Woegothe, the Session Guardian

2 weeks ago

𝐸𝓃𝑔𝓁𝒾𝓈𝒽'𝓈 𝒞𝒽𝑜𝓈𝑒𝓃

𝓞𝓷𝓮 𝓸𝓯 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓼𝓮𝓵𝓮𝓬𝓽 𝓯𝓮𝔀 𝓲𝓷 𝓱𝓲𝓼 𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓿𝓲𝓬𝓮.

@woeGothic[WG]

A Horror Terror Survival Guide Penned by Rose "Woegothe" Lalonde Penned for use by @golgothasTerror#1984, Jake English Horror terrors are not simply a menace with a theatrical light about it. Nor is it a squid with a diary. They transcend the gods who have conveniently arranged organs. They are smarmier than any dungeon boss obliging weak points in vibrant colors. You are asking where to strike a thunderstorm. The answer is: you do not. Their bodies, when they bother having bodies, are often more like a courtesy than a limitation. A gesture. A local translation of something too large, too old, and too fundamentally impolite to occupy three dimensions without making the wallpaper bleed. They eat, when they eat, according to appetites I would advise you not to flatter yourself by understanding. Meat, memory, fear, prophecy, worship, discarded timelines, the fat around a dying star. The menu varies by specimen, mood, and metaphor. Do they sleep? Some do. Some simulate dormancy. Some dream so violently that civilizations mistake the dream for weather. As for vulnerable spots, the most consistent one is usually the ego of the person convinced they can exploit them. That is not a joke, though I appreciate how much it sounds like one. If you meet one, do not posture. Do not threaten. Do not attempt to classify it aloud while standing inside its attention. Do not assume that fear is weakness, or that friendliness is safety, or that monstrosity is moral evidence. Bring an intermediary if you have one. Bring offerings if you know what they accept. Bring an exit. Bring no weapon you are unwilling to see become symbolic. Most importantly, do not call them monsters unless you are prepared for them to ask you to define the word. And if this is, as Meenah has quite correctly suspected, a hunting inquiry dressed in a little khaki explorer hat: Do not hunt a horrorterror. The best case is that you fail. The worst case is that you succeed in a way you will spend the remainder of your life explaining to the thing that notices the absence. For comparison, consider Fluthlu. Or Fthulhu, if we are entertaining your spelling as either a regional corruption, a juvenile mispronunciation, or a heretical offshoot with fewer vowels and no better manners. Fluthlu is, in many ways, the approachable model of horrorterror. Which is to say, he is the kind that makes the catastrophic mistake of appearing somewhere a detective can reach him. He has locality. He has girth. He has the decency to become stuck in architecture. There is a body with sufficient comic integrity to be obstructed by a window. There is a battle. There is a means by which the encounter may be rendered absurd enough to survive. That is not nothing. A monster that can be embarrassed by carpentry is a monster that has already conceded several metaphysical points. Gl'bgolyb is different. Gl'bgolyb is not merely large. She is institutional. She is a creature, yes, but also a throne. A prophecy. A leash tied around an empire’s throat. She exists as a guardian, a hostage-taker, a religious problem, and a living apocalypse sleeping in the ocean with the political subtlety of a loaded pistol in a nursery. Fluthlu intrudes. Gl'bgolyb presides. Fthulhu pervades your body with tickling tendrils, intending to get into your mind through the exploratory philandering we all ought to expect. G'lbgolyb simply melts your pan with her innocent voice. Their similarities are obvious enough to be nearly useless. Both are aquatic in affect. Both are eldritch. Both are named as if the alphabet suffered a seizure while drowning. Fluthlu menaces bodies. Gl'bgolyb menaces civilizations. Fluthlu can be treated, however foolishly, as an adversary. Gl'bgolyb must be treated as a condition of reality. So, Jake, if you are compiling notes: Fluthlu teaches that a horrorterror may occasionally be defeated when it is forced to obey the rules of a smaller, stupider story. Gl'bgolyb teaches that the more dangerous ones do not need to fight you at all. They only need to speak. I hope this helps you understand the full breadth of your enemy. Though, I doubt they could ever truly be fully understood. #suggestive For the gratuitous fondling reference. #horror For the subject matter.