Writers Notes

The Manga Shoggoth

The Manga Shoggoth in the Lair Legion

Ebony of Nubilia

Blair Atholl

PJs

Sherri

The Reverend James Harlsden

The Office of High Priestess

The High Priestess basically has four tasks:

• Look after the residents of the Refuge.
• Hunt down and destroy manifestations of the Great Old Ones (and other Elder nasties)
• Do the things that - in all honesty - cannot be done by a blasphemous Elder Creature.
• When required, the odd bits of shopping.

In UT172, Ebony rather neatly summed up her job as follows:

"There are basically two kinds of priests," Ebony explained to Nitz the Bloody. "Well, three if you count the screaming cultist sacrificing-virgins kind, but it's really best to just put them out of their misery."

"Okay," Nitz agreed. "And the other two?"

"There's the priests who get direct communication with their deity…"

"Like say seeing a big rhino that talks to them?" the Priest of Zeku asked anxiously.

"Or carrying a bit of their employer round in an amulet," added Ebony, indicating the rather pretty necklace she was wearing. "And there are those who have to get by on faith alone, just like the other worshippers."

"The ones with made-up gods," Nitz suggested.

"Or gods too big to fit into a rhino or an amulet," Ebony suggested. "Anyway, a priest of either kind has two basic jobs."

"One of them isn't sermons, is it?" Nitz asked worriedly. "I don't think I'm good at sermons."

"The priest acts as their god's representative, a kind of middle-man or woman, saying and doing the things the god wants saying or doing. In my case with the Shoggoth, who's not exactly a god so much as a loathsome squamous elder entity, what he usually wants doing is buying DVDs and what he usually wants saying is 'Why aren't they making any more Tenchi?'"

"Zeku usually wants me to root out misuses of his power, Drak Zeku, and to care for the planet and stuff," Nitz admitted. "DVD purchasing would be so much cooler."

"But the second part," Ebony went on, "the second part is still more important. You see the priest really is like a middle man, a mouthpiece. But it works both ways. The priest has to convince people to do as his god wants, but he also has to convince his god to do what the people want."

"Like a lobbyist in Congress."

"Only with less of a hospitality budget. The priest represents the needs of the people. Stands up for them." Ebony sighed. "Sometimes our bosses don't really understand what it means to be human, so they need us to stop them getting carried away or missing the point." She looked at Nitz seriously. "Sometimes the bravest thing you'll be called on to do is to say no to your god."

"I was going to say aren't gods supposed to be infallible," Nitz admitted, "but then I thought of Zeku's track record."

"If there was a god who really understood being human, and who really was infallible… well, that would be a terrifying, awesome thing indeed," Ebony whispered. "That might be a very different discipleship." She shrugged and lightened up. "But us, we just try to stop the boss from eating the McDonalds stand not just the burger, you with me?"

A similar sentiment was more bluntly expressed in "Leaving and Cleaving":

"Worship, respect and obedience?"

The last things I need in a High Priestess.

The Fortress of Many Angles

The Fortress of Many Angles is the Antarctic lair of the Shoggoth. It can be found by tracing the ancient caverns down, through the abandoned cities of the Great Old Ones, past the carnivorous giant penguins, avoiding the "Delivery Ramen Bowl" trap, until you reach the unholy and chthonic horror of the Anime Viewing Chamber.

There are a number of caverns:

• The aforesaid Viewing Chamber: A vast cave filled with videos, monitors, DVDs but - strangely - no method of generating any power whatsoever.
• One is where Ebony sleeps, with another adjoining this containing a luxury (artificial) onsen (hot spring) - the ultimate in en-suite.
• The store room, where all the Manga is kept. Despite the damp, the Manga remains in perfect condition.
• The Room of Models, where the figures, diorama and other memorabilia are kept. The centrepiece of this is an animated diorama showing a fuku-clad Ebony (with the help of CSFB!) taking out a Great Old One in true Sailor Moon style. Ebony, who rather dislikes Sentai, has not found out about this yet.

