Chthonians in Guatemala

Cement Surroundings are no defense.

Via Boing Boing, via the Guatemalan government's Flicker feed.

Gone to Sleep

Moby and Kelli Scarr make a song based on this picture by artist Phil Toledano.


The video about their creation process (and the song itself) gives a great vibe of eerie desolation.




Author's note: the first night I watched this it inspired a fascinating nightmare about Changeling: the Lost's "Gentry", so I'm considering it prime fodder for that game at least.

Transportation Accessability

Need to strand your PCs far from hope of backup?

This should help you hit the right ballpark:


The New Scientist article also gives maps of world-wide roads, railways, and navigable rivers.

Via Fast Company, via the Delta Green Mailing List.

Basilisk Images

Exerpt from the comp.basilisk FAQ:

5. How does a basilisk operate?

The short answer is: we mustn't say. Detailed information is classified beyond Top Secret.

The longer answer is based on a popular-science article by Berryman (New Scientist, 2001), which outlines his thinking. He imagined the human mind as a formal, deterministic computational system -- a system that, as predicted by a variant of Gödel's Theorem in mathematics, can be crashed by thoughts which the mind is physically or logically incapable of thinking. The Logical Imaging Technique presents such a thought in purely visual form as a basilisk image which our optic nerves can't help but accept. The result is disastrous, like a software stealth-virus smuggled into the brain.


6. Why "basilisk"?

It's the name of a mythical creature: a reptile whose mere gaze can turn people to stone. According to ancient myth, a basilisk can be safely viewed in a mirror. This is not generally true of the modern version -- although some highly asymmetric basilisks like B-756 are lethal only in unreflected or reflected form, depending on the dominant hemisphere of the victim's brain.

- David Langford

Reiko

A little too overtly bloody to prefectly fit the Slaugh archetype, but subtler than the stereotypical Redcap. Still seems like she'd fit in pretty well with the Unseelie Kithain crowd though.

Many flash animations available at the artist's site here.


Via Newgrounds.

Extra-terrestrial anomalies

UFOs and other oddities caught on NASA film and imagery.

Ice particles and photographic artifacts? Or evidence our secret masters don't want you to know about.


Via Dirty Russia.

Paradox Realm of Finance

After successfully over-leveraging his assets by several orders of magnitude, a Syndicate Technocrat stumbles into his first Paradox Realm.


Alternate explanations:

• Arcadian Realm
• Otherspace
• Hastur Incursion
• Nightmare Realm

Via Dirty Russia.

Bachelorette (Isobel version)

Love the recursion. Seems a good portrayal of a Durance.

Quicktime version available at Bjork's official site here.

Mythic Miami

From the Miami New Times:

On Christmas night a year ago, God fled Heaven to escape an audacious demon attack -- a celestial Tet Offensive. The demons smashed to dust his palace of beautiful blue-moon marble. TV news kept it secret, but homeless children in shelters across the country report being awakened from troubled sleep and alerted by dead relatives. No one knows why God has never reappeared, leaving his stunned angels to defend his earthly estate against assaults from Hell. "Demons found doors to our world," adds eight-year-old Miguel, who sits before Andre with the other children at the Salvation Army shelter. The demons' gateways from Hell include abandoned refrigerators, mirrors, Ghost Town (the nickname shelter children have for a cemetery somewhere in Dade County), and Jeep Cherokees with "black windows." The demons are nourished by dark human emotions: jealousy, hate, fear.

One demon is feared even by Satan. In Miami shelters, children know her by two names: Bloody Mary and La Llorona (the Crying Woman). She weeps blood or black tears from ghoulish empty sockets and feeds on children's terror. When a child is killed accidentally in gang crossfire or is murdered, she croons with joy. "If you wake at night and see her," a ten-year-old says softly, "her clothes be blowing back, even in a room where there is no wind. And you know she's marked you for killing."

The homeless children's chief ally is a beautiful angel they have nicknamed the Blue Lady. She has pale blue skin and lives in the ocean, but she is hobbled by a spell. "The demons made it so she only has power if you know her secret name," says Andre, whose mother has been through three rehabilitation programs for crack addiction. "If you and your friends on a corner on a street when a car comes shooting bullets and only one child yells out her true name, all will be safe. Even if bullets tearing your skin, the Blue Lady makes them fall on the ground. She can talk to us, even without her name. She says: 'Hold on.'"

A blond six-year-old with a bruise above his eye, swollen huge as a ruby egg and laced with black stitches, nods his head in affirmation. "I've seen her," he murmurs. A rustle of whispered Me toos ripples through the small circle of initiates.

Full story here.

Less pretty, but also available at Archive.org.

Cult-reviving politician killed by lightning

Reposted from Mosnews:

A Ukrainian politician who had been excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church for his attempts to revive ancient pagan cult was killed by lightning on Saturday while on a fishing trip, Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda reported on Monday.

. . .

A former activist in the Soviet youth movement Comsomol, Chervoni started an independent political career in early 1990s with radical Ukrainian nationalists. At some point, the politician joined the religious movement Runvera – a Ukrainian sect that seeks revival of obscure ancient cults, in particular, the worship of the sun god Dazhbog.

When he was retired from the governor’s post in 2006, all Orthodox churches in Rovno Region had a special prayer thanking the Lord for deliverance.

This story was trawled up by the Delta Green folks who had the obvious take that, in the name of nationalist cultic revival, this guy had been dredging up ancient powers best left forgotten.

