The Call of Cthulhu RPG has more archaeology references than the video game counterpart. It is a fantastic experience to play as well, if the right people are running it, and it feels like an investigation. Depending on the group, the experience can vary, but there are a lot of things that can contribute to that feeling.

There are several different packages put together by Chaosium that are considered to be “beginner experiences” and the amount of archaeological detail will change based on what experience is being run. No matter what, a team of investigators are gathered to solve a mystery that usually has something to do with a cult, a strange disappearance, or an eldritch horror of some kind. The developers have also done their best to create the game in a way that both mirrors the experience of the 1920s while also separating the work from the author and taking what made Lovecraft spooky and leaving behind what made him racist.

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It is a delicate balance to tread, but the RPG does it well and even starts with suggestions for how to make it a better and more diverse experience for everyone at the table. That all said, I was able to experience playing the game in a very archaeological fashion while attending PAX Unplugged in 2024.

The experience was run by an experienced Lore Master, and it was organized by the developers. When we got to the table, I said that I had some experience with the game but was relatively new to it, but that I had done a lot of research on Lovecraft specifically and was an archaeologist myself. That landed me with the role of the archaeologist, who I named Kara Loft, and our investigation started in Egypt near Gizeh but not quite there, looking at a solid wall that we had to get into in order to prove our hypothesis.

It was an oddly strange and satisfying experience.

To sum up the story itself, our investigations entered the chamber, found eerie hieroglyphs that appeared to be inverted, accidentally summoned an eldritch horror, set the tomb of the eldritch horror on fire, and barely escaped to tell the tale. The strange part for me was being able to let some of those intrusive thoughts as an archaeologist escape - like what if I just burned up the mummy? It was a little silly from that perspective, but it did allow me to play with archaeology in a way that I usually don’t.

Kara herself went a little insane in the Lovecraftian sense, as the sight of the eldritch horror was too much for her, and that was what incentivized the character to light the rest of the room on fire. It was a downhill journey from there on for that character, but an overall fun time for me. However, at the end, after most of the group had escaped the tomb, they ran outside to find the locals all staring at the entrance, who saw our group and said, “You shouldn’t be alive.”

That was the end.

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Now there are a couple of specific things from this game that I want to call out as being directly related to other topics on this site:

1. The Archaeology

The excavation itself actually felt fairly accurate for the time. It’s being sponsored by a rich noble who has nothing better to spend money on and wants the glory of finding something like Tutankhamen. It was also done by not being overly cautious. Archaeologists were not very worried about preserving details for the future at the time, they were more interested in the artifacts themselves. It was about the trophy and far less about learning something. This felt almost too well represented in the game, as my character searched for something that would fund more excavations and land her an official title back home.

2. The Eldritch Horror

It was an odd reflection of reality, with things that would be recognizable from Egyptian mythology but inverted or mirrored in such a way that it didn’t feel quite right. This felt a lot like Under The Pyramids or either of the other two main tales, where there are things that reflect human mythologies among the horrors, but they are just wrong enough to make the humans question what they are seeing. The loss of sanity came from not being able to comprehend that revelation, and not because my character had a mental illness. It felt like the right amount of comparison to the Egyptian mythology without using a stereotype to justify or change it.

3. The Locals

As mentioned in my article on Rats in the Walls, there is this strange kind of tension between the locals and the academics or outsiders in several of Lovecraft’s pieces. This can come through via full-on racial stereotypes or be as simple as the tension between the “simple” villagers who know better and the “greedy” antiquarians that push forward regardless. In our game, we didn’t interact with the locals very much, as we left them behind when we entered the chamber and the door shut behind us, but upon exiting the locals clearly knew that we shouldn’t be alive. This plays on that tension of the locals do know and are aware of the eldritch horrors, but they do not let on that they do nor warn the archaeologists, at least in this instance. However, the game itself did not have a lot of the racial stereotypes that the locals in Lovecraft often get dealt. Instead, our particular game played a very nice balance between the locals and the greedy archaeologist who nearly sets the horrors free.

Overall, it was a great experience and from listening to others playing the game, reading about their experiences, and from what I have played myself, this seems to be the case for most people. While some may play it a little less seriously where it concerns the horror, others dive in. It’s a very customizable experience, but anyone’s character can take up an interest in archaeology or history or something similar. And it can even relieve a lot of stress from a tired archaeologist who is angry at the institution.

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The End or a New Beginning?

This one topic alone could go on forever and ever, with a never-ending supply of various media, pop culture references, and over nineteen seasons of Ancient Aliens and counting. There are a lot of tough and potentially horrifying - and not because of Cthulhu - subjects wrapped into this conversation, and it is easy to get lost in.

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While H.P. Lovecraft himself might have been and continue to be problematic, and his beliefs permeate his stories whether or not the reader is aware of it, his works can continue to survive and evolve in new and different ways. Lovecraft Country is a good example of this evolution, and other authors and developers continue to reclaim Lovecraft’s ideas for themselves.

The supernatural’s connection to pseudoarchaeology is likely never going away in fiction, particularly in universes, like Star Wars, where the supernatural is normalized and part of everyday life for the inhabitants. Contextualizing these themes and ensuring that there is room for questions, conversation, and recognizing that fiction can just be that is a good start. And sometimes having those conversations around fictional properties can lighten the mood, lower the stakes, and make the topic easier to discuss.

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Many more franchises and media forms are out there just waiting to be explored. This is hardly an end, and it will be quite the journey to find more and more examples out in the wild as time goes on. Perhaps some movies or games can never be seen the same way again, but perhaps that only adds to the complexity and enjoyment of the lore. Perhaps, glimpsing what’s behind many of these ideas, brings about clarity instead of insanity and a healthy thirst for more knowledge. There’s no way of knowing without experimenting, and that’s half the battle.

In the meantime, keep digging for the truth, however deep it may be.

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What’s Next?

As in all cosmic horror, this is not the end. As time goes on, more and more posts will connect back to this series, particularly in the previous part, which you can view down below. I’m still sorting out my computer situation, so updates may come slower, and this will not be the sole focus of the publication. Please subscribe to make sure you get any updates!

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The Legacy of Lovecraft and the Supposed Horrors of Archaeology lives on in modern Pop Culture.

Many cultural touchstones and media touch on this theme -- some of them more Lovecraftian, some of them more archaeological, but one franchise typically stands out in the memory of popular culture where it concerns the intersection of both.

