1. The Sixth Adulation Of His Chthonic Majesty

[From a fragmentary transcription of the sixth Latin edition of the Chthonic Chronicles, believed
lost during the great fire of London in 1666:]

"O', great and luminous ones, who came from beyond the stars to slumber serene beneath the earth of
the third sphere, hearken to me! Hear me, o' mighty one, o' great Khthon! Awaken and hear my
adulation, o' divine and glorious God of gods! From thy hoary tomb thou shalt ascend, and the earth
shall be enraptured by thy majesty!"

"Khthon! To the ancient Lemurians, you assumed the guise of a beautiful azure-skinned woman with
great black wings, to the Atlanteans, you manifested as a brilliant fiery sphere of searing radiant
energy, to the peoples of Ultima Thule and Hyperborea, you took the form of a titanic crystalline
dragon. Yet your true form is beyond the ken of men, darker than the blackest heart of deepest
night, more terrifying than the very essence of fear itself... thou art terror incarnate! From the
timeless void you came, son of Z'xulth! Glory to They-Who-Lurk-And-Breed-In-Limbo!

[Excerpts from translator's cautionary notation:]

"Behold these repositories of fearful arcane knowledge, tomes of aeons-old cursed lore which was
surely ancient even when the ill-fortuned antedeluvian civilizations which initially articulated it
first committed such dread lexicons of terror to shuddering memory! Fear these legendary
encyclopaedia antedeluvia, these ebon necronomica of shunned rites and diabolical adulations! The
Tome of Shadows, the Forbidden Books of the First Cataclysm, the Epsilon Exordium, the Scrolls of
the Third Circle, the Oracle of Antediluvian Blasphemies, the Diabolist's Lexicon, the Arcana Atra
Libri, the Thirteen Cryptical Prophecies of Mu, the Manuscripts of the Cultists of Ur, the
Chronicle of Shadows, the Black Bible of Kor-Avul-Thaa, the Ancient Book of the Six Keys, the
Cydonia Manifesto, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Star-Maps of the Ancient Cosmographers, the
Cursed Books of the Z'xulth, the Praxeum Codex, the Chthonic Chronicles!
"I now know that there is something inestimably evil at large throughout the cosmos. It is a
ravenous and pitiless storm which rages across the universe, permeating the very fabric of
creation, existing simultaneously in all dimensions, wholly unconstrained by linear time. This
force is the black, quasi-sentient mana which sustains such ageless revenants of the Z'xulth as the
dread Dwellers in Eternal Shadow and the unspeakable They-Who-Lurk-And-Breed-In-Limbo. When beings
whose essences are intrinsically malefic choose to embrace this darksome energy source, the
resultant sinister symbiosis can be sublimely diabolical, as evidenced by the black blight that was
the infamous pseudo-human sorcerer Lord Angsaar! And of course, the malign Zurra, that abominable
result of an experiment by the Ersatz Ones gone disastrously wrong; an ill advised attempt to clone
the K'laa genetic template of mighty Zuranthus in the Mera spawning vats beneath the Pre-Cambrian
sea, only for the matrix to become contaminated by the errant cells of a captured fiend of Z'xulth!
The result was a prime fiend whose capacity for evil and wanton annihilation was exceeded only by a
penchant for self-agrandizement and his rampant psychological instability. In many cases, the
potential for ruination and domination that such entities may aspire to is constrained only by
their own physical and psychological limitations, as the toll which the dark mana takes upon the
host's mind and flesh is not insignificant..."

2. Invocations Beyond The Outer-World Night

[The Testament of the Winds:]

Many thousands of years ago, they ruled the globe. But the pressing fist of great power carried a
heavy price, and now their dominion has fallen beyond time and shadow. Look now, to the interior
world...

[The Explorer:]

Ah yes, the ancient map (its true origin unknown... mayhap crafted by the same vaunted cartographer
as the infamous Piri Reis map itself?) won in a game of cards at Portsmouth Docks... a fortuitous
hand indeed! (This could eclipse even Blackthorne's discoveries in Antarctica!) Wagered by a
grizzled mariner (in whose weary rum-addled gaze gleamed the knowledge of something far greater)...
Twin axial portals to the inner reaches... one at the very polar pinnacle of the world, the other
hidden beneath the lost ice-bound megalopolis!
(See also: "In Search of the Lost Cities of Antarctica")

Seeking answers to the cryptic riddles of the universe,
Secrets of the blackest (most impenetrable) deeps of the umbra,
Wreathed in frozen shadow and ice-bound peril,
Subterrene halls of horripilated wonderment...

Tatsumaki Maru voyage north, ever north!
Cleave a path through the massing Arctic ice!
Agleam with all the colours of the aurora,
Far beyond Ny Alesund lies our goal.

Invocations and ideograms (dreams of the Xtaxchedron?),
Conjuration of the inner world's (tenebrous) denizens,
And their star-spanning progenitors, spawned beyond the outer-world night.

These darkling subterrene dominions, astir with strange and terrible beings, sired by entities
whose genesis was far beyond the nighted void of our own outer-world! The legacy of the First Ones,
spawn of the Mera! But, it is here written that one day, when even the War of the Lexicon and the
cataclysmic Great Chaos War have faded to naught but distant memory, a great conflict shall be
waged between the forces of Order and the dread avatars of the Z'xulth. Vile fiends of the Outer
Darkness, They-Who-Lurk-And-Breed-In-Limbo, the Dwellers in Eternal Shadow unleashed through The
Gate to That Which Lies Beyond! The Black Galaxy disgorges its malignant horrors! Mankind shall
suffer inestimably at the hands of these sinistrous black titans of maleficent Chaos!