But from a World of Darkness point of view he might just as easily have been fried by the Technocracy before he could use his newly acquired reality deviant abilities to revive yet another brand of superstitionist practice among the masses. Simple Paradox backlash wouldn't be out of the question either.

Via Tenebrax on the Delta Green mailing list.

Abandoned Places (etc.)

As a source for desolate, claustrophobic, and/or seedy locations to set a game I highly recommend the Abandoned Places blog. A smattering of it's more famous or interesting areas includes:

Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong

Abandoned Places:

Kowloon used to be one of the areas of Hong Kong city. By the end of 1970s Walled City began to grow. Square buildings folded up into one another as thousands of modifications were made, virtually none by architects or engineers, until the entire City became monolithic. Labyrinthine corridors ran through the City, some former streets (at the ground level, and often clogged up with refuse), and some running through upper floors, through and between buildings. The streets were illuminated by fluorescent lights, as sunlight rarely reached the lower levels.

. . .

By the early 1980s, Kowloon Walled City had an estimated population of 35,000. The City was notorious for its excess of brothels, casinos, opium dens, cocaine parlours, food courts serving dog meat, and secret factories.

Centralia, United States

The moderately well known Pennsylvania town where a mine fire, raging unchecked since 1962, occasionally still opens smoking rents in the ground and chars hillside foliage.

Gunkanjima, Japan

Abandoned Places:

Mitsubishi bought the island in 1890 and began the project, the aim of which was retrieving coal from the bottom of the sea. They built Japan’s first large concrete building, a block of apartments in 1916 to accommodate their burgeoning ranks of workers (many of whom were forcibly recruited labourers from other parts of Asia), and to protect against typhoon destruction.

As petroleum replaced coal in Japan in the 1960s, coal mines began shutting down all over the country, and Hashima’s mines were no exception. Mitsubishi officially announced the closing of the mine in 1974, and today it is empty and bare, which is why it’s called the Ghost Island. Travel to Hashima was re-opened on April 22, 2009 after more than 20 years of closure.

Pripyat, Ukraine

Ukrainian community built to house workers at Chernobyl. Evacuated and abandoned after the 1986 disaster.

Photo by Artem Grinchenko.

Link.


Thanks to Mike Lake of the Unknown Armies mailing list for pointing out the site.

The Horned Man in Sports

One of the old gods proving his mettle against these modern human contrivances. Probably a Firbolg or Runnerswift.

Image originally from Mutantti aamulenkillä.

Via Dirty Russia.

Bug Hunter

Via Dirty Russia.

Forestry Blades

Some random, cool-looking implements intended for wilderness and/or forestry use.
Click images for more information.

Gator Combination Axe
Gerber: purveyor of fine baby foods and bladed implements.

Woodsman's Pal Axe
Also available in salty sea dog.

The Magnum Kukri
Because it's tough to go wrong a giant black machete.

Again via the Delta Green list, c/o the MIB.

Logging Spider

This prototype spider-walking logging tractor (apparently designed by John Deere / Plustech Oy) may be a bit slow but would seem to provide a couple advantages over conventional means: The ability to maneuver through the confines of a forest for selective logging, and the ability to navigate previously impassible terrain while providing a stable platform for heavy machinery.

Clearly the era of Labors is nearly upon us.



Via the Delta Green mailing list, via Tech Fresh.
(And apparently through a million other blog re-postings as well.)

Paradox-free Mouse

Finally a mouse custom-made for the Magi of House Thig.

More steampunk/arcana projects and cephalopod pics at the artist's website.

The Shadows of St. Petersburg

The hungry ghosts crowd in great overlapping mobs, swarming unseen through the places they haunted in life. They search wearily and in vain for something, anything to give their prolongation meaning, to feed the emptiness inside.


Of Alexey Titarenko:

Major photo series include "City of Shadows" (1992-1994), "Black and White Magic of St. Petersburg" (1995-1997), and "Time Standing Still" (1998-1999). In those series Titarenko paints a bitter picture of a Russia (seen through the lens of St. Petersburg), where people live in a world of unrealized hopes and where time seems to have stopped.

More here.

Nature's Wrath

A spirit of wilderness and desolation lashes out with impotent rage at the highway desecrating it's land.

Or, alternately: The last remaining eddy of excess energy released by a powerful ritual in the area.


Via Nothing To Do With Arbroath, by way of Boing Boing.

The Dyatlov Pass Accident

Of the event Wikipedia has this to say:

The mysterious circumstances and subsequent investigations of the hikers' deaths have inspired much speculation. Investigations of the deaths suggest that the hikers tore open their tent from within, departing barefoot in heavy snow; while the corpses show no signs of struggle, two victims had fractured skulls, two had broken ribs, and one was missing her tongue. According to sources, the victims' clothing contained high levels of radiation . . . Soviet investigators determined only that "a compelling unknown force" had caused the deaths, barring entry to the area for years thereafter. The causes of the accident remain unclear.

Article here.


Via the Delta Green mailing list.

In Crystal Abiding

Blue crystal everywhere. The apartment's interior was completely covered with the stuff.

What ritual needed this as a focus?
What arcane process gone awry left this in it's wake?
What bizarre thing, new to sentience, dwelt here in dark mineral-saturated waters for a time? Or left this residue behind, a spent chrysalis?

Article and video here.


Via Boingboing.