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The Mummy Franchise

There is an easy and direct connection here that has been discussed extensively by archaeologists such as Kevin McGeough and Peter Hiscock, among others. The first film was made in 1932, with actor Boris Karloff as the main antagonist, followed by a myriad number of films and additional media up until 2018. The film focuses on a group of archaeologists facing an Egyptian Mummy who has a curse associated with him, and many of the stereotypes and problems are present in this franchise. And it is, in fact, the franchise that much of the research into pop culture and archaeology began with, and it is likely to remain in cultural memory for a very long time.

Many other movies and television shows share these kinds of tropes, thanks to this first film.

The Arkham Horror Files

The Arkham Horror Files are a set of traditional games and some book adaptations all made and produced by Fantasy Flight Games. There are card games, board games, miniature games, and dice games all set in the same Arkham Horror Files world, with many of the “Investigators” crossing between games as playable characters. They are a good example of a modern adaptation for several reasons, the chief of which is the writing and lore that has been added to and put together to make this world come together.

The biggest set of worldbuilding and lore that the games have put together in one fairly cohesive piece is in Arkham Horror: The Card Game. It is a cooperative game - meaning the players win or lose as a team together - and the storytelling is extensive and extremely well-written. It takes heavy inspiration from the lore while updating it and making it accessible and new for a modern audience. The extent that the developers have gone to is quite impressive and not only is it a well-designed game, but it’s also incredibly immersive for a card game.

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The tropes of the supernatural clashing with archaeological investigations are still there - and not all of it is strictly “archaeological” although there are quite a lot of direct references to archaeologists who are other characters, archaeological work that has been done, and a few Investigators that are directly related to or are archaeologists. The pictures to the right (or below on mobile) show some of the most notable examples, but all of the Arkham Horror Files have these connections.

The Call of Cthulhu Games

The Dicebreaker YouTube Channel’s feature on the popularity of Call of Cthulhu in Japan and why it beat out Dungeons and Dragons.

These games, produced by Chaosium, are both very similar to the Arkham Horror Files. The game started as a Pen & Paper game in 1981 and is now on the 7th Edition, and it is one of, if not the most popular RPG in Japan, beating out even Dungeons & Dragons.

It was adapted as a video game in 2018 by Focus Home Interactive, in which an Investigator named Edward Pierce comes to a strange place in search of answers. The video game is not immediately recognizable as archaeological, but many of the themes are very similar and there are art collectors, historians, ancient artifacts, and the Necronomicon, a book often associated with antiquity and Archaeology in the Cthulhu Mythos.

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But looking back at the Pen & Paper game, even the Introductory Set already sets the players well into an archaeological mindset, with multiples of the ready-made characters being archaeologists or in fields that are often misrepresented or misunderstood as archaeology, such as Antiquarians, Classicists, Historians, Museum Workers, Paleontologists, etc. Mysteries involving ancient artifacts and an overall theme in the game of antiquity and the modern era (the game takes place in the 1920s) collide throughout this franchise.

This is one of the franchises that has very much embraced the link between Lovecraft & archaeology.

Other Media

These are just two main franchises that are directly linked to archaeology & Lovecraft in a very stated way from the beginning, but they are far from the only ones. The two above have very obvious connections, much like the Mummy movies, and much like other major franchises mentioned earlier. Click on the titles or images below to read more about the various pieces of media.

Video Games

Quite a few video games represent this link between Lovecraft & archaeology and, although Call of Cthulhu is a great example, many more exist. Some of them are very new, and some of them are quite a bit older. A lot of these titles might have slipped through the cracks as well, due to being made by smaller studios. Others, like Dredge, caught the attention of a large part of the world and won the Indie category for the Game of the Year Awards in 2023. Small or big, these games rest on the connection between the two subjects in some way or another.

Star Wars

The Star Wars franchise is full of references and reactions to archaeologists. Most notably, both runs of the Doctor Aphra series (2016-2019; 2020 - present), are all about archaeological themes. The Screaming Citadel crossover comic series and the first few issues of the first run of the series both have a very Lovecraftian theme intermixed with them.

Other

While the main types of media that tend to catch a lot of attention have been listed, there are a few more things worth mentioning. A big one that is similar to the Arkham Horror Files is the general category that could be described as Detective Horror. This is largely due to Agatha Christie, who was at one point married to an archaeologist, Max Mallowan, and who spent a fair amount of time on dig sites herself. While she may be the main inspiration for it, others have taken her idea and run with it.

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“Such secrets are not good for mankind.”

— H.P. Lovecraft, Rats in the Walls

Rats in the Walls (1924) was written during the height of Lovecraft’s publishing career and was published in Weird Tales. It is another direct link between Lovecraft & archaeology, and this one even has a full team of archaeologists attempting to excavate and explore the site of an old house. The story is one example of the link between Lovecraft & madness as well, as the main character ends up confined to a cell at “Hanwell” by the end of the story due to the experiences he had.

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Again, madness in Lovecraft is a very different idea from that of mental health today. In this case, it is a clear link to the unknown and seeing a great, unspeakable horror that drives the narrator to the point where he is confined by the end of the book. “Hanwell” is a real insane asylum that has existed since 1831 and has undergone renovations and changes since then. Now it is known as St. Bernard’s Wing and is part of a larger hospital in Southhall, England, which is a city often incorporated into Greater London.

This story goes as follows:

The narrator, whose name is unknown but whose family name is Delapore (or de la Pore), describes an old estate known as Exham Priory that had been condemned and left to ruins after a tragedy left most of the inhabitants dead. The Priory became a place of wonder for antiquarians, who loved to examine the architecture. The architecture was said to span from pre-Roman builders up until the Gothic period.

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Eventually, the narrator is told by his son more about the family legends while fighting in what would become World War I. The son’s friend, Captain Norrys, is the main source for these legends, and the narrator moves from America to the Priory to have it restored after his son passes away in the war. At this point, he learned that the Priory was believed to rest on a Druidical or pre-historic temple.

The previous occupants were called the “cursed of God” by the other locals and were speculated to be part of a cult of Cybele that formed around the Priory. It was then abandoned, but the moniker continued to follow the new occupants, including the narrator’s ancestors.

In between the previous narrative are anecdotes that support the idea of the villagers in the surrounding area being “too superstitious,” racism in the form of the narrator’s cat, references to African Americans in less-than-acceptable terms nowadays, as well as the “voodoo practices” that the villagers were involved in. The story was written in the 1920’s, but Lovecraft’s racism in this story cannot be excused just because he was “of the time,” as he was known to be an extremist even by his contemporaries. Unfortunately, this shows up in his work, and it is also present in archaeological practices of the time as well (See Trigger).

