Sleep
How many times now has it been?
I suppose it depends how long you've been here. This could very well be your first such excursion. But for many of you, it's an all too familiar circumstance.
You crawl into bed after a long day of work or… interpersonal drama, or whatever else you adorable, pointless little weirdos get up to in your free time. You close your eyes, and drift off into a deep slumber, far, far from the worries of a harsh and troubled world. Or so you thought. You wake to find yourself somewhere new, whether physically transported or simply trapped in some horrible lucid nightmare, and you are subjected to new and unimaginable horrors you never dared to dream back on that wretched little island. You are at the mercy of who or whatever brought you there, and their whims, or your own wits.
And so I ask again, "offworlder," how many times has it been now?
How many times have we met?
Would you even know?
Oh, goodness, where are my manners? I really should introduce myself. I have a number of names--- the Crawling Chaos, the Caliban Storm, the Bloody Tongue, Kayne--- would you believe I've even been called "Mr. Tiddles"? People are just so creative. But my proper, gods-given name is Nyarlathotep.
It's alright, I know you can't pronounce it. Why don't you just call me the name you usually do?
What do you mean, "which name"? Oh, come on now. Surely you've figured it out by now. Here's a hint. It starts with an N…
But there will be time for all that later, my pets. I have splendid news for you. All of you have been such good little playthings for the past several years that I've decided you deserve a holiday. I've brought you to a destination near and dear to my heart, for a dream getaway you surely won't forget.
Let me give you the tour.
Dream
{ CONTENT WARNINGS: Unreality }
The palace of the gods of old sits high above the great city. This hidden metropolis bustles in your ignorance, but is all but dead with you here to perceive it. Those brave enough to chase the rumors of its existence will find it perched high in steep and baseless mountains of sheer moon rock, with no ground at the edges and separated by a chasm with no end. These mountains, as austere as they are impossible, reach achingly like broken fingers towards a hungry, prismatic sky and can be found in that dreadful space where reality gnaws at the edges of your unconscious mind. The name of the city, spoken of in whispers exchanged among ghouls and cats, is Kadath.
I'm still workshopping that Airbnb listing. What do you think, too much?
Well, it doesn't matter for now. You all are the first guests in quite a long time, and our helpful attendants are just so eager to meet you! But more on that later.
Within the palace you'll find such splendid amenities as a banquet hall suited for the highest number of guests your rudimentary mind can realistically conceive of, a stairwell that always begins but does not end, a sprawling courtyard garden full of plants that refuse to accept a shape with physical boundaries and a wishing well that does not care about you, a constantly shifting maze of impossible hallways, the inner sanctum of all knowledge which shall never be written, and the throne room of the gods.
Your room, regardless of its location within the palace, will be fitted with a canopy bed whose gossamer drapes ebb and flow as if submerged in water, and a balcony that looks out onto that starving sky which beckons to you, begging that you may stare into it long enough for it to crawl into your eyes and become you. Such trappings, as it were, are yours to explore at your leisure.
Now, it is worth noting that we are not used to hosting guests as reality-impaired as yourselves, and thus our accommodations may take some getting used to. For one, you won't find an exit. And for another, you may find that your subconscious influences the way you perceive the… aesthetics of the palace, in ways your fellow guests may not see. The layout is also utterly indescribable, and thus you will only find anything if you were meant to, and you may have to be open to means of traversing spaces that are beyond your normal idea of what is possible.
Such is the way of dreams, no? Trying to make sense of it would be futile for a mind that is so accustomed to the rigid limitations of wakefulness, truth, and sanity. Although whether you realize you're dreaming may vary. I wouldn't recommend considering it too carefully if you want to enjoy your time here.
"Go home"? Now why in the world would I tell you how to do that?
Chaos
{ CONTENT WARNINGS: unreality, wrongness, faceless figures, memory loss }
Now, as I've said, each of our infinite guest rooms is outfitted with the same luxuries. Unlike Aster, I do not play favorites. I cherish you all equally! Most, but not all of you, will find yourselves waking there. Leaving your room and getting downstairs is entirely possible but does require you to traverse the upstairs hallways. Those can be a bit of a labyrinth. (Side note, there is a rather splendid film by the same name which really captures the same energy of the space. You really should watch it if you’re ever in the appropriate time period.) Some may find the journey more arduous than others, depending upon where you are attempting to go, but there's truly no one single right way to do anything around here.
In the banquet hall, the table will lengthen and food will appear itself as needed, but very seldom as desired. If you have a normal, healthy relationship with food and social gatherings, it will be perfectly fine. Probably.
You may also stumble across the broad glass doors that lead out into the sunlit courtyard. Ancient, impossible architecture sprawls out in every direction for what appears to be miles, far further than should be physically possible. The plant life within the garden is as abundant as it is strange and malformed, rife with fasciated blooms or leaves with no borders, like something generated by the hallucinating mind of a machine built to trick you into believing it can think like you. You can wander for hours, finding dream-like beauty beyond compare, forgetting yourself. Become lost in memories, chase buried desires, or simply lose yourself completely. There's a well at the center. You have a coin. Toss it in, make a wish. Whose voice do you yearn to hear? Who do you wish to be? What material thing do you desire? Do you even remember after travelling this far? Whatever bastardization the indifferent spirit here bestows, it will not make you happy.
