Just Yellow Sign Thoughts. If you like deck building games on your iOS device you might try
Cthulhu Realms. That genre isn't my jam but the art is amusing. Also be prepared for the worst voice acting ever.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cthulhu-realms/id1035256452?mt=8
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Particle Colliders and Cartoon Catshttp://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/small-cat-big-science"The proposed International Linear Collider has a fuzzy new ally.
Hello Kitty is known throughout Japan as the poster girl (poster cat?) of kawaii, a segment of pop culture built around all things cute.
But recently she took on a new job: representing the proposed International Linear Collider...
Japan is considering hosting the ILC, a proposed accelerator that could mass-produce Higgs bosons and other fundamental particles. Japan’s Advanced Accelerator Association partnered with the company Sanrio to create the special kawaii gear in the hopes of drawing attention to the large-scale project.
The ILC: Science you’ll want to snuggle."
In real life that's great. But this story reminded me of the other particle collider shenanigans in the news.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/18/fake-human-sacrifice-filmed-at-cern-with-pranking-scientists-suspectedA bunch of scientists (presumably) decided to fake a satanic ritual on CERN's grounds in front of the statue of Shiva. Add not-so-shaky cam from Blair Witch.
Separate from this, I recall a Unspeakable Oath that had an adventure featuring the children's book cartoon character (fictional) "Tee-Tok the Happy Star". The adventure synopsis was that a less than successful children's writer got tangled up in Mythos inspiration and wrote a children's book featuring a happy cartoon version of Azathoth. Add the spell "Call Azathoth" embedded in the book's art and text (not unlike the movie Babadook) a mysterious fire at the printers and you have yourself a mystery.
What I'm saying is that good old King in Yellow needs a yellow cuddly mascot to spread virally through media and VR games. No not the real life electric one, a fictional one.
Add the hook that Delta Green realizes that a cult is about to sponsor a particle collider with the (super cute) Yellow King mascot as some ritual of consecration. Have half of the adventure be kinetic attacks/assassinations of the yellow cultists, and the other half be anti-media campaigns against the cult's PR division. Through in players having to soil themselves by whipping up anti-science protests, or debate cult representatives on CNN, and you have an interesting plot.
Depending on the timing of the setting, this might be a good excuse to have players be on Firing Line with William F Buckley (1966-1999), Crossfire (CNN: 1982 to 2005), The McLaughlin Group (1982-2016; also note the timeslot during the 80s is RIGHT during Saturday Morning cartoons, providing a great link for a Hastur cartoon show), or John Stewart.
Get cracking, artists. The Yellow Sign is Manifold in It's forms.
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GESAFFELSTEIN and the Hand of Vecna the King in YellowGESAFFELSTEIN is a band with highly symbolic music videos.
Pursuit :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB8Ci7X5HUUHATE OR GLORY :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_NgkfRmUPkBoth deal with the acquisition of power taken to extreme. The sacrifices and violence, explicit and symbolic, made by men to seize the crown are on display. No other act can drive humans so quickly to bestial grasping and a nihilistic mentality in the midst of causing terribly vicious chaos. Grasping for societal authority is itself a type of madness, regardless of the power-seeker's illusion of installing some more perfect social order. Some come to the Masquerade of Cassilda and Camilla willingly. Not to revel. But to seek the King. As usurpers.
Such seekers are already lost and mad.
All bow before the throne.
Visually please see HATE OR GLORY at 3:13. Usually Carcosa is thought to be a psudo-European environ, and by extension some assume the King in Yellow appears as such. Nihilistic madness however, is universal as gravity. A gangland warlord who dips his face in the molten gold of his enemies, saturated with their blood, may indeed be seeking to become an Avatar of the King. Or perhaps this is a ritual to allow the power-seeker to transport himself and his retinue to Carcosa. His followers are of course a sacrifice in this ritual, lost in the primal chaos city as the power-seeker is free to hunt the King.
Now please watch "Pursuit". Highly symbolic of the rise and fall of a warlord, perhaps a fascist. Anyway, note that instead of a "yellow mask" in HATE OR GLORY, a golden (yellow) glove represents the pursuit of power. Instead of a glove, does the video instead show a yellow cybernetic gauntlet that requires the owner to cut off his own hand? It is a homage to Skywalker? Perhaps the answer lies with the observer. After all, in Carcosa ALL could be true.
