whether my novel is the one for you. Either way, I'm not the boss of you.

Gideon Morris and Joanna Rusk: a central plot point in Ornamental Women is that the artist Gideon Morris buried a book of love poems with his wife, Joanna, when she died--and then later wants to have the poems exhumed from her grave. This has its basis in the history of the real-world Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Dante Gabriel Rossetti really did bury a book of poems with his wife and model Elizabeth Siddal, and then later "re-acquired" the poems for publication. Of course, one hopes that Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a better man than Gideon Morris is in the novel. 

The Quattrocentro Movement: The Quattrocentro Movement is, of course, based on the Pre-Raphaelites, but there's also a good deal of the British aestheticism/symbolism movement worked in there as well.

Gideon's wombat: Dante Gabriel Rossetti really did keep a menagerie of exotic pets, including a wombat.

Piskaro: it's Gothic fantasy Slavic Venice, of course. 

Tsar Arturus: the quasi-Arthurian legend that Celestine tells Wayland Morgaunt while she labors over his sword was inspired by a similar story told in Algis Burdys's Rogue Moon.

Valter Freavis-Moleridge: the literary critic that Abelard pulls from the shelf to explain the Quattrocentrists to Serafina is an allusion to Walter Pater's The Renaissance, which was more or less a blueprint for British Decadence at the fin de siecle. The passage he reads aloud is a winking allusion to Pater's thoughts on the Mona Lisa.

The Abbot & the Lusty Acolyte: the book the Widow is reading throughout the novel is an homage to the overheated Gothic romances that are dear to my heart, though the Widow's book is an unabashedly gay version of the paperback Gothic romance. Imagine Matthew Lewis's The Monk, but for Pride. 

The Yezhuli: When Serafina talks of her childhood to the Widow, she mentions that she grew up in a Yezhuli household. In Krevborna, the Yezhuli are fantasy Mormons. The plural marriage and patriarchy stuff probably gives that away.

The Hook: the strange, quasi-Lovecraftian tavern were Serafina meets some of Piskaro's down-and-out grave robbers was inspired by an out-of-production liquor called The Incredible Hook that a friend shared during a D&D meet up.

Black skaldism: the kind of music that Nightsong plays is a Gothic fantasy take on black metal. Notice the mosh pits, people throwing the horns, the leather jackets and spikes, the use of magic to create musical distortion and amplification, Nightsong's corpse paint, the use of phrases like "true kvlt," etc. The chapter title "A Blaze in the Piskaran Sky" is a nod to Darkthrone's album "A Blaze in the Northern Sky." Nightsong would love Darkthrone.

Nocturne: the underground tavern Nightsong is performing at is so named because, for a while, every goth night seemed to be named "Nocturne." Did your town have one or two of those too? 

Nightsong's call to action: the words Nightsong uses to call her fanatics to enter the fray and assault Abelard echo the lyrics of Electric Wizard's song "Witchcult Today."

Nightsong's church arson: the act of Nightsong burning down a stave church was inspired by real-world church arsons in Norway perpetrated by people from the local black metal scene.

Otto Eichwald: Eichwald's fencing fixation is Krevborna's equivalent to the German mensur tradition. Also, I paraphrased various "apocalyptic folk" lyrics and the crappy "philosophical" writings of various historical edgelords for some of the insane things Eichwald says when meeting with Serafina and the Widow.

Cassie Mabcrowe's hand and eye: Cassie's disturbing transhumanist approach to witchcraft was originally a homage to Michael Moorcock, who wrote some of the first fantasy fiction I ever truly loved. You may have noticed that Moorcock has a few protagonists that end up with magical replacements for their limbs and organs; Cassie is the feminine inversion of that.

The Noknitsa: nocnitsa are Slavic nightmare spirits, though mine also have a great deal in common with the traditional succubus. The hagstone Wayland uses and the circle of knives he lays around Bilka are drawn directly from the folklore.

Mariana: Wayland notes that the painting of St. Mariana in Ormlesti's church is a little too buxom and knowing; this is a reference to Matthew Lewis's The Monk, in which a painting of Mother Mary gives the titular monk some rather impure thoughts. Naming this saint "Mariana" was inspired by the Ghost song "Mary On a Cross."

Nightsong's descent into Hell: I re-read Dante's Inferno to capture some of the feel for the Ninth Circle.

The Redmayne League: the gentlemen's club with a shared grotesque fetish for women with red hair doesn't have a historical antecedent, but it was inspired by talking to women friends of mine who happen to have red hair about what freaks men can be about their hair color. I suppose, on some level, Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Red-Headed League" also played a part.

Vlaak brown: there is a fleeting mention that the bodies of the ancient vlaak have been sold and ground up to make brown paint; this is a real thing that European artists did with Egyptian mummies.

Wayland vs. Eresh: the "choreography" for this fight was inspired by the classic stop-motion animations of Ray Harryhausen. Also, though Eresh has some qualities in common with Kali, there's also a bit of Erichtho in her origins as well. That's more Dante creeping in.

