Platypus of Truth

I recently finished Grevel Lindop's landmark biography of Charles Williams, Charles Williams: The Third Inkling . It's one of the those books that can only be written when enough people have died. If that doesn't pique your interest, we can go on to "did you knows". Did you know that actor Christopher Lee met and corresponded with Williams during World War II? Did you know that Charles Williams was mainly responsible for the books picked to form the Oxford World Classics series, thus shaping the literary tastes of students across the anglo-phonic world? Did you know that the line "at the still point of the turning world" from the Four Quartets is a reference to Charles' Williams' The Greater Trumps ? Did you know that Charles Williams played a major role in promoting the poetic works of Gerard Manley Hopkins? If not, don't be surprised. Williams himself lived with the fear that he would always be a mere footnote to his friends and associated ...

Oh no! After too many games of Arkham Horror, Crochet Cthulhu appeared crushing everything in sight beneath his colossal tread. Before he could call to the Outer Gods whole dwell in the darkness between the stars with the help of his Evil Mayo, our investigators rallied to the cause. Assisted by the noble Platypus, they were able to force the Abomination back through the gate and seal it with the Elder Sign.

My wife and I picked up Fantasy Flight's Cthulhu Mythos game, Arkham Horror , over the break. We've been playing Eldritch Horror and Elder Sign: Omens for about a year now and we were eager to see the legendary game that started it all. In some ways, Arkham Horror feels like a less refined version of Eldrich Horror. There is less flavor text and the game mechanics are less stream-lined. After playing through two and a half games, however, I see the attraction. Arkham Horror is more flexible and more focused than Eldrich Horror. With the setting limited to a single town rather than the whole earth, the art and tone of the game are more focused. The less stream-lined mechanics also allow for a greater amount of control over the investigators (player characters), and thus a more intense game. And the game is much more intense than either Eldrich Horror or Elder Signs: Omens. Monster movement each turn creates all kinds of problems for the investigators. The frequency with wh...

2015 was a year of difficulties. I spent most of November to July ill. There were several surgeries and a cross-town move. All of those were overcome, however, and on the last day of the year we're still alive and kicking. Not surprisingly, this ended up being the year of tomb stones, art therapy and H.P. Lovecraft. I'm not sure what 2016 will bring. As Counting Crows says "it's been one long December, and there's reason to believe maybe next year will be better than the last..." Whatever befalls, we will keep you up to date here at the Platypus of Truth.

I'm playing with enhancement, filters, and color saturation this morning. I've taken my Blake-Geiger Cthulhu  and run it through the basic Windows 10 editing software to give the drawing a more cosmic feel. Now we can imagine the priest of the Elder Gods winging his way through the voids of oblivion whose soul and messenger is the Creeping Chaos, Nyarlathotep.

Enjoying my break here with a little art therapy. The picture on the left is based on H.P. Lovecraft's "The Shunned House" and has been color adjusted from the original with basic photo editing software. The second picture is my poor attempt to draw of the Plateau of Leng based on the art from Fantasy Flight's Elder Sign: Omens . Both drawings are Prismacolor colored pencils on black sketch paper.

My pastel sketch of R.W. Chambers' The King in Yellow  gets a little help from some very basic Windows 10 photo editing software. I'll keep fiddling with it and see if I can produce any better results for some of my future creative efforts.