The Refuge

The island or Lemuria, situated in the Indian Ocean, is a large crescent-shaped land mass largely covered in jungle. The crescent is actually very thick, the points of which are quite close together, forming a natural harbour or lagoon. There is a reef blocking the entrance to the lagoon.

It has a rich variety of flora and fauna including Lemurs and the occasional Clanger (This being due to the influence of C'thandra).

It also doesn't exist.

Lemuria - according to some sources - was posited as a "lost island" to explain the modern distribution of Lemurs. The theory of continental drift has now demonstrated that the island does not, and has never existed, anywhere except in the minds of men.

Which is why the Shoggoth annexed it for its own purposes. It has created a refuge on the island for humans that is comes across that "will not be missed" - usually people (mostly slaves) from ships that have sunk at various times. This gives a very dynamic population that is both temporally and racially mixed. Although it is not immediately obvious, most of the people in the refuge tend to speak Great Old One as a common language. They haven't noticed yet.

The reasoning behind this refuge is as follows:

The Shoggoth likes humans. The humans are stretching out into space, and will eventually encounter the Great Old Ones. All the younger races have a vast, unreasoning terror of the Elder Creatures.

So: create a community of humans, and expose them to an Elder Creature (itself). Over time, continued exposure will mean that they start to loose just a little of the terror. This will be passed on to their children and so on until the fear is bred out of the race entirely.

There are, of course, two flaws to the plan. Firstly, the Terror is actually due to seeing something that should not exist in this reality, which is not a genetic thing. Secondly, even if this worked, these characteristics would not be passed on to the humans outside the refuge, since humans are individual creatures (unlike the Shoggoth).

Despite this, something appears to be working since some humans can control the Terror enough to be able to fight the Elder Creatures.

It should be note that the Lagoon formed by the crescent is a great place to swim, not least because it is patrolled by C'thandra. Any dangerous creature that can't keep its teeth to itself doesn't last very long.

Chymeric Gates

The following is quoted directly from UT179:

Chymeric Gates shouldn't work under the laws of the Parodyverse, and only do in those areas where the usual physical conditions are overruled by the presence of a squamous elder being using different rules of reality from sanity-mangling other realms. The Manga Shoggoth uses this technique to shift his mass from one of his plasmic forms to another (being careful now not to mix his main biomass with the tainted one residing with the Lair Legion, from whom he is currently physically and psychically separated). He also uses it to shift himself and others through dimensions in defiance of conventional science - but this tends to drive mortals insane, and the more they understand what's happening the more insane they go. There are also risks involved in this kind of travel for the Shoggoth, since virtually anything else using those means of travel and encountered on the way is likely to be an enemy. Human cultists sometimes open these kinds of portals to summon loathsome elder creatures, usually at the cost of their sanity, other people's life-forces, and almost inevitably sooner or later their own lives.

I should add from my own viewpoint that most users of Chymeric Gates take risks, as many of the Elder Creatures do not get on with each other either.

Why the Shoggoth is a Legionnaire

The Shoggoth, or at least a part of it, is currently residing in the Lair Mansion. It is waiting for the Legion to work out a method of removing the Mundane Matter from its body, having been contaminated whilst trying to protect the Legion during the Resolution War.

This - indirectly - gives the main reason for the Shoggoth being a part of the Legion. It is attempting to pay the Legion back for its "room and board" (and eventual decontamination). Payback is very important to the Shoggoth, as it views taking without some form of payment as a form of enslavement. Since it was originally created by the Great Old Ones as a slave, it has some very strong feelings on the matter.

The paybacks may - to human eyes - be disproportionate. To the Shoggoth it is the principle that counts.

The Shoggoth does have at least three other motivations, however. The main one is probably curiosity. It has been observing mankind since mankind first made an appearance. It has a very deep and detailed knowledge of mankind, but its knowledge is limited by two things:

• It is the knowledge of an outsider. The Shoggoth is not human by any description, and in any case thinks in multi-dimensional terms. It looks upon fifth or sixth dimensional effects as nice artwork, and is usually operating on much higher dimensions.
• Because it operates in such terms, it can easily become confused with human mores and customs, which change regularly - even a few years can make a drastic difference in some societies, and in any case humans are so...brief.