Simon Drokar's silver nose: the silver nose Simon Drokar uses to hide his ravagement at the hands of a disease recalls the historical libertine and poet Lord Rochester's use of a silver nose to hide the damage caused by syphilis. 

Serafina first seeing Nightsong: Serafina expects a frail woman "half in love with easeful Death," an allusion to John Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale." Nightingales are definitely NOT the same thing as Nightsongs, as she quickly learns. 

The Wormwood Star: the absinthe cafe where Serafina and Nightsong have their date was inspired by Parisian "death cafes." Mel Gordon's book Cabarets of Death was essential to the description here.

"You probably, like, read poetry about mine collapses in your spare time.": This line is essentially a dig at myself; one of my earliest publications was a poem about a mine collapse, titled "Death Had Come to the Crying Town," when I was in middle school. It was published in a SUNY series called Poetry and the Children.

Nightsong's ghost story: the ghost story that Nightsong tells to break down Serafina's walls was inspired by the Pine Hill Haints song "Whisper in the Dark." I had the good fortune to see them live years ago; cracking good band.

The fruit plate: the overlong list of fruits on the dessert plate that Serafina and Nightsong share at the Wormwood Star was pulled from Christina Rossetti's poem "Goblin Market." Rossetti's poem is, at heart, about the love between women, so it felt like the appropriate reference to make in a chapter where two women are steadily falling in love with each other--even if one of them doesn't realize it at the time.

Nightsong's folk song: the song Nightsong sings for the patrons of the Wormwood Star is a version of "The Two Sisters" (or any of its twenty-one variations). In the real-world song, the musician does make an instrument out of the murdered sisters body, the sound of which exposes the living sister's crime.

The Pearl: the inn Nightsong is staying at is a reference to The Pearl, a Victorian pornographic publication that featured a good deal of lesbian sex. As is probably clear in Ornamental Women, Piskaro's Pearl caters exclusively to a lesbian clientele. 

Nightsong's real name: all three parts of her real name are an allusion to Lady Gaga's "Alejandro." Sometimes you just have to have some fun with it to keep yourself amused.

The Unholy House of Manfred Gretzenhof

To cap off our run of interconnected Halloween Month one-shots, I ran a game of Blades in the Dark for the group. Instead of using the game's default Doskvol setting, I used Krevborna. The premise was that the characters were all blackened skalds--devil-worshipping bards--who had been hired by the infamous Nightsong to infiltrate a Hallowmass party and steal an unpublished manuscript written by Morten Jaqard (who featured in all four of the Halloween Month games). 

Characters

Winterwake, the Cutter

Nithogg, the Lurk

Vigil, the Hound

Ashlen, the Slide

Bleakwold, the Spider

Ulfurbryn, the Whisper

Events

We began play with the characters arriving at a lonesome house on the moors just outside of Creedhall in their stolen catering uniforms and domino masks. But how did they get into this position? We flashed back to the events leading up to this moment. Ashlen kept watch over the house, learning that it had been shut until just recently when its master had returned. Ulfurbryn used his occult contacts to discover that the master of the house was a man named Manfred Gretzenhof, a powerful sorcerer who had been absent for years. Winterwake and Bleakwold paid a visit to a costume shop and learned that the guests were du Grandier (a traveling healer who would be dressed as a jester), Striborg (a Church agent who would be dressed as a monk), Osanna Blucher (a noblewoman who would be dressed as a nun), Dimitri Marozov (a drakoi glutton who would be dressed as a knight), and Genivette Harlow (a highwayman who would be dressed as a pirate, specifically as Vanessa Laurant). Nithogg arranged for a smuggler to be waiting with a carriage, hidden in the trees, so they could make a quick getaway.

It was Vigil's trip to the catering company that allowed them to stage an ambush and take the caterers' place for the evening in question. Once in position in their roles as the catering staff, the group noticed that something was "off" with the chef--he didn't seem to know his business nearly as well as he should have. Even more disconcerting was the fact that none of the costumed party guests knew why they were there--there was talk among them of mysterious invites and hints of blackmail should they fail to attend.

Vigil was able to sneak upstairs to scout the possible location of the manuscript; however, the first room she entered was set up for some sort of foul surgical exhibition. An unconscious woman was strapped to a chair on a raised dais, with five chairs arranged for an audience to watch. Vigil heard the squeak of wheels approaching; ducking her head out of the door, she saw a man in a skull mask pushing a trolley laden with surgical implements toward the room! Confronting the man didn't work very well--he was quite unimpressed by her threats of violence, and a wave of his hand sent her flying. 

Vigil was only able to escape the situation when Ulfurbryn intervened by throwing a vial of ectoplasm at the man's feet and using his magic to conjure the specters of everyone he had ever wronged. Even this was only a temporary solution; the man tore off his mask and began to eat the many ghosts arrayed against him!

Meanwhile, Ashlen tumbled through a secret door while the dinner guests were occupied and fell down into the basement--which was strewn with human bones and corpses hanging from meat hooks. The guests were alarmed by the sound, and by Ashlen's discovery, but as they tried to leave they discovered that everyone was magically trapped inside the house. Winterwake was able to confirm this when she attempted to use dynamite to blow the front door open, to no effect.