These stygian pitch-black vaults are filled with batrachian devils,
Dire crystalline watch-dogs of the chasmed deeps,
(For the gleaming jewels of truth are not without their protection...)
Vril-gorged adamantine fiends of the threshold,
Spawn of the ersatz interior sun.
(Behold, a vast plasma-fueled crystalline illuminatory orb... a vril-sun rising!
And marvel at the colossal terra-forming machines of the First Ones!)

Quaere verum... Sic itur ad astra!

[The testament of the Winds:]

Far, far beneath the surface of this coruscating sphere, at the very heart of our mysterious globe,
lies the true path to man's dark destiny beyond the heavens...

3. Six Score And Ten Oblations To A Malefic Avatar

The following are excerpts from handwritten notes discovered secreted in a hidden alcove in the
west wing of the Phillips-Ervin Museum, London England. Sealed in a leather canister, the aged
script was accompanied by an ornate bronze key of unknown origin. The author of the journal remains
unidentified, and the artifact was only chanced upon following the museum's partial destruction
during the spring of 1941...

[Fragmentary entry I:]

I have come into possession of a certain ancient book, a collection of arcane scrawlings reputed to
have been derived from an even earlier transcription, allegedly lost during the great fire of 1666.
The Chthonic Chronicles! I cannot disclose here the precise and rather unsavory means by which I
acquired this weather-worn tome, but I immediately recognized the veracity of the fevered
inscriptions contained within. Apparently derived from an incomplete Latin translation of the
original source material, the text sporadically lapses into an indecipherable tongue which the
translation cryptically notes as being Old High Atlantean. Glyphs, sigils, occult pictograms, six
score and ten oblations to some malign entity of colossal evil... some diabolical avatar of the
Z'xulth. Khthon! I must delve further into the foreboding depths of this great black book...

[Fragmentary Entry II:]

Caught in the maleficent whorls and verticals of this dark tome... but what lies at the heart of
it? A vespertine viper's nest of sublime wickedness! What I discovered within this shadow-haunted
volume was a terrifying axiom so inestimably terrible in its magnitude that it would shatter all
man's carefully orchestrated views of the cosmos and render utterly redundant previous theories on
the origin of humankind. Lore dating from time immemorial; lore surviving in the records of long
extinct civilizations, be it inscribed upon parchment now crumbled to dust, etched into the
sand-whipped, glyph-scored stone of hoary temples, or committed to verbal traditions long since
ingrained into some collective tribal memory. This is no globally common myth cycle, no collection
of universally allegorical folk tales; it is all cold, pitiless truth! And yet, such enlightenment
has not been a prize easily won... I have communed with native shamans, consulted with misanthropic
diabolists. I have confronted the martial agents, acolytes and cultists of clandestine sects who
would see their knowledge safeguarded at all costs. Hildebrandt and Quorum have treacherously
attempted to have me committed to the baleful confines of Grimm's Hold Sanitarium, yet I have
circumvented their insidious plot to put an end to my vaunted research. Damn their traitorous eyes!
I must confer with Blackthorne upon his return from the Peruvian expedition... or mayhap Stone if
ever the poor wretch regains his sanity...

Stygian gramarye, etched with blasphemy,
Whorls and verticals, black with baleful spells,
Vespertine conjurings, doomsayer's prophecy,
Pellucid lotus-dreams, spawn of the elder fiends,
Cryptic halls, squamous mass, malevolent diabolist,
Black desire, knighted woe, shunned and forbidden tome,
Brooding dark, deepest night, ritual, abhorrent sight,
Whispering, malignity, hearken to the summoning!

[Fragmentary Entry III:]

What titanic demi-gods once strode the boiling surface of the young earth, treading the shattered
surface of mighty Pangaea beneath their ersatz feet? What fearsome entities were already
inestimably ancient when mankind himself was naught but a collection of mindless random atoms, a
viscous puddle of gelid protoplasm teeming with the raw materials of life, transient cells of
primordial slime, all naught but malleable and tractable clay to be worked at by unimaginable
sculptors, immortal star-spanning fiends! What inhuman eyes even now watch the inconsequential
toilings of man from afar? The answers to these questions of denied primacy and direful cosmogony
were too repulsively horrific to contemplate, and yet...
I knew the truth!
And more terrifying still... The Z'xulth and their villainous agents of depravity even now walk
among us! But what price these revelations? What dire agents of malignity safeguard such cryptic
axioms against the prying intellect of man? I must confess, oftimes in the brooding darkness of the
night, I have sensed their malefic gaze upon me, lurking, inexorably dogging my every step, their
existence perceived only as some unnamable sense of fearful unease, and the occasional glimpse of
black shimmering against black in the depths of the teeming shadows... I hear them whispering when
the mantle of darkness silences the world, and the sibilant words they utter are not for the minds
of men to know. O' how I wish I had left those vile and fathomless depths of cryptical lore wholly
and mercifully unplumbed! O', how I long for the assuaging balm of ignorance to once again soothe
my ravaged mind! But such pleadings are, of course, ultimately in vain. I must keep my wits about
me. Even now the stars align, the celestial spheres moving into the prophesied positions of the
great astral conjunction. Am I to be ground to dust between the grand gears of this pitiless cosmic
engine of destruction? The die is cast, the endgame nears. Wait... they come, they come for me! Is
it Hildebrandt, or something far, far worse which stalks me this night? The key... I must hide the
key!

