“. . . Could some act of his have opened the way for occult forces to invade his privacy?”

Matt Fox (1906–1988), illustration to “The Ormolu Clock” by August Derleth

from ‘Weird Tales’ Vol. 42 #2, January 1950

August Derleth: welcome to another sanity-draining game of Call of Cathulhu Derleth: i'm your dungeonmaster, august Derleth Derleth: let's go around the table are reintroduce our characters Brian Keene: i'm Dr. Batcountry, professor of journalism Victor LaValle: i'm sweet sweetbreads the harlem hustler Nick Mamaatas: i'm groovio daddio the freaky deaky beatnik

Derleth: ugh guys, i can't understand why you have to keep playing these subversive characters! Derleth: why can't you play characters true to the original spirit of Lovecraft? LaValle: true how so? Derleth: well like i mean LaValle: Derleth: i mean LaValle: say it Derleth: Derleth: [sweats]

Dean Koontz: hey can i play? Derleth: are you going to play a proper Lovecraftian character? Derleth: because i run this campaign true to the spirit of the original lovecraft Koontz: can i play a dog? Derleth: no! Derleth: this isn't fucking ironclaw!!!

Derleth: classic lovecraft character types only! Derleth: and that means reedy academics who faint if they see an Irishman! Derleth: none of these subversions! Koontz: but Koontz: but Koontz: BUT they're all doing subversions! Derleth: yeah I've been meaning to talk to them about that

Koontz: sigh i wish there was a role-playing game for me Koontz: a game where i could just play a nice dog Kij Johnson: [drifting up in a row boat, carrying a parasol] oh but young master dean! Johnson: there is!

Johnson: young master dean, let me introduce you to a world of lazy sundays, watercress sandwich picnics, and doctors who make house calls to prescribe cod liver oil Johnson: let me introduce you to the world of Johnson: [placing straw boater on koontz's head] riverbank!

Johnson: in riverbank, there are three character classes Johnson: rabbits in waistcoats Johnson: hedgehog chimneysweeps Johnson: and mean cockney weasels Johnson: and of course to give it that veddy british feel we don't distinguish lizards and salamanders Koontz: but those are different things! Johnson: fft, what are you? an American?

Johnson: this is a game about rabbits in waistcoats Johnson: the most british of all genres Johnson: not to be confused with its related but distinct American genre Johnson: possums in overalls

Koontz: can i play a dog? Johnson: oh goodness gracious! oh chim chimmery chee! oh my stars and garters! oh jiggery jam! Johnson: can the dog be wearing a smart bowler hat and spats?

Johnson: ok first let's introduce our characters Johnson: now before we start Johnson: none of you are actual furries are you? Koontz: no Cordwainer Smith: [sweats] no Brian Jacques: [sweats] no Frank Belknap Long: [sweats] no

Johnson: good because we've had some trouble with furries in the past Johnson: they just really get into this game Johnson: a little too much

Dean Koontz: my character is a dog and he's a good boy Johnson: Koontz: oh! Koontz: sorry! Koontz: and he wears a bowler hat and spats Johnson: great jimmery jam, how splendid!

Cordwainer Smith: my character is Lady Ephemeria Smith: she's a grand doyenne of a big fat persian cat who wears a really big hat with a dead bird on it Smith: i wish she would just put me her handbag and carry me around Johnson:

Brian Jacques: [squeaking] i'm a mouse, good and true, brave and honest Jacques: [squeaking] not like those filthy weasels Johnson: oh you're going to fit right in! Jacques: [squeaking] they run the banks, you know

PSINKTOBER_DAY15

But I kept running into it. Or maybe it kept running into me.

Eventually I got curious. I started reading. Not just the games, but the stories behind the stories. Bierce. Chambers. Lovecraft. Derleth. I was trying to trace the roots of this unnameable god, but they never stayed still. It wasn’t linear, not like Cthulhu or Nyarlathotep. It was more like a pattern that emerges only when you’re not quite paying attention.

The stories weren’t connected by plot, more by mood. Disconnection. Identity slippage. Art that drives people to madness. A fictional play that eats your mind just by existing in it. And the thing is, Chambers never gives you the whole play. Just pieces. Just reactions. And that makes it worse. Because your brain fills in the gaps, and it knows exactly how to destroy you.

It's personal.

Intimate.

The madness is tailor-made.

I thought it was just a clever literary trick. A device. But then I kept noticing it. That sense of dislocation. That creeping unreality. I’d be reading something or watching a movie or walking around late at night and there’d be this flicker, like I’d caught a reflection in a mirror that shouldn’t be there. Something was… thin. And behind it, something watching. Wearing my thoughts like a mask.

I think what keeps pulling me back to this mythos is the way it frames horror as yearning. Most cosmic horror pushes you away. Hastur draws you in. The Yellow Sign doesn’t repel, it calls. And even when you know it’s a trap, you might still answer. Because it promises meaning. And in a chaotic, indifferent universe, sometimes that’s the most terrifying thing of all.

When I think back to the early moments, the games, the handouts, the symbols, I realize now that those weren’t my first steps into Carcosa. I didn’t know it then, but I was already walking the shores of Lake Hali, already hearing the King’s song. And that’s the way it happens, isn’t it? Not with a scream. But with a whisper. Not with a monster. But with a story.

And once you’ve read it, really read it, you are never the same.

Delta Green, especially, made the Mythos feel present. It didn’t just use the imagery, it asked what it would mean if this kind of horror existed in our world. What if a piece of fiction could rewrite your perception of reality? What if art and madness weren’t opposites, but neighbors? In Delta Green, The King in Yellow is a memetic hazard. A story that spreads not because of a monster lurking behind the curtain, but because the curtain itself is the danger. The idea that the world we live in might be a beautiful lie, and some part of us longs to know the truth underneath it.

You don’t fight it. You remember it. That’s the genius of it. It’s not coming for you. You were always part of it. The Yellow Sign doesn’t mark, it reveals. You don’t discover Carcosa. You come home.

What keeps me coming back to the Hastur Mythos isn’t the monsters or the horror tropes. It’s the way it blurs boundaries: between fiction and reality, between sanity and meaning, between art and identity. It taps into something human, the desire to understand, and the cost that can come with understanding too much.

It’s not about losing your mind. It’s about what happens when you begin to question what your mind is built on.

I’ve seen the faces of those who came before me. They are blurred, indistinct, but they carry the same hollow gaze, the same feverish yearning. They were the same as me. They all are me. And soon, I will join them. I will be one with the play, one with Carcosa. The script has already been written. The King is waiting. And when the final act begins, it will consume us all.

Sometimes when I write, I don’t remember choosing the words. They come in yellow. They hum softly. They wait patiently, like old friends. I think they’ve always been there, just out of reach, behind a veil I didn’t know was thin.

I hear the drums again. They are closer now, pounding in my chest, matching the rhythm of the Yellow Sign. The city’s streets are opening wide before me, like a gaping mouth, ready to swallow me whole. I step forward. I know what is waiting. I know the end. But it’s no longer frightening. It’s not a fall. It’s not even a beginning. It is simply the next line in the play.

The city is near now. I can hear water. I can see towers through the mist. The mask fits better every day. The lines are written. The curtain is rising.

We are all players here.

The city is open now.

The curtain is rising.

He is coming.

He has always been.

And you—yes, you—will know the final line, when it comes.

Do you see it now?

The Yellow Sign?

You’ll understand soon.

We all do, in time.