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Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacn
Posted By: Lion O CyborgDate: 3/29/22 1:05 p.m.

In Response To: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnter (UrsusArctos)

: Looks to me like there are Lovecraft references in Marathon that go beyond
: the familiar Cthulhu mythos, in this case from the story "The Rats in
: the Walls". In this story the protagonist keeps hearing phantom rats
: in the walls and comes to a horrifying discovery about his family
: heritage. It ends with the protagonist incarcerated in an asylum (which is
: no spoiler to anyone remotely familiar with Lovecraft's work!) uttering
: the following classically Lovecraftian lines -

: They must know it was the rats; the slithering scurrying rats whose
: scampering will never let me sleep; the daemon rats that race behind the
: padding in this room and beckon me down to greater horrors than I have
: ever known; the rats they can never hear; the rats, the rats in the walls.

: This doesn't sound all too different from this sentence in Tfear's
: description of the W'rkncancter's assault on Aye Mak Sicur in the failed
: timeline, does it?

: But the trackless whisper chattering through
: the hollow space in these cursed walls buzzes
: and threatens madness.

: Given that the W'rkncacnter is a creature of total chaos and is associated
: with doubt too, that it should also cause mental madness right out of a
: Lovecraft story seems appropriate.

: Also, the association of an unearthly, buzzing voice or sound with madness
: comes out of Lovecraft too. There's the novella "The Whisperer in
: Darkness", which features choice descriptions of the voice of an
: extraterrestrial being, which, while not remotely as monstrous as Cthulhu
: or the W'rkncacnter, is nevertheless well capable of driving people mad -

:
: I think I am going crazy. It may be that all I have ever written you is a
: dream or madness. It was bad enough before, but this time it is too much.
: They talked to me last night—talked in that cursed buzzing voice and told
: me things that I dare not repeat to you.

: Perhaps Greg K. or someone else at Bungie was into classic Lovecraft? These
: really don't seem to be a coincidence in light of the previous
: thinly-veiled allusions to Cthulhu.

: For the curious, both the stories I referred to are available in full at
: wikisource, but be warned that the name of the black cat in The Rats in
: the Walls (named after one of Lovecraft's own beloved cats) is
: monstrously offensive.

: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Rats_in_the_Walls
: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Whisperer_in_Darkness/full

The Rats in the Walls has also been referenced twice in the series previously too: Gherrit White overhears an invisible man in his cell saying that the rats chewing things inside the cell walls keeps him awake at night, sometimes getting scared they are biting him as well.

In Pathways into Darkness, we meet Rats in the Walls who do just that on the floor We Can See in the Dark, Can You?

The W'rkncacnter/Dreaming God -specifically the first one whose avatar (Deceit) we meet in PID- is also described as causing changes in its environment merely by dreaming, unaware it is doing so or unable or unwilling to stop it. The pyramid the game takes place in, the unknown depths below and the many otherworldly monsters living in them are living manifestations of the Wrk's dreams. If it wakes up, it would distort and scramble reality with mere thoughts. In short, the W'rkcacnter are basically an entire species of Azathoth. Yep, that's them alright; what almighty idiots!

Other than the Lh'owon god's screaming (i.e. how I interpreted the sounds of the terraforming station creaking), we don't see any evidence of its devouring the spacetime continuum in Infinity itself other than Durandal & Tfear bricking their breeches as it eats everyone on the station (minus those we meet in the failure maps) and even the shields.

Marathon Eternal's failure planks however, show us more clearly, such as husks that used to be Bobs & pfhor littering Inti station as well as the more terrifying shadow versions of its dream monsters (which to me resemble the Kamala demons from Fran Bow, especially Nightmares)roam everywhere. Sometimes, attempting to close the hanger doors to prevent vaccuum leads to some force (the god's will?) prizing them open again, as I learned the hard way in the Tour of Duty. In some Inti station levels, glitches in the skybox and certain windows I saw in the Tour create the impression of reality breaking down. Episode 4 even has the sun turned into a red giant or even red supergiant yet the station isn't plasma tempura yet.

Episode 5 takes place in a timezone where one dreaming god is already awake. Besides the monsters everywhere and their very high respawn rates, what was supposed to be a big storm to me looked like the sky and the ocean had mixed together and there were big aerial tsunamis and floating sea foam. This is most easily seen in the success plank dream levels of the older versions of Eternal, especially prior to the HD textures updates:

To sum it up, the longer an W'rkncacnter is awake, the stronger it will become.

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Pre-2004 Posts

Replies:

Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnterUrsusArctos 3/26/22 6:49 p.m.
     Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnGodot 3/26/22 11:31 p.m.
           Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnUrsusArctos 3/30/22 5:11 p.m.
                 Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnGodot 3/30/22 11:54 p.m.
                       Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnBaileyi 12/1/23 8:53 a.m.
                             Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnGodot 12/1/23 9:42 a.m.
     Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnLion O Cyborg 3/29/22 1:05 p.m.
           Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnUrsusArctos 3/30/22 4:43 p.m.
                 Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnDurandal_1707 3/31/22 12:06 p.m.
                       Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnLion O Cyborg 3/31/22 1:47 p.m.
                             Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnUrsusArctos 3/31/22 5:29 p.m.
                 Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnLion O Cyborg 3/31/22 1:43 p.m.
                       Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnUrsusArctos 3/31/22 5:29 p.m.
                             Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnDurandal_1707 4/1/22 4:50 a.m.
                                   Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnLion O Cyborg 4/1/22 2:48 p.m.

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