You get wrapped up in a Lovecraft story(RAR)

[FaxModem1]

Due to a mailing mistake, you receive a package containing the book for bringing about Nyarlathotep. If you decide to peruse the contents, you would discover all the ways to bring Nyarlathotep into this plane of existence, along with other dark mystical crap. It also includes a letter addressed to a local antique shop where it was supposed to go. If you read it, you'll discover that all of Lovecraft's writings were rather on the money, and the cult wants the book for their ceremony, or at least believe that's the case.

What do you do?

[Broomstick]

Destroy the book.

[The Romulan Republic]

Yeah, that.

And possibly try to destroy any other copies of Lovecraft's work that I can get my hands on.

[Simon_Jester]

1) Not do anything the book says.
2) Think about destroying the book.
3a) If I encounter any evidence that magic is a real thing, I decide to burn the book.
3b) If not, I dunno. I don't like being panicked into making bad decisions and I consider book burning a bad decision in general.

And TRR... Lovecraft didn't write the book of evil magic, in all likelihood. And Lovecraft's stories are in the public domain; any possible harm they could have caused themselves has already happened. Running around trying to get them suppressed is a good way to end up in the loony bin.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, I haven't read much Lovecraft- if we presume his books are real in this scenario, do they contain information that would enable summoning of things that should not be summoned? That's my thinking here.

But yeah, probably no way to suppress it now.

And yeah, I don't like the idea of destroying books either. I just feel like in a scenario where I happened to discover something like this, I'd have a responsibility to do something besides washing my hands of it and walking away (even though that's what I'd want to do).

[Simon_Jester]

Well, I haven't read much Lovecraft- if we presume his books are real in this scenario, do they contain information that would enable summoning of things that should not be summoned?

Uh, no, they don't go into nearly enough (fictional) detail on the summoning of (fictional) entities for there to be any realistic risk that if the entities are real, they can be summoned through knowledge gained by reading the stories.

Unless just thinking about the entities summons them... in which case the damage is already done.

And yeah, I don't like the idea of destroying books either. I just feel like in a scenario where I happened to discover something like this, I'd have a responsibility to do something besides washing my hands of it and walking away (even though that's what I'd want to do).

Any appropriate course of action would have to be thought through over a longer period of time than this, and would probably be a lot more complicated than "take five seconds to destroy the first thing that pops into my head."

A plan of action for defeating a grave threat is usually not going to be that simple.

[NecronLord]

I join the cult.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, I haven't read much Lovecraft- if we presume his books are real in this scenario, do they contain information that would enable summoning of things that should not be summoned?

Uh, no, they don't go into nearly enough (fictional) detail on the summoning of (fictional) entities for there to be any realistic risk that if the entities are real, they can be summoned through knowledge gained by reading the stories.

Unless just thinking about the entities summons them... in which case the damage is already done.

And yeah, I don't like the idea of destroying books either. I just feel like in a scenario where I happened to discover something like this, I'd have a responsibility to do something besides washing my hands of it and walking away (even though that's what I'd want to do).

Any appropriate course of action would have to be thought through over a longer period of time than this, and would probably be a lot more complicated than "take five seconds to destroy the first thing that pops into my head."

A plan of action for defeating a grave threat is usually not going to be that simple.

Well, obviously.

If this were the real world, I wouldn't be putting my half-assed ideas on an internet forum. I'd probably be still trying to come to grips with our entire understanding of the universe being wrong, and maybe crying into my pillow.

I mean, if we're being brutally honest about how a real, ordinary, run of the mill person would react to being dropped into a deadly supernatural conspiracy, instead of a storybook character.

[Ralin]

Get the fuck out of whatever area I happen to be living in. The cult can't be too big and connected, otherwise they never would have lost their secret book or whatever to begin with. Or they would have done their summoning already.

Don't burn the book. If I burn the book and the cult finds me then they probably won't believe I destroyed the book, meaning I have all the downsides and no bargaining chip.

Once feasible, attempt to read the book. If nothing else so I'll know what to look for. Try not to be unhinged by whatever is inside of it.

Invest in some sort of weapon.

[Elheru Aran]

I think by 'Lovecraft's writings were right on the money' the OP is saying two things: that Lovecraft was right that elder gods existed and so forth (but for whatever reason we're just now finding out about them) and that the *fictional* works such as the Necronomicon, De Vermiis Mysteris and so forth do exist. Presumably one such book is now in your possession.