There is no reason the archetypal yellow mask cannot take many forms.
Let us examine the Yellow Sign for a moment. It is a two dimensional image. Several authors (not Chambers iirc) suggest that the Sign changes subtly upon observation. Let's run with this idea and expand upon it: the Yellow Sign is a multidimensional symbol not unlike the Elder Sign.
Ok good. Now lets assume that a scientist has been studying the Yellow Sign.
In mathematics, there is something called a
manifold. From wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold"In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, each point of an n-dimensional manifold has a neighbourhood that is homeomorphic to the Euclidean space of dimension n...Two-dimensional manifolds are also called surfaces."
Now two dimensional surfaces can usually be represented by an equation. Perhaps this scientist was seeking the secret to Kingly power...and derived an equation ("Yellow Equation" for lack of a better term). The scientist then used this Yellow Equation to solve a difficult problem in cybernetics to create the Yellow Gauntlet - an object that confers might to the wearer and suffuses them with Kingly eminence. As long as certain sacrifices are made, you see. Enter the music video "Pursuit" as documentation of the Yellow Gauntlet's corrosive effects on the bearer and his people.
In a Delta Green scenario, you could have the agents need to go up against an American politician where the Yellow Gauntlet takes the form of an Orange-Yellow Weave. Er, ... I mean...*gunshot*
In a near future Delta Green scenario, a wounded military veteran is given the Yellow Gauntlet as a replacement hand after his service in Iraq/Afghanistan/the next terrorist IED attack. In this case the "scientists" is a group of rogue MJ-12 researchers working in a prosthetics/cybernetics company. Naturally they also use a control group of normal cybernetic hands to record the effects of the Mythos artifact. This veteran essentially follows the Castaigne plotline and begins to become compelled to join politics an seek greater and greater office. Delta Green becomes aware of this man as a threat by his meteoric rise from local legislator to mayor to Senator in just a few years.
Because a Delta Green game should be difficult (and because I don't want the Secret Service to contact this board) kinetic action against the Mythos suborned veteran turned politician cannot be taken. DG agents must prop up his opponent/work against his campaign while the other half race against time to glean the origin of the cybernetic hand and eventually try to convince the veteran with bits of his pre Mythos corrupted history/life to voluntarily give up the Yellow Gauntlet.
Permutations of a Yellow Gauntlet idea could be:
-Set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (just rewrite Thanatos as a victim of the Gauntlet)
-Set in Mythic Greece. Daedalus is the artisan/scientist. Perhaps he creates the Gauntlet at the behest of the King of Crete (and to take revenge for the loss of his son Icarus).
-Set in the modern day. The Yellow Gauntlet is an artifact directly from Carcosa that has reappeared. It was originally crafted by Ambrose (see old Unspeakable Oaths) an artisan who creates impossible steampunk like devices in Carcosa. The DG team must contain/return the vector to it's otherworldly home.
-No joke,
John McAfee used the music to "Pursuit" in his 2016 Libertarian Presidential bid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAjl-Gibm8cIn addition, this video has not so subliminal messages. Listen for the repetition of "9/11" in the video. Draw your own conclusions. I can't make this stuff up.
One other thought about the music video "Pursuit." Please reference the tyrant looking in the mirror at (2:45-2:47) and the copies of the tyrant in the military (0:48-0:53) and blaming each other in the symbolic bureaucracy (2:47-3:03).
John Tynes in The Unspeakable Oath #1 (iirc) introduced new locations (the Whisper Vault, etc.) into Carcosa as part of his take on the King in Yellow Mythos. It is reprinted in one of the Delta Green supplements, I will forever forget which one. Anyway, why not a place in Carcosa which is filled with mirrors? A psychomanteum if you will. Drawing from "Pursuit", perhaps if you find the mirror with your specific name on it, a power-seeker can generate doppelgangers who will will work towards his wish, but at the cost of the power-seeker standing in front of the mirror eternally and watching the Mythos tainted homunculi drag his dreams into inevitable ruin. The continual generation of homunculi can only be stopped by entering the psychomanteum and pulling the power-seeker away from his mirror.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PsychomanteumThe catch is the Carcosa psychomanteum can only be found by a truly selfish individual. Leading to the question. Are the players willing to sacrifice a truly selfish man and risk him finding his own mirror/killing him to prevent the actions of another once-selfish man?