  For a rough human parallel, think of the "average" westerner trying to understand Japanese society, and then trying to understand the societies of ancient Greece and the Middle East in the same terms.

  (Incidentally, this explanation neatly covers any differences in writing style between HH and myself).

The second motivation is part of its long-term plan to prepare the human race for its inevitable encounter with the Great Old Ones, who still inhabit the deeps of space. To this end it has created a refuge in Lemuria (which doesn't exist, and never has existed), where it tries to accustom humans to being in the presence of Elder Creatures. Mixing with the Legion will give it more data on how to achieve this end.

(For the confused: The Shoggoth is a real Lovecraftian horror, the mere sight of which sends humans insane - this is why it spends most of its time swathed in bandages when with the Legion).

The final motivation, and one that should not be underestimated, is that Sir Mumphrey Wilton may well have asked it to help. HH has hinted that the relationship between Mumphrey and the Shoggoth has been in place for some time (before it became known as the Manga Shoggoth).

The Fall of the (Fairly) Great Old Ones

The text and footnote are quoted from UT115:

Geysers of lava shot half a mile in the air through the Earth's shattered mantle, clouding the planet in thick choking dust that would take years to settle and cause half the species on its surface to become extinct. The proto-men that would one day evolve to rule the planet fled screaming as the dark gods writhed in torment at their servitors rebellion.

Most of the many-angled ones were down now, defeated by the slithering globs they had created as slaves, overwhelmed by gelid fury released from mind-slavery by the Thinking Machine that they had been given. The Fairly Great Old Ones were fading, their influence over the Parodyverse waning as the very stars changed. Here in a universe of stories, what people believed to be true shaped what was true. And the Thinking Machine had given ideas to the proto-humans, taught the Shoggoths defiance, and so the intruders who had never been meant to infest this tangled knot of dimensions were shimmering to nothingness, dying, sleeping until the stars were right again for their return.

The Shoggoth - one of many, or perhaps just one discrete unit of the single intelligence - oozed over to the dying messenger that had brought the Thinking Machine to set them free. "You are dying," it noted, looking down at the broken figure with the charred silver wings.

"Yes," agreed the Messenger. "I didn't know it was possible. But the message has been delivered."

"Indeed," the Shoggoth bubbled. "The Space Robots have given us thought, provoked the fleshy ones to believe differently. You brought us the Thinking Machine at the cost of your immortal life."

"Not just mine," the Messenger admitted. "My Order. One intervention is never enough. We knew that when I volunteered to come. All of us must now descend, one after another, until all our work is done."

"A great sacrifice," the Shoggoth admitted. "In honour of your loss we shall not sweep all other life from this world, but rather let it prosper as you have wished it. It will live or die on its own merits, no other. We shall withdraw from the world and… watch."

Overhead the First Celestian Host winked in to put their experiment aright, taming the last of the Fairly Great Old Ones and setting it guardian to a secret they buried for the ages, seeding the Austernal and Deviate races, planting the mutagenic gene that would blossom in humanity many generations to come.

The following is from the footnotes to UT115:

When the Parodyverse was new, it attracted a parasitical infestation of nonhuman elder beasties, gods to some, who came in all their Lovecraftian sliminess from elsewhere(TM) and basically took over. This story details how the previously documented overthrow of the Fairly Great Old Ones (FOOG) was achieved, with the Celestian Space Robots unleashing the Thinking Machine that released the race that would become humans from their mental slavery, and gave the Shoggoth servitor race free will to rebel against their masters. "When the stars are right" is a metaphor for saying "when the laws of physics get bent into other rules than they are now", because the FOOG can't really properly exist in the timespace continuum as we know and rather like it. Since the Parodyverse is basically whatever the majority of people believe it is, the Thinking Machine simply arranged for everybody to believe that the FOOG were gone and the multiverse operated under different physical laws. Then the Shoggoths smacked the FOOG down, as depicted here. New information presented in this story suggests that the Thinking Machine was unleashed for the Celestians by the first of the Celestial College of Messengers, an angelic race, and that having once become entangled with earthly affairs they were destined to keep on interacting until they were all fallen and destroyed.