Bleakwold followed the chef upstairs and saw him enter the library and begin to unsuccessfully rifle through the books. A hidden room was located on the same floor--in which the manuscript was uncovered and duly stolen.

Nithogg made his way to the fourth floor, where he had an unfortunate encounter with a woman who slopped out of the muck in a filthy tub. He ran for it, locking himself in a bedroom. Meanwhile a few of the others were able to join him on this floor and dispatch the woman so he could leave safely.

Ultimately, the group uncovered a few things that enabled their escape from the house: besides Manfred (the man who had the skull mask), there was another powerful source of magic operating within the house--the woman Manfred had planned to perform occult surgery on to be "inhabited by the Dark Mother." (After which, he planned on using the woman to kill off his dinner guests, who had all offended him in one way or another.)

Secondly, the woman was trying to communicate with them via the witch boards they discovered within the house. By speaking to her via the witch board, they were able to figure out that she could be awakened by spelling out her name--Veronica--using the planchette. Unfortunately, channeling her reduced two of the skalds to twitching vegetables. Once awakened, she was able to fight Manfred and destroy the magical lock keeping everyone within the house. As they passed the room in which she confronted Manfred, they saw Veronica push her thumbs into his eyes as he screamed on his knees.

The blackened skalds dragged their incapacitated comrades to their waiting carriage, sped off into the night, and delivered the manuscript to Nightsong, who planned to give it to her wife as a gift. When asked if she knew anyone who might restore their friends, Nightsong offered to take them to the lab of Viktoria Skarnstein.

I'm sure the "improvements" Viktoria makes to them won't hurt...too much.

Beyond the Black Goat's Woods

The Halloween one-shots continued with a very different PLANET MOTHERFUCKER game that was re-flavored to feel more like a grimdark fantasy than the usual psychotronic trash culture apocalypse. The connections to previous one-shots in this series continued as well; this time we were playing through the final chapters of Gary Brown's (teenage survivor of a plane crash in the first session, genre author using his fiction to spread the madness of Shub-Niggurath in the second) final novel.

As you might notice from the list of characters below, none of the characters had actual names. As is the old-school rpg trope, the characters were referred to only as their "class." I guess Gary was a bit of a grognard, eh?

Also old-school was the nature of the adventure. I used a hacked-up version of "The Death Ziggurat," which is mostly a randomly generated hexcrawl with a few detailed locations.

Characters

Mortuary Knight

Funereal Priest of Kalag-Mohr

Ossuary Cryptarch

Order of the Scarab Assassin

Ranger of the Thornwoad

Dustspeaker of the Empty Hell

Events

Beyond the Black Goat's woods, the party found a deep depression filled with ruins--it looked as though a giant fist had pummeled the earth. They located the camp of a fearful group of cultists clad in furs, outlandish headdresses, and dangling bits of bone. The cult's leader brought them to the cavemouth that could lead into the depression. This was a literal "cavemouth": its rocky fanged jaws were clamped shut, but they opened when the Ranger of the Thornwoad bled upon it.

They explored as they moved north from the cavemouth. Strange phenomena occurred as they traveled. At one point, the daylit sky turned to black night and a hole that was darker than darkness could be seen expanding in the sky. (This was a callback to "Black Hole Sun" playing in the Velvet when the agents went to stop the handoff of Gary's art.) At another point, snow began to fall from the black hole in the night sky.

The group encountered a pack of priests in black robes with wide-brimmed black hats and veils. The priests attempted to warn them off of venturing further through the ruins, then warned them of Arkuhn, the Child of the Cosmos, Daughter of the Black Goat. The group ran for it as Arkhun approached--they didn't even stop to get a look at her.

After fleeing from Arkuhn, the party discovered a spiraling chapel. From the top of the chapel's spire, they saw a frozen lake and smoke rising from an encampment of some kind, but they did not see the ziggurat they sought. 

They decided to head for the encampment to see if they could gleam any information as to the ziggurat's whereabouts, but they never made it there. On the way, they encountered another pack of Arkuhn's rot-priests and two dark young of Shub-Niggurath. The priests really latched onto the Ossuary Cryptarch, chomping away at his flesh while the others fought off them off. Somehow, he survived.

They searched the priests' bodies after the melee and discovered that they all wore medallions that held hidden keys. Now that they had these, they decided against visiting the encampment. Instead, they headed for the frozen lake. The lake was surrounded by moaning undead whose feet were stuck in the frigid mire. They ultimately decided that they didn't want to mess with that.

Heading north again brought them to the spiral chapel again. However, those who now had medallions could see a swirling tornado of fog partially obscuring a black ziggurat that they hadn't been able to see before. Investigating the mural of a priest surveying the cosmos also netted them a crown that was bladed on the inside. The Ossuary Cryptarch removed the blades from the crown, but it didn't do anything when he put it on. 