Ah, you got me waxing poetic again, how dare you! Now let's see, what else… Ah, yes, the ballroom! You're just in time for our ball. I do know how you Pumpkin Hollowites love your fancy galas, and I'd already imagined you up some stunning clothing---- what? Did you think you'd be running through a nightmare castle, chased by incomprehensible horrors, in your work clothes? Where's the fun in that? Pardon me for a bit of glamour alongside the unreality and bloodshed.
In any case, you'll find the ballroom beautifully adorned and brimming with waltzing dancers wearing pallid, featureless masks. Don a mask of your own, and lose your face in the crowd--- there are secrets being spoken by unseen lips on the dance floor. Some of them are yours.
Then, in the heart of the castle, you will find the inner sanctum of the gods. An archive, mostly, full of reliquaries and books. Objects, holy and unholy, lost to time or only ever seen in dreams. Things conceived of but never built. Volumes upon volumes of knowledge that will never be written nor read, incomprehensible to mortal minds or simply just beyond their reach. The Necronomicon once lived here, before I gifted it to my followers. Now that it has been held in human hands, it can never reside on these shelves again. And there are things here that would very much like to prevent this from happening to the other books and artefacts stored here.
And the last room I shall bother to mention, as there are hundreds on just the ground floor, is the throne room. There is only one thing to find there.
Now, before we move on to what there is to find in the subterranean floors of the palace, I would like to ask your forgiveness for the small vermin infestation. Wretched little creatures the size of handbags running around the halls, primarily on this floor but also on others, who deliberately dreamed themselves here when they knew you'd all be coming. I asked my useless staff to try to catch them, but these blithering idiots only managed to lock up one of the smelly, obnoxious little blighters. So if you see some pointy-eared beast calling himself "Fluffy" or some nonsense like that, do let a member of our staff know immediately. And don't listen to a word he says.
Madness
{ CONTENT WARNINGS: insanity, potential for gore, cult references, potential for claustrophobia, heights, entrapment, graphic descriptions of eldritch body horror }
Now, the basement is where things really get interesting. Sure, the upper floors have luxurious balls and banquets, lavish gardens, spiral staircases for running up and down dramatically or thrilling sword fights, and all the amenities your heart desires. But the basement, that's where all the drama lives. The secrets a family keeps, the skeletons in their closet, their long forgotten treasures, the poorly stored holiday decorations that someone is going to get yelled at for next year, the cult ritual spaces---- you know, the good stuff.
Well, maybe your family doesn't keep cult ritual spaces, but mine certainly does. Dozens of them, take your pick! Torture chambers, well-appointed meeting rooms with austere wine goblets and tapestries on the walls, amphitheaters for grand gatherings of beings of immense size, dark rooms with rune circles and black candles on hardwood floors, and more besides. Why, there's even a blood pit. I recently had it remodeled, as well. Holds more blood now. But I digress.
Given that many of these rooms hold forbidden knowledge and eldritch relics, or maybe even some of my relatives (more on that shortly), you may also carelessly wander into trap rooms. Some of them are cleverly engineered puzzles that those with the mettle to solve can escape. Some are simply designed for violence, meant to crush or stab or maim or devour. Some do little more than hold you, a dark hole in which to be forgotten. Perhaps another will find your same pit, and you can die slowly together, watching each other's bodies unravel as time marches agonizingly on.
Speaking of places to be held, some lucky wanderers may encounter our pride and joy--- the dungeons. Rows and rows of intricately structured cells, winding around each other in such a way that it is impossible to tell what is a cell and what is the walkway just from looking! How does one prevent oneself from wandering into a cage and becoming trapped in its iron bars? How do you know you're not already in one? I do love a good mystery. Presently, the occupants within are meager, but once these very walls hosted hundreds of prisoners who dreamed of things their minds were not meant to see. Just as you do now.
The basements of Castle Kadath also contain some unfinished spaces. Caverns, if you will. Many are quite beautiful, filled with gravity-defying rock formations, glowing crystals, and pools of the clearest water you've ever seen. Though it may not be your own face you see in its mirror-like surface. Of course, not all of these caverns are peaceful, nor easily traversed. From narrow rock bridges to flooded passageways, you may have to risk some discomfort to proceed. But there are many possible rewards for doing so, whether that's safety from that which threatens your life, a reunion with a loved one, or an object of power that may even follow you home from dreaming.
Those luckier still (or perhaps unluckier, depending on how you look at it) may find enlightenment beyond their wildest dreams in the depths of the mountain.
