The Shadow out of Providence

I am currently in Norway collecting data on wilderness encounters, which I will share when my internet access is less limited. However in the interim Ezra Claverie’s very worthy Kickstarter for a Lovecraftian meta-text, The Shadow out of Providence, is about to reach the end of its funding campaign, as he was kind enough to remind me:

Tumble out of your hammock, seaman! I’ve orders for ye!

Run aloft to the very top of the Mule Abides, and sing out that you’ve spotted _The Shadow out of Providence_. Tell the lads to row for it with all their might, and we may yet return with a hold full of oil.

I’m offering an extra measure of rum for all the crew if we exceed our goal by a thousand Yankee dollars. Videlicett, if we raise $8,500, “the hardcover will have marbled endpapers, and every backer’s name will appear in the book, on the roster of the lost members of the 8th American-Soviet Friendship Expedition (which, sadly, had no survivors). This list will be separate from the acknowledgments, and part of ‘The Vostok Dossier’.”

Update #9, which I just posted, contains the full details, if ye should forget, or if ye should find the lingo of an old sea-captain less than transparent.

–Cap’n Ezra

One of the main attractions of this project for old-schoolers may be the new illustrations by Erol Otus, see below. However there is much to be said (which I guess I also need to say in a future post) for the proposition that Lovecraft and his circle of correspondents invented a key component of roleplaying, the idea of a shared world which was gradually revealed by the stories of individual protagonists. Of course, many of these protagonists died horribly in proper old-school fashion because D&D and the Cthulu Mythos are both the story of the world, not the story of the heroes in it. I’ve written before about how seeing the Mythos appear in the Electronic Arts game Murder on the Zinderneuf was my first transmedia experience, and I think it’s not jus a fondness for monsters that causes Lovecraft is named in Appendix N and beloved of roleplayers everywhere. Ezra’s metatext promises to be a worthy and exciting addition to this canon; check it out, I think you’ll dig it.