Those who had medallions had to lead those who did not, but they eventually pushed their way through the fog tornado and up the steps of the black stone ziggurat. At the top of the ziggurat, they used three of the keys to unlock a "scab" that led straight down into a pulsating "throat" of flesh. They shimmied down the wet flesh tunnel and found themselves in a meaty cavern where a large heart was beating.

They also found Arkuhn, a floating child with too many eyes, goat horns, and a toothy maw running vertically down her body.

While the rest of the group engaged Arkuhn in combat, the Order of the Scarab Assassin stabbed the heart, killing it. (This was a wise thing to do; if the heart wasn't destroyed, Arkuhn would have kept resurrecting.) The Mortuary Knight hit Arkuhn hard enough to send her spinning out of control. The Funereal Priest's devotion gave everyone the zeal to hit harder, and the Ranger of the Thornwoad peppered Arkuhn with arrows--until her bow was damaged. The Dustspeaker of the Empty Hell tried to demoralize her to get her to flee, but Arkuhn held strong in the face of adversity. The Ossuary Cryptarch stabbed Arkhun with a blade from the crown, but this healed her--undoing a lot of their hard work to slay her. She relentlessly blasted them with bolts of cosmic evil from her eyes. Ultimately, the Order of the Scarab Assassin leapt through the air and stabbed the eldritch child to death.

The grim party who had fought their way beyond the Black Goat's woods had triumphed. Their world was safe from Shub-Niggurath's influence. 

But what of the echoes that would reverberate across other worlds? Well, we'll tackle that in the last of these Halloween one-shots.

Dark Horse Ravenloft Comic #1

The first issue of Dark Horse's new Ravenloft comic is out. Is it any good?

Well.

It's fine, but it has some problems.

The premise is semi-interesting: Rudolph Van Richten is off on some sort of expedition--and is needlessly tight-lipped about what he's up to or why--and his goodbye note to Ezmerelda D'Avenir, the Weathermay-Foxgrove twins, and Alanik & Arthur sounds so much like a suicide note that they all set off to find him. 

This first issue focuses on Ezmerelda's search. (I know we're supposed to call her "Ez," but I don't understand the reason for the change.) Ezmerelda encounters some gremishka, which really illustrates how hard it is to have an introductory comic with one character with no sidekick to bounce off of; she ends up just giving a lore dump, out loud to an audience of no one in the fictive world, as she fights the monsters, which feels incredibly clumsy. She has no real reason to be explaining why she has a prosthetic leg when no one is around who could benefit from that information.

After she falls down a glacier, she meets up with a nameless stranger and then they're both promptly taken captive by Viktra Mordenheim's minions and brought to the mad doctor's schloss. Viktra is suitably creepy, discounting anyone and everything except her own devotion to science. Ezmerelda eventually turns the tables on Viktra so that she and the mysterious stranger (a reborn) can escape. They run into a monster again, which causes Ezmerelda to immediately name what it is out loud (sigh). The issue ends with Ezmerelda smashing up Viktra's experiments and doing some arson on the way out.

Overall, it's an okay issue, but I'm not sure okay is good enough for a first issue of a series. Grab our attention, go big with it, damn it! 

The Weathermay-Foxgrove girls look to be the protagonists of the second issue. We'll see if it picks up.

The Fifth Submission

Our series of Halloween one-shots over at the Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque Discord server continued with a session of my own AG3NTS OF CRVCIBLE game--an rpg about playing mystified secret agents who infiltrate dreams. 

Although these Halloween Month games are one-shots, the players realized that there were connections in this one to the prior week's Call of Cthulhu game.

Characters

Agent Hammer, a slab of a woman with a broken nose

Agent Darling, a dapper older gentleman with slicked-back gray hair

Agent Arrow, a small woman with a narrow face and bright blue eyes

Agent Tower, a man built like he was born to play Superman

Events

The agents came into consciousness inside a four-door sedan driving down a road; the asphalt was cracked and smoke was issuing from the rents in the pavement. In their earpieces, they heard a burst of static from Control, and the only words they could make out amid the din were "seed" and the name "Morten Jaqard." They saw a sign hanging above an oncoming driveway that read "New Centralia University," so they decided that Control must have meant for them to do something at the college and pulled in. 

After speaking with a man at the information booth and mentioning Morten Jaqard's name, they were given directions to the English department. In the department's main office, they found Colleen Snover, the department secretary, making copies at a Xerox machine as the fluorescent lights flickered overhead. 

When they told her they were looking for Morten Jaqard, she asked them if they were fans of his--it turned out that Prof. Jaqard was an instructor of literature and creative writing, as well as a popular writer of horror and fantasy novels. Unfortunately, Prof. Jaqard didn't have an office at the main campus; his office was located "at the Madhouse"--a former asylum on the hill that had been purchased by the university and repurposed as classroom and office space. 

