The Tree of Azathoth, page 29
John Booth’s adventures are a trip into the insanity of a Phipps-generated Lovecraft story. You have the protagonist that, much like Phipps himself, wants to help others but is hindered by something that Phipps isn’t, and that’s that everyone he is trying to help is a monster of some kind. Some of them he collects into a team that scours the wastelands looking for ways to assist other monsters and the remnants of humanity. Just as many of us Mythos (and superhero/cyberpunk/urban fantasy/science fiction) writers would not have networked with each other if not for the connective tissue that is Phipps, Booth has built a team to help him do his good works and carve something greater out of his niche of the Wastelands.
This new book (that I got to read before any of you, so HA! I win!), takes everything set before it and does a very Azathoth thing. Perhaps a very Phipps thing as well. Much as a long dream can shift into new realities and changes in what we know to be true, Phipps takes us twenty years after the second book to show us how a world entirely dominated by everything Lovecraft can be shaken like an Etch-A-Sketch into an entirely new image, all kicked into existence by Booth’s longing for his companions as well as the referenced Tree of Azathoth.
The Cthulhu Armageddon series is about fighting and accepting change as much as it is about Booth and the survivors of the human species. With this new, shook up, world for Booth, we also get something that Phipps had yet to do in a Lovecraft story, and that’s a touch on the classic pulp adventure style of Lovecraft’s contemporaries which also allows for people familiar with the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game to feel more at home in Booth’s apocalypse.
When we dive into the works of Phipps, we see some common themes in that he loves to world build, take his characters through painful arcs, and is not afraid of completely altering the fabric of the book’s reality if it means giving his character a new challenge. Tearing down the theater to create a better movie sounds like a dangerous approach to writing, but it not only works with Booth, it kind of has to work with Booth.
At this point, and after everything he’s lost, what else does he even have left? His world must be shaken up if Booth is to have any hope of a future where he isn’t constantly tortured. We keep reading to see him gain hope. The stories continue to show us how that hope can be torn away from him. Of course, the moment he reaches that blissful moment, the story will end. So, here we are, hoping to see how Phipps tortures Booth this time.
The tree in the title of this book seems to be a deity made from man’s intervention, but it reads to me as something that man made to interface with the dreaming god. A conduit of flesh from our reality that reaches into something bigger. How would that look from inside your own head? Would you notice if one of the things you dreamt up started building a way to understand the rest of the dreams in your mind? And if you did notice, would you wake up?
It is that kind of complete brain-twister of horror that makes me excited whenever Phipps has a new title coming out, and even more so to shoot ideas back and forth with him. Together, Phipps and I, along with several others (waving at a bunch of people named David), have done a handful of “connected” anthologies.
These are books with brought to you by a modern Lovecraftian Circle of authors, all of whom were brought together, or networked, by Phipps. Authors like David Hambling (Harry Stubbs, The War of the God Queen), David Niall Wilson (The Call of Distant Shores), and David J. West (Cowboys and Cthulhu). Each of these titles, on top of his other prolific works, includes at least two stories from Phipps with at least one being a Cthulhu Armageddon tale. No matter what adventure in whatever genre is tugging at him, Phipps is never too far from his friend and ally, John Booth.
As prolific as Charles is, it is his engagement with his audience, his networking with his contemporaries, and his depth of understanding of the source material that makes me think he would have been welcomed into the Lovecraft Circle of authors back in the day. Or, perhaps that’s not fair to Phipps. He somehow manages to put out full-length novels at a pace that most cannot even fathom, while still doing the same level of networking, audience discussions, and research (or more so) than even Howard Philips did.
Our real-life Booth does all of this without breaking a sweat and keeps us, his fans, and his friends steering clear of the hazards but getting close enough to see what absolute horrors are on its shores and to smell the colossal nightmares deep in its sands.
Madness without the debilitating side-effects courtesy of our captain, C. T. Phipps.
Glossary
* * *
H.P. Lovecraft created a vast array of strange and unusual creatures as well as places for his world. These were expanded on and added to by many authors over the years. However, they can also be extremely confusing or weird. Which was the point. I’ve gathered here a list of definitions for many of them in hopes that some readers will be able to have an easier time navigating the Dreaming City.