4. The Obsidian Crown Unbound

(Episode IX: The Legions of the Imperium Storm the Cloud-Capped Palisades of Gul-Kothoth)

Chapter 11: The Siege Begins

And so the mighty and resplendent armies of the Imperium assembled before the towering cyclopean
walls of ancient Gul-Kothoth. It was some time before the billowing dust cloud raised by the massed
arrival of the vast imperial host settled, ultimately dissipating as the shadows of dusk descended.
With nightfall, the imperial army's countless torches, braziers and cookfires illuminated the dark
plain before the fortress like a coruscating sea, painting the stygian heavens the colour of flame.
And the high summer's night passed swiftly. At length, the dawn approached tentatively, and with
the first signs of the newborn sun etching its promise upon the skies, the martial preparations
commenced in earnest. A brief perfunctory exchange between the Imperial Herald and the
fortification's Watch Commander held no surprises, and the Emperor's banner was duly driven into
the seared earth before Gul-Kothoth with a chilling finality.

Vast siege engines and powerful ballistae were hauled inexorably into position, alongside a battery
of katapelte and petrobolos. The one hundred thousand strong Imperial Frontier Army, having planted
their regimented blazons into the arid soil, waited with a disciplined patience born of never
having met defeat in pitched battle or siege, the dreaded Imperial War-Leopards straining noisily
against their iron-link leashes to the rear of the cohorts of conscripts and auxiliaries. The
pitiless Iron Phalanx and their Lord Militant Commander had assumed position at the head of the
army's Alpha Wing, polished swords, spears and poll-axes reflecting the glow from the myriad
torches and braziers which still burned about the Imperial Host. And behind them were drawn of the
legendary Legion of the Ebon Tiger, Pride of the Emperor, the infantry and cavalry famed throughout
the Great Northern Continent, personal regiment of the feared general Baalthus Vane. True to their
martial reputation, the six thousand strong Legion were inscrutable in their jet black armour,
their sable banner billowing in the chill breeze which skittered over the plain. And finally,
astride his azure-shaffroned warhorse and surrounded by his elite guard, the silvern-armoured
Emperor Koord himself studied the precipitous gates with a disdainful scruntiny. At the Emperor's
right hand was the renowned Swordmaster of Kyrman'ku, an eastern bladesman of preternatural skill
and the most revered and expensive mercenary in the Imperium. At his left, the infamous Ogre-Mage
of the Black Lake brooded silently, swathed in a stygian cloak and fuliginous cowl and exuding an
aura of implacable malevolence, which unnerved even the bravest of the Imperial troops. The Emperor
had deemed the services of these two nefarious renegades pivotal to the execution of the Final
Campaign, for they alone had knowledge of the mysterious arcane rite known as The Words Which
Unfetter. And, behind their titanic time-worn palisades, the defenders of Gul-Kothoth beheld this
awesome force ranged against them and shuddered, not with fear, but with an awful and night-cold
anticipation.

[The Emperor Koord:]
General Vane, we begin the final siege of this campaign with the rising of the sun. The war which
has raged for decades, shall finally be decided here, before the hoary walls of ageless
Gul-Kothoth. The Imperium's last and most glorious victory is at hand. The procrastinating
sybarites of the bureaucracy have been threatened and bribed into compliance over this venture.
This more than anything else is why I have deigned to grace this final battle with my Imperial
presence, even against the advice of the Grand Vizier and the sage counsel of the Seers.

[Baalthus Vane:]
You shall enjoy watching the Ebon Tiger bloody its claws, sire. Our victory here is assured.

[The Emperor Koord:]
You should not call your falcons before the hunt is done, my loyal servitor. Overconfidence is but
one of the many foes a general must face upon the field of war. Today, the precepts and maxims of
the Imperium shall be tested, and we shall see whether the velvet glove of diplomacy or the iron
gauntlet of conquest has proved the more effective tool.

[Baalthus Vane:]
The days of the feudal suzerainties are long gone, my liege. The Imperial Military Council is the
only entity fit to govern the dominions. The fall of Vyrgothia shall today render the truth of the
Imperial Mandate self evident.

[The Emperor Koord:]
And yet I am vexed, for as you well know, the sorcerous emissary I dispatched to the Court of the
Over-King has warned that the Vyrgothians may have recovered one of the artifacts comprising the
fabled Trinity of Might; the legendary Obsidian Crown itself! In the hands of a skilled
thaumaturgist, it is said that the Crown may be used as a weapon of unparalleled destructive
potency.

[Baalthus Vane:]
The Shadow-Sword! The Obsidian Crown! The Ebon Sceptre! Feh! The power of the Trinity is but a
myth! No antiquated trinket wielded by a religious fanatic will prevail against the Legion, sire.
Our steel is proof against such diabolism! Behold! Gul-Tryarch has fallen, Gul-Azlaan has been
given to the earth, Gul-Nomedes is naught but smouldering rubble, and soon we shall surge over the
shattered remnants of Gul-Kothoth's renowned walls! The Vyrgothian Alliance shall crumble when
these gates are breached, and the Over-King himself shall stand before thee in shackles!

[The Emperor Koord:]
Indeed. At any rate, I have been blessed with foresight enough to prepare a contingency should the
foe fulfill that fearful potential which has been weighing heavy on my mind. But now, the sun
rises! Let it begin! Let the final chapter of our legend be written! Give the word! Raze
Gul-Kothoth to the ground!

