Awash in Seas of Ebony

I finally got a chance to play my newly-acquired game, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, last night. I bought it a week or so ago and even upgraded my video card to run it but, upon trying to play the first time, it errored out. I wasn't too worried the first time as most games require the player to update drivers and apply patches before playing anyway. So I upgraded my sound and video drivers before heading to the game's website to look for patches. There I discovered that there were no patches available because the developer had gone out of business shortly after the game's release. In addition, I read that it had been ported to the PC from XBox for free by dedicated programmers. This didn't bode well. I did all I could and still couldn't get it to run. The final option was to upgrade DirectX to the latest version which I was unable to do because of the beta version of SP2 I had on my computer. Well, I surmounted this issue last week and the game started like a champ. So, if anyone out there is considering buying the game, remember to have the latest audio& video drivers installed as well as DirectX 9.0c.

If you're unfamiliar with things Cthulhu, then know that the game is based on the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, a horror author from the early 20th century. It is not totally incorrect to think of him as having taken the torch from Edgar Allen Poe. Cthulhu is but one fictional diety in a whole pantheon that Lovecraft created. When mere mortals encounter these eldritch gods, they tend to go insane. Lovecraft created the fictional New England town of Arkham and its asylum has housed countless literary figures. We humans are just incapable of grasping the true nature of the world and so we lose our sanity in an attempt at mental self-defense when confronted with awful truths. Many a Lovecraft story involves a character in the Arkham Asylum fearful retelling the horrific events that make up his tale.

As for the game at hand, I managed to get through the prologue last night before chickening out. The interface is first person but, unlike most FPSs, there's no HUD. Loss of health and of sanity are indicated by such things as a hastening heartbeat and your POV going all fuzzy or jerky.

The game starts with a movie which shows your character, Jack Walters, in a cell at the Arkham Asylum.



There's the usual mumbling to oneself about evil lurking in the dark corners of the earth, the weird symbols and, well, the whole Lovecraftian thing about your character being insane. This leads Jack to hang himself.



The player is then transported back several years to show the events which led to his confinement and ultimate demise. Things begin with you, Jack Walters, standing out in the rain in front of a strange house talking to a police officer. The joint is occupied by a group of cultists led by Victor Holt. Gunshots were reported as coming from the house and so the police were called in to investigate. Holt asked to speak with you personally and so the coppers summoned you to the scene. I made my way up the winding stairs leading to the front of the house. I got to the front yard and saw Holt standing by a corner of the house and he started yelling something that I couldn't make out. As I took my first step towards him, all hell broke loose as shots rang out. The awful event was very sudden, and wholly unexpected. Holt disappeared and I ran to the corner where he had stood because A) I wanted to try and catch up with him and B) to get the fuck out of the line of fire. Zipping over to the side of the house, I find a door and it's open. Now, if the first shot had the effect of startling me, then walking into the old, dark house just plain creeped me out.

Running up the stairs, I found myself in a dimly-lit hallway with a bunch of doors. I could hear shots being fired from close by and someone in the house yelling at the coppers outside, taunting them. Carefully opening the doors revealed rooms like this one:



There was art hanging on the walls and whoever lived there wasn't exactly into French Impressionism. It was more like the work of H.R. Giger's dad when he was in his Great Old Ones phase.



And so I wandered upstairs.



I came across some rooms with occultists taking aim at the men in blue down below.



Whenever the cultist would become aware of my presence, they'd straighten up from their hunched positions at the window and greet me. By name. How the fuck did they know who I was? By doing so, they put themselves in the line of fire and were shot dead just after acknowledging me. The answer to my question came when I entered this room:



The walls were lined with photos of and newspaper clippings about yours truly. This was all going to end in tears.

As I wandered, I found some keys which got me into rooms which were locked. One of those rooms was the library. There were shelves and shelves of books written in languages which were completely unfamiliar. By unfamiliar, I don't mean something like - Oh, these are written in German but I don't know any German. What I mean is those letters or pictograms were not composed by a human hand. But even more disconcerting than a library full of unearthly tomes was the moaning that emanated from one side of the room. Investigating, I found a trap door behind a bookshelf. As I opened the door, the moaning became almost deafening. I descended and found myself in a tunnel dug into the ground beneath the house. There were wooden steps with the walls and floor lined with wooden planks. Towards the middle of the staircase, a board broke and I fell down several steps to a landing. Rising from my fall, I noticed that the stairs were completely broken and that they were now insurmountable. The tunnel meandered on for a bit before I came to a room which, unfortunately but not unexpectedly, was a morgue.



In one corner there were several gurneys with corpses upon them while in another there were the coolers and, well, you can see from the picture what state they were in. Across from the coolers was a door which led to a most eldritch chamber. Entering, I found myself on a little balcony with stairs leading down to the floor on either side of me. The room was lit by a green glow. The walls were tiled as a laboratory. In the center was this obelisk hoolie which appeared to be a generator of some kind. Oh, and there was this figure hanging from the far wall his chest splayed open.



My sanity must have taken quite a hit because things got all fuzzy. As you can see, he looks like the police officer from The Silence of the Lambs except his liver wasn't removed and eaten with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. Instead it was removed along with his brain, lungs, kidneys, and other viscera and put into the aquarium thingies which were built into columns along the wall. They were pulsing and throbbing in their tanks. Tubes and cables were attached to the organs and there were also tubes and cables leading from each tank to the poor guy hanging from the wall. Also notice the crystal in the picture on the right and the control panel on the left. The crystal somehow provided energy to this foul contraption. I fiddled with the control panel. It had a face like a clock that was divided into 6 equal parts. I touched the device and the part at the top of the face lit up green. The others lit up deasil one at a time until the whole face glowed. Suddenly giant blue spikes of electricity flew over my head and struck the man. He writhed and screamed in agony until death was upon him and the bolts of blue energy stopped. I felt badly at first for having killed the man but, upon further reflection, I decided that it was probably a good thing for both him and myself.

Thinking that ending a grotesque science experiment was enough, I left the room and made my way through a door which was at one side. If the room I had just left appeared as a laboratory then the one I then found myself in was a dungeon. The green glow remained but the walls were lined with large bricks in strange patterns. There was a pool in the center of the room which was filled with what appeared to be mercury. Above it were a few of those eerie green crystals hanging from the end of chains which were dangling down like stalactites. On opposite sides of the pool were a set of controls and a receptacle not unlike those in the adjacent room of horror. Being unable to get back upstairs into the house, I found myself stuck in these heinous catacombs with but one thing to do. Although it went against all my gaming principles, I inserted a green crystal that I'd picked up and activated the controls.

The room began to glow a brilliant white with the source of the light coming from the area above the pool. From within the refulgent din, a figure began to materialize. I shall never forget the noxious afrite that suddenly stood before me. At thirty feet, the creature towered over my meager frame. It was vaguely humanoid in that it had the requisite limbs but its head was ghastly. At its side, smaller beasts appeared mid-air and flew off into the distance. Where could such creatures dwell to be summoned? I stood rooted to the ground as the creature took its first lumbering steps out of the light towards me. I screamed and raised my hands to shield my face. All at once, everything went white…

It would be the height of mercy if I were able to forget those horrible events but, alas, I cannot. Six months in the Arkham Asylum has made my mind marginally better but that night haunts me still. Six years after my release, I am now a private investigator.



One night while sitting at my desk, I receive a call from the district manager of the First National Grocery Store Chain asking me to take a case. A store manager has gone missing and he wants me to find him. I grudgingly accepted and left for Innsmouth, a small town near Arkham.