Meanwhile, the first hint of the titular rats comes about midway through the story when recalling the lore from the village that a swarm of rats once came from the Priory and consumed a fair amount of food and people. While the villagers are suspicious, Captain Norrys and the “antiquarians” are excited and want to uncover more.

After the house is restored, Captain Norrys and the narrator begin to notice the odd behavior of the cats, which all want to get to the sub-cellar of the Priory. This behavior is often accompanied by the sound of scurrying - as if there are rats in the walls despite it being a new renovation.

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They find more evidence for the cult of Cybele and perhaps an even older cult, and the greed for knowledge of the past leads to the pair assembling a team of archaeologists -- who share this greed -- to uncover what awaits in the basement. They manage to move a stone altar and find a full world beneath the Priory, one filled with massive amounts of gnawed-on bones.

The bones found are examined by the archaeologists and said to be part of the “Piltdown man” class (See Fagan), but at the same time very human. These were mixed with bones of quadrupeds, and the reader is informed that there are secrets too terrible for mankind below. Some bones look slightly-more-human than a gorilla’s with “indescribable ideographic carvings” found in a prehistoric tumulus. At one point, the narrator describes the Priory as sharing a foundation with that of Stonehenge.

At the end, the narrator enters the vast darkness and flees after hearing certain sounds emanating from the scurrying rats, which he believes will lead him to the earth’s center, where a faceless god named Nyarlathotep waits. It is at this point that the narrator descends into “madness” mumbling about how it wasn’t him and the Latin phrases that were inscribed on the wall. He is found with the half-eaten body of Captain Norrys by the archaeologists, and the cat trying to attack him.

The archaeologists then, supposedly, blow up the Priory, take the cat away, and shut him in Hanwell while pretending the events that happened were something other than the truth. The story ends with the narrator insisting that it was the rats in the walls that did what they accuse him of.

Rats in the Walls, Antiquarianism & Insanity

Rats in the Walls is the story that deals directly with an excavation, as the antiquarians and the archaeologists are all excited to uncover and restore the house of the main character. We also see more examples of the locals knowing better than the group of greedy antiquarians, but this story highlights a couple of pseudological ideas that the other two stories do not.

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The “Piltdown man” reference has been known to be a hoax for a long time now, one that is written extensively about in Feder’s Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology. If you want a shorter breakdown, Stephanie Hall wrote an article for the Library of Congress that explains it well. However, Lovecraft directly references the Piltdown Man as the same evolutionary type as the bones he sees in the world beneath the Priory. There are other references to what are now known to be pseudoscience as well, and there are heavy-handed references to the cult of Cybele as well.

The cult of Cybele in real life was based around a Roman deity known as the Great Mother. Many Roman provinces that had a mother goddess often used Cybele as a stand-in for their own deities that the Romans forbade them from worshipping. This allowed them to still worship their deity while making it look like they were following the Roman Cybele. The cult has a lot of misinformation about it generally speaking. However, this idea of misunderstood religious practices being studied by archaeologists abounds in fiction like Rats in the Walls. You can also see this in less horror-like settings like the Indiana Jones franchise.

The antiquarians are never described in great detail, only stated as excited to study the various time periods displayed in the Priory. However, this is often the case in a lot of media. There is usually a vaguely described archaeologist -- or curator, antiquarian, paleontologist, linguist, classicist, historian or even librarian that knows just enough about the past to be dangerous in these stories. They often serve as the ones to get the investigation rolling or are responsible for finding specific clues. They usually know incredibly obscure languages, and they have the translation skills of a minor deity. This may not be where the trope originated, but it is one that has stuck around and is certainly the case here.

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Lastly, of the three works that have the most to do with archaeology, this one showcases the resulting insanity often seen in fiction the best. The way the narrator slowly falls into madness by continually hearing the scratching in the walls until he can’t help but descend into the space beneath the Priory has followed the Lovecraftian genre ever since. The quote, “Such secrets are not good for mankind” highlights exactly what it is that induces madness in archaeology.

It is not just that the antiquarians and the narrator are greedy, it is that some things are better left unsaid. This is the idea that the knowledge of ancient history is too dangerous for mortal ears. Insanity is the biggest trope across all of Lovecraftian horror, but it has made its way into archaeological tropes as well because of things like Rats in the Walls. Indiana Jones actually witnesses the consequences of mortals encountering too much knowledge at the end of his movies frequently. In Genesis, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil causes humans to experience death, so the idea of knowledge causing madness or death is not new. However, the incorporation of dangerous knowledge into modern pop culture was spread and distributed in large part by H.P. Lovecraft.

He was not the only one of his time who truly believed that too much knowledge was a bad thing, but he is the one who took it to the extreme due to his own prejudice.

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“Like a land of mystery in a dream.”

— H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness

At The Mountains of Madness was accepted by an editor in 1936 and was published as a novella in the magazine that at the time was known as Astounding Stories, and has been under various other titles since. It was serialized, much like Charles Dickens’ novels in England, and appeared in three different issues of the magazine. It is the oldest and longest of the stories examined here, but it is also the one most concerned with archaeology and the one that displays a lot of the stereotypes that are still associated with this kind of horror and archaeology.

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Lovecraft had this novella written much earlier, but due to the long length it was rejected and publication stalled for quite some time. As it is, this was published only a year before his death. It was not the last one he published, far from it, and many were published postmortem. This story seemed to be inspired partially by the exploration of Antarctica and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, a work by Edgar Allen Poe. The plot generally follows William Dyer, a professor from Miskatonic University.

The story is broken into multiple parts, which do not line up exactly with how the story was originally published.

Part I:

In part one, the narrator, Dyer, is stating that despite advice to the contrary, he is finally going to reveal the truth of what happened on his previous expedition to Antarctica. He is attempting to convince men of science that what he saw was real and that they should stop any more expeditions to the mountains of madness.

The expedition hoped to uncover a fair amount of material, believed to be the remnants of primal life-history and a key part of uncovering the earth’s past. They believed that the continent was once a thriving tropical continent.