[The Imperial War-Skalds:]
An age of fire, sword and shield,
The thunder of the battlefield,
The clarions call, bring down the wall!
May the Empire's glory never fade,
Righteous fury guide our blades,
We march to war!

[The Wizards of Vyrgothia:]
Darkly bejeweled circlet of night, Crown of the Elder King,
Unfettered at last the Trinity of Might, the Sceptre, the Sword and the Ring!

Chapter 12: The Fall of Gul-Kothoth

And so it was that a terrible and inestimable carnage was unleashed upon the field of battle.
Colossal stones, firebrands and howling iron-tipped missiles rained pitilessly down upon the
hero-hewn walls of Gul-Kothoth. Vast and serpentine cracks appeared in the ancient cyclopean
edifice, and hundreds of warriors, both attackers and defenders, perished in the fray, either
crushed beneath the ceaselessly assailed testudo, hammered to crimson pulp by the merciless storm
of unforgiving stone, or burned to blackened husks by the nightmare onslaught of flaming quicklime
and saltpetre. Scaling ladders raised and repulsed in turn, storms of razor tipped shafts exchanged
by the combatants, isolated skirmishes raging upon the ramparts, men blade to blade and clarions
bellowing embattled defiance. For seemingly innumerable hours the sanguineous battle raged, with no
quarter asked nor given between the bitter ancestral foes. And the gates held firm. At length, the
mightiest of the Empire's iron-hooked battering rams, dubbed The Bringer of Woe, was brought to
bear upon the besieged fortress, and, with the shadows of dusk lengthening upon the field of war,
the centuries old Primary Gate of Gul-Kothoth was finally sundered amidst an earsplitting cacophony
of shattering oak and iron louder than any storm-born thunderclap. With the rending of the mighty
gate, and vast fragments of the ancient walls yielding, buckling and crashing to the blood-sodden
earth, the Imperium's forces breached the defenses of Gul-Kothoth and surged into the Vyrgothian
Alliance's last and most renowned stronghold. And it was at that fate-steeped instant that an army
of five score and ten, bearing the Obsidian Crown, arrived upon the field of battle.

Chapter 13: The Wizards Do Battle

[The Sorcerer:]
By Klatrymadon and Zuranthus! They come! They come, wielding the Circlet of Night! The dire warning
issued to me as I stood before Vyrgothia's Master Wizard has been proved no idle boast! The
citadel's spells of containment breached... the Black Crown is upon us!

[The Emperor Koord:]
It is as I have forseen! Be spry, my sorcerous lackey... join the Iron Phalanx in entertaining
these latecomers while I prepare a reception worthy of their audacity!

[The Sorcerer:]

By your command, o' luminous Imperial majesty!

At once, the far-feared and martially renowned Iron Phalanx wheeled to face the newcomers, and at
the command of a decurion, a volley of armour-piercing shafts screamed skywards to rain down
mercilessly upon the foe. And even as this transpired, the Emperor's Prime Sorcerer, emissary of
the Imperial Court and master of those arts which speak to man in narcotic dreams from the darkest
and most silent places, summoned forth that black potency which lay entwined in stygian tendrils
within his mind... an ireful power born of they who writhed upon the shores of Pangaea before man's
progenitors ever erected their lofty spires to the restless skies. And yet Vyrgothia's Master
Wizard, unrivalled Arch-Mage and adept of that lost Eastern order who journey beyond the boundaries
of time and space upon those nebulous wings born of the sacred Azure Lotus, rose to meet this power
which lapped at the periphery of his mind like a midnight tide, and stood firm against its
insistent siren call. And upon that arid field of war, the sentinels of light and shadow spoke to
each other in tongues dormant since the Third Moon fell burning from the heavens, and not sweet
were the words they uttered. Until at last, with the armies poised to clash, and with dusk painting
the sky a deep crimson exceeded in its vibrancy only by that bloody rubicund hue which stained the
battlefield below it, the Emperor's mage fell and the aeons-old might of the Obsidian Crown was
finally brought to bear against they who had breached the walls of ancient Gul-Kothoth.

[The Imperial War-Skalds:]
Sundered the gate of the ancient fortress,
Besieged! Now breached stand the walls.
And lo, there an army of five score and ten,
Behold! The Obsidian Crown.
Embattled, the wizards, their weapons arcane,
Untramelled, the circlet, the Prime-Sorcerer slain,
The Crown's peerless power, the Emperor's bane,
Dark magicks and havoc, now red carnage reigns!

Like the prow of a blood-hungry vessel of war rending the waves of a midnight sea, a luminescent
blade of shrieking cerulean light lanced from the legendary black circlet locked tight within the
gnarled hand of the Master Wizard, and clove mercilessly into the glorious ranks of the Imperium.
And all who were touched by this ruinous arc of coruscating radiance knew no more... Men and beasts
reduced to blackened husks, charred shells of smouldering ash, lifeless effigies which toppled to
the seared earth to be dissipated by the whispering breath of the wind. Again and again the
ravaging radiance smote the ranks of the Empire, leaving a noisome charnel-pit of nightmare in its
crackling wake. The forces of the Imperium were plunged into a howling vortex of disarray, and,
faced with the unthinkable prospect of defeat, the unprecedented first routing of the Emperor's
glorious army began to become a grim reality. Yet for all the unparalleled carnage which had
erupted about them, there was one regiment of Imperial troops for whom the taste of fear was bland
compared to the sharp tang of rage which sat bitter upon their noble tongues...