Al-Azif: A book of magic that was used to create the Necronomicon.
Abdul al-Hazred: An early sorcerer and occultist from the 7th century. He wrote the Necronomicon and founded one of the early cults of the Great Old Ones. He was mysteriously killed by alien forces in a crowded bazaar.
Arkham: A large city formerly in Massachusetts. It was destroyed by the Rising.
Avatar: A manifestation of a fragment of a Great Old One or other higher beings consciousness. If summoned via magic, they are often less like the gods themselves but a combination of them with whatever the summoning thinks they’re like.
Azathoth: The supreme god of the universe. It is a barely intelligent primordial force that creates and destroys at will. It is served and controlled by Nyarlathotep.
The Black Cathedral: An ancient Elder Thing structure taken over by Alan Ward and turned into the headquarters for the Cult of Cthulhu.
The Black Soldier: A Wasteland scare legend of a ghostly warrior that wanders the desert to collect the souls of warriors slain in battle. It is a face of Nyarlathotep.
Carcosa: A planet or possibly entire dimension with the Dreamlands (or accessible by it). It is a land of fairy tales, art, and sorcery ruled by worshipers of Hastur. The Plateau of Leng and Kingdom of Hali are sometimes associated with.
Cat: The race from Earth that is furry and sociopathic but adorable. They are intelligent and capable of speech in the Dreamlands.
Cats from Saturn: A race of cats that are capable of shapechanging, size-changing, and other magic. They live in a dream of Saturn from a long-dead Roman that they stabilized with their power.
Celephais: The sister city of the Dreaming City, known as the Shining City, it has an almost identical origin. The product of the dreamer Kuranes' powerful imagination, it was crafted by his immense will. A native Englishman, he created the city to reflect his initial dreams of idealized medieval fantasy kingdom, but it gradually came to resemble Modern England as he grew to miss it. It has since grown into an empire.
The City: Also known as the Dreaming City. It is a massive island of sanity in the madness of the Dreamland created by Randolph Carter and later expanded by millions of other dreamers from the now-dead Earth. It resembles a weird hybrid of New York, Los Angeles, Arkham, and other dead human cities.
The Color: One of a race of vampiric energy clouds that travel through space, absorbing life and reproducing. They are vulnerable to radiation and being trapped between in physical substances. They are the people of the Unimaginable Horror and its spawn that it spread throughout the universe.
The Council: The leadership of the Dreaming City based on the Council of Leaders from New Arkham. It replaced the former City Elders.
Cult of Cthulhu: A once vast cult of worshipers that previously spanned the world. Despite their god rising and ignoring them, the cult continues to exist in the City.
Cthulhu: The most infamous and powerful of the Great Old Ones. He appears as a mile-tall tentacled squid-dragon-humanoid. He is the Lord of R'lyeh and the High Priest of Azathoth. He is the first of his kind and lord of the Cthulhuoid race.
Cthulhuoid: Lesser members of Cthulhu's race that are giants and psychic beings of great power.
Dagon: The least of the Great Old Ones and a servant of Cthulhu. Supposedly slain by Alan Ward. It is still worshiped by Deep Ones despite not answering their prayers for millennia.
Deep Ones: A race of aquatic humanoids that lived alongside humanity beneath the waves for millennia. They worship Dagon, Mother Hydra, and Cthulhu. They are accepted as a demihuman race in the City.
Demihumans: The polite term for the human offshoots like Deep Ones, ghouls, Faceless Ones, and other species that can still breed with mankind as well as produce viable offspring.
Dreamer: A human, cat, ghoul, or other being capable of altering the nature of reality in the Dreamlands. This is the basis of magic and far easier in the Dreamlands than in the former physical world.
The Dreaming City: See The City.
The Dreaming King: A legendary figure who altered the Dreaming City from its original subdued state to its massive current size. Believed by many to be Randolph Carter.
The Dreamlands: A dimension where thought becomes reality. It exists alongside physical reality and where the gods of the universe are born.