The Miskatonic Expedition sent four University men: Pabodie, from Engineering, Lake, from Biology, Atwood from Physics, and Dyer from Geology, along with other members of the expedition who accompanied them. The beginning of the journey was fairly routine, as they simply had to make their way to Antarctica. When they arrived, the scene reminded Dyer of a strange painting by Nicholas Roerich, as well as the book the Necronomicon, which Dyer states he regrets reading.

Both works he references are foreign, which Lovecraft likely used to mean “exotic,” and this is a recurring theme and one that is likely derivative of Lovecraft’s own xenophobia and “othering” of places he would have considered “exotic” - things that are notably something that modern archaeologists attempt to avoid at all costs.

Dyer then directly references Edgar Allan Poe in the text, who wrote at story featuring Antarctica as well, which Danforth points out. Danforth is a main character moving forward, and he is said to read “bizarre material,” which Dyer implies includes Poe’s works.

The team sets up a barrier camp and they begin to explore the surrounding area. They set up a new base camp and begin to conduct scientific experiments. They also make observation flights, which convince them to establish yet another base and a new place to search for geological specimens. It is at this point that odd things start to happen, as Lake is convinced there is a new pre-Cambrian specimen to document in the area, which Dyer states must have been over 500 million years old.

Part II:

Dyer begins the second part by stating that those back home responded to their reports back with wild thoughts of places beyond human touch and human imagination, but that Dyer did not expect to revolutionize the sciences. Lake diverged from the others at this point and from then on had a separate expedition. During this, it is clear that his excitement for new knowledge has surpassed reason, and we start to see the first signs of madness.

At some point, Lake’s plane was forced down and stated that they had found something like a gateway to a forbidden world. The rest of Part II is a set of transmissions to and from the two expeditions. Lake starts to send very excited messages stating that he had found a cave that was filled with vertebrate fossils. The cave led to a closed-off passage that they opened and found far more “tropical” and ancient animals than anyone could have counted. This was followed by a series of transmissions.

Almost all of the transmissions are of new and exciting discoveries. They are all things that no one expected to find. Of them, Lake describes some specimens as creatures resembling those in “primal myth” such as those found in the Necronomicon. This is also the first reference to the rest of Lovecraftian lore, as Lake describes things like “Cthulhu cult appendages.”

Dyer stops dictating each transmission but mentions that Lake had recovered 14 specimens of some of these primal beings and was attempting to dissect them. Both scientists spend some time describing the biology of what they thought the creature must have been, before stating that it must have been something known by the folklorist at Miskatonic University, as opposed to the science department.

This section ends with Dyer and Lake agreeing over radio to speak again the next day while both of their teams attempt to take shelter for the night.

At this point in the story, the scientists have passed the point of greed overcoming caution. It is important to see the path they took, and this is the point where they have pushed past what would normally be considered reasonable. They have seen the danger but are continuing with their experiments and plan to continue doing so.

Part III:

The next day, Lake never answers the radio and the remaining team begins to investigate. Dyer describes that the plane ride they took was burned into his memory when he and Danforth found a world of lurking horrors.

It is also on the plane ride that they see what they believe to be the ruins of an ancient city set into the mountains. It looks too perfect and not natural enough. Dyer regrets his knowledge of both Asian lore and the Necronomicon, as he would rather not know what he was facing. He calls it a Cyclopean city or architecture that was beyond the scope of humanity.

Dyer then begins to summarize the end of their expedition, such as stating that they found Lake’s entire camp had been wiped out. Dyer stated that they purposely left the nameless terrors they found out of their initial report. They explained that the camp had been destroyed by a windstorm, but avoided everything else.

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Some of the specimens that Lake had collected were found buried in a careful grave by the remaining survivors. At this point, Dyer doesn’t describe them but said that they carefully packed anything that wasn’t in the official reports away for private use only.

They packed things away and flew back to the base camp, Dyer explaining that they had all worked since to discourage any Antarctic exploration while keeping what they saw to themselves. Dyer states that he is finally breaking his silence, in an attempt to convince others to stay away from what they saw.

The Last Parts:

The remaining parts (IV-XII) describe what Dyer and Danforth traversed through. It is quite repetitive, and it is mostly a scientific report of an ancient city beyond human imagination filled with “nightmare terrors” from the Necronomicon. They find giant penguins, many carvings and runes, and a few of the creatures they discovered before.

Part VII, particularly, reads like a full archaeological breakdown of an ancient city, filled with speculation and what Danforth and Dyer did. They also speculate on how the ancient city collapsed, what happened to make the city what it was, and so on. They state that both the giant penguins and the other creatures were likely not part of the city, as they came from different time periods. There are continual references back to other “exotic” myths before they finally started running away.

They disturb something they were not supposed to, and the cries of Tekeli-li! follow them out of the ruins. Danforth looks back as they scramble into the plane and take off, where he gets a glimpse of a mirage that showed him some kind of terrible vision that he refuses to talk about, and which Dyer stated is the cause of his mental breakdown. That is the end of the tale as Dyer tells it, which is missing from their original reports.

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At the Mountains of Madness, Scientific Greed & Primal History

It is the scientific greed and pseudoarchaeology shown in At the Mountains of Madness that is most relevant to this project. The scientists on the expedition are enamored with what they find, never thinking to turn back and always pushing forward in the name of new discoveries even when it is clear their lives are at stake. This greed can be seen in other movies, like Alien or Jurassic Park. The idea that a scientist can’t let go and will die rather than turn back is memorialized in Dyer and Danforth’s determination to sketch the city rather than leave while they can.

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Dyer spends many, many parts of the story just enumerating what he thinks the city was, giving it a false archaeological background that he, as a geologist, is not as qualified to give.

However, in the past, professions that we would consider more specialized and isolated now were not as isolated then. Often, things like archaeology, geology, and biology would have had many of the same courses and would overlap a lot more than they currently do. That is why this novella is associated with archaeology by the general public, despite no archaeologists being present. Dyer is acting as an archaeologist during the final seven parts in every way that matters.

The idea of archaeologists digging too deep has a long history, but this is the epitome of it, and even Dyer says that they should have left before they did, which is why he is discouraging others from following in his footsteps.

The other thing this novella showcases is the idea of a “Primal” history. Dyer describes multiple stages of a great ancient history, something that existed a very long time ago before the Biblical Flood (Pre-Cambrian). These creatures and this city were supposedly from that era, and the cave they find was filled with remnants of a tropical civilization. While it is true that humans had great civilizations long before historians ever acknowledged that they did, the idea that there was a great alien civilization on earth before “modern” history — which is usually dated to Ancient Sumeria by historians as that is the first instance of written history, has never gone away.