[Baalthus Vane:]

By all the gods of war! Stand fast, hounds of the Imperium! 'Tis true... steel is no use against
this ignoble magical trickery! But if our souls are bound for the Pit this day, we'll damn well
take a few of these bastards with us! Onward, my Legion! Alpha formation, banners high! Glory to
the Emperor! Into the foe! Show them the Tiger's claws!

[The Legion:]
Never quarter, never mercy, never retreat! Praise the Emperor!

[The Emperor Koord:]
My sorcerous thrall has fallen, but he has bought us time enough to riposte. And general Vane's
mettle may yet turn the tide of war back in our favour. Now, let the final act be played out! I
call thee forth, Ogre Mage of the Black Lake! I call thee forth, Swordmaster of Kyrman'ku! It is
time! Now, I charge thee, for the glory of the Imperium... Speak the Words Which Unfetter!

And so, it began... the two pivotal players in the Emperor's plan, the two key figures in the
Imperium's contingency, stepped forth to fill their most vital of roles in that grand theatre of
carnage which now ran unchecked on the field of battle. The Ogre-Mage and the Swordmaster began to
utter fearsome words in a tongue which was ancient ere the gleaming stars shifted upon the
fathomless countenance of the distant heavens, words which in truth were not words, but rather a
resonant key which would aspire to unlock a dire power which had reposed shackled since the fall of
the legendary Shadow King himself, whose ebon circlet's power they even now sought to thwart. The
incantation they gave voice to in the midst of that sanguineous turmoil which engulfed them was not
so much heard by those within earshot as perceived, sensed as a vague disturbance in the fabric of
reality, as fuliginous ripples on the surface of a hitherto still and placid pool, growing ever
larger and more far reaching; an unnerving and unnamable sense of change which insinuated itself
into the mind of the listener and suggested with a cold and disturbing quasi-certainty that
something of preternaturally ineffable magnitude was transpiring, as surely as a festering and
gangrenous corpse would split to spill its noisome gore. And as that maddeningly implacable
incantation reached its resounding climax, a momentary silence enshrouded the battlefield, swathing
the vista of chaos in an aura of noiselessness more pure and untainted than the tranquility of the
boundless and stygian void. It was as if time itself had halted for one immemorial moment. And it
was in that oddly immeasurable instant that the dark and peerless power unfettered by those grim
pseudo-words finally, ultimately, made itself known before the sundered gates of ancient
Gul-Kothoth...

(To be continued in Episode X: The Shadow King Reborn)

5. The Fallen Kingdoms Of The Abyssal Plain

Tribal creation myth and folklore from the Northern Hemisphere, dating from 650 B.T.C. (Before the
Third Cataclysm), Antediluvian Calendar:

Hearken, children of the Ersatz gods, sons and daughters of the New Earth, for here is truth. Long
ago, before the third of Earth's moons fell fiery from the star-seared sky, there were those whom
we have come to call the First Ones. These men-who-were-not-men were the creations of the Mera,
beings from the far reaches of the limitless cosmos, whose essence still flickers latently within
the minds of all their disparate progeny. Praise the Mera, fathers of the First Ones, bondsmen of
the K'laa, sworn foes of the Z'xulth! Sired in the great spawning vats beyond the fathomless deeps
of the Pre-Cambrian sea, the First Ones throve. Those who were engineered to live on land duly
constructed the grand Antarctic Megalopolis, ultimately becoming entangled in bitter conflicts with
the hoary Serpent Kings before retreating into the subterrene depths of the vast inner world,
whereas those First Ones that had chosen the embrace of the abyssal seas were the architects of
vast and glorious submarine cities whose splendid spires and minarets towered proudly beneath the
unfathomed waves. Those grand bioluminescent cities are now long since fallen, razed and dispersed,
given over to the cruel whims of the unforgiving oceans. From the lore of our ancestors, we know
the true nature of the cosmos. We know of the hidden and silent places, the places which reside in
between the veils of reality, the places which mankind was never meant to see. All this we know...
we who survive, we who are descended from those First Ones, and who give thanks to the
gods-who-are-not-gods, for our creation, our genesis, for the breath of life that was forced into
our progenitors during the early epochs of this cratered globe. Hearken, children of the Ersatz
gods, sons and daughters of the New Earth, for here is truth...

6. Shackled To The Trilithon Of Kutulu

Seek ye to invoke the Lord of Dreams, to know His divine will via the dreamscape, to have power
over His minions, to unlock the secrets of the deep? Enscribe ye the great seals 'neath the horned
moon, when the black stars of the chaosphere spin in trine, prepare ye a supplicant, and offer up
olibanum, storax, dictamnus, opium and the incense of Zkauba, in the shadow of the sacred trilithon
that overlooks the endless sea...

"O' Thou that lieth dead but ever dreameth... Hear me, Lord of Dreams!
The Deep Ones knoweth Thy secret name, the Hydra knoweth Thy lair...
Dagon shall break Thy accursed bonds, and Thy kingdom shall rise once more."

Rise o' spawn of Chaos and elder night.
With these words (and by the sign of Kish), I summon Thee.
Slumbering serpent, primal and serene,
Great Old One, hearken to me!

When the stars align in the Chaosphere, then the time of awakening shall be at hand!

"When death dies, Thy time shall be, and Thou shalt sleep no more..."
"Hear me, Lord of Dreams," "Hear, Thy servant calleth Thee."
In Thy tower they have sealed ye, dead yet ever dreaming.
O' great Lord of the Deep, awaken from Thy deathly sleep.

And there fell a great star from the heavens burning,
Older than the Sphinx or Babylon.
O' Mighty One, Lord and Master of the great abyss!

