"It was with a trace of genuine dread and reluctance that I pressed the lever then heard the preliminary scratching of the saphire point, and I was glad that the first faint, fragmentary words were in a human voice --a mellow, educated voice which seemed vaguely Bostonian in accent, and which was certainly not that of any native of the Vermont hills. As I listened to the tantalisingly feeble rendering, I seemed to find the speech identical with Akeley's carefully prepared transcript. On it chanted, in that mellow Bostonian voice ... "Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Goat with a Thousand Young! ..."
- --The Whisperer in Darkness, H. P. Lovecraft
In this section other visitors to Propping Up the Mythos share their ideas and experiences.
Topics:
Coloured Ink
Wax and Candles
Dirt
Mysterious Substances
Incense
Fake Blood
Making a Necronomicon Cover
Dry, Cracking Parchment
More Incense
Making Your Own Ink
A Better Gloss Finish
Better Surface for Painting
Using Weird Fonts
Keeping Your Text Straight
Copy Images Into your Book
Bind Your Own Book
Our first whispers come from Kevin the Insane:
"I've created (much smaller) mythos books for a number of live-action games I ran, and I had a few suggestions you didn't mention but that have worked really well for me:
- Brown/Red-brown Ink: Most art supply stores carry this, and splattered on a page it looks exactly like a blood stain. You can thicken it up with corn syrup or flour or corn starch (my favorite) to get it really crusty and disgusting. You can also get a (damn, I can't remember what they're called -- one of those pens you have to dip in ink... yeesh... like a fountain pen) pen and write in the red-brown ink. I "decorated" a couple of pages of a book in this way -- writing bizarre and wholly insane commentary about blood -- and it creeped the players out far more than the actual text of the book. There was actually an argument as to who would have to carry the book!
Wax and Candles: If you're careful, you can burn the edges of the pages, scorch the cover, and otherwise subject the book to fire. Most of the tomes seem to have been rescued at the last minute by cultists from the fires of the Church, so this is particularly appropriate. I also like to go through the completed book with a butane blowtorch (available at most miscellany-type stores such as Brookstone for $40 or so) and carefully singe out words. Just single words. The players go crazy trying to figure out what those words were. Dripped candle wax on a page is good as well, as long as it's done in moderation; you can just imagine the shaking hands of the insane sorceror as he pores over the blasphemous tome late into the night...
Dirt: You mentioned rubbing dirt on the pages. One thing I did that worked very very well was to bury the book. About two weeks before the game, I went out to the side of the dorm, which was watered by sprinkler about twice a day. I dug a fairly deep hole, and proceeded to put the book in and leave it up until the game. When I got it out again it was nasty and goopy and filthy, and some of the pages were torn up from the water. I wiped it down, page by page, with a dry cloth (to get the most egregious dirt clods out) and voila! a blasphemous book.
Mysterious substances: I've splattered my books with all manner of strange things from time to time. Vivid green ink is good; glow-in-the-dark paint is better (found in these strange ceiling "paint the stars" kits that show up in upscale mall stores). Taking a suction cup and lightly brushing on some green paint, and then "walking" over the pages of the book is good, too. Writing in lemon juice, and then gently singeing the page to "bake" the juice brown is good, particularly if you only singe part of the page, so the words mysteriously trail off and vanish. That "slime" you buy in grocery stores dries out to a crusty, vivid mess... Sticking a strange (and pre-abused) piece of cloth in as a bookmark, particularly if it's blood-stained, is a good way to lead players to an important section of the book."
Steven Downer writes:
"With my blasphemous tome, I smoked it with incense after getting all the coffee grains out of it. Not only did it remove the annoying coffee smell but it gave it an added strangeness. Go down to a New Age shop or like shop to find tons of odd-smelling incense."
Enkireigns writes:
"To make some coagulated, messy, authentic looking blood without using a
knife:
mix red food coloring and soy sauce (chinese fast food restaurant type). When it dries it looks real. You'll have to fool around with the amount of each in your mixture.
Aaron Vanek, director of My Necronomicon and The Outsider shares his experiences making a Necronomicon:
"I knew I wanted a prop of the book for the film, and, truth to tell, I wanted something that looked like the "Necronomicon" from Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead" (photo)(which had a face on it).
- I went to a used book store and bought a big black book. I had a choice between this one (the actual book was, interestingly, called "Lost Worlds", sort of a Time-Life book on Atlantis, Mu, etc.), and Pilgrim's Progress. I went with "Lost Worlds".
- The rest was easy: we bought some sculpey (a brand of moldable clay you can find at an art store) in the colors of grey, black, and green (even though I knew the film would be in black and white, I thought the colors would give differnt shades). We also bought a litle face mold that was happy and cheerful.
- I gave
some direction to Kirsten in the making of it, but mostly let her go. I told her I wanted faces, swirls, etc. She did a good job, and managed to stretch the faces she imprinted in the sculpey into screaming mouths. I wanted the sculpey to have a "rolled back" look to reveal the name. She painted the title on it with a black paint, and sprinkled some glitter on it (you can't see it in the film). Once it was done, we cooked the whole thing in the oven (to harden the sculpey)
For the inside, we took a page of paper, burned the edges, and she drew the symbols and words with a pen. For an example, I showed her the pages of the "Necronomicon" from an old issue of Heavy Metal that was devoted to HP Lovecraft. This page was loose from the book, so we cheated it on film."Chris Waring writes:
"In regard to making paper by staining it with tea or coffee - you can get a really good 'dry, cracking parchment' effect by roasting it in the oven for a while."