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The Alien films, as well as in the Indiana Jones franchise and the Assassin’s Creed series, all show off the idea of ancient aliens as a progenitor race and one that influenced the building of many of the ancient world’s wonders. It was also a result of the ideas from social Darwinism, as it was believed a civilization could never “regress” back to “barbarianism.” However, this dismisses the achievements of past humans, all of whom were just as intelligent or foolish as humans are today.

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Under the Pyramids lies a great mystery - one that still shapes Archaeological myth today.

Under the Pyramids, published in 1924 as “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs,” is one of the main sources that can easily link Lovecraft & Archaeology together. This work is a longer short story that was written as if from the perspective of Harry Houdini, so there is already a tie to the “supernatural” in the form of the real-life magician inserted into Egypt.

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To find out more, see the PBS special on Harry Houdini and his career as an escape artist.

Harry Houdini would be dead less than two years after this was published in 1926, but he would have been at the height of his popularity during the time that this was written and published, having become the president of the oldest magic company in America, Martinka & Co. in 1923, and would have his own evening show a year later in 1925. Houdini remains in some way connected to Lovecraft because of this work, as can be seen in the game, The Last Case of Benedict Fox, where he is portrayed as the father-like figure to the protagonist.

“Mystery Attracts Mystery.”

— HP Lovecraft, Under the Pyramids

The following is the story of Under the Pyramids, summarized with emphasis on the points made about Ancient Egypt. There are quotes included with commentary from my peer and I, the former of whom has a Ph.D. in Archaeology, and who is referred to in the audio as “Seren.”

The story goes as follows:

In the first act, Harry Houdini arrives in Egypt, talking about the strange events surrounding his life and what happened in Egypt nearly fourteen years before. He spends the rest of the time narrating what happened, supposedly, speaking about his speculations on what he had read about Egyptology recently.

“What I saw - or thought I saw - certainly did not take place; but is rather to be viewed as a result of my then recent readings in Egyptology.”

Despite wanting to travel anonymously, he gave himself away by attempting to best a fellow musician on a trip on the Nile, before making his way to Cairo, at which point he meets a tour guide who is a thinly veiled stereotype of a Middle-Eastern tourist guide and who becomes a much bigger danger later. Houdini spends the rest of this act being guided around Cairo by this man and visits the Great Pyramids as well.

“This man, a shaven, peculiarly hollow-voiced, and relatively cleanly fellow who looked like a Pharaoh and called himself ‘Abdul Reis el Drogman.’”

In due course, and after Houdini is told various things about “Egyptian magic” by the tour guide, he is captured and taken away alone in what was to be a test of his own magic powers to escape. Houdini is carried deep into the Pyramids, tied and lowered deep into a shaft, before he passes out amidst horrors that he seems unsure were of his own making or not.

“Egypt, he reminded me, is very old; and full of inner mysteries and antique powers not even conceivable to the experts of today.”

Act II retells Houdini’s attempts at escape. He first recalls the dreams he had while still unconscious, many of which involve the horror of Egypt’s antiquity, and the temples, Pharaohs, and other Great Beings of the time. As he wakes, he is not much better off, being consumed by thoughts of the dead and the terror of what lay beneath the Pyramids. He continues to lament that he knew anything at all of Egyptology, and that all the people of Egypt thought of was death and the dead.

“God!... If only I had not read so much Egyptology before coming to this land which is the fountain of all darkness and terror.”

He continues to describe this, while attempting to free himself of his bonds, which he does eventually do. He stumbles around this tomb, with only a matchbox to light his way, remarking occasionally that Archaeologists must not even know of this place, he thinks he might be in the bowels of the earth now. He hears a cacophony of marching feet and voices, which he attempts not to look at, but which have shadows of abnormal bodies - such as half-men, half-animal bodies.

“I saw that this was no part of Khephren’s gateway temple which tourists know, and it struck me that this particular hall might be unknown even to archaeologists...”

Houdini sees this mass was led by King Khephren, who he believes is the tour guide that had been leading them earlier and who succeeded in kidnapping him, and that they were all throwing sacrifices to some Unknown One that was concealed. Houdini sees a brief glimpse of it on his way out, describing it as a five-headed monster, which was what the Great Sphinx had been carved to resemble, before he escapes up the stairs and out into the desert in a hazy fog.

“The Great Sphinx!... what huge and loathsome abnormality was the Sphinx originally carven to represent?”

He is clearly disturbed by this event, but he pushes the thoughts of the horrors down with one simple line:

You can listen to the full podcast this audio was taken from on Podbean by clicking here.

Under the Pyramids, Egyptomania & Bad Stereotypes

The main archaeological issue in this story is the dependence on the exoticism of Egypt and the people living there. At the time this story was originally published during, colonial and imperial views that archaeologists held put people who didn’t typically fit the European cultural model into the categories of Savages or Barbarians (see Trigger). While Egypt sort of got away from some of those views due to the “Classical” heritage it had, it didn’t get away from all of it.

Because Egypt had great pyramids and civilizations, it got incorporated into the Western model of civilization much the same way Greece and Rome did. Throughout history, the Western model typically inherited many of the ideas and traits from previous great civilizations. For instance, Rome imitated the empire of Alexander the Great and the Athenian city-state. Often, this was done to seem like one civilization “inherited” its culture and civilization from a previous one. Eventually, the British Empire associated itself with these great ancient civilizations in the same way to the extent that we now associate Imperial Rome with British accents in cinema, and Ancient Egypt is often incorporated into that same narrative (see Sumner and Aldrete).

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However, the present inhabitants of Egypt in Lovecraft’s writing and in real life at the time, like Abdul in Under the Pyramids, were given stereotypes that would stick over time. In archaeological terms, indigenous populations of places like Egypt were seen as separate from their ancient kin who built the pyramids. This is due to the model of Darwinian archaeology where societies could only advance from Savagery to Civilization, and it is not seen as possible to “regress” (See the Unilineal Cultural Evolution chart below).

Note: While called Darwinian archaeology or social Darwinism, the man himself didn’t have much to do with it. In fact, we don’t know what his ideas on the view would have been. Rather, other social scientists and archaeologists took his ideas and began applying them to human societies in a way that ultimately resulted in a lot of harm. These ideas of societal evolution are discussed as part of archaeological history, but no longer supported by the archaeological community.