"Give forth Thy sign that I may know Thy will upon the earth..."
"Grant me the power to still the waves that I may hear Thy call."

"In His house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."
"Yet He shall rise, and His kingdom shall cover the earth!"

7. The Hammer Of The Emperor

Sinistrous legendary fulgurates from me. My name is a word of power on the lips of my followers.
You can't escape me. I'm inside your mind. Beware the Grand Arbiter of Temporal Jurisprudence, for
when it comes at last, terrible shall be thy punishment. In the ceaseless shadow at the centre of
infinity, the spheres have aligned. After the day, comes the night. My time has come.

How seldom falls the opportunity to forge an empire without bloodshed. It will yet come to war.

She Came Bearing Dark Portents (The Foreshadowing):

Fever-dreams, dark omens and auguries. Prophecy!

Why, when I meet your narcotic sloe-eyed gaze, does the image of a viper nestling in a bed of
blossoms fill my mind's eye?
Why, when you come to me by the pale light of a waning moon, do I glimpse the sheen of ophidian
scales through the veils of sable?
Why, when you enrapture me with your envenomed kisses, does the flicker of a serpent's tongue score
my flesh?

Enthralled by the vitreous lustre of your rubicund lips, your snow-pale skin musky with the
intoxicating scent of night... but such wicket thorns beneath this rose. Come witch, fly to me!

A garland of newborn stars to adorn thee... the Permian Extinction, a parting gift.
May your maleficent soul walk only in dark places.

8. Unfettering The Hoary Sentinels Of Karnak

Fragmentary delusional recollections from within the confines of Grimm's Hold Sanitarium:

When Blackthorne returns from his expedition to Tiahuanaco and the Peruvian jungle I shall duly
tell him of the catalyst which compelled me to those cursed black vaults in ancient Ur, should
Hildebrandt allow me another visit. Yes... Giza, Karnak, Thebes... I see them now once more! In the
grip of a waking dream, I walk those restless sands again. Egypt... here my journey began, and here
I took the first steps towards destiny and damnation.
(The events recounted here took place before "The Dreamer in the Catacombs of Ur.")

From the expeditionary journal of Doctor Ignatius X. Stone:

Giza, Egypt (March 17, 1890)

The heat here is damnably oppressive, and all day the omnipresent sand has been whipped up by an
impudent wind, making progress all the more difficult. At dawn, I pinpointed the location of the
Great Pyramid's secret chamber which my old friend Professor Caleb Blackthorne and his benefactor
Lord Blackiston had discovered several months previously, but ingress to its concealed depths was
denied me by a partial collapse of the age old edifice's stone ceiling. Excavation is evidently
impossible, lest more of the mighty tomb come crashing down about us. At any rate, Blackthorne has
studied the incredible inscriptions within that hidden alcove exhaustively, and in truth my own
interests lie elsewhere in this desolate sand-flayed landscape. The traditionalists believe that,
in keeping with Egyptian tenets, only mundane things such as new air shafts and ever more ornate
sarcophagi are yet to be discovered deep within the tunnel networks of these cyclopean monuments.
Feh! If only they knew the true extent of this great cosmic puzzle! They are as fools who view a
tapestry in a darkened room by the light of only one candle, seeing only small sections illuminated
one by one, and refusing to recognize or connect the darkened and unseen areas to the entirety.
Working from the geometric calculations which I prepared before our arrival here, I have studied
the alignment of Cheops, Chefren and Mykerinos. It is as I suspected. Tomorrow, I leave the
imperious and hoary mausoleum of Khufu and seek answers within the Great Temple of Karnak...

Karnak, Egypt (March 18, 1890)

What oblations to the grim chthonic deities of the ancient world were once offered solemnly beneath
the stygian skies of this sweltering place, I wonder? What sublime power awaits the aspirant, the
querent who dares seek answers in those shadowed places where men of lesser fortitude fear to gaze?
Blackthorne often berates me for what he calls my preoccupation with the arcane, the occult, the
sinistrous lore of the chthonic... he insists no good will come of such delving into nighted
realms. Ha! The path to elucidation is seldom devoid of thorns, the road to knowledge rarely free
of perils! I seek enlightenment and by the erudite tongue of Herodotus, I may have found it!
Ancient tradition of this land has long spoken of strange flashes of light emanating from the
depths of pyramid passages and temple catacombs. Over a thousand years ago the Arabs wrote of the
transient walls and hidden chambers of these monuments; of secret doors moved by an unseen force
and of implacable sentries who guarded the secrets of the temples with dour tenacity. What I found
this evening gives credence to all that and more. Is the lore which I discovered carved into the
ancient stone of Karnak's temple the next fragment of the cryptic conundrum which I have dedicated
my life to solving? The Coptic papyrus states that, upon the walls of the pyramids and the temple
were inscribed the mysteries of science, astronomy, geometry and physics; inscriptions of unknown
peoples and lost civilizations whose lore was carved into the stone to preserve it from the ravages
of the great deluge. The surviving knowledge of long forgotten antediluvian races! Aye, prudent
Surid, heeding the warnings of his priests, erected certain repositories of long forgotten
knowledge to withstand the first great flood, and then an all-consuming fire which was prophesied
would come from the sky. Masoudi, in the tenth century, described automata; titanic guardians of
stone and metal which were placed to guard the treasures and the entombed lore, and which were
tasked to destroy all those deemed unworthy, all those who dared enter the chambers unbidden. I see
them! The hoary sentinels of Karnak are unfettered! Rising from their sandy tombs to smite the
intruder, the raider and the interloper with righteous fury! And what is this... was there once a
glimmer of life within the sightless stone eyes of the Theban guardian? Does the silent watcher of
Giza even now descend from its granite dais to once more stalk the shifting sands on carven claws?
Hu! Horem-askhet!