Me? It's going in the nearest fire. None of those entities were particularly *good* to anybody. You want to find out what happens to norms who mess with elder gods, read Fall of Cthulhu. Nothing good happens there.

[Broomstick]

Once feasible, attempt to read the book. If nothing else so I'll know what to look for. Try not to be unhinged by whatever is inside of it.

The problem is that reading the magic books in the Lovecraftian mythos pretty much is certain to unhinge normal people.

[Ralin]

The problem is that reading the magic books in the Lovecraftian mythos pretty much is certain to unhinge normal people.

Yeaaah, but from my limited exposure to Lovecraft's work I get the impression that the people who go really truly off the deep end were usually already on the unstable side to begin with. I'm willing to gamble that I can deal with it, because getting somewhat fucked up by knowing how to recognize eldritch shit is better than being completely fucked up from getting blindsided by eldritch shit. The book can't be worse than actual Nyarlathotep, and reading the book increases my chances of actual Nyarlathotep getting summoned.

[Elheru Aran]

The problem is that reading the magic books in the Lovecraftian mythos pretty much is certain to unhinge normal people.

Yeaaah, but from my limited exposure to Lovecraft's work I get the impression that the people who go really truly off the deep end were usually already on the unstable side to begin with. I'm willing to gamble that I can deal with it, because getting somewhat fucked up by knowing how to recognize eldritch shit is better than being completely fucked up from getting blindsided by eldritch shit. The book can't be worse than actual Nyarlathotep, and reading the book increases my chances of actual Nyarlathotep getting summoned.

...if you think you can sort out one of the leading Elder Gods on your own, good luck to you.

I'll just be over here packing my bags and buying overnight tickets to Australia...

[Ralin]

...if you think you can sort out one of the leading Elder Gods on your own, good luck to you.

I'll just be over here packing my bags and buying overnight tickets to Australia...

Well I mean, I might be able to recognize what the cult will try to do and how to stop/avoid them being able to do that. And if they have weird magic powers the book might give me some idea how to counter or avoid them.

"Get the fuck away" was the first time I said I would do. Reading the book is just hedging my bets, because presumably they're going to try and track me down. If they know some sort of "track the infidel with the book" spell I want to be forewarned.

[Simon_Jester]

If the spell to track the book is itself in the book, the cultists presumably know much of what the book says, in which case why do they need the book that badly?

[Elheru Aran]

If the spell to track the book is itself in the book, the cultists presumably know much of what the book says, in which case why do they need the book that badly?

Possibly the book has an intrinsic value to the various ceremonies and spells described within. Made with human skin, inked with the blood of a fish-man... something like that might have more power and ability to summon Yog-Sothoth than a standard printed volume, for example.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Due to a mailing mistake, you receive a package containing the book for bringing about Nyarlathotep. If you decide to peruse the contents, you would discover all the ways to bring Nyarlathotep into this plane of existence, along with other dark mystical crap. It also includes a letter addressed to a local antique shop where it was supposed to go. If you read it, you'll discover that all of Lovecraft's writings were rather on the money, and the cult wants the book for their ceremony, or at least believe that's the case.

What do you do?

Put it back in its packing crate and mark it "RETURN TO SENDER! WRONG ADDRESS!" Let the sender deal with the consequences, and re-direct the discreet enquiries back to them.

After that, do my best Sergeant Schultz impresssion when asked about it.

[Ralin]

If the spell to track the book is itself in the book, the cultists presumably know much of what the book says, in which case why do they need the book that badly?

Possibly the book has an intrinsic value to the various ceremonies and spells described within. Made with human skin, inked with the blood of a fish-man... something like that might have more power and ability to summon Yog-Sothoth than a standard printed volume, for example.

Yeah, exactly. Who knows how these things work? That's part of why I'm going with the "read the book and gamble that I can maintain my sanity" option. Knowledge can fuck me up, but it can also give me a fighting chance. Ignorance means I have no chance because I have no idea what I'm up against or what may be coming at me. And if some super abomination is summoned up I'm absolutely fucked, to the point where I'm not confident that fleeing to the other side of the world will make a difference.

[Napoleon the Clown]

If I am feeling malevolent: Transcribe the contents and upload them to the internet, ushering in the end of mankind.

If I am feeling not malevolent: Burn it, and hope that burning it actually works and doesn't either fail to damage the book entirely or, worse, releases foul entities beyond the understanding of mankind.

