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On Invocating the Terrestrial Ones, the Summoning of Yithean Echoes, and the Construction of a Shining Technohedron
🕑 Added 2023-11-27 23:08:45 +0000 UTCA basic primer on the Rites of the Abyss by T. Tekmander
Approved for ages 16 and up.
This guide I have decided to write in order to ensure that even the most hobbyist Occultek can benefit from the ability to conjur forth the cosmos. To begin with, I shall provide a list of pelagic liturguries, means of summoning forth echoes of the Terrestrials, ones that should fit a broad list of use-cases, as well as means to summon forth a higher intelligence to act as collaborator in the arcane, and lastly the means to craft a tool to help sharpen ones eldritch studies.
Links forged between mortality and true divinity, the Terrestrials are those post-mortal mysteks who have learned enough of the secret arts of the outer gods to craft for themselves a throne in the dreamlands. Many of these beings have since left the world, but though their spirit might be dead and their body lost, echoes of their power contained by their traces still remain: follow these steps, and you shall learn how to call upon these echoes of almost-divinity.
First, you must choose an appropriate Terrestrial for the ritual you are attempting to summon. There are many potential Terrestrials, but for the purposes of this guide I will only list the kindest three to conjure.
The first is the Hollow Mind, Ogghud Jaggai Zkauba, Randolph Carter. Appearing as a humanoid with a vaporous skull and elegantly tailored clothes, this Terrestrial God was once a mortal occultist who had found the ultimate gate and in the process found themselves transformed. His price is simple but harrowing: to invoke him is to allow his Echo to take your place: it shall possess your body for the duration. In return, you will find your mind in a lightless, soundless world of emptiness, as the echoes Hollow Mind possesses no vessel for the petitioner to possess since they left the world. This experience will last an unknown amount of time, typically between thirty minutes to six hours. The longest period of replacement I have observed has lasted one month: the process left significant psychological damage upon the petitioner.
This process has no effect on the soul as the echo of the Terrestrial known as Randolph Carter no longer possesses one. To conjure this being, you must perform your ritual at the setting sun, and use a key formed from silver. Hold it to the sky during the apex of your ritual, pointed at the setting sun, and twist seven times while repeating these words: “Gnngafai Gata. Mychak Yigguth Ch’aak. Gata Yigguth. Zkauba Yigguth H’hhhgai. Khjam Randolph Yigguth. H’H [Insert Petitioners Name] Yigguth”. Do this, and the echo will appear before you. Should your ritual be transformative, or one that involves gates, he will provide you the power of alteration.
The next is Kuranes, the Dreamer King. A king of the dreamlands whose imagination was so powerful that it made them a peer to the gods themselves and even gave them the power of illusory creation, it is said Kuranes still dwells in his city, Celephaïs, which still dwell somewhere in the darkness of the Deep Warp. The price extracted by his trace is the kindest, relatively speaking: to gain his assistance, one must offer up their memories, obliterating them in the process. The more precious and nostalgic the memory, the greater the power, though what it gains from this is unknown.
To conjur him forth, you must use lucid dreaming. Each night for the month leading up to your ritual, you must craft in your dreams a city. You must do your best to make it as real and populated as possible: while his price is least severe, conjuring him is more difficult. If you can successfully craft your dream city with enough detail and versimillitude, its trace will appear within it, somewhere, taking on the disguise of a normal citizen of the city, typically one of modest means and mild, generally unassuming personality. One must discover and confront his trace. If it is agreeable and the price is paid, rituals and magics that call upon the power of creation or dreams will find itself guided and strengthened by the limitless imagination of the Terrestrial of Dreams.
WARNING: Do not confuse this Terrestrial with the similarly named dead god of the Eldar. Doing so will offend the trace. This is very obviously bad.
The last such being I will name is Zo-Kalar, the Boundless Dead, a patron of the ancient doomed city of Sarnath, slain alongside his people and fellow terrestrial gods of Sarnath by the awakening of the Great Water Lizard, a great old one who sought retribution for the genocide of Lizards followers and children at the hands of the Sarnathi and their souls cursed by the wrathful god. Though this slain god was killed many dark aeons ago, for a being such as them death is not the end of their existence.. Their tormented ghost makes a harsh demand: for their assistance, you must experience the destruction of Sarnath first hand. I do not know if what follows is mere vision, some form of warpsculpting, or else if the god physically transports you through time itself, but for the next three days the petitioner will find themselves in that city.
It inevitably ends with the Great Water Lizard rising and annihilating the city, including the petitioner, who will experience the pain, terror, and confusion of dying even as their mind finds itself assaulted with the visage of the Great Old One and its maddening lizard-song. Their body will be annihilated, over and over, until the city around them is nought but empty swamp: the power of Zo-Kalar will keep them from perishing.
