Headscratchers abound

OT: And it grew in the Writing by Gandalf the Beige on 2011-08-17 05:25:00 UTC Reply

Well, the story bug has bitten me again, threatening to slow down my other fanfic projects (and my mission) even further. It will probably need a Beta-reader, a first for me, as will my mission when it gets off the ground.

This one comes from a couple of character ideas I had when I was going to put a Star Destroyer into drydock and flood HQ with crewers. It's basically a Cthulhu Mythos story, centering around the East Asian people known as the "Tcho-Tcho".

However, I'm giving it a sort of new spin. Mostly because traditional horror creeps me the smeg out... I'm better with suspense ending with a very plain "oh crap" moment. I may also one day run an RPG with this scenario.

First, the "Tcho-Tcho" themselves (in my version) are an amalgam of groups across Southeast Asia with a few similarities having to do with cannibalism, human sacrifice and the adoption of Dreamland sorcery. However, they are rather different

The first group encountered inhabit the Annamite mountain range, being either the descendants of Lac Viet agriculturalists driven west and south by Chinese expansion in the second and third centuries BCE. Animist and largely Bronze-age, these "Leng Viet" worship manifestations of the power of the Outer Gods in the forms of animals alongside the more traditional ancestor cults. Human sacrifice provides protection for their villages and rice from narrow hill terraces.. but alot of the sacrifices now are the very old and ill volunteering themselves or a meaningful death or of game and livestock, with unlucky travellers, soldiers and arrogant missionaries coming fewer and farther apart these days. They are the group that the protagonist first meets and, despite their early abuse of the sorceries taught them, they are possibly the least evil of the three subgroups (in the biased view of said protagonist).

The second group are the traditonal Great-Old-One worshiping Neolithic pygmies, surviving in the lowland jungles of Cambodia and Eastern Thailand despite the governments leasing out massive resource concessions to foreign companies. Whereas one group of the Goat-legged Men of Leng (long story) had come to the Viet refugee groups led by a spectral Black Buffalo Cow, a second group of fleeing Leng-ese (or "Shugoran", in my mutation) had come to these people at the same time, living out their lives as Sorcerer-Kings and worshiped as Gods (similar to Yag-Kosha in Hoard's Tower of the Elephant). Eventually the people came to worship Lloigor and Zhar, two interconnected masses of tentacled insanity from the star Arcturus that seem more intent on trying to destroy each other in their subterranean caves than actually help their cultists. I have these guys pegged as "Chaotic Neutral bordering on evil".

The third group is in Burma, being your classical evil and cruel cult that secretly kidnaps innocents to sacrifice to the Outer Demon Chaugner Faughn, the "Yara" of this story. His original servants were the Miri Nigri, frog men created in the young days of the world, who helped him entrap and enslave a great portion of the original Shugoran refugees from Tibet. This group is reviled by the other two, mostly for enslaving their spiritual teachers instead of worshiping or sheltering them. The Leng Viet in particular would like nothign better than to slay Chaugner Faughn and retrieve the Shugoran holy index, the "Book of Cracked Jade".

However, all groups have been put under one label, the "Tcho-Tcho", derived from the Hmong "Tchaw-Tchaw", or Eaters. There's a history there, what with the Communists using the Vietic and Tai-speaking Leng-ists as territorial choke-points during the war with western backed groups (including the Hmong). However, the popular legend has combined the ferocity of the Leng Viet warriors and hunters (who seem to be regressing to barbarianism versus their people's attachment to settled agriculture), the primitive life of the Jungle pygmies and the cruelty and power-lust of the Burmese cults into one image.

Next time... What I'm doing with Delta Green and the other conspiracies. But first, please feel free to criticize, poke holes, tell me how mixing Howard, Lovecraft and Derleth is a crime against Canon (and I agree, which is why this is very specifically non-canon) or just discuss.

Beige-not sure how long it's been since I posted somethign this long.

And it Grew in the Writing, Cont'd... by Gandalf the Beige on 2011-08-19 03:39:00 UTC Reply

This hasn't gotten any feedback, so I'll repeat my request for a mission Beta (in advance) and just fill out the rest of my story idea, specifically the investigators.

The Investigators in this story take... three forms, roughly. The first are the old, 1920-1960 breed that went in, shot cultists, took names and stopped the destruction of the world.

The second are the modern breed with Federal connections. With Delta Green itself (in my iteration, fic and possible RPG-wise), there are the official "Vowel Cells", who have plenty of backup to deal with Mythos activity. A and E cells are for kill-ops, where quick, decisive use of assets is important to safeguard humanity. I and O cells are for more delicate ops where the entities and cults are relatively benign or low powered, and the aim is to contain Mythos activity to a controllable area while leaving most of the human initiares alive and free to worship benignly. U and Y cells are the most delicate, where the aim is to actively seek Mythos assistance against much worse abominations (This group has a turnover rate typical of dealing with beings that create a psionic undercurrent as a matter of course). And then there's Majestic-12, which is pretty much like the Men in Black... only creepier, with a Brain-in-a-jar ambassadorial program, Shoggoth defense systems and Yithian outreach and library system.