The Dream-Quest of Randolph Carter: A movie made by Gabriel Booth to tell the story of the City's founder. It is largely accurate except for the insertion of a love interest and portraying Carter as a two-fisted action hero over the horror-obsessed scholar he was.
The Dunwych: A tribal people of multiple cultures mixed together after the Rising. They are well-adapted to the Wasteland and are users of technology.
Elder Gods: Powerful dreaming entities that embody the dreams of humanity of divine beings. These include the Small Gods of Earth and benevolent interpretations of Great Old Ones as well as Other Gods.
Elder Things: A race of tentacled, stalk-like aliens that once ruled the Earth. They created the shoggoths and uplifted humanity from apes. They are a race of scientists and slavers that were enemies of the Great Old Ones.
Elder Sign: A star-like symbol that provides protection against the lesser species of the Other Gods. It has no effect on baseline humans, Kastro’vaal, Great Race of Yith, or the Elder Things. It is believed to have been created by either the Elder Gods or the Elder Things to battle the Great Old Ones.
The Empty House: A pocket universe created as the personal domain of Gabriel Booth upon his transformation. It appears as a large house or small mansion that is infinite in size. It is quite comfortable but isolated from time as well as any visitors. It is located in Carcosa, Hali, and Leng simultaneously. Gabriel briefly considered evacuating the Old Universe’s survivors here.
Esoteric East: A nickname for the New England Wasteland due to its frontier-like environments.
Eyes of Yog-Sothoth: See Kastro'vaal.
Faceless Ones: A race of men without faces who live underground and wield vast knowledge regarding science as well as sorcery. Possibly related to the K'nyanians, only mutated much worse. They have mouths on their hands.
Familiar: An animal or lesser being containing a summoned spirit or consciousness that is bound to a witch or wizard’s will. They are usually intelligent and powerful in their own right. Lesser willed wizards frequently become dominated by their pets.
Ghouls: A race of canine humanoids that can appear as human beings as well as breed with them. They primarily live underground, possess advanced technology, and eat copious amounts of meat. Significantly friendlier to humanity than most species.
Gods: A title given by mankind to various powerful entities.
Great Old Ones: Massive immortal psychic entities that are the apex of the universe's beings, uplifted by Nyarlathotep to embody their species' development. Earth has a higher number that normal with perhaps a one hundred or more.
Great Race of Yith: A race of conical aliens that are psychically capable of possessing others as well as traveling through time. Unlike most species, they are relatively friendly to humankind, if condescending.
Hali: A Medieval-esque kingdom in the Dreamlands where all fairy tales, nightmares, and sorceries are true. It is associated with Hali and Carcosa. There is supposedly a vast lake within it that can bring life to all wishes and desires as well as contains its own Great Old One.
Hastur: The King in Yellow and the Lord of Decay. Hastur appears as a humanoid alien hidden by a yellow cloak among other avatars. A Great Old One, he is worshiped by a vast cult of wizards as well as artists, fungal, shepherds, and undead beings. Like all his kind, he is utterly inscrutable to mankind.
Hyborian Age: A period of human civilization taking place roughly 20,000 to 13,000 years ago that contained Bronze to Medieval levels of technology as well as far greater amounts of magic.
Ilek-Vad: A city taken over by Randolph Carter, who ruled it as a king for a time. It has many stereotypical elements of a fantasy kingdom and dates back to the Hyborian Age. It has since modernized to an extent and is a chief trading partner of the City.
Kadath: A vast mountaintop castle fortress where the Small Gods of Earth live and breed with their human slaves. It is the inspiration for Olympus, Shamballah, and Elysium according to scholars.
Kastro'vaal: As close as human pronunciation can come to the true name of the Eyes of Yog-Sothoth. They are a race of time and space traveling aliens that exist outside of reality. They are shapechangers that can assume the form of other races and even breed with them. Their default appearance varied tremendously but can be described as “armored slime with a central humanoid body.”
The King in Yellow: Another movie by Gabriel Booth that was never completed. It is based on an infamous play considered blasphemous, cursed, lewd, and terrifying in equal respects.