The alignment of Cheops, Chefren and Mykerinos revealed,
Chthonic lore concealed in Khufu's imperious mausoleum,
By the erudite tongue of Herodotus, I have found the answers,
Arcane secrets inscribed in the ancient Coptic papyrus,
The Pyramid's legacy compels me to these dark discoveries,
The Theban guardian rises from its sandy tomb to meet us,
The Silent Watcher stalks, behold the Sentinels of Karnak!

Thebes, Egypt (March 19, 1890)

Niut-Ammon! Lucidity has reasserted its blessed hold upon me. I understand now the true nature of
that knowledge which was revealed to me deep within the shadowed confines of Karnak's timeless
temple. Telluric energy, harnessed by the ancients... triggered by lunar rays and solar radiation,
channeled to impart static charges to rock strata and lines of natural power running through the
earth. Neuro-electric energy generated, developed, creating light, separating inertia from gravity!
And what more? The fourth state of matter, forged countless millennia ago in the hearts of burning
stars... fettered, channeled, for creation and destruction! The secret of the great monuments of
the ancients! Yes, secrets... answers. A rogue celestial body passes inside the orbit of the moon,
becoming a captive of the earth's gravitational field. The world tilts upon its axis, its
revolution slows, the planet shifts farther from its parent star... one of many such cataclysms.
Asteroid strikes, floods, firestorms, the sky swathed in a veil of darkness through which the sun's
light cannot pass, great ice-ages enshrouding the globe. And what is this? The forces of evil, of
chaos... servitors of the sinister gods of the universe... manifesting upon the tellurian sphere?
What dire agents of malignity were unleashed upon mankind? Bringers of carnage and destruction,
pestilence and decay! The Z'xulth! Secrets once known by the forgotten peoples... ancient
Atlantis... time-lost Lemuria... Hyperborea. Ultima-Thule, utopian Atland and its enduring legacy.
Fragments, memories... descendants... the Incas, the Aztecs, the Maya, the Egyptians, the Greeks,
the Britons, the Frisians, the ancient Sumerians. Yes, it is clear to me, like a diamond worked to
perfection in the skilled hands of a master craftsman. The sigils and glyphs I beheld carved into
the ancient stone of Karnak (which I somehow understood implicitly), the visions I experienced
within the temple, it is all quite clearly compelling me to the next stage in my grand voyage of
enlightenment. According to the inscriptions, the truth, the key, awaits me within the ziggurats of
ancient Sumeria. I hear the call of the ancients, beckoning me to that aeon-veiled place across the
unforgiving sands. We shall depart at once. I feel sure I shall find that which I seek between the
two rivers, at the place of the seven cities. Yes, I shall surely meet my destiny within the
mystery-haunted catacombs of ancient Ur...

[The Keeper of the Ancient Lore of Ur:]
Hearken to the warnings of the Ancients... tread softly those sacred and unforgiving sands. Do not
break the seal of the seventh city!

[The Chief Cultist of Ur:]
The Gate must not be opened. You dare not awaken the Dreamer!

Cuneiform tablets bear a grim, darkly portentous warning,
Sumerian catacombs astir with vile Chthonic horrors.
The lore of Babylon inscribed in stone as old as Atlantis,
Glyphs and sigils now compel me to the ziggurats...

In a waking dream, I hear the call of the Ancients. I shall find that which I seek between the two
rivers, at the place of the seven cities... in the Catacombs of Ur!

To Storm The Cyclopean Gates Of Byzantium

Spring, 196 A.D. (C.E.)

[Centurion Decianus Varus:]
Alea iacta est! Emperor Publius Helvius Pertinax has fallen victim to the assassin's blade. As I
stand gazing out across the massed ranks of our Pannonian legions, Septimus Severus duly strives to
consolidate his newly acquired control of the Empire. Pescennius Niger is slain, his forces
expelled from Cyzicus, Nicaea and Issus, and yet Clodius Albinus has sailed from Britannia and is
raising an army in Gaul in his own bid to seize the throne. Severus intends to engage that northern
host at Lugdunum once his campaigns here in the east are concluded. Behold Byzantium! We now
prepare to lay siege to this ancient and splendoured city. Strangely, the order has been given that
the Byzantine library is to be searched thoroughly following our victory. Rumour has it that
Severus's aged soothsayer Angsaar is searching for a collection of arcane scrolls said to be of the
utmost importance, scrolls which are reputed to be hidden somewhere here in Byzantium. Something
about that wizened old shaman unnerves me... there is something strangely unnatural about him,
something... sinister. Feh! What are those scrolls supposed to be called again? Ah yes, The
Chthonic Chronicles...

Arcana Antediluvia

Act I: The Argosy on the Eldritch Sea

[The Antediluvian Oracle:]
And so it was written, that rage would carry him like a howling wind, leaving only frozen corpses,
Their bones rattling in hollow armour, to tell their tale in his wake.

[The Black Mariner:]
Behold, my blackened, grim and gory axe, the searing glow of trenchant steel.
I'll notch another widow to my haft, and wreak red vengeance 'cross the waves.
Tales of black-sailed argosies, bedeviled by base treachery!

