The Shards of Cthuhlu
“Lovecraft meets City of Heroes”
Our world lives in a blissful ignorance of a cold war that has spanned the ages. I, Vincent Spector, am a soldier in this war against beings beyond time and space. I was born in the small town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts in 1666; I came to know the name of these beings as many in my town worshipped them as gods. The Old Ones, as they were known, were said to have visited earth on many occasions wreaking havoc among mankind. It was discovered when we were teens that my brother Richard and I had a special “gift”, the ability to manipulate the world around us with the power of our minds. Our parents, who were high-priests in the cult of the Old One known as Cthulhu, believed we were sent to be sacrificed for his greatness. My brother and I escaped this fate and swore to fight this cult and stand against the entities that they worship.
The years past and both my brother and I had become formidable practitioners of the mystic arts. Unlike magicians, who use slight-of-hand to perform parlor tricks, true mystics are able to use the power of mind, body, and spirit to manipulate the physical world. Our unique abilities allowed us to gain great skills that the average practitioner would need a lifetime to attain. With our skills and knowledge came a greater understanding of the Old Ones and Cthulhu in particular. Cthulhu was a massive creature from the inter-dimensional city of R'lyeh that came to Earth to breed telepathic madness among humanity in preparation for the greater invasion from their world. Throughout the ages, powerful mystics have fought against the many cults whose goal it was to bring about the apocalypse foretold by many ancient texts and manuscripts across the globe. It is also because of these mystics that the world at large is unaware of the dangers that threaten their very existence. In time it had become more and more difficult to hide the strange happenings that occurred as a result of the many battles that spilled out into the open. To settle the mind of the average person, it was decided to release information about the Old Ones and the cult of Cthuhlu as a series of fictional tales. Created by H.P. Lovecraft, a powerful mystic in his own right, these tales were designed to not only dispel belief in the truth behind them, but guide any potential new members to the cults to false understandings of our design.
Through our many adventures, I felt my brother Richard become more and more estranged and his studies of Cthuhlu became an obsession. One of our many skills, along with our extended life, was the ability to psychically leave our physical bodies to commune with other warriors across the globe or to seek potential portals cultist may have created to the Old Ones dimension. Richard would spend days on the psychic plane, to the risk of his own well-being with no explanations upon his return. Eventually Richard and I parted ways and it wouldn’t be until decades later that I would discover what had become of him.
In the time since, the world had seen the rise super-humans, changing the dynamic of the war against the Old Ones. The cults had become more embolden now that the fantastic had become more common-place, battles between the cultist and what had now become the Order of the Midnight Club had become more violent and destructive than ever. Portals to the city of R'lyeh were opening across the globe and Cthuhlu’s psychic tentacles were wreaking havoc on the minds of thousands. The cults had fashioned powerful amulets known as “Shards of Cthuhlu” that they used to amplify their power and open these portals in hopes that enough of beasts’ being would enter into our world. It was believed that we had gathered all of the Shards and the balance of power had been returned to its precarious state…we were wrong.
The Order had decided to let the worlds superheroes handle the “heavy-lifting” in the war, only acting as council, advisors and keepers of the lore. I had settled into the role of Professor of the Occult at the University of ParagonCity, Rhode Island. My peaceful life would be shattered by the scream of a thousand souls that rippled across the psychic plane. Most of the warriors of the Order had relegated themselves to the life of scholars and had either lost the will or the ability to fight this new threat. We, who had become the keepers of the Shards of Cthuhlu, had chosen to sacrifice part of our psychic and spiritual selves to keeps the portals to R’lyeh closed and the beast at bay. It was our connection to that dimension that allowed us to understand the danger that has now risen. The world of mysticism is laced with irony, so it was no surprise when we discovered the source of the danger.
The town of Innsmouth had been lost to all but Lovecraft’s many tales and was now known as Newburyport, a sleepy unassuming town on the banks of the Merrimack River. When the seven of us arrived, there was a cold fog that had blanketed the entire town and the once active main street was lifeless and desolate. Although much had changed since my time as a child here, I instinctively where we would find the source of the evil that permeated the town. It was at the center of the aptly named “Downfall” wildlife forest where we found the towns’ people, hundreds of them, gathered at the familiar sacrificial alter of my youth. The townspeople, their eye’s blazing red, faces lifelessly staring at the figure standing at the alter chanting an ancient rite, were oblivious to our presence. This would change when I called out to the host of this twisted ritual…Richard! The eyes of all present turned to me, necks distended impossibly to focus on me as they all spoke in unison, “You are too late brother. All your efforts to contain him were for naught!” As they spoke, a familiar ring of energy began to form in the sky above. A portal, the size none of had ever seen before, had opened over the entire forest. As the tentacles began to emerge, the seven of us knew what had to be done. The other six Keepers rose through the air to meet the massive psychic appendages, focusing their spells through their amulets. I sped over the crowd to intercept Richard, now calling himself “Old Castro” an antagonist from the Lovecraft tales. I was stunned by the sight of the gold amulet that hung around Richards’s neck; it was an eighth Shard of Cthuhlu! It was obvious that the years past, Richard had succumb to the power of the beast and now is doing its bidding. I tried focusing all my power through my own amulet to try to break the bond between them, but my concentration was broken by the screams of other Keepers as one by one, they fell to the Old Ones power. It was now up to me, I only had one chance to stop this by cutting off the portals power at the source. I gathered the amulets of my fallen comrades and formed a sigil in the sky above the townspeople and performed a spell of reflection. The spell had broken the link between the townspeople and Richards amulet. The shock had left the people unconscious, but safe and gave Richard a brief enough moment of clarity to see the horror he was about to unleash.
The moment was enough for Richard to tear off his own Shard and rose to meet the tentacles now twisting unimpeded toward the earth. I used the Shard Sigil to shield Richard as best I could as he used the rest of his amplified power to draw the appendages back across the portal. The last sight of my brother would be as the tentacles twisted around his form and with his last breath he uttered the final spell that released the last of his power closed the portal forever. The Order had come and restored the town of Newburyport to a normal state, leaving its people with no memory of the events of that night. The other Keepers had sacrificed their mortal bodies and were now only the shadow guardians that defended the other portals around the world. The Shard Sigil was buried at the spot below where the alter stood in the forest, to aid me as I cleaved even more of my soul to guard this new opening. The discovery of an eighth shard left the question of whether there were more of these dangerous artifacts waiting to be discovered.
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