To conjure the Boundless Dead, you must descend into a dark space, deep below the earth. You must have with you seven black candles rendered from the fat of the dead: the god does not care how this was acquired, so to acquire these candles you should enquire with your local morgue or NekroTeks to obtain them ethically. On the floor of this space, you must create from blood a heptagrammic star surrounded by three rings from your own blood: around the edges of these rings you must carve with bone three sigils: the elder sign, the emblem of the eye-in-hand, and the arrow of light, each equidistant from each other. Seal the exits: it must be airtight lest you wish to find yourself trapped in the warp for all eternity. Then, in the dark, you must light each candle and place them at each point of the heptagram and recite as best you can how you believe you are going to die.
Do this, and Zo-Kalar will appear before you as yourself, rotting. He will drag you through the circle to experience the Doom of Sarnath: when it ends, your body will be restored by the cursed ghost of Zo-Kalar, for any rite cast within the next month calling upon restoration or the conjuring of the dead, his ghost will give your ritual great power.
There are other such beings that can be conjured: through the aeons, many have managed to crawl up the latter of existence to achieve this partial transcendence. However, these beings should not be sought out lightly: many require such great prices that I cannot in good conscience provide the unproven the ability to summon them forth. If one should seek them out on ones own, so be it, but it would be irresponsible of me to tell others how to call their remnants forth.
If you do, know that the price these beings ask CANNOT be deferred, passed on, or avoided via legal or (currently) mystek means. The Directorate has no means to help you should you sign away your soul to Black Philip, offer your body to the Witch of the Tape, or accidentally curse yourself attempting to summon the Empty Man. If you absolutely must conjure the remnants of these entities for whatever reason or, more foolishly, stumble into conjuring one that still exists, there is no recourse available to you except for petitioning even higher beings: the flaw with this idea should be obvious. Whatever power you gain from the deal is temporary, but the same cannot be said for the price.
There exist lesser spells one can utilize in their stead should one of the three provided not fit your usecase. I shall provide one such: if you require a collaborator in the arcane, or else the expertise of a peerless occult engineer with advanced mastery of time, you can through certain means conjure an echo of a Yithean, a race that once existed as peer of both the race of Kadath and the Machine Gods in the most ancient of eras. While this race has long since left our timeline for a brighter one, their echoes still remain, with access to much of their keen intellect. First, you must obtain the sigil of the Yithean whose remnant you with to summon. Then you must use the sigil in a heptagrammic circle, alongside a sacrifice of lifeforce and a suitable vessel for the Yithean to inhabit. It must have a mind, though the mind of a non-sophont synthetic is acceptable, so long as its programmed to keep themselves alive sufficiently: though this function is no longer required now that the Yitheans have left the timeline, it remains as a vestigeal feature of this processes original function. The vessel must bare some resemblance to the chosen echos sigil.
Lastly, you must perform the chant that accompanies the chosen sigil and offer up some form of arcane energy: lifeforce is the most preferred, but each echo is likely to have a few alternatives they find nourishing enough once negotiated. If you wish to look up which Yithian Sigils and Chants have been discovered, you may either use the Yithean Index or craft a Shining Technohedron.
A Shining Technohedron is a device designed to impart great occult power. To make one, you must find or create a multiphasic polydimensional material. For this purpose certain publically available materials such as biometal or gemstone once treated is the most easily sourced. Then, one must perform the following steps: it requires an investiture of blood and memories. The more, the better and brighter the Technohedron. Then, one must carefully use particle technology to carve the item into a polydimensional tetrohedron shape: we strongly recommend allowing the computer to carve, as few three dimensional organic brains can comprehend the non-euclidean higher folds of space with enough aptitude to perform this process accurately.
Once done correctly, one must paint on the correct sigils. We recommend luminite based paint: it produces a somewhat more efficient implement. These sigils can be found in the Ars Teknologia, page 34. Each of these emblems must cover every possible face of the item. If done correctly, the item should begin to glow strongly. At this point, it is an Unbound Technohedron: to bind it, merely perform a ritual consecration to the Old One, who will imbue it with a portion of his wisdom, to be accessed by performing Rites of Communion to access its vast psychic repository. If used correctly, it can be utilized to learn names of the Yithean Echos, rituals and means to invoke the powers of the Terrestrials and other greater entities, the means to construct all sorts of arcane apparatus, and with diligent study, even more.
Each of these rituals and rites carry with them various risk to the soul, mind, and body, but should the rules be observed and the practitioner NOT be arrogant, these sub-rites and conjurations will serve them well as either sources of power, means to summon forth expert chronotheurges, or provide them a tool by which they can increase their occult knowledge. But be warned: meddling with higher powers recklessly will bring you nothing but misery and destruction. If you take any lesson from this, let it be CAUTION: these beings existed far before you or I, and many are beyond our ability to comprehend except in the most basic, rudimentary of senses. To meddle with them recklesslessly is to bring about doom.
Fail to heed this warning, there are far worse things you can lose than your life.