Deep, deep within the belly of the old stone of dreams and moonlight, there exists the mouth to primordial chaos incarnate. The world turned inside out, the infinity of space buried within the cold stone of the world beneath unknown Kadath. The center of all infinity. The birthplace of the gods. No gods that you know, none that you dare worship, for just the sound of their names upon your fragile lips could be enough to crack reality. Cause the world to bend and break around their impossible forms just to make way for their incomprehensible will. Things like me, but not like me. Gibbering genius-fools with vast minds so full of everything and nothing that they are beyond thought or spoken word or the weak and limiting binds of coherency. And residing there, in the gulping maw of all that is and ever will be and never was and cannot become, one god still whispers, screams, loud and voiceless, accompanied by the pounding of drums like blood in the ears and the shrill and incessant whine of broken flutes. His form twists and churns, endless tendrils and hungering mouths coiling in on themselves and suffocating in his own bulk as new mouths and new tendrils and new blind and vacant eyes are born, endlessly folding like batter in an industrial mixer and made of vile and putrid matter that should not exist at all, much less as flesh. The few that have known him have called him many things, his collection of epithets even greater than my own. The Lord of All, the Primal Chaos, the Downbreaker, the Deep Dark, the Cold One. The Blind Idiot God. I personally just call him "Dad," these days.
But you, my privileged guests. You are here as visitors! Friends of the family! You, my dears, may simply call him Azathoth. I am sure he'd be delighted by your visit. It will surely be one you remember for a long, long time.
Oh, also, while I'm thinking about it--- should you need to return upstairs for any reason, do take care which staircase you take. There are a number of them that always begin but never end. I'd hate to see you waste hours climbing a thousand steps only to look back and find yourself still on the third one. But it's impossible to tell which ones will do this, or when the effect will pass, or when you'll be able to find another staircase. This place is a bit of a maze. Perhaps you should just climb a while more, see what happens.
Blood
{ CONTENT WARNINGS: eldritch body horror, death, Nyarlathotep literally suicide baiting you in the last paragraph }
And now, my beautiful dreamers, we have reached the finale of our grand tour. I'm sure you all feel so terribly fortunate to spend some indiscriminate amount of time as the houseguests of the Old Gods. Before we part ways, I do feel it pertinent that I should issue a few… safety warnings.
In addition to my staff, which is comprised predominantly of faceless mannequin men and bats, my niece's adorable children by and large have the run of the place. Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods, Mother of a Thousand Young, is the daughter of my sibling. And as her name suggests, she has a rather extensive number of whippersnappers--- though I think at this point "a thousand" is a bit of a misnomer, as I believe their number is more in the hundred-thousands by now. Not all of them are home, lucky for you.
Shub-Niggurath's children are so varied in appearance and size that I shan't bother to describe them individually. They are bestial things of darkness and hatred, borrowing the visages of the beasts of Earth and Concorde and worlds like them. Bears, birds, tigers, oxen, things with teeth and talons to gore you with, blended with--- goats, mostly. Caprine things, often with cephalopod bits mixed in, body parts that no beast should have and which have no names, just clever descriptors. Or occasionally just too many of the normal anatomical bits you might expect. You get the idea.
Their motivation, when they locate you, is simple. They will chase you single-mindedly through whatever maze you've found yourself in, regardless of what they have to destroy to do so. This will continue until you kill them, outrun them, or until they catch you. If they catch you, they will kill and eat you in the most excessively grotesque and excruciating way they can manage. Fairly straightforward, no?
By now I'm sure you're all asking, "but Nyarlathotep, what happens if I die? I'm outside of the barrier, but also this is some sort of dream. And Castle Kadath is dangerous! There's so many traps and creatures! What becomes of me if I succumb?"
Well, my pets, fear not. Because this is a dream, you cannot truly die. You will feel every moment of the act of dying in glorious detail, right down to the moment your final breath leaves your pathetic, fragile frame. In fact, you will likely find yourself far more conscious of your state than you would be for a normal death, no longer plagued with the delirium of blood loss or organ failure, completely cognizant of every breaking thing in your body until you can no longer perceive anything at all. But, as soon as it's over, you'll pop right back up in your room, right as rain and ready for another go. Now, your corpse may end up left behind if it can be sufficiently useful in tormenting your fellow dreamers, but you'll be none the wiser in most cases.
Of course, this is only relevant if something actively kills you. There are certain things you can do to break or alter this particular cycle. No, of course I'm not going to tell you what they are. Goodness, doesn't anyone enjoy a little mystery anymore? I swear, it's almost like you're reading this as some sort of explanation for what you're meant to be doing for the month or something. What am I supposed to be, a Dungeon Master?
Alright, fine, I'll give you one piece of advice. Get experimental. Try dying as many ways as you can think of! You could even try killing yourself if you're feeling spicy. The castle is your oyster.
In any case, dear visitors, this is where I bid you adieu. Have fun on your little adventure, you've had a painfully dull December and you're in for an equally droll Merrymeet, so this is the most excitement you'll get 'till the Ides. I'll plop you back into your quaint little reality whenever I feel sufficiently entertained, so do try to keep things amusing for me, won't you? And feel free to come pay me a visit if you're in the area! We'll do brunch.
See you soon!
Farewell
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