Atlantean Magic and Demons, care of some schmuck back in the early 1900's

When I say 'schmuck' I mean that he is roundly unsung and forgotten now, although in his own time he was fairly influential.  Elliot O'Donnell.  Backstory - so, I swore to +James Bennett that my goal for the year was to refrain from reading anything written after 1900 this calendar year.  Believe it or not, I've done pretty good so far, but this little gem was read by me back in November, and I've been thinking about it, mulling it over.  You know, sort of sacrificing tomcats and drams of my own blood in the moonlight.  That kind of thing.

This book, The Sorcery Club, starts off neat - with maybe some inside information about the Celtic-Mayan-Egyptian connection for Atlantis' remnants in the Yucatan.  It's pretty plausible if you're on ketamine or else a Serpent Man masquerading as a human.  There's a history of the downfall of Atlantis after the rise of its Black Magicians, how to actually become an Atlantean Black Magician by trucking with the last of the wordly spirits, and then it kind of just degenerates into a late 1800s/pre-War era morality tale and romance.  It's a complicated love quadrangle with super-powerful perverts on one side and some plucky country Englishmen and -women on the other.

This is what you get if you put in "plucky English country folk" to Google's image search

All things considered, it's kind of cool I guess.  You get a rundown of the spirits (good and bad) as recognized by the sorcerous Atlanteans, and then some really sketchy and implausible restrictions on Black Magician behavior.  It boils down to : DONT STICK YOUR MEAT WHERE YOU MAKE YOUR BREAD

Chapter 2 has a brief breakdown of Atlantis, its reliance upon the interchange between men and spirits, and the pre-religious feelings of Atlanteans. Also, how Atlantis fell.

Chapter 5 has some great (read: mediocre) poetry about the various spirits that the Atlanteans had deals with.  Here's the poetry in question:

"I am not sure of that," Hamar said, and after a brief pause began to repeat these words —

"Morbas from the mountains,
Where flow malignant fountains

We are ready for you—Come!

Vampires from the passes,

Where grow blood-sucking grasses,

We are ready for you—Come!

Vice Elementals pretty

Give ear unto our ditty

We are ready for you—Come!

Planetians, forms so fearful,

We inform you, eager, tearful,

We are ready for you—Come!

Clanogrians, things of sorrow.

Postpone not till to-morrow,

We are ready for you—Come!

Barrowvians, shades seclusive,

Be not to us exclusive,

We are ready for you—Come!

Earthbound spirits of the Dead

Approach with grim and noiseless tread—

We are ready for you—Come!"

(footnote: According to Atlantean ideas these spirits were:—Vice Elementals; Morbas (or Disease Elementals); Clanogrians (or malicious family ghosts, such as Banshees, etc.); Vampires; Barrowvians, i. e. a grotesque kind of phantasm that frequents places where prehistoric man or beast has been interred; Planetians, i. e. spirits inimical to dwellers on this earth that inhabit various of the other planets; and earthbound spirits of such dead human beings as were mad, imbecile, cruel and vicious, together with the phantasms of vicious and mad beasts, and beasts of prey.—(Eliot O'Donnell's note.))

Morbas, Vampires, Vice Elementals, Planetians, Clanogrians, Barrowvians, and the Earthbound Spirits of the Dead.  Good stuff, I guess.  The whole process of becoming an Atlantean Black Magician is laid out in grisly detail - one almost wonders if Mr. Eliot hadn't at least tried it.  His own backstory is pretty spooky and there for the interested.  He wrote many more books than are easily available today, but a good handful of them are available at Gutenberg and might be useful to interested parties in the RPG community.  Like me.  Maybe once my other project is done I will put out a sourcebook of Elliot O'Donnell critters and spells etc.  Sort of a poor man's Vance or something.

Peoria Plague Redux - don't breathe the vapors, Garfunkel!

I am a fan of radio drama; old/new/whatever

We have a thing here on Sunday nights "the Big Show" on WAMU that has a good number of old fashioned 1940s and 50s stuff. Johnny Dollar. Dragnet. Occasional comedies.

So also, I love all things zombi - undead is a big theme in my RPG games; I don't know why. They are wrong and easy to slay and it's like you're doing the universe a favor and setting things a-right. Nobody can argue the ethics of putting down the undead.

The Peoria Plague was a thing in 1971 or so, apparently produced by this radio station as an homage to War of the Worlds and Romero's Night of the Living Dead.

I tried to listen to this bit of radio history a couple of times and the muddy audio killed me.  I'm not good at audio sorcery, but I chopped out a great deal of noise, slowed it down a notch or two so the announcer doesn't sound hilariously tinny and awful, and reduced the amount of pop n' click.  Thanks, Audacity beta 1.3 from a couple of years ago (my current version)

I don't know if it helps, but it might be slightly better to listen to for you, if you're into that kind of thing.  I find it still breaks down in the middle, mostly since it appears to have been recorded by someone pointing a mic at a radio speaker in a room with an AC or fan in the background, on a reel to reel machine, and to my untrained ears it sounds as if they kept fiddling with the placement.

The proper way to do it would be to have some clever audio technician gently caress it in some crazy high fidelity audio cleaning suite and do it in separate bits, since the noise profile is slightly different throughout.  I have some other software packages I might use to REALLY crank out changes, but this is a part time hobby and nothing I'm innately good at or highly interested in.

Anyways, if you're into Zombies, Simon and Garfunkel, or both (and who isn't, I ask you?), I offer you this:

GOD BLESS YOU PLEASE, MRS. ZOMBIE ROBINSON

Before you get all HEY MAN I CANT HERE THIS PART IN THE MIDDLE, let me remind you that I don't know what the hell I'm doing, but I did get some of the fan noise out, since it's an easy filter to muck around with.

Bonus, if you made it this long into the damnable post, is a mix of the XCOM: Terror from the Deep introductory music with some high-end (but poorly utilized) samples of timpani, strings, and etc.  I stole the midi file from my own (totally legit) copy, plugged it into a Soundfont thing and used a marvelous orchestral sample soundfont, I don't know why I give it to you it's something of a personal project to me.

DAMN YOU TO HELL YOU ALIEN MENACE!