Before departing for the Madhouse, the agents decided to go to the university library to see what Jaqard's books were all about. They found four titles listed in the old-fashioned card catalog: The Bloodstained Mother, The Hand of Niggurath, The Tower of the Thousand Young, and A Dream of the Witch-Road. Unfortunately, the books were all checked out, leaving a gap in the stacks where they should have been. A helpful passing co-ed recommended a book store on Main Street called The Black Goat; the store, she said, had plenty of signed copies of Morten Jaqard's works. 

Since they still wanted to take a look at the books before delving deeper into this mystery, they drove over to The Black Goat, a small shop specializing in genre fiction. However, they noted that some of the omnipresent cracks in the road were now spitting tongues of fire. The bookstore was clean and well organized, but the decor was strange--creepy paintings, a Fiji mermaid, and a jar with a malformed fetus floating inside that seemed to move when it wasn't being directly looked at. 

From examining the four titles that Jaqard had published, they learned that he wrote pulpy stories that merged horror and fantasy; his novels were stand-alone books, but they had a throughline hinting at some sort of greater eldritch influence at work. The author's photo at the back showed Morten Jaqard looking surprisingly like a big, strapping mountain man with a beard and a checkered flannel shirt. The books also shared the same lurid cover artist, a woman named Petra Sanderson.

Additionally, the agents learned a bit about the history of the Madhouse, which was initially an asylum for inebriates, but grew to house people suffering from all manner of psychological illnesses. The most infamous inmate was a man named Johnny Quint, a serial murderer who escaped the asylum before it was decommissioned--he was still at large. (Note: Johnny Quint was the character who survived last week's Call of Cthulhu scenario, albeit becoming permanently insane.) 

Outside of the Black Goat, they encountered four other agents who tried to warn them off of investigating matters further. Which, of course, did not put them off. Instead, they drove to the Madhouse to look for Prof. Jaqard's office. Since no one answered their knocks and the light was switched off inside, they picked the lock and entered. They learned a few things from searching through Jaqard's things: he had a new novel coming out called Beyond the Black Goat's Woods; Jaqard was teaching a course in "The American Unheimlich"; Jaqard had been reading many articles on a small chapel, called the Chapel of Our Lady of the Forsaken, that had been moved brick-by-brick from western Canada to the outskirts of New Centralia. Their search was interrupted by the presence of a thirty-something man in a suit jacket with leather arm patches.

The man proved to be Bill Bartlett, a grad student at New Centralia University and Jaqard's current teaching assistant. According to Bill, Prof. Jaqard had "fucked off on an unofficial sabbatical," which was something he apparently did fairly regularly. From Bill, they were able to get Jaqard's home address.

When they pulled up outside of Morten Jaqard's home, which was in a seedy section of town, they spotted someone with a flashlight poking around inside. The agents split up to cover the front and back doors, then made their way inside. The man they surprised was a knife-wielding Johnny Quint, who was obviously both insane and high on an illicit substance. They managed to talk Johnny down from attacking them; Johnny claimed to have a vendetta against Jaqard because in their teenage years he had left Johnny in a bad situation, forcing him to confront unspeakable horrors, while Jaqard saved his own skin. He also revealed that "Morten Jaqard" was not the man's real name--he was actually Gary Brown. (Note: Gary was the redneck who fled into the metal monolith in last week's Call of Cthulhu scenario!)

Johnny showed them Gary's office, where Gary had printed out more articles about the Chapel of Our Lady of the Forsaken. He also pointed out a matchbook for a bar called the Velvet where cover artist Petra Sanderson was supposed to hand over the art for Gary's next novel. From here, the group ventured into the basement, where they found an old television and a VCR. Pressing play, they saw a few disturbing scenes from a movie called Night of the Niggurath II: Shub's Revenge. As they examined the mattress across from the television, a fresh wet stain began to spread across it and their earpieces exploded with another blast of static. 

Then they heard footsteps overhead. 

Creeping up the stairs, they burst in and got into a firefight with the four agents who had accosted them outside of the Black Goat. Unfortunately, Johnny Quint was killed in the gunfight, but the group only sustained minor injuries before executing their rivals.

They then drove over to the Velvet, a college dive bar decorated with a black Santa. At a booth in the back, they found Petra Sanderson drawing in a sketchbook. They attempted to grab her to stop her leaving, but she slipped by them all and exited the bar in a hurry. They were able to tail her as she drove deep into the wooded outskirts of New Centralia--to where the Chapel of Our Lady of the Forsaken was waiting. 

Inside, they saw her running down the central aisle to where Gary stood upon a smoking altar. She pulled out a tube--holding the cover art for Beyond the Black Goat's Woods, presumably, but the agents immediately shot her, then put some bullets into Gary as well. However, Gary didn't die so easily--indeed, only Agent Arrow's bullets seemed to have any effect on him at all. He rushed Agent Darling and snapped his neck. Agent Tower grabbed the tube and emptied his clip into it--but the holes he shot into it overran with alien flesh and thin, skittering legs. The "tube" tried to run away on its own, but Agent Tower managed to wrap it in his jacket. Agent Hammer was able to pick up Gary and break his back over her knee, but Gary reached up and pushed his thumbs into the agent's eyes.

