Post by Catsmate on Jan 27, 2021 12:37:52 GMT
Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.
Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.
Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.
Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.
"Cassilda's Song" in The King in Yellow
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.
Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.
Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.
Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.
"Cassilda's Song" in The King in Yellow
Stories of a place where people, desperate and despairing people, did something terrible, something stupid and reckless and paid a dreadful price for their folly.
Are still paying a dreadful price.
It’s a cautionary tale, for the younger races (humanity among them) who sometimes find artefacts and debris from long gone alien civilisations that promise much, but exact a price.
Sensible people wonder why those civilisations are gone and don't dabble in necromancy.
Sometimes people meddle with Things There Were Not Meant To Know. Hopefully they either fail utterly or merely kill themselves. Sometimes they destroy large areas, cities, planets, star systems, Occasionally they succeed; the place dubbed “Carcosa” by one visitor is an example of that success, but at an awful price.
It started a long time ago, or perhaps in a time yet to come. Some say it happened in the last universe, with its different physical reality and laws, or in the universe yet to come after the collapse into the Big Crunch. Others say it happened elsewhere, in one of the realities orthogonal to ours. Some say it doesn’t really matter.
Whatever the truth, it has spawned a legion of odd stories and legends.
Once, there was a great city, by a lake, the centre of an empire of some sort, spanning a continent, or a planet or a galaxy, the stories vary and the survivors don’t remember or don’t want to remember. It was a glittering place, full of laughter and song, trade and wealth, learning and knowledge.
Then the Enemy came.
At first the threat was distant, at the peripheries of the empire, and was of no consequence in Carcosa. Nothing could threaten them. But the Enemy could not be stopped, and gradually the peripheries fell victim to their onslaught. Eventually the metropole and its great bastion was threatened and the people of Carcosa began to panic.
They turned to one of their great thinkers, a person previously shunned because of their interest in certain matters considered, if not heretical, then worse, not-quite-nice.
This thinker promised to save the city; faced with imminent death, slavery, or worse, the leaders agreed and prepared.
At the appointed time Carcosa disappeared.
None of the stories is anything but vague about exactly what was done, or how, but the city was….moved….elsewhere. Wrenched from reality into a pocket universe perhaps, or out of time, or something else entirely. But it was gone and the Enemy frustrated. The great thinker was acclaimed as their saviour.
At first the populace was joyous, thinking themselves saved (though some regretted those left behind, abandoned to the Enemy, they were in a distinct minority). They could remain safe here, wherever “here” was, until the Enemy was gone and return to recreate their empire.
But that was not an option. The thinker they fêted told them of the price that would have to be paid for their salvation. There was consternation and some of the citizens balked at the price but the bulk of the citizenry accepted the necessity and selected from among the slaves and the criminals the necessary sacrifices and delivered them to the thinker.
Life continued.
Surprisingly soon there were few slaves left to be sacrificed, and the unpopular, the deviant, the different were chosen and delivered.
Then a lottery was devised and sacrifices chosen in that manner.
The air of gaiety began to be more forced, as the populace partied in the face of potential Selection and an unknown fate. For while the thinker had told them of the necessity of the sacrifices, they hadn’t been told what happened to them. The wearing of masks became a popular fad, as people sought to maintain an air of carefree gaiety.
It didn’t take long for insanity to become the new norm. People began to wonder if they’d ever return to the lakes they’d known, and dimly remembered. A few began to wonder, how long had they been like this? It was difficult to remember.
One day things erupted. No-one seems to know why, did someone resist Selection, was there a problem with the sacrifices, or was whatever the thinker had done beginning to fail? Perhaps it was the effect of wherever they'd gone?
Over the course of a night the city of Carcosa exploded into madness. Most of the populace died that night.
But some survived. And are still there, so the stories say.
The stories also say that you can travel to Dim and Lost Carcosa. The right state of mind, meditation on certain odd shapes to stretch the consciousness (or activate natural psionic capacity) it is said. Or curious mechanisms of magnets and crystals and wires twisted around themselves, powered by electricity. Or blood sacrifice.
There are treasures to be found in Carcosa, so it's said; the knowledge and wealth of a great empire. And nor all of it is tainted. Secrets that could make one powerful, the wealth to buy whatever one desired. All there for the taking
Yes, this is a bit of an odd one for me. But I was thinking about the intersection of the Whoniverse and parts of the Cthulhu Mythos and this popped into my head. Perhaps it's time to change my reading material...
The King in Yellow (wiki) was developed by Robert Chambers (wiki) and much later was shoehorned into the Muythos by Derleth. Perhaps the eponymous play exists in the real world, with cadences in it that awake human psionic potential and (if a sufficient mass is present) can open a portal to Carcosa? Or could a scientist, dabbing with electricity (or alien technology) allow the malign influence of Carcosa to seep into Victorian London?
- One interesting interpretation is that Carcosa was (is?) Gallifrey.
The King in Yellow (wiki) was developed by Robert Chambers (wiki) and much later was shoehorned into the Muythos by Derleth. Perhaps the eponymous play exists in the real world, with cadences in it that awake human psionic potential and (if a sufficient mass is present) can open a portal to Carcosa? Or could a scientist, dabbing with electricity (or alien technology) allow the malign influence of Carcosa to seep into Victorian London?
Comments?
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