Wednesday, December 21, 2022

The Unspeakable

I've never been very fond of Deities & Demigods, though, being a TSR fanboy, I nevertheless dutifully purchased it. In my youth, the DDG sat on my bookshelf largely untouched, which is why my copy of it looks practically pristine to this day, in stark contrast to my copies of the Players Handbook, the Dungeon Masters Guide, and – especially – the Monster Manual. 

Even so, I'd occasionally flip through its pages and read random sections to see what little bits of esoterica I might find. I strongly remember the first time I noticed the following statement at the end of James Ward's preface:

Special thanks are also given to Chaosium, Inc. for permission to use the material found in the Cthulhu Mythos and the Melnibonean Mythos.

This baffled me, since there are no references to either the creations of Lovecraft or Moorcock in Deities & Demigods. What could this possibly mean? Sometime later, I learned from one of the older gamers whom I knew that there'd been some sort of "legal dispute" between TSR and Chaosium, resulting in the removal of chapters on the Cthulhu and Melnibonean mythoi from the DDG. As you might imagine, this revelation filled me with excitement, though it wouldn't be until I was in college that I'd ever set my eyes on these expurgated chapters.

Thanks to a very kind friend, I now own a copy of the original printing of Deities & Demigods, which has probably seen more reading than my original one, largely because of the two chapters TSR removed. I suspect I've spent more time reading the Cthulhu Mythos chapter than the Melnibonean Mythos chapter and a big reason why is its downright funky art by Erol Otus. 

All of the art in this chapter is awesome, but the piece that really sticks with me is this one:

Supposedly, this depicts Hastur the Unspeakable, who is little more than a name in Lovecraft's works but was a favorite of August Derleth, who decided that Hastur was Cthulhu's "half-brother," whatever that means. The DDG entry describes Hastur as having "a scaled, elongated body, a lizard's head and maw, and taloned lizard claws. It also has 200 tentacles projecting from its body ..." I have no idea where this description comes from, since not even Derleth bothered to describe his favorite Great Old One as far as I can recall.

Regardless, there's no question it's a very striking image. I particularly like the juxtaposition of a fairly ordinary looking medieval castle with this bizarre monstrosity. I've sometimes thought it might be interesting to referee a medieval Call of Cthulhu campaign, perhaps taking inspiration from Clark Ashton Smith's Averoigne series, but I've never pursued the matter seriously. If I ever do, you can be sure I'll take inspiration from this piece by Erol Otus.

14 comments:

  1. I had the original version published in 1980. I was in the 6th grade and my friends and I would sometimes try to pit one deity against another. Proto-powergamers, I suppose. Otis' art, particularly in the Melnibonean chapter, was pretty cool, but then I've always liked his stuff.

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    1. I may be wrong, but wasn't the vast majority of the Elric art Jeff Dee? Erol Otus did Theleb K'aarna's headshot and maybe teh Nehrain horse but I think that was it. He had a lot more in the Cthulhu Mythos section, of course.

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  2. Back in the day, I often thought of running a D&D game where the Lovecraftian Mythos was active. Deep Ones infiltrate Porttown; root out their operation in the Smugglers' Caves. Worshippers traveling to the deep caverns below Mount Voormithadeth where Shub Niggurath dwells stop to do a sacrifice in the woods near where the PCs are camping. A Macguffin the PCs need was on the body of a person sacrificed to Ithaqua that they have to locate. All sorts of scenario hooks in that chapter!

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  3. I always wondered why they had King Arthurs knights (a similar book filled with heroes would have been welcome). They didn't really fit in Deities and Demigods, not being a pantheon.

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    1. Well, the OD&D version was Gods, Demo-Gods, and Heroes. They just went with a shorter, punchier title for the 2nd go.

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    2. Gods Demigods, and Heroes had Hyborian Gods (presumably removed because of a lawsuit). If they had C'Thulu, Hyborian, Newhon, Melnibone, Greyhawk, and Non-human Gods (and high level demons and devils if they had the guts), and dumped the real-world pantheons they would have had a more interesting and useful book.

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    3. The deal with Chaosium allowed them to continue publishing those two pantheons as long as they thanked Chaosium but TSR decided after that initial printing to remove them anyway. Ive not heard the reasoning behind that decision but it seems silly.

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    4. My understanding is that TSR didn't want to be advertising for a competitor.

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    5. I liked the Aurther Stuff. It also had heroes from Lieber and Moorcock

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  4. I've been running a campaign, currently on hiatus, pitting PC gods Horus, Seker, and Anhur against powerful demons in the service of Set. Uses the gods from D&DG adapted to Advanced Labyrinth Lord. Nice uber-power game, plays like a superhero game.

    Set has set a trap for Ra, and the PC gods are investigating the Great Darkness in the West. So far they have encountered a swarm of demons (including a Balor) and a flying Behemoth.

    The game is on hold while we play Russians & Radiation with a wider group. But it's been fun so far. Once they start encountering demi-god level beings it will get very interesting...

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  5. I have the original printing and it's always been one of my favorite D&D supplements, even if I seldom used the material directly.

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  6. Cosmic horror as we know it is a modern sensibility. I see litte point in transporting it to a "medieval" setting, as much as the average D&D setting can be called medieval (not much) - and in a "realistic medieval" (God forbid!) setting the cthulhoid monsters, no matter how terrible, would be interpreted as hellspawn, not as beings outside and fundamentally hostile to reality. And aside that, what you have is a bunch of new critters with tentacles to hack.

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    1. Perhaps so. However, I think Aquelarre, while more focused on hellspawn and folk monsters, would be pretty close, seeing how it has a portion of CoC's DNA in it.

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