They say the jungles of Kenya are called the "Dark Heart of Africa" for a reason, and I'm inclined to agree, but not for the reasons you'd expect coming from us. The jungle is a dangerous, deadly, and dismaying place. Not because of monsters, not because of the Bloody Tongue Cult, but simply because of the hazards from insects, disease, and other such things. Am I ever glad we don't have any of this stuff back home in Minnesota!
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Finally, I think we might be getting somewhere after all this time. Too bad getting to this point has been dismaying, stressful, deadly, and tedious...
I didn't want to get roped back into this mess, I really didn't - but fate has a strange way of calling your name again after it's already been answered once.
We have taken a most grievous blow for not asking the proper questions. Mr. Singh the tea-monger is not all that he appears to be, it seems...
Never have I felt so at home, and yet so far away from it at the same time. I sense great danger is coming for us, and my instincts are rarely wrong. Someone is not whom they seem, and our dealings in this foreign land have led me only to question everything, and accept nothing at face value.
My home country is beautiful, yes, but also incredibly dangerous. Perhaps more dangerous than any of the others may know, even outside of the threat of the Bloody Tongue Cult...
This country is very far from my homeland, but I find similarities here that make my longing far more bearable. I also find many more differences, ones which astonish me and frighten my new friends.
Why the Hell is it that everything that can possibly go wrong always goes wrong on my damn plane?!
As if traveling in the dark was not enough with the threat of being caught by those flying things and human cultists, we were up to our knees in something I can roughly describe as metaphorical guano, and politely describe as abject danger. Then again, it is not every day that one must team up with an alien time-traveler that wields an electric gun in order to destroy an evil lair straight from the pages of an action novella lurking in an ancient city underneath the Great Sandy Desert.
In the belly of the beast. It's a Biblical phrase, one you hear way too bloody often if you ask me. You want to know what being in the literal belly of the beast feels like, though, you could damn well do worse than being down where we were, in a cavern city more ancient and massive than any dinosaur - a place I am intricately, and strangely, all too familiar with...
Note: This post is cross-posted from Reddit's r/shatter board, where I posted pictures, and r/crimescene, where I first mentioned the story. The story was not posted on r/gore as per their policy, but it is mentioned. All of these subreddits are always NSFW. They are all quite gory and the latter features images, video, and gifs of actual deaths. The second features death and true crime scene images, some of them of child and animal victims. It's for that reason I emphasize the following - please, do not visit these subreddits if injury/death/gore bother you in any way. Especially r/gore, for the love of God, Viewer Discretion Incredibly Advised on that one. It's Quarantined for a reason.
-------- So, I have a hell of a story to tell you guys. I was almost a victim featured on r/crimescene. Just on Sunday, I was in a really horrible car accident. It was at a place I didn't realize was infamous for a lot of collisions, and I didn't see the light turn. I ended up slamming into a van coming off the highway, at 55 MPH. Both airbags went off, and I blacked out for a few minutes from the force of the impact. When I came back to, a guy wanted to know if I was okay. I was just so dazed from the impact I didn't even realize what had happened at first. I was bleeding from cuts to my hand from broken glass; the left window had absolutely shattered. I was okay, but dazed, and able to walk away from the wreck, thank god. Only scratches, whiplash, and cuts - nothing broken, possible mild concussion but otherwise alright. My car was absolutely totaled, and I was covered in glass and airbag dust. There were first responders involved and fortunately, the EMT checked me and I was alright. Since the crash, I've been anxious in cars and every day around the same time as the crash, the anxiety gets worse. I'm fairly certain I was mildly concussed, because I've noticed my speech has slurred a bit from normal, I was disoriented and dizzy for the last week, with my ears having not stopped ringing since the accident. Thinking was foggy - especially when recalling distant past memories - and I've forgotten some bits of info like old computer passwords, some really distant details of things, etc. Nothing super meaningful. Typing long responses or reading too many things made my brain feel more fatigued than usual as well. It has gotten better, though, from resting, and I am 100% fine now, enough to run a game for my players tonight. Otherwise, I'm okay and all the physical injuries have healed nicely. This is why I haven't been posting this week and am behind, by about two or so weeks, on material for the Thousand Masks Saga. I was just too mentally fatigued from the trauma, stress, and minor concussion to work on it. I needed the mental and emotional break. Things should be back to normal by mid-August, but until then I will be a bit behind on the material for Australia's entries. I have four of them queued up now, and am just working on finding time to write and post them. This may take a week or two, so please be patient while I get them up. All things concerned, I'm pretty fucking lucky. The police said it was the worst accident that they had seen at that intersection in a very long time. I could easily be hospitalized or another dead girl on r/gore. Thank every deity that ever was or could be that I was not, and I am here to share the story. I'm carless, yes - but alive. Stay safe when you drive, everyone, and for the love of God, wear your seat belt. It's what saved me from going through the windshield. Hell of a day this has been, and I'm not just talking about your typical Outback dangers...
