Lovecraft story finals, round 1

[Hodgson]

Vote your favorite. Comments are welcome. The poll will run 3 days.


At the Mountains of Madness
The story is written in first-person perspective by Professor William Dyer, a geologist from Miskatonic University. He writes to disclose hitherto unknown and closely kept secrets in the hope that it will deter a planned and much publicized scientific expedition to Antarctica. On a previous expedition to Antarctica, a party of scholars from Miskatonic University, lead by Dyer, discovered fantastic and horrific ruins and a dangerous secret beyond a range of mountains taller than the Himalayas. The group that discovered and crossed the mountains found the remains of fourteen ancient half-vegetable, half-animal life-forms, completely unknown to science after digging deep into an underground cave. Six of the specimens seem to be badly damaged, the others uncannily pristine. The extremely early date in the geological strata of these "fossils" is problematic because of their highly evolved features. Because of their resemblance to creatures of myth mentioned in the Necronomicon, they are dubbed the "Elder Things". When the main expedition loses contact with this party, Dyer and the rest of his colleagues travel to their camp to investigate. They find that the camp has been devastated, and the men and dogs slaughtered, with the body of one of their friends and one dog missing. Near the camp they find six star-shaped snow mounds, each containing one of the damaged specimens.

Prof. Dyer and a student named Danforth fly an airplane over the mountains and set down to investigate a huge, abandoned stone city of cubes and cones utterly alien to any human architecture. Exploring one of the cones, the men are able to learn the history of the Elder Things by interpreting their magnificent hieroglyphic murals. The elder things first came to earth shortly after the moon was pulled loose from the planet and were the creators of life. They built their cities with the help of "shoggoths", things created to perform any task, assume any form and reflect any thought. Danforth and Dyer realize that the eight "Elder Things" were alive when they found a sledge from the camp which to their horror contained the bodies of the missing dog and man, evidently kept as scientific specimens.

They find evidence of dead "Elder Things" and were chased back to their plane by a ululating horror that could only have been a "shoggoth". As they fly away Danforth looks back and sees something (what he sees is not described) that causes him to lose most of his sanity. Professor Dyer concludes that the "Elder Things" and their civilization were destroyed by the "shoggoths" they created, and begs the planners of the proposed Antarctic expediton to stay away from things that should not be loosed on this earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Mou ... of_Madness
Read at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/At_the_Mo ... of_Madness


Beyond the Wall of Sleep
An intern in a mental hospital relates his experience with Joe Slater, an inmate who died at the facilty a few weeks after being confined as a criminally insane murderer. He describes Slater as a "typical denizen of the Catskill Mountain region, who corresponds exactly with the 'white trash' of the South", for whom "laws and morals are nonexistent" and whose "general mental status is probably below that of any other native American people". Although Slater's crime was exceedingly brutal and unprovoked he had an "absurd appearance of harmless stupidity" and the doctors guessed his age at about forty. During the third night of his confinement, Slater had the first of his "attacks". He burst from an uneasy sleep into a frenzy so violent it took four orderlies to strait-jacket him. For nearly fifteen minutes he gave vent to an incredible rant. The words were in the voice and couched in the paltry vocabulary of Joe Slater but the onlookers could construe from the inadequate language a vision of:

great edifices of light, oceans of space, strange music, and shadowy mountains and valleys. But most of all did he dwell upon some mysterious blazing entity that shook and laughed and mocked at him. This vast, vague personality seemed to have done him a terrible wrong and to kill it in triumphant revenge was his paramount desire.In order to reach it...he would soar through abysses of emptiness 'burning' every obstacle that stood in his way.
The ranting stopped as suddenly as it ceased. This was the first of what would become nightly "attacks" of a similar nature. The peripheral otherworldy images of Slater's visions were different and more fantastic with each successive night, but always there was the central theme of the blazing entity and its revenge. The doctors were perplexed with the Slater case. Where did a backward man like Slater get such visions, when surely an illiterate rustic like him would have had little if any exposure to fairy tales or fantasy stories? Not that there were stories similar to Slater's. Why, too, was Slater dying?

As an undergraduate, the intern had built but never tested a device for two-way telepathic communication. The device was designed around his principle that thought was ultimately a form of radiant energy. Heedless of any ethics, he attached himself with Slater to the device as Slater lay near death. With the device switched on, he received a message from a being of light whose experiences had been what were transmitted through the medium of Joe Slater. This being explained that all men are light beings when not shackled to their physical bodies. All light beings, the thought-message went on, within the realm of sleep experience the vistas of many planes and universes which remain unknown to waking awareness.

The intern understood that the light being would now become completely incorporeal, and undertake at last a final battle with its nemesis Algol, the Demon Star. Joe Slater died then, and there were no further transmissions. That night an enormously bright star was discovered in the sky near Algol. Within a week it had dimmed to the luminosity of an ordinary star and in a few months it had vanished completely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_the_Wall_of_Sleep
Read at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Beyond_the_Wall_of_Sleep

[Eternities End]

It pretty obvious which one everyones gonna vote for

[Hodgson]

Yeah, most of the 1st round votes will probably be over before they've started. But not all of them. Rats in the Walls goes against Shadow out of Time.

[Eternities End]

Meh Shadow Out of Time will win that one...I hope anywayz

[Hodgson]

Yeah, most of the 1st round votes will probably be over before they've started. But not all of them. Rats in the Walls goes against Shadow out of Time.

I take it back. Some of the others may be competitive.

http://www.templeofdagon.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1028
http://www.templeofdagon.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1030
http://www.templeofdagon.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1029