[The Antediluvian Oracle:]
His gaze is as fire, his words are as spear-points, his voice is as thunder, his touch as the
plague!

[The Black Mariner:]
Storm-prow cleaving, dragon rending, nighted deeps far, far below,
Hail-scur scouring, sea devouring, sunken realm's ethereal glow.

[The Antediluvian Oracle:]
And one night, there came a storm, a storm with searing red winds.
Fire and steel rode within it, and vengeance writ in thunder and blood!

[The Black Mariner:]
Down sixty fathoms, from stygian coral-clad tombs, the pitiless abyssal sea disgorges its shambling
mold-mottled dead,
Dank innards blackly acoil with nests of slithering things!
Ghosts aglide upon the eldritch seas, unfathomed voyage to ascendancy,
Traitorous blood, the surf roils red, churning crimson, thrice-cursed dead.

[The Antediluvian Oracle:]
'Tis enough that men might dream of being kings without aspiring to the power of gods.

Beneath The Crimson Vaults Of Cydonia

Ruminations from the Six Pyramids of Cydonia:

This red charnel pit of primal horror, howling black ecstasies to the void. Ancient and divine,
older than the hidden Icosahedron, now rebirthed beyond the chaosphere. Rise... rise and destroy!
Hatred, carnage, slaughter, havoc, chaos, murder! I am become the devourer of all life!

Phobos, Deimos! The moons' rays liquefied in these blood red pyramids.
In the shrines of abomination, black tongues rapt with blasphemy.
Chaosphere, watchtowers, genesis, Cydonia...
The Abyss yawns wide!
Spirit of the carrion-thronged battlefield, open wide thy gate!

Colossal shapes etched against the moons, supine obeisance 'fore the mound,
Accursed fiends, hail the Slitherer, abhorrent jaws drooling lunacy.

The Abyss yawns wide... Claws sharpened on the dead.
The Abyss yawns wide... Ensanguined fangs agleam.

Great shadow, awaken and eclipse the suns of a thousand worlds...
Slumbering 'neath these crimson vaults, behold the majest of the Outer Darkness!
Praise the Z'xulth!

Fell Worm of the Black Galaxy, awaken and descend without pity upon the Tellurian sphere! Destroy
the flaccid priests of the newborn usurper faiths. Sweep away the thralls of the cruciform stave!
Crush the lackeys of the corrupted hexagram! Devour the slaves of the eastern crescent!

Crush them, grind them, slay them all!
Plague-blessed, flay them alive!

Now, behold in terror what waits beneath the crimson vaults of Cydonia...

Return To Hatheg-Kla

(The Sixth Key: The Omega Axiom)

Some would call it epiphany, others would deem it the final descent into madness... whatever the
case, the last vestiges of those tenuous palisades which had previously, and blessedly, safeguarded
my reason and prevented my mind from accepting the full and staggering magnitude of the naked truth
then crumbled, fading into nothingness like the dissolution of a night-mist. At length, one
oppressively miasmic night, with such malefically portentous lore preying pitilessly upon my
sanity, I began to descend through a myriad veils of sombre and swirling shades, finally
surrendering my grip on wakefulness. And on that fitful, fateful eve, the last of the dreams
came... A waking dream? I dare not speculate. The vision was mine, the soul too... but the time,
the place, the very flesh, all this and more was unknown to me. I stood upon a nighted vista...
unfeasibly alien, and yet at once wholly, unnervingly familiar. In my hand I grasped a glimmering
crystal which although beautiful in its shimmering radiance, was as black as the impenetrable
depths of the most stygian midnight sea. As I gazed into the obsidian heart of the gem, a needle of
black light lanced forth from its multi-faceted surface and filled my eyes with a panoply of
fantastic hues, revealing to me in between its pulses of massing darkness certain fleeting glimpses
of places and things so fantastically terrifying that I could not faithfully begin to recount their
hideous and yet grimly compelling nature. A terrible sound filled my ears... an insidious resonance
which sent waves of excruciating pain coursing through my mind... a sound which inexorably
coalesced into a recognizable but entirely inhuman voice, a voice which slowly, inevitably, formed
approximations of words which I could discern...

[The Crystalline Oracle:]
Hearken, o' manling of the Tellurian orb... the Circle closes. Perpare to embrace the agony of
enlightenment. Know you of the Six Cataclysms?

[The Aspirant:]
I do. Six times has the world perished and been reborn!

[The Crystalline Oracle:]
You have discovered the true meaning of the six coruscating rings of arcane power?

[The Aspirant:]
Praise Klatrymadon and Zuranthus! The Six Keys!

[The Crystalline Oracle:]
Know you of the blackened orb which burned bright o'er ancient Lemuria? Know you of the sidereal
flame which engulfed the high seat of power in Ultima Thule? Know you of that martial sorcery woven
in the pitiless throng of epic battle? Know you of the astral power permeating the multiverse and
the might of the cosmic codex? Know you of the rise and fall of glorious Atlantis? Know you the
blasphemies contained within the Chthonic Chronicles?

[The Aspirant:]
I know all this, and more!

[The Crystalline Oracle:]
Have you, o' hybrid child of the cosmos, gazed into the Great Eye of the Universe?

[The Aspirant:]
I have.

[The Crystalline Oracle:]
And what did you see there, young Xerxes?

[The Aspirant:]
I saw oblivion and damnation. I saw truth, and enlightenment. I saw the closure of the Great Circle
Without End. I saw the Sixth Great Cataclysm. I saw the alpha and the omega, I saw the beginning...
and I saw the end. The end of all there is!