Agent Tower rushed to the door of the chapel--and found that the cracks in the world outside had widened to the point where the chapel hung over an abyss of fire. He dropped the tube into the inferno.

Agents Arrow and Tower awoke. They each lay on a reclining chair--like the sort found in a dentist's office--and were connected to various bits of eldritch machinery. They saw two other bodies reclining on other chairs, dead. Rest in peace, Agents Hammer and Darling. The CRVCIBLE agency's technicians, in their red masks and red surgical gowns, thanked them for their service in making sure that the "seed" did not reach "Morten Jaqard." 

Total Skull: September, 2026

Things that brought me delight in September:

S. M. Hallow, The Halls of the Dead

S. M. Hallow's The Halls of the Dead was an absolute delight. In a medium-sized novel we've got heretic Victorian-esque necromancers trying to rebuild a repository of occult knowledge, dealing with bites being taken out of their souls, abusive ghosts, and coming back from the dead with a newfound ravenous hunger for flesh. And that's just the broad outline--there's a lot going on here. The Halls of the Dead immediately went on my list of "best books I've read this year." S. M Hallow did a tremendous job crafting a complex little book where all the pieces fit together just so, yet not in a way that was immediately obvious.

Delirium

In 1972's Delirium (not to be confused with the hundred other movies named Delirium), a scientist is driven into a murderous frenzy by shapely legs and mini dresses, as I assume we all are. Overall, Delirium is pretty standard Italo-Gothic thriller fare, but what saves this movie is the fact that early on we're aware that, besides the psychosexual killer scientist, there is another killer at work too. Wondering at their identity and purpose is the real meat of the film. There's one death toward the end that is so abrupt that I had to rewind and watch the scene again to see if I missed something. (I hadn't; it's just abrupt!) But besides the usual quibbles and execution issues, this was a diverting watch. Always fun to see Mickey Hargitay being a complete freak.

Devil Master, Bloody Dreams

Devil Master is back with another blast of their signature mixture of extreme metal and sinister deathrock. They've varied the vocal formula a bit on this outing, which adds some nice texture, but the thing that's really compelling about Devil Master is how they always sound like they're about to go completely off the rails--off-kilter and chaotic--but they somehow manage to keep it together. At under half an hour of runtime, Bloody Dreams doesn't overstay its welcome, but you also won't mind letting it spin again and again either.

Kierstan White, The Fox and the Devil

In The Fox and the Devil, Van Helsing's daughter is obsessed with catching and killing the alluring vampiress who killed her father. Of course, she believes her father's notes to be the ramblings of a madman--until she comes face to face with the supernatural. And, predictably, she's got almost everything wrong. The Fox and the Devil is a fun novel of occult investigation, involving the 1900 Paris Exposition, elaborately staged crime scenes, and more tragic backstories than usual. There's one character whose role I wish I had been expanded upon, but this was a fun Gothic romp.

Lydia Lunch, 13.13

I remember a period in my life where I made a point of hunting down a physical copy of Lydia Lunch's 13.13, a quest that was well worth it as every time I break out this record I'm blown away all over again. Critics remain divided over 13.13, but in my opinion this is one of the great little-known goth albums. The tracks trend toward lengthy, challenging dirges; imagine a much more mean-spirited, grittier Siouxsie and the Banshees.

Green Lung, Necropolitan

I had some trepidation going into Green Lung's Necropolitan because the first song I watched a video for from this album really didn't do it for me. Strangely, without the visuals and within the context of the record as a whole, every song on Necropolitan works. Everything you want from Green Lung is here in spades: eerie atmospheres, retro-flavored doom metal riffs, and some fun historical and occult references for those who actually pay attention to the lyrics.

Asha Greyling, The Harrowing of Archibald Lee

Asha Greyling's second outing with her lawyer-of-Indian-extraction in a vampire-infused nineteenth-century America is a delight. Radhika Dinghra, said lawyer, has reason to believe that her Poe-esque client was not a suicide as is widely suspected, leading her back into the murky world of the undead. There's an easiness to the prose in The Harrowing of Archibald Lee that makes this a breezy, quick read, and the author has a talent for characterization--each of the characters has a very distinct voice. The mystery is solid--though perhaps the resolution could have been hinted at a little more among the many red herrings and false starts--so this is an altogether worthy read from an up-and-coming independent author. Seriously, there are lauded authors in the genre who are absolutely not on this level.

Blood for Dracula

It's interesting that those "Gothic Marxism" books (which are near-universally terrible) don't really address Blood for Dracula, a film with explicitly socialist themes. Of course, the socialist character in Blood for Dracula undermines the general Gothic Marxist project: to bend the horror genre into something that flatters the writer's politics and to justify, if only to themselves, that they're okay for liking the things they like. For those of us who can just enjoy things without an ideological rationale, Blood for Dracula is a fun bit of Gothic foolery; Dracula's on the prowl for virgin blood, but the current crop of aristocratic young women are already "fallen" in more ways than one.

