Round 17 Start
You know him, you fear him, he drives ya crazy. He’s the thing which lurks beyond the outer darkness. The watcher who waits for the stars to align. He’s not your friend, nor mine, he’s the one and only:
Cthulhu. In sunken R’lyeh, he waits. When the stars align, he will rise and wipe away the pathetic life he finds on the surface. But the question you have to answer is, what song will be playing when that happens?
Messenger of fear in sight
Dark deception kills the lightHybrid children watch the sea
Pray for father, roaming freeFearless wretch
Insanity
He watches
Lurking beneath the sea
Great old one
Forbidden site
He searches
Hunter of the shadows is rising
Immortal
In madness you dwellCrawling chaos, underground
Cult has summoned, twisted soundOut from ruins once possessed
Fallen city, living deathFearless wretch
Insanity
He watches
Lurking beneath the sea
Timeless sleep
Has been upset
He awakens
Hunter of the shadows is rising
Immortal
In madness you dwell
In madness you dwellNot dead which eternal lie
Stranger eons death may dieDrain you of your sanity
Face the thing that should not beFearless wretch
Insanity
He watches
Lurking beneath the sea
Great old one
Forbidden site
He searches
Hunter of the shadows is rising
Immortal
In madness you dwell
I assume you won’t accept music that is explicitly Cthulhu inspired? Cause there’s a lot of that.
That’s never really been a rule. If so I’ll have to change my Metallica pick.
You can pick whatever you like! The voters will decide!
Btw, I’m going to leave this up over the weekend, I’m guessing some people won’t even see this until Monday.
Per the rules in the OP:
Not trying to be a rules lawyer, and I’m content watching from the sidelines either way. It’s just this is the first character that has so many songs about them.
Nah, no worries, just clarifying. But yeah, basically the rule is “if it’s too obvious and on the nose, the voters may punish you for it (or they may not) so go crazy.”
I still think the thread title is misleading. I keep coming expecting a “Two songs enter…” format.:)
I’ll take Metallica’s Call of Ktulu then! Their most underrated masterpiece.
As every schoolchild learns, deep in the sunken city of Ry’leh, dead Cthulhu lies dreaming. His dreams seep into the troubled consciousness of humanity, and sometimes nightmares walk through dusk to daylight. Sometimes travelers may find a night’s rest, but under the strange eyes – could they be the staring and scarcely blinking eyes of the avian? – of the bellhops and desk clerks, the travelers find that the exits have vanished, and indeed they are trapped in some eldritch hollow, pulled away from the familiar spacetime they once took for granted. They can never leave.
The whole album is about the destruction of Atlantis, but this specific song is about fulfilling ancient prophecies, mankind’s hubris, and how they brought about their own destruction rising from the deep.
I knew waiting until Monday was a good idea. I doubt we’ll have any more submissions. I’ll put the poll up in a few hours.
You’ll be wrong! I’ve been trying to decide, since there are so many great options.
Not the first time, won’t be the last…
Alright, let’s stop holding this up. For some other rounds, I struggled to come up with one entry that felt fitting. For this one, it was the opposite problem, as the Metallica tracks above are just the tip of the Cthulhu-mythos-inspired metal iceberg. I seriously considered tracks from Sulphur Aeon, Crafteon, The Great Old Ones, Portal, and Thergothon, but am going to go with Chthe’ilist. These guys have their own catalog of eldritch monstrosities rather than directly referencing Cthulhu, but Lovecraft obviously looms very large in their creative process, with each song’s lyrics being a prose passage of cosmic horror fiction. More importantly, the music itself evokes the same atmosphere, with its slithering bass, dissonance, off-kilter rhythms, and ominous vocals hovering just on the knife-edge of intelligibility.
You force your way into your neighbour’s manor, only to find an eyeless corpse next to a knife and a book in a puddle of blood. Out of curiosity, you pick up the book and read the last pages:
"Diary of Lord Edward S. Davenport, son of Eleanor T. Davenport. Renowned Cilucithionian Archaeologist”
“Journal entry number 457, Tuesday, May 6th, 3241: My last discovery:”
- According to an old Cilucitionian legend, it is said that there exists an antediluvian manuscript containing the scriptures revealing the secrets of Eil’udom. It is said that reciting the writings is forbidden. These scriptures were written in an arcane dialect by the eyeless ones - the “Typhlodians” - in which rituals of astral projection to enter Eil’udom were “exposed”. Rumours said that whoever tried to decipher the dialect would suffer the same fate of the Typhlodians - punished by the gods - left deformed and sightless. My quest to uncover the secrets of these scriptures then began. Town-folks would think I lost my mind, fearing the Typhlodian spirits would bestow a curse upon me. My helpless obsession led me to a subterranean temple, where the book was kept in secrecy. And after returning to the village with my prize, I could already smell the fumes of death surrounding me. While reciting the strange incantations, I went into a deep slumber – which took my spirit in the cursed dream world of Eil’udom, and inside a subterranean sepulchre. The sepulchre was filled with mangled bodies – pale, emaciated eyeless beings. The corpses started to convulse and move. I realized I was cursed by the Typhlodians. And with their empty eye sockets - fathomless abysses of terror, they stared at me and whispered my name. I deeply gazed into their empty stare. Endlessly screaming, I beheld my own death. Night after night, these nightmarish beings came back to haunt my dreams with their empty, eye-less stare. But the manifestations soon became more frequent, even during day-time. I pray that the gods will forgive me, and that someone will find this journal upon my death and burn the scriptures. For I, Edward, must now remove my own eyes. In death, I will find peace. I cannot bear seeing their horrific stares anymore
…By the gods, they are in the windows!
As you finish reading the last sentence, you turn the other pages of the book, and notice numerous spots of blood on the blank pages. You close the journal and slowly walk away from the corpse, but as you back away from the gruesome scene, you hear a cold, otherworldly voice whisper something behind your ears:
“Edward”
0 voters
Lots of submissions! I wonder if the number of metal entries will risk splitting the vote?