While this model is out of date and unused by the vast majority of archaeologists now, its effects on society stuck, whereupon the idea made its way into the greater popular culture through means like Lovecraft’s writings (and unfortunately, the education system). That said, the Nazi party did use archaeology to justify many of their radical ideas, which came to power not long after this story was published (see Arnold). Notably, they were not the only ones. These same ideas gave justification for Americans to “civilize” Indigenous populations, Western populations to justify slavery, and many other social injustices that have taken place since at least the 1600s, when the first “official” social anthropologists and archaeologists in the modern sense began to emerge. The Nazi party that rose up in the aftermath of WWI is simply the example everyone recognizes.

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The character of Abdul presents a resounding example of this stereotype that shaped archaeology invading popular culture, as it had been for several hundred years at this point. However, while archaeologists have tried to move on, the stereotypes in pop culture remain in part due to the prevalence of these tropes.

Under The Pyramids also highlights the connection between the supernatural and archaeology, and it might even be a main part of the reason that those two get linked often. The idea of rituals, magic, and supernatural entities crossing paths while digging up ancient history is here to stay. Abdul is a practitioner of this magic, Houdini himself is a magician of a kind, and the inner workings of the Pyramid itself are home to a whole world of cult-like magic that the stereotyped locals are part of.

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While cults exist in every corner of Lovecraft’s work, and it is not new, the treatment of Abdul in light of this view of indigenous populations and Lovecraft’s own xenophobia puts a different spin on this story that is not present in either Rats in the Walls or At the Mountains of Madness.

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Previous Part:

H.P. Lovecraft: The man himself was made famous like many authors of his day — long after their death. He died penniless and too young, and his life was not a particularly good one. His work was later popularized and his imaginings created a Mythos full of creatures beyond our worst nightmares like Cthulhu, Dagon, and Hastur, among other Great Old Ones, Outer Gods, and Elder Things. In almost every story, there are also cults of those who worship these beings and attempt to summon or use them for their own purposes.

The true horror of Lovecraft’s works are perhaps that they cannot be fully divorced from the author himself, who had a reputation even during his time (1920s) for being racist and xenophobic, with a deep, deep fear for those people and things that were foreign to him. It has been well documented, and is, in fact, also adjacent and perhaps tied into his connection to Archaeology, as he and others like Edgar Allen Poe at the time were afraid of what was being dug up under the Pyramids in Egypt.

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The true horror of Lovecraft’s works are perhaps that they cannot be fully divorced from the author himself, who had a reputation even during his time (1920s) for being racist and xenophobic, with a deep, deep fear for those people and things that were foreign to him. It has been well documented, and is, in fact, also adjacent and perhaps tied into his connection to Archaeology, as he and others like Edgar Allen Poe at the time were afraid of what was being dug up under the Pyramids in Egypt.

PBS Lovecraft Special

A/N: The link above will take you to a PBS special on the life and works of HP Lovecraft, with an emphasis on how his works and personal beliefs collided. Annoyingly, Substack doesn’t allow you to embed linked videos if they aren’t on YouTube, so it’s just a link in this article. I still think it’s worth watching, so check it out if you’re interested.

This fear perhaps spurred the creation of the mythos, which is fueled by the fear of the unknown and of those things that humans are incapable of comprehending, and often leads the humans in his stories to be driven into insanity. It is important to mention that mental health studies have come a long way since the 1920s, and that insanity in Lovecraft’s stories should be defined more as glimpsing the truth of the universe and being unable to process that experience as opposed to any clinical mental health issue known today.

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His works were largely published from 1917-1937, the year he died, mainly in the form of short stories and occasionally as serials in magazines such as Weird Tales, a speculative literary journal that published other authors such as Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian), and later Ray Bradbury. The magazine declined and officially ceased publication in 1954, and has changed hands and been revived by several different publishers over the years since.

Full Timeline of Lovecraft’s Works

He has over 60 published works, nearly all short fiction, but the three works most relevant to the discussion of Lovecraft & Archaeology are Under the Pyramids (1924), Rats in the Walls (1923), and At the Mountains of Madness (1936).

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Part 3 - Under the Pyramids:

Welcome Initiates to the world of Lovecraft and the mysteries of the past. The two have a long and storied history together, growing in the rise and aftermath of World War I, the obsession with Egypt, the discovery of the Ancient Wonders of Tutankhamun, and the City of Troy. So beware the dangers of the past, the man who made it popular, and the true horrors behind it all.

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Archaeology can be misused to tell stories that may not be true, and Lovecraft was deeply impacted by it.

“Pseudoarchaeological images of the human past are legion. They come in many forms, reflecting sacred and profane visions of the world, as well as both natural and supernatural processes. All share the proposition that academic/scientific archaeologists are unable or unwilling to recognize the processes that have shaped the human past and that there is a hidden history of humanity that is radically different from the one accepted by academic archaeology and history.”

— Hiscock (2012) Cinema, Supernatural Archaeology, and the Hidden Human Past

HP Lovecraft’s works - and others like his - are a major source of influence in the cultural idea of archaeology. Since those authors came and went, the idea of the supernatural mythos of Egypt has become so closely tied to archaeology that it shows itself in nearly every major franchise that an archaeologist is involved in - including the heavy hitters of The Mummy and Indiana Jones.

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The idea is not limited to Egypt, but has now spread to anywhere involving similar stereotypes, including Mesoamerica which can be seen in the Tomb Raider franchise and even Star Wars (the Doctor Aphra comics). Lovecraft’s ideas didn’t come out of nowhere, but this fear of the unknown and the idea that archaeologists, “were digging too greedily and too deep,” was a very widespread idea at the time, although Lovecraft was the one who took it to the extreme.

Lovecraft would have been well aware of the Egyptomania of the time, and with the “Curse” that followed those who worked on excavations of the Pharaonic tombs, particularly the Valley of the Kings, the events that transpired led to the overwhelming cultural belief that archaeologists have to deal with the supernatural on a regular basis.

1922: Howard Carter excavates the tomb of Tutankhamun, two years before Lovecraft’s Under the Pyramids is published, and enough time for members of the excavation to start dying.

While many archaeologists and scholars have striven to disprove the Curse of the Pharaohs and other supernatural connections to archaeology, the cultural myth remains very powerful and will likely live for a long time hereafter.

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The idea has become part of the archaeological term “pseudoarchaeology” which is the construction of archaeological thoughts without evidence or that is not backed by scientific processes. Pseudoarchaeology is a dense and complex subject, and that definition is sufficient, but doesn’t cover the full scope of the subject.