[Vendetta]

Me? It's going in the nearest fire. None of those entities were particularly *good* to anybody. You want to find out what happens to norms who mess with elder gods, read Fall of Cthulhu. Nothing good happens there.

If you mean Call of Cthulhu, not a lot happens really. The protagonist finds out the Horrible Truth* but nothing actually happens because the stars are not right.


* This is a farly common Lovecraft feature, protagonist finds out some kind of Horrible Truth about themself or the world and goes mad from the revelation. If you are not mortally afeared of black people or fish, this may be less problematic for you than it was for old Howard.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah.

Lovecraft did a very good job of capturing the sense of eerieness, of things being so weird and foreign that they just totally blow your mind and leave you incapable of even processing the bizarreness of what just happened.

But then, Lovecraft was also a man who suffered from a wealth of intense phobias and prejudices, so he felt this eerieness very, very intensely. And it shows in his work.

At the same time... well, I'll quote a passage I wrote some time ago:

Within the context of Lovecraft's stories it is impossible to tell whether these beings are breaking physical laws, or whether they simply have physical properties that are based upon laws of which we are ignorant. One of the key concepts informing Lovecraft's fiction was that he was working and writing in the early 20th century, a time when science was opening up vast new vistas of time, space, and reality. Things which a classically educated individual raised in the late 19th century was often ill-equipped to understand or internalize.

During Lovecraft's lifetime, the size of the 'known universe' as described by astronomers increased by a factor of roughly a hundred thousand or more.

The laws of Newton and the geometry of planes and lines as described by Euclid were proven to be wrong and an inaccurate description of our universe on the largest and smallest scale. Lovecraft would have been taught in school that these were absolute mathematical laws governing reality in a predictable, clockwork fashion.

The atom, which by definition had been supposed to be the basic building block of all matter, was revealed to have structure, and our suppositions about the nature of this structure were evolving so rapidly that you could have asked the greatest scientists of the era "what are atoms made of, and how do they work" at five to ten-year intervals for several decades and gotten different answers each time.

All manner of exotic species of plants and animals were revealed to have existed on Earth in the distant past, including many which resemble no species now living. Not only did this great upheaval of life occur once, paleontologists would tell Lovecraft, but it occurred repeatedly, with several totally different biospheres of radically different organisms evolving and being wiped out in cataclysms which, at that time, no one really understood or had an explanation for.

It is difficult to describe just how comprehensively mind-blowing this could be, to someone who was actually trying to sit down and understand how all this affected man's place in the universe.

So when you read a Lovecraft story, you need to understand that the author, the protagonist, and the reader are all assumed to be educated men of the early 20th century. Which means that all three of them accept as a basic premise of their intellectual life that they do not now understand the basic workings of the universe, that their current ideas about how the universe works are probably wrong, and that the real answers are much, much weirder than the already weird and alarming things they already believe that they know.

[Elheru Aran]

Me? It's going in the nearest fire. None of those entities were particularly *good* to anybody. You want to find out what happens to norms who mess with elder gods, read Fall of Cthulhu. Nothing good happens there.

If you mean Call of Cthulhu, not a lot happens really. The protagonist finds out the Horrible Truth* but nothing actually happens because the stars are not right.


* This is a farly common Lovecraft feature, protagonist finds out some kind of Horrible Truth about themself or the world and goes mad from the revelation. If you are not mortally afeared of black people or fish, this may be less problematic for you than it was for old Howard.

Nope. Fall of Cthulhu, Boom Studios. Short version: Nyarlathotep is trying to kick-start the apocalypse by manipulating norms into fucked-up situations. Other gods beg to differ. I suspect a number of them may come from writers other than Lovecraft.

[Solauren]

Burn the book with fire, acid, and everything I can get my hands on.
Then feed the ashes to a dying animal, then repeat on animal corpse.

[Zeropoint]

Realistically, I probably just mail the thing to the antique shop without ever discovering what I've actually got on my hands.

In any case, I won't know that I'm in a mythos story until AFTER I've read enough of the book to be a dangerous level of exposure. I've probably got enough SAN to handle losing a few points, and after reading the book, I may have a better idea how to deal with it.

I guess either way I'd get a concealed carry permit. A handgun won't do me any good against Nyarlothotep, but it should help against a cultist or two.

[bilateralrope]

A handgun won't do me any good against Nyarlothotep

Is shooting yourself not a useful thing to do when facing Nyarlothotep ?