Kithnid: A being believed to be Cthulhu's equal and opposite by some Elder God worshipers, but others worship him as a benevolent version of the Great Old One himself. It supposedly lives on the top of Kadath rather than in R’lyeh. The Re’Kithnid postulates him as the supreme good of the universe and prophet of Yog-Sothoth opposed by a Satanic Azathoth-worshiping Cthulhu.
Knights of Arkham: A human supremacist hate group that venerates the Great Old Ones, Outer Gods, and practices magic while teaching utter nonsense. The organization also favors certain groups of humans it deems purebloods over others based on discredited racial science. Its religion is just an excuse to accumulate as much power as possible while manipulating the masses.
Leng: A vast plateau in the Dreamlands where the Empire of Leng exists. Its population are believed to be survivors of another human-populated universe destroyed by the Great Old Ones.
Men of Leng: A demihuman species that dwell on the Plateau of Leng where their vast empire exists. They are trading partners with the City and many other communities but find the city's anti-slaving laws deeply frustrating. They appear as satyrs and succubi with many inhuman elements like furry legs, hooves, horns, and wings.
Mi-Go: The Fungi from Yuggoth are a psychic, space-dwelling race that exists in the asteroid belt around the Sol system. They are not natives to this region but have since immigrated to live among its residents. They employ human brains in various robotic devices, including human-like androids. The race still exists in the Dreamlands despite its universe being destroyed.
Miskatonic University: A Pre-Rising Ivy League school with a focus on the occult and metaphysics. A university named in its honor has been constructed in the City.
Moon-Beasts: A race that has oppressed and conquered the people of Leng. They communicate with flutes but are otherwise silent and eat human or demihuman species. John speculates they are a degenerate subspecies of Elder Things, but that may be his prejudices regarding both.
Mother Hydra: Another Great Old One of the Deep Ones’ race that is worshiped as their supreme deity now that Dagon is dead. She is a fertility goddess and bears some similarity to Shub-Niggurath.
The Necronomicon: The book written by Abdul al-Hazred. It is a fairly accurate description of the history of the world and the creation of the Great Old Ones and their inevitable rise to destroy the world. It contains numerous magical rituals and true names of deities but is not primarily a book of sorcery. See the Al-Azif.
New Arkham: A city built on the remains of a United States Air Force base nearby the original city of Arkham, Massachusetts. It was destroyed by a Cthulhuoid entity, and its survivors fled to Kingsport then the Dreaming City. The population was both fascist and xenophobic.
New Ulthar: A small, cat-ridden, frontier cattle town that seems obliviousness to the horrors around it. John settled there with Mercury for the better part of two decades.
Nyarlathotep: The Other Gods' messenger. A being that has an infinite number of faces and avatars across all the cosmos, it is capable of dealing with other beings on their own level no matter how small or insignificant. It is the guardian of gods and transcendence, no matter how foul or terrifying.
Old Universe: John's reality (termed Universe-2821 by the Great Race of Yith and the Mi-Go). Yog-Sothoth has effectively consumed the entirety of it and its survivors have since fled to the Dreamlands or other realities.
Other Gods: Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, and Yog-Sothoth. The true gods of existence.
Psychic: Humans carrying the genes modified by the Elder Things that allow them to will their dreams into reality. Psychics are much more common in the aftermath of the Rising. All sorcerers possess this quality to some extent.
Prophecies of the Rat God: A book written by Hastur-worshiping ghouls during the Black Death that spoke of it as a divine punishment from Zum-Trivalis. It speaks of the destruction of the world and humanity fleeing to a world of Dreams. The rites of the religion are deeply sexual and cannibalistic.
Randolph Carter: A writer of weird fiction and occult investigator from Earth in the 1920s. The descendant of wizards, he refused to turn back from his studies despite the death of his best friend and became a powerful dreamer. After a failed quest to contact the Small Gods of Earth, he eventually sought ultimate enlightenment from Yog-Sothoth. This resulted in his tragic fusion with the alien wizard Zkauba. Randolph Carter created the basis of the Dreaming City during his quest and is believed by many to be the Dreaming King.