But the horrors of the unknown, Lovecraft’s vision that we are uncovering mysteries better left alone, and archaeology continue to be tied together in popular media even today.

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Continue Reading Part 2:

Continuing on the Lovecraftian theme, I wanted to go into a bit more detail about Kymani Jones, one of the investigators in the Arkham Horror franchise, and one who has a very interesting backstory, where it concerns museums that have a lot of relevance for the state of museums & archaeology today.

Kymani Jones is labeled in game as “The Security Consultant” and the developers put them in the Rogue category, which is one of five character classes in the game that shape how a character navigates the game’s challenges. In this article, I want to focus on museums specifically.

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Kymani was a new addition to the game with The Scarlet Keys expansion, and they were also the first character in the game to be added with they/them pronouns.

The biggest bit of backstory for Kymani we have so far is the back of their character card, which reads as follows:

“When the Taino artifacts went missing from the Miskatonic Museum, Kymani was hired to assess the museum’s liability. Of course, Kymani already knew who the thief was - it has been their own heist, all along. But Kymani had no interest in selling the relics. As far as Kymani was concerned, they weren’t the ones who really stole them. No; Kymani had sent the historical artifacts back home, where they truly belonged. The museum and the insurance company see only a villain to catch, but Kymani is faster, smarter, and better.”

There’s a lot - and I mean a lot - to unpack there, and given that this is happening in the fictional world of the game in the early 1920s, it is surprisingly relevant to today. While museum heists are often the plot of popular movies, this is very much a real and very complex problem that continues today.

As I mentioned before, the past has currency that makes looting extremely valuable, and until recently it was common practice and considered normal to also loot the artifacts of conquered nations until more international laws about what could be taken by the victors was agreed upon. That means that things like the Benin Bronzes or Indigenous artifacts from the Americas ended up in enemy hands and now there are many, many more cries for museums to return these once-stolen goods.

Kymani represents someone who is the opposite of a looter in that they steal things from the museum and then return them to the place they were taken from. In 2018, this article was released that described art heists taking place across Europe from 2010 to the present with similar tactics and targets that all had significance in Chinese history.

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It is frustrating for groups that have been constantly asking for artifacts back with seemingly no response - or a very delayed one - and as Kymani believed, they might not see a problem with stealing back what was once stolen from them. For the longest part of history, the world operated on “Finders Keepers” but now that people want things back and are willing to steal to take them back, there is the question as to whether they have the right to do that.

Is it right? Can it be considered stealing if they are stealing something stolen from them? Is it not their ancestral heritage? It’s such a complicated problem and the backstory of Kymani sums all that up in just a paragraph of fictional text. They don’t see a problem with this and they never will. It’s likely a lot easier to do so in the 1920s, before mass security systems and alarms on every glass case, but it’s still happening.

The British Museum recently lost its director, Hartwig Fischer, along with nearly 2000 items from its collection that were missing, stolen, or damaged (See the article from The Guardian here). In addition, this called into question the imperialist idea that the British Museum considers itself the one (and often only) caretaker of the world’s history, and with any luck, this incident will force the museum’s policy to change (It likely won’t).

At any rate, it’s a question no one has a perfect answer to and may never get resolved. Often, Western museums cite security issues and questions like, “What if they destroy or resell these artifacts if we give them back?” to avoid repatriation, but perhaps they have the right to do so if it always belonged to them. Kymani is an interesting example for this conversation, being basically a counter-agent to the Lovecraftian archaeologist who continually digs up and uncovers treasures they were not supposed to. It’s a good foil, and it brings up a lot of interesting questions for us today. All of which is from the flavor text on the back of a single card in a game meant for entertainment.

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Keep reading more about Arkham Horror:

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Antarctic Expeditions

It’s easier to make the connection than one might think, although there is some interesting roundabout thinking involved. For one, there isn’t much archaeology to be done in the Antarctic at first glance. Humans have not lived there significantly long, so any archaeology would be done on modern bodies. Which is something archaeologists are called in to do, particularly in forensics, and using excavation techniques to find the remains of past Antarctic expeditions would be fascinating if it were a little less dangerous.

However, as I showed in my breakdown of Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, just because those past researchers were not necessarily archaeologists doesn’t mean they weren’t associated with archaeologists. There is a clear archaeological theme present in Lovecraft’s tale, despite the absence of any “named” archaeologists. I broke this down in more detail there, but the cultural ideas that rose up around Antarctic expeditions are the real proof.

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There are plenty of examples of something ancient, usually horrific, being found deep under the ice. The Thing and Alien Vs. Predator being prime examples. The game, Conarium, is based on At the Mountains of Madness and includes many of the same ideas. The idea that something could be lurking hidden beneath the ice that changes everything we know about ancient humans is an intriguing one. And here’s where I think there’s some truth to the idea.

Climate Change & Melting Ice

The glaciers are melting. That has been provably true, due to cases like Dennis Bell. However, this is also visible on Everest, where less and less stable paths to the top are remaining, and people have been falling into newly revealed crevasses more and more. And I think there are some cases where we will find new archaeological discoveries.

Ötzi was found in a similar situation in 1991. A body so preserved that they thought it was a modern forensics case, coming out of a glacier. As more and more glaciers melt, it’s possible we find more ancient bodies, or at the very least the bodies of previous modern explorers that were thought lost forever. It could bring comfort to some families that are still left behind, and end a few mysteries still out there.

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Not that we should be rooting for climate change. The devastating effects on real, living people are not worth the cost. As archaeologists, it’s almost always a balancing act of respecting the dead and the living, which is often weighted in favor of the most wealthy party’s interests. In this case, there’s very little recoverable from Antarctica that would be worth the cost.

That said, depending on your view of how the continents ended up where they are today, there might be some validity to something being preserved under the ice that we haven’t found before. Do I believe there are ancient aliens or cosmic horrors waiting for us? No. But I do think it’s possible that we find interesting fossils.

We won’t know until more of the ice melts, and then we might have much bigger problems than whether or not we’ve found a new species of dinosaur.

But Dennis isn’t the only one that was lost in the ice. The most stirring part of the article for me was the quote from BAS director Jane Francis, when he said that the discovery brought closure to a, “Decades-long mystery and reminds us of the human stories embedded in the history of Antarctic science."