Chelsea Wolfe, The Dark

I've never been let down by a Chelsea Wolfe album, but I am occasionally blown away by one when it dropped. Such was the case with The Dark. I've seen people tout The Dark as one of her more "accessible" albums, perhaps a record aimed at a mainstream breakthrough, but I'm not sure I agree with that. Just because the music isn't sonically challenging doesn't mean that the sentiments expressed on the record are anything less than bleak and blistering. And there are moments of feral fire here, too. The Dark is one of the best albums of the year.

Leslie J. Anderson, The Unmothers

In The Unmothers, a recently widowed journalist is sent to a rural town to cover the story of a horse that supposedly gave birth to a human baby. If that weren't enough to hang a novel on, there is also some sort of folk horror prowling the town and a secret history of rituals related to it. Leslie J. Anderson did a fantastic job capturing the feeling of dying-maybe-already-dead rural places riddled with drug use and despair, and the horse stuff really rang true for me as well. (She clearly has firsthand experience.) I also really liked that the folk horror elements weren't cribbed from Midsommar, The Witch, or The Wicker Man--this is a novel the breathes fresh life into folk horror, a true original. 

L. Wyatt, The Terrible Tale of Edgar Switchblade, The Dreadful Death of Edgar Switchblade, and The Revolting Revelation of Edgar Switchblade

These three novels were penned by Lonesome Wyatt, one-half of the Gothic country group Those Poor Bastards and solo singer extraordinaire. Edgar Switchblade, the titular protagonist, is a pious psychopath who gallops around the Wicked West encountering demons, werewolves, wendigos, zombies, witches, and...worse yet...Puritans. These short novels definitely have a "bizarro" flavor, which means they are A) gross and B) things just happen without too much fussing over any traditional notion of plot.

Crypt of the Vampire

Crypt of the Vampire is a movie that says, "Yeah, yeah, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla is great, but maybe it doesn't go far enough. What if we added...a plotline about an antiquarian called into discover the connection between nightmares and deaths in the waking world...and a nurse who practices black magic...and a mistress who wants to sleep her way into the aristocracy?" Never has a movie Yes, and'd harder than this or with such remarkably atmospheric results.

Isabela Livino, An Immaculate Deception

Isabela Livino's An Immaculate Deception is a WILD book. Starts off as a sort of standard Gothic (a woman tells her upper-class beau that she's pregnant with his child, they immediately have a carriage wreck, she wakes up at his house and he's acting real weird), veers into black magic occult conspiracy territory, takes a detour into some disturbing Norman Bates stuff, then the twist shows up and turns the whole thing into a late-season soap opera grasping at straws, but I mean that in a positive way. I can definitely see the twist not working for everyone, but I was definitely along for the ride on this one.

Sunscorched, Blood of the Badlands

Call me a filthy casual, but I think black metal is at its best when its working an unexpected flavor into the mix. With Sunscorched, that additional element is a Wild West influence. Occasional acoustic passages and atmospheric movements enliven the crushing tremolo riffage with just enough tonal difference to make Blood of the Badlands stand out. This one is going to inspire some brutal moments in my Vespermark campaign, I can just feel it.

Be Not Afraid, The Last Day of H. P. Lovecraft, Our Little Wild Time

I also read some great comics at the end of September. Be Not Afraid is a Southern Gothic nightmare that tells the tragic tale of a corrupt(ing) man born of the nephilim. This comic reminded me quite a bit--in terms of art style and theme--of the old Hellraiser comics published on the Epic imprint.

The Last Day of H. P. Lovecraft is just that--a fantastical version of Lovecraft's last day in the hospital before he succumbed to stomach cancer. When strange visitors arrive at his beside, he is forced to confront his life, his prejudices, and the possibilities of his legacy. In five issues, The Last Day of H. P. Lovecraft makes a more compelling story out of Lovecraft's complexities than the sprawling (and somewhat self-indulgent) Providence, which is rich since Alan Moore appears as a character in this book!

Our Little Wild Time is a collection of comics by Fred Noland from the indie zine scene. The comics within vary in story and characters--one is like Eurotrash Gone Wild, another is a Southern Gothic tale of life on the skids--but there is a unifying grimy manic-ness that provides the throughline. If you love idiosyncratic comics work--and you should, that's where the heat is--this is something you should definitely check this out.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here

The October series of Halloween horror one-shots has begun! We're kicking things off with one of my favorite games, Call of Cthulhu.

The characters in this Call of Cthulhu scenario were all high school students who were being flown out to stage their production of The Tempest as part of the Alberta Shakespeare Festival. On the way, their plane went down over the Canadian Rockies. The players' characters survived the crash, but perhaps it would have been better if they hadn't...

