The Great Work

Our cause is a secret within a secret, a secret that only another secret can explain; it is a secret about a secret that is veiled in a secret.
—Ja’far as-Sadiq, 702-765 CE

Introduction

The Covenant and Dagon
Although the Covenant was founded on Dagon worship, their understanding of this elusive deity has evolved considerably since the days of Estienne Mordant. At first, the Bons pêcheurs identified Dagon with the Cathar Demiurge, or Rex Mundi. The true creator of the material world, Dagon was cast down by the Invisible Father and imprisoned in his own creation. Obtaining the Necronomicon in the sixteenth century broadened their horizons, linking the Green Flame to ancient Mesopotamian cults and introducing the Covenant to the Mythos. Two hundred years later, the discovery of the Ponape Scripture deepened their understanding, prying Dagon from a strictly Judeo-Christian framework and placing him in a more cosmic context. The R’lyeh Text provided Dagon with a prehuman history, and revealed that his original name was K’th-oan-esh-el. And finally, the Cthaat Aquadingen offered a pathway for Dagon’s resurrection and return.

The modern Covenant possesses an understanding of Dagon unparalleled in human history. Despite this, their knowledge is imperfect and incomplete, distorted by their Gnostic origins and shaped by a racial bias that places humanity at the gravitational center of the Mythos. While the contemporary Bons pêcheurs no longer believe that Dagon authored the entire cosmos, they acknowledge him as the creator of humanity. In this sense, Dagon remains the Demiurge. They understand that Dagon ruled over the Ancestors, a prelapsarian race the Covenant imagines as angelic human beings. In a vain attempt to wrest power from their god, the Ancestors dismembered Dagon and imprisoned his remains in the oceanic Abyss. Their hubris triggered a global catastrophe that destroyed their civilization and catalyzed the rise of humanity.

The Covenant believes the sundering of Dagon is the original “fall from grace” inscribed in Western mythology and religion: the punishment of Prometheus, the fall of the Archons, the rebellion of Lucifer, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden, the Great Flood, even the betrayal and subsequent damnation of Judas Iscariot. It’s preserved in the Bible as the story of Dagon’s dismemberment before the Ark of the Covenant, and was present at the Covenant’s founding, when Estienne Mordant dedicated the Bons pêcheurs to liberating the imprisoned Rex Mundi.

The Great Work
In 1818, Abner Ezekiel Hoag, Isaiah and Rowena Tuttle, and Judge Return Whicher convoked a meeting of the Covenant’s Quéraudes—Bons pêcheurs who had attained the Fifth Degree or higher. Held at the Fishermen’s Chapel during the summer solstice, the conclave began with the unveiling of Rowena’s translation of Perotine Cauchés’ Le livre de la méchanceté, followed by a detailed recitation of Covenant history. Whicher then announced the commencement of the Great Work. After six hundred years, the Covenant was going to realize the dream of its founders. They were going to resurrect Dagon. The Great Work would require decades of preparation and careful orchestration. Books would have to be translated, ciphers decoded, ancient rituals unearthed and mastered. But most importantly, the Covenant would have to locate and secure the sundered relics of Dagon—the Head, Hands, and Stump of Biblical fame.

Finding the Relics

Every book in the Covenant’s possession states that Dagon’s body is locked in the Abyss, an antediluvian prison submerged in the Pacific Ocean. The entrance to this Abyss is located on a mysterious Black Island that emerges from the waves during certain planetary alignments. The R’lyeh Text names this island K’th-aat, which Lon Dara renders as “Kithaat.” Despite its eponymous distinction, the Cthaat Aquadingen never names the island directly, referring to it as the Black Island. The Ponape Scripture repeats this epithet, but also gives its Pohnpeian name: Enipei. Although none of these books can predict when the Black Island appears, its cycles of emergence are heralded by numerous omens, and the island usually remains above the waves for two to three years. The Black Island is the only gateway to the Abyss. Indeed, the name K’th-aat translates as “Stairway to the Abyss,” from the ideograms K’th (Abyss) and Aat (Passage).

The Great Lock and Key
According to the R’lyeh Text, the Abyss is protected by a ward known as the Ab-rakh-el, or “Sacred Water Seal.” This seal may only be broken by the d’Ab-rakh-el, a mysterious countersign activated by the Iao-k’th, or “Invocation to the Abyss.” This incantation is presented as a series of impenetrable hierograms. The Cthaat Aquadingen refers to the pair as “Abrachael” and “Dabrachael,” the origin of the famous magical phrase. Translating these as “Great Lock” and “Great Key,” it describes the latter as a small artifact of Ancestor origin, “fœtid by touch yet radiant in pow’r.” Unable to translate the corresponding invocation, the medieval authors of the Cthaat Aquadingen obscured their ignorance behind a veil of spurious alchemical symbolism. The Ponape Scripture refers to the Ab-rakh-el as the “Gate of Seven Terrors” and the d’Ab-rakh-el as the “Black Seal.” The Iao-k’th is not mentioned.