Professor Enoch writes:
"1. you may want to add liquid incense to the staining mixture (for aging paper).
2. obtain a silver spoon. smear it with mugwort. hold it while chanting over a violet candle. scrape the fine black residue off the spoon using parchment and collecting it in a small vial. Later mix this with gummed water (gum arabic is best) and any other additives. This is better than any ink you could buy."
Donald Eric Kesler writes:
"You mentioned a problem with finding a clear, glossy coat that would dry properly. For my RAFM miniture of Cthulhu, I used Krylon Quick Dry Lacquer. You can find the stuff in K-Mart's hardware department. (Shop smart; shop S-Mart.) The statue looks very slimey, but is actually as dry as a bone.
I have never used Sculpey, but I know that all painting techniques work a whole lot better if the surface is first painted with a coat of primer. I didn't see this step in your list of instructions."
Chip Powell, whose R'Lyeh text can be seen here writes:
"Using odd fonts, like the Cthulhu Runes, or
others (I've come across likenesses of Hebrew, Oriental and Russian),
you could create a text that has some meaning. Type the text on the
computer under MSword or something similiar (I used excerpts from
Chaosium's Necronomicon), click on select all, and change the font from
English to something bizarre. Print and transcribe. No one can
actually read it, but there is a literal translation (something akin to
Wilbur Whateley's cypher, in simplest form)."
"Another technique for transcribing: use post-it notes (the long ones)
to rule the page as you go. The post-its serve as a guide for the
letters, creating very even lines on the page. But they don't damage
the page itself. Also, if you are left-handed like me, they keep you
from smudging the work as you go."
"If you have a picture you want to use in your tome, print it out to the
proper size on a sheet of plain paper. Cut off the outside edges
leaving a bit of a margin. Turn the paper over and on the blank side
begin covering the back using a No. 2 pencil. Use the pencil at an
angle so that the flat of the graphite is used. Cover enough that it
mirrors the image on the other side.
Turn the paper back over, and place on the page where you want the
picture. Hold the picture in place using the adhesive edge of a few
post-its (again with the post-its...) Carefully, with moderate pressure
trace the picture using a ball point pen. When you are done and lift
the paper, your page should have a carbon image in pencil. Go over it
with a pen and when you are finished, erase the pencil marks.
A couple of notes: make sure while you are tracing the picture it does
not slip off or shift. It's a pain to get back into place. Also, how
detailed you want to trace the picture is up to you. I find that a
basic outline is all I desire; I fill in details and shading later."
George Burruss writes: "First I bought several books on book binding (as it turns out there is a web site which has
a very good step-by-step, cheap and easy way to bind your own book with
very minimal materials.
Next, I used Microsoft Excel to generate a random number series (1-150)
and then copied and pasted about 40,000 numbers in installments of 5,000
or so (generating a new sequence every time- 100 pages (25 sheets) of
8.5 X 11 with two columns in landscape front and back) into Microsoft
Word. Then I assigned a letter of the alphabet to each number up to 22.
I excluded some letter that don't appear in Latin (J, V for Us etc...)
Then I assigned Latin conjunctions and words along with Cthulorum,
Nyarlhotepibus, Azathothus etc.. A sample line looks like this:
It's suppose to be a coded Latin manuscript. The random sequence makes
it look like it should mean something. I then searched and replaced
doubles like MALIFICORUM MALIFICORUM with other words or several letters
like IAKU. As you can see words can appear close together so I'd
recommend words like SUM SED ET QUIS QUID etc..
I then selected all and changed the font to a distressed New Times Roman
(looks like someone dropped the paper in water and the print bled).
Next, I changed the first letter in many lines with a Drop Cap feature
and used Old English Font - thus it looks like a medieval manuscript. I
also included several pages with nothing so I could add some art later.
So, with all that (which took about four hours) I printed the odd pages
and then turned them over and printed the even pages all with 1 inch
margins. The final result looks like a movable press printed
manuscript.
Then I folded each landscaped page into half (thus making 4 pages of
printed text) and punched holes per the bookbinding instructions (easy
but the most time consuming of the binding process). Then I sowed
thread through each hole thus binding the manuscript (I added glue to
the spine for added strength). Next I found an old worn piece of
leather, trimmed it to size, and pasted the front pages (card stock for
the front and back) onto the leather. Next I'll add some drawings and distress the pages.
Of course one could simply find an alien or foreign font and turn their
term paper into a ancient manuscript and skip the random number process.
This process offers
you the opportunity to make a very good, professional book with minimal
effort. Also, you can write journals on the computer, use a
handwriting font, print them and bind them much easier than doing it all
by hand. In addition, you can choose any material for the cover!"
Do you have any knowledge or experience you would like to share? Join the Million Favoured Ones; email me at: xn@geocities.com
NOMINE ET DEUS S. MAL. G. N. F.NUNC Y.B.H. MALIFICORUM IAVO H. OP.NTRV.
K. CUM SED Q. P. NECRO OIA MALIFICORUM IAKU O. EX.INFUR. IAO SUM VIT.