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As long as humans have known about Antarctica, there has been a drive to explore it, to find new human stories in the ice. Humans are known for their curiosity and their drive to discover what’s been lost. And that is what archaeology is all about, and what we hope to find and show in our research. We want to tell the best human stories we can, and this case highlights that in a poignant way.

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The Arkham Horror LCG is a fantastic and often frustrating game. Like many other games I’ve covered, it also has a lot to do with both Lovecraft and Archaeology. I’ve written a fair amount about it before, but I recently started re-playing The Scarlet Keys campaign, and I had some new thoughts about how the game reflects archaeology.

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Lovecraftian Archaeology

Unlike other short stories, the Scarlet Keys and the source material doesn’t have anything directly to do with archaeology in the same way something like At The Mountains of Madness does. Instead, it is a little more indirect and subtle, which makes things more fun to dive into.

However, the globetrotting nature of The Scarlet Keys campaign and the way that the game has you collecting various artifacts, or at least keeping track of them, has a wealth of information to get into that does correlate to various archaeological topics and themes. Granted, anything that has to do even marginally with the human past can be tied to archaeology, which is a big part of the fun of studying it, but there are a little more specific details here.

The Scarlet Keys

This campaign, unlike others in the franchise, seems to be a mostly original creation. While there are bits and pieces taken from Lovecraft’s stories, the main storyline is fresh and new. There are keys referenced in some of his original works, mainly The Silver Key, but these are different. And, as far as my research has shown, the Red Gloved Man seems to have no basis in the original stories themselves.

I find this very refreshing. As was pointed out in this article from WBUR, creating something fresh has the advantage of allowing FFG to sidestep the racism and xenophobia present in many of Lovecraft’s stories. I’ve spoken more directly on that subject in Under the Pyramids, but given that this is a globetrotting adventure dealing with many different cultures in the 1920s, it would’ve been easy to keep those negative themes present; however, they were not.

What I really want to talk about today, however, are the keys themselves.

The Keys As Powerful Ancient Artifacts

Ancient artifacts have always had a “mystic” sense about them in the popular imagination. This is partly due to authors like H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe, but it goes back far further than that as well. Even ancient peoples believed that objects older than their civilizations held power that others did not. This includes items like the Shield of Achilles, which was supposedly looted by Alexander the Great when he visited Troy (though probably in reality he didn’t take Achilles’ actual shield - but that’s a different article).

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However, it is far from the only example. The Aztecs believed Teotihuacan to be a holy city, when it was abandoned long before they rose to power and began to see and use it as such. There’s something about ancient history that has always drawn humans to see it as something more powerful than their present reality, even when we know that it was made and created by other humans just like us.

In the case of The Scarlet Keys campaign in the Arkham Horror LCG, there are eleven total keys that represent powerful artifacts that you can find throughout the game. Some of which you can earn, some of which will become guarded or found by another character. The campaign changes quite a bit depending on where you go and who you choose to side with, so where they end up is up to you and how well you play.

While I don’t want to get too bogged down in details, I do have the images of several of the keys here, so that you can see them. You can skip past them if you don’t want to know what they do.

For those that know me, you might already guess that The Light Of Pharos stands out to me the most. This one, unlike most of the others, is a direct reference to a historical place in the region of the game you find it in. Alexandria was the first place I headed off to once given the choice. The Light of Pharos is directly linked to the Pharos of Alexandria, otherwise known as the Lighthouse of Alexandria and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. I spent a long time studying Macedonian history during my studies, and seeing this was quite exciting.

As a side note, project PHAROS is currently working on digitally restoring the Lighthouse from blocks found underwater.

The Eye of Ravens might well be a nod to Edgar Allan Poe, but that is not clarified. However, we do get a few clues as to what these items are throughout the Scarlet Keys campaign. The first (or at least the first one I came to) big hint is, in fact, in Alexandria when players get the chance to speak with the Claret Knight. He reveals that the Red Coterie, the organization that the player works both for and against throughout the campaign, is an agency that works to protect these powerful artifacts.

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Ece in Constantinople will tell players much the same thing, as will others. You do get a fair amount of the same information from different sources, given that the campaign is more modular and not as linear as most of the others. The Claret Knight is the best source of information if you make a deal and hold up your end of the bargain.

The most important bit of knowledge is that the Red Coterie protects objects that are too powerful for most to wield but too valuable to discard. He also reveals that they are used to do battle against forces that come from outside our world, and that these relics are humanity’s last line of defense. In the final scenario, these objects and others are used to help you defend humanity from these external threats.

But that’s the game.

The Power Of The Past

In real life, however, it is still very much a common belief that very similar artifacts hold power. It is portrayed over and over again in pop culture. You can see Indiana Jones and the Nazis fighting over them throughout the series, various mummies reawakened in the Mummy franchise with them, even a singular powerful artifact in a museum causing havoc for one security guard in Night at the Museum.

This doesn’t end in fiction.

The search for powerful artifacts on the part of the Nazi party was real. Alexander believed that his newfound shield gave him power when he acquired it (at least as far as we can tell from the historic texts), and there are still people searching for the Ark of the Covenant. Regardless of whether these items actually have magical powers or not, they do contain a real and weighty power over people. The power of the past is enormous, and it is used over and over again to exert real forces on entire countries and more.

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Bettina Arnold has a lot to say on the matter, specifically concerning Nazi Germany, but that isn’t where the story ends. It’s a good example to use, because almost everyone is familiar with it, but you can see it at play today. It’s why there are protests for and against the statues of Confederate generals being taken down. It’s why museums still exist. It’s why nation after nation uses the imagery of Greece and Rome to command power. It’s why Trump’s campaign ran a promise with a slogan to bring a certain past back, even if that past was quite different than the rose-tinted version nostalgia carries.

The past shapes elections, creates meaning, and can even define the physical health of future generations for a long time to come. These objects in a game are representations of that. The Red Coterie might not exist, but the power the past has to change the course of humanity remains quite real. Archaeologists need to be careful when interpreting the past for that reason, as it can be used to do harm and to do good.

I’ve had people ask me why I chose a “useless” major, but I don’t see it that way. It’s a very dangerous one. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be rewriting history books when it suits us. The past is important, and recognizing that it is dangerous and that it does hold power - even if it’s not supernatural - is just as important in real life as in a game.

For now, I’ll return to my current run through of The Scarlet Keys and consider how best to use these keys to save the world from an external and supernatural threat. But I’ll always keep in mind just how much real power the past has, and how we must be careful how we use it and be aware of just how much it can also be used to influence us without our knowledge.

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