Great Sandy Desert? More like Great Big Pain in My Arse, if I'd have named the bloody place. Sand in your shoes, mud in your face. Hot as Hell, and that's during the dry season. But it's not the dry season, is it? No, that'd be much too easy on us. It's the bloody wet season.
As if things couldn't get much worse. Lucas has kindly told me that the phrase "Buckley's Chance" is Aussie slang meaning, roughly, to have absolutely no chance at all. To be, as the Americans put it, "Up Shit Creek without a paddle". To be entirely luckless. I'm fairly sure none of that has anything to do with the ghosts of murder victims, but I guess there's a first time for everything.
From one tiny mining town to another... I'm beginning to sense a theme about the Land Down Under.
If there's one thing more primal than a fear of the dark or the unknown, it's a fear of fire. Merciless, pitiless, and all-consuming fire...
Then again, I'd argue our last night digging deeply into the injustice that occurred in Yirrimburra is probably a very close second, especially since none of us could control our own dreams... Yirrimburra really is not all that it seems, is it? And to think I once believed that this was a nice town!
First off, no, I don't bloody know what the hell happened to me over the past few days. Second of all, apparently trouble likes to follow this lot, because Lucas' uncle just kicked the bucket and none of us know what did it. Third, I'm making this whole thing quick, because my head is pounding like a 'roo jumped all over it and I just know there's something weird going on.
Darwin, Australia. Boy, am I ever glad to be somewhere that speaks my language for once, someplace I actually feel like I belong, someplace not as dreary and dirty as Shanghai's streets!
Grey Dragon Island... how it loomed sinister and smoky on the horizon as the sun peered over it like a great red eye, watching us all. It might have been beautiful, a tropical paradise... if we hadn't known better. If we didn't know, or see, what was under its placid surface. If we were naive.
There is never a dull moment in this group, is there? First we encounter cultists worshiping a dark aspect of Chaos Itself, then we encounter bizarre starfish-like beings and ghouls, and now this.
I feel like I've just escaped a car crash right now - dizzy from how fast things are moving and how quickly tides have shifted. But even still, I did not expect to go from being secure in my position at the top of the underground in Shanghai to aboard a "borrowed" ship sailing towards my rival's base of operations, with a group of Communists and four people I barely know.
Still, it's not the craziest thing I've seen or weathered, not by a long shot. It has been a rough night. My sleep is troubled by flashes of the horrors we saw at the Manor... and I was not the only one so affected by that forsaken place, either, not by any stretch of the imagination. I had known these experiences would change me. I did not, however, expect it to change Laurent so... viscerally as well as mentally.
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About The Blog
Welcome to Musings 2.0, my personal blog here on WordFlow! Here, you can find out what I'm doing now and where I'm going next, as well as get my thoughts on the Cthulhu Mythos, assorted sundry writing topics, and various scientific topics. Archives
January 2019
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