Characters

Kyle Paquette, the Nerd

Brendan Donner, the Jock

Johnny Quint, the Delinquent

Gary Brown, the Redneck

Annabeth McMasters, the Artist

Jane Beerbaum, the Weirdo

Events

The survivors' first order of business was to scavenge the wreckage of their flight looking for food, clothing, and any items that would help them last in woods until their rescue. (Most noteworthy: each of them found a stout stick to arm themselves with "just in case.") Unfortunately, this also meant having to encounter the mangled corpses of their fellow students, teachers, and the flight crew--such as a pilot they found impaled on the steering apparatus in the cockpit. They also tried to get the lay of the land: heavy boot prints were found heading north from their location, Kyle and Annabeth foraged for berries in the south and found a "rock obelisk," and Jane climbed a tree and spotted a clearing in the distance dotted with strange "mounds."

They spent the night in a section of the plane, but were awoken by the sound of glass breaking in the cockpit. When they investigated, they discovered that someone had broken the glass at the front of the plane (!!!) and dragged the pilot's body away into the trees. They hoped this was the work of an animal, like a bear, but the bloody fingerprint they found was very clearly human.

In the morning, they decided to try to find water, so they headed west. They spotted an area where the trees thinned; beyond that, they could see metal structures that proved to be an abandoned training ground for the 1988 Winter Olympics. They traversed the rusty buildings and found a fast-running stream--unfortunately, the stream was choked with dead fish and the water was blood red. 

As if that wasn't bad enough, they also encountered an old man wearing overalls (and no shirt underneath) who called himself Prospero. Prospero also wore a star-shaped stone amulet on a leather cord and had found a copy of their play in the wreckage of the plane. He was not exactly helpful and did not exactly seem sane. He was prone to quoting lines from The Tempest to them--lines that hinted that he had had something to do with their plane falling from the sky. In fact, his bizarre banter caused them to suddenly break away and run for the road leading south.

After a distance, the broken asphalt of the road grew overgrown with woods again and the group found themselves lost among the thick threes. They encountered the "rock obelisk" again, but now it was audibly humming. A rock was thrown at it--and when struck it made a metallic ping sound. It wasn't a rock obelisk at all; rather, it was made of metal disguised to look like rock. They then got badly off course and emerged at the rocky outcroppings at the foot of a mountain. However, they did find the entrance to a cave. After fashioning some torches, they entered the darkness. 

Within the cave system, they could hear running water, so they followed the sound. Their route took them into a cavern where what seemed to be a massive dead tree loomed against a cave wall. Although the group really did not want to approach this "tree," they eventually did examine it--and they discovered that instead of roots the tree was perched upon three massive hooves. Bypassing the "tree" (it wasn't a tree), they found a ratty, filthy sleeping bag (and another star-shaped stone amulet), as well as a freshwater spring and were able to fill a number of plastic bottles.

They explored another tunnel and found some wooden cages (complete with fingernail scrape marks from whoever was inside trying to escape) and a list of places where the human residents had disappeared or had to leave (Great Zimbabwe, Tikal, Roanoke, Pripyat, Cahokia). Unfortunately, they again encountered Old Man Prospero, but this time he had a revolver. Panicked at the thought that he meant them harm, Gary shot at the old man with the flare gun he had found in the airplane's cockpit--but he missed. The man returned fire and killed Kyle outright. His mind pushed to the limit, Johnny became catatonic. The rest of the group descended on Prospero with their heavy sticks and bashed his brains in. 

It was with heavy hearts that they continued to explore the cave system. They found what they assumed to be a section used as a "graveyard" for infants and a rifle. After leaving the caves, they found another clearing with ornately carved stakes pounded into the ground (that they did NOT examine), as well as a number of rotten sleeping bags and used condoms. 

They next ventured to the clearing that Jane had spotted the day before. The "mounds" proved to be huts surrounding a well. As they investigated the well, five tongueless and eyeless humans, clad in an amalgamation of torn clothing and furs, emerged from the huts and began to crawl toward them. Already spooked, the group opened fire on the people, killing most of them easily. Brendan's sanity momentarily snapped and he beat one of them to death with his bare hands--and he kept punching even after it was dead. One of them managed to latch onto Johnny's arm, dealing him a grievous wound. 

They then searched the huts and found a Lisa Frank journal with an entry that ranted about "the Dark Mother" and her "Thousand Young." They also found a key card with a magnetic strip. It was otherwise not labeled. However, they figured it must have something to do with the not-stone obelisk, so they returned to that clearing. 

Annabeth was able to discover the hidden slot in the obelisk that the key card could be fitted to. It caused an opening into the obelisk to appear in an unnatural way. The group then heard something massive coming through the trees into the clearing. Gary pushed everyone out of the way and entered the obelisk; it shut closed behind him and could not be opened again. The rest of the group stood there in horror as a monster--with a thick, fleshy trunk, three legs that ended in massive hooves, and a number of thick, muscular tentacles--charged into the clearing. The monster grabbed Brendan with its tentacles and tore him in half. Johnny fell to the ground, weeping and rocking manically. He was, nevertheless, spared from destruction because he was wearing a stone star amulet. Jane and Annabeth were not so lucky; they were trampled underfoot by the Dark Young. 

Did the now-insane Johnny survive? What happened to Gary within the mysterious obelisk? Perhaps there will be hints as to their fates as this season of Halloween horror rpgs continues throughout October.