And then there are the more typical cells in Delta Green, including civilian friendlies. Ten are connected to the Vowels, who use them as assets with plausible deniability. The others, however, do not follow official procedure or have sanction. These are the Lost 10; Some of them are merely considered fools and cowboys, who use just a little too much gunplay and assassination of witnesses in their mission to protect but are otherwise effective. Others, though... the Vowels think that some of these cells are one psychotic break from declaring Exterminatus on the entire planet, killing us all so the mythos doesn't get us first. Mostly the result of Battle fatigue and excessive SAN loss, there have been battles against some of these cells and the feds... sometimes with high body-counts. Executive opinion is that they are bordering on cultdom themselves and are extremely dangerous. One of these cells will be the antagonists in the first part of the story.

Basically, the mythos is inscrutable in it's motives... but sometimes, inscrutable can just as easily mean "Why is it helping us?" as "Why is it hurting us?".

Well, I've rambled again, and I seem to be the king of the empty thread. So here it ends with another quest for feedback and critcism on this little chunk of Mythos fanfic. What does everybody think

Headscratchers abound by gaijinguy on 2011-08-19 22:39:00 UTC Reply

Full disclosure: I don't know the Mythos, Delta Green, etc. etc. beyond the usual Hello Cthulhu and Ry'leh fhtaghn cheezburger jokes that you find on the internet.

I honestly don't get where you're going with this. The first post was a ton of backstory which I could kinda-sorta get into (it reminded me of "Our Town," and anything that reminds me of early X-Files is good) but a setting/setup isn't a plot. I don't know who the characters are, and I don't know what they're trying to accomplish or what's standing in their way.

Yes, I'm sort of bad on that by Gandalf the Beige on 2011-08-20 19:13:00 UTC Reply

The two primary characters are ones that I introduced during my first permission request. The first, one Joesph Clayton, is the son of insurance brokers in the northern Massechusetts town of Glaston, in the hills east of historic Dunwich. The second is one Marie Trinh, daughter of the proprietors of a pseudo-Vietnamese restaurant in the town and, until some months before the story begins, the only East or Southeast Asian family in town.

As the story begins, Joeseph and Marie, both high school sophomores, have been in a relationship for about six months but friends since childhood. Just as her parents restaurant is beginning to suffer vandalism from an unknown person or persons, Joseph informs her that 1) there is a "Heritage Day" variety show coming up soon and 2) there are people in this town that realize that the Trinhs are not mainstream Vietnamese, though only Joseph comprehends that the usual explanation of being Hmong or some other known minority. For the event, despite the worries of her parents, Marie performs the "stork dance", a traditional ritual of marking departure on and return from long journeys, in an archaic Four-paneled dress, white cloak and mask resembling the head of a black spoonbill. It is after this that Joseph, having performed something from Normandy, overhears that the vandal has been arrested, being the teenage son of another Vietnamese family that has set up a jewellry shop.

Years later, Joseph is in Miskatonic U as an Anthropology freshman while Marie, after high school, had disappeared back to Vietnam for a year. During an ethnographical trip to the highlands south of the city of Vinh in the selfsame nation (which turns out to be a government exclusion zone), Joseph, his elderly professor and several of his classmates are captured by fearsome tattooed warriors with shaved heads and sharpened teeth, wearing white kilts and wielding bronze weapons. Brought back to a valley village full of people, wearing kilts, short-sleeved jackets and Yem undergarments for the women, all sporting tattoos similar to Marie's parents, the party is intended to be tomorrow mornings sacrifice and tomorrow evenings barbecue.

However, a frantic (and now similarly tattooed) Marie manages to spare Joseph on account of his parents service to her parents (insurance brokers) while the divinations of the villages chief sorcerer-priest (and the fickle designs of Nyarlathotep) spares the others. Eventually allowed to participate in anthropological fieldwork among the villagers, Joseph discovers the full history of his girlfriends people, finds out about Delta Green cells both sanctioned and rogue from his professor (who pioneered negotiating with the more relatable cults and abominations) and also participates in a battle to protect the village from one of these rogue cells and their local military assets since one of his party turns out to be a traitor.

Aided by the darker sorceries of the warriors, men with bows and bronze swords and tattoos glowing with eldritch fire are able to deflect bullets and blades while Joseph helps the levied farmers, armed with old french rifles and a Hotchkiss machine gun from an earlier battle, fight off a flanking attack on the village. Eventually aided by a stampede of spectral Guar bulls and tigers, Joseph fights for a short while in the melee with his steel machete, the eldritch fire lending him some protection as it dances across his skin and leaves scars similar to the warriors tattoos. Upon returning to the village temple, the young man's jubilation fades as he finds that, after sacrificing the traitor, his professor sacrificed himself to finish the battle

Both Marie and Joseph develop a bit of a "laugh to keep from screaming" thing after dealing with battles and the occasional non-voluntary sacrifice of a gangster.

The future arc involves Joseph working with both the sanctioned DG cells and the Leng Viet to venture across southeast Asia, from northern Laos to Cambodia to the Burmese uplands and Rangoons underbelly in order to destroy Chaughner Faughn and his cult and recover the Book of Cracked Jade. Characters accompanying the primary character will include a Leng Viet archer who Joseph terms "spider eye" (need to think up proper names), a swordsman, a junior sorcerer from the village and a Delta green minder.

I hope that doesn't get too much more confusing.