Melonia

FROM THE DGML. IT HAS NOT YET BEEN FORMATTED.

AKA "The Grapes from Carcosa"

It is not original to me, and is in fact a John Tynes creation. It appears in the short story "Broadalbin" and in the Carcosa sequences in the Pagan solo scenario "Alone on Halloween". It is described in Alone on Halloween as a short plant, the color of wheat, that consists of a single narrow central stem with largish spade-shaped leaves jutting out on short stems. At the top dangles a cluster of fuzzy thin pods. It appears growing up out of a crack in the floor inside the Whisper Gallery. In "Broadalbin" it is revealed that melonia grows in the fields near the city of Carcosa. The main character is given one of the pods to eat. It apparently has a sort of hallucinogenic affect and appears to open the mind to the King in Yellow.

I am far too lazy to come up with stats or anything, but here is another drug one of my own creation.

I was running a campaign wherin I was just beginning to introduce the Hastur Vibe. I had yet to read "Broadalbin" or find "Alone on Halloween" on Ebay, so I knew of no Hastur Vibe drugs. Off the cuff, I had the agents spot a couple of little girls in frilly dresses and bathed in a sickly yellow light looking out of the fourth story window of a building that they were about to enter. After they were done with their business in the building, curiosity prompted them to try and find the girl's apartment. I don't know, but I hadn't expected that. Again off the cuff, I had them enter the apartment, only to find it completely empty except for a crumbling, faded and dry-rotted kids plastic wading pool filled with dry sand. Sticking up out of the sand were a couple of cheerleader's batons, and growing up out of the sand was a grape plant that entwined both batons. The leaves of the plant were yellow like autumn leaves and hanging from the plant were two bunches of greenish-yellow grapes. Growing in dry sand. CREEPY!

Of course the agents took pictures of the whole thing. They also took both bunches of grapes. One of them even ate one right there! Another took to cultivating the grapes, trying to get them to grow. As the campaign progressed, I kept with the grape vines as an image and symbol of the Hastur Vibe. My players are kinda dense, so just repeating the Hastur Vibe themes was too subtle for them. They kept trying to investigate Vibe Theme stuff as if it pertained to the investigation at hand, and they would get side tracked for hours. Real hours not game hours. Using the grape vines as a signal that weirdness was at hand but probably didn't have anything to do with the current case seemed like a good idea.

Eventually I developed a background to go with the grape vines. On the outskirts on the Corpse City of Carcosa, nearby the melonia fields were the Tatterdemalion stands as both scarecrow and King, there is a vineyard. It is known of as the Executioners Arbor, the Hangman's Vineyard, and the Offering's Orchard. It is speculated that when someone dies in a place rich with the Vibe, perhaps as a sacrifice to the King In Yellow or by by someone caught up in the throes of the Vibe, their life enriches and instructs the Arbor, and something of them appears here.

The ground is a powdery and crunchy carpet of bones both recent and ancient. It would appear that there were once trees here and that the grape vines grew to entwine and cover the trees, but the trees are gone. The grape vines are so ancient that their "trunks" have become thick and woody enough to support the weight of the grape plants without assistance. The vines retain the shape of the trees that once held them up, giving the appearance of a orchard where there is no longer one, if there ever was one at all. All throughout the Arbor, objects appear entwined in the vines. They are mostly everyday objects: a clipboard, a TV remote, a walking stick, a flashlight, a notebook, or the like. They hang among the greenish-yellow bunches of grapes like they were fruit as well.

If someone were to make wine out of these grapes, the affect would be much like that of melonia. Hallucinations that open the mind to the King in Yellow.

What, you ask, is the point to all this. If your players are like mine, they are going to treat a text like "The King In Yellow" as if it was radioactive. This makes it difficult to infect them with the Hastur Vibe should you wish this to happen. On the other hand, they will poke and prod and maybe even take home shit like a weird bunch of grapes. And if they hear it will get them high, some players will kill themselves trying to get their hand on it. You know the ones I mean. The ones who are always late and can never remember that you are supposed to play tomorrow. Players are funny like that. Problem solved.

Contributed by The Thug Whisperer

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