The Head and Hands of Dagon
As described in the R’lyeh Text, when the K’th-thyalei dismembered K’th-oan-esh-el, they first removed his ub-Sha, or Divine Intellect. This was bound in a relic known as the Aza-sha-el, or “Sacred Head.” The second power to be stolen was the ub-Mha, or Divine Will, bound in a relic called the Aza-mha-el, or “Sacred Hands.” They installed these relics on the island-temple of K’th-khor, roughly translated as “Sentinel of the Abyss” and rendered by Lon Dara as “Kith Kohr.” Bearing a mysterious connection to Kithaat, Kith Kohr drifts across the Pacific Ocean, appearing and vanishing in conjunction with the cycles of Kithaat’s emergence. The Cthaat Aquadingen refers to Kith Kohr as the Wandering Island, and describes the “Azashael” and “Azamhael” as stone idols commanding the “natural & unnatural spheres.” Kith Kohr appears in the Ponape Scripture as Katau Peidi, the fabled birthplace of the builders of Nan Madol. Described as a floating island cloaked by storms, Katau Peidi was home to flying dragons who nested in “great stone hands.” Both the Cthaat Aquadingen and the Ponape Scripture warn of the island’s guardians: terrible Black Leviathans, the language of the Ancients emblazoned upon their skin.

The Ritual of Resurrection

Once the Stump of Dagon has been located and the Head and Hands obtained, the Sundered God may be reborn by completing the Toth-um-Sekh’u, or “Ritual of Resurrection.” This monumental tasks falls to the Supplicant, named in the R’lyeh Text as the Aza-za’el, or “Soul Who Sacrifices.” The Supplicant inaugurates the Ritual of Resurrection by enacting the Toth-um-Kha, or “Rite of Rapture,” and concludes the ritual with the Iao-Aza-za’el, or “Coronation of Azazel.” (All translations are from the Cthaat Aquadingen. Occultists love their capital letters!)

The Rite of Rapture
The third power usurped by Dagon’s captors was his ub-Kha, or Divine Spirit. Known more commonly as the Green Flame, this magical essence was poured into forty-nine vessels called the Aza-kha-elim, mistranslated by the Cthaat Aquadingen as “Azabhaels,” or “Sacred Hearts.” As these vessels shattered over millions of years, the liberated Green Flame gathered in strength. On the day of Dagon’s glorious Resurrection, this divided Spirit must be restored along with his Head and Hands.

This task is accomplished through the Toth-um-Kha, or “Rite of Rapture,” the sacrament that formally begins the Toth-um-Sekh’u. In this complicated ceremony, the Supplicant summons all the Green Flame dispersed across the world and funnels it directly into his heart. He becomes the sole repository of Dagon’s reunified Kha: a living Aza-kha-el. The Rite of Rapture requires three components to be successful: an ub-Resh, the Iao-um-Kha, and the Pahn-aat-vohr-aza-Toth-um-Kha.

A deceptively complicated ideogram, ub-Resh may be translated as “residue,” but can also mean “impression,” “ghost,” “fossil,” or even “nostalgia.” Here, it has a very specific meaning: a shard from one of the broken vessels that contained Dagon’s stolen Kha. Pressing this ub-Resh against his heart, the Supplicant intones the Iao-um-Kha, or “Chant of Rapture,” the repetitive series of tortured syllables that summons the Green Flame. This cantillation must be accompanied by the Pahn-aat-vohr-aza-Toth-um-Kha. A poetic phrase combining Pahn (Idol), Aat (Passage), and Vohr (Time), Pahn-aat-vohr literally means “sculpted passage of time,” and was used by the K’th-thyalei to denote music, repetitive rhythms, or ritualized sounds. (Curiously, the Old Tongue lacks specific ideograms for the fine arts. A piece of music is a “time idol,” a mural is a “light idol,” and a poem is a “sound idol.”) The composition itself is scored as a spiraling equation of hieratic symbols and pentagonal dot clusters. These glyphs appear nowhere else in the R’lyeh Text, and are generally believed to be K’th-thyalei musical notation.

The Coronation of Azazel
The Supplicant completes the Ritual of Resurrection by speaking the Iao-Aza-za’el, or “Coronation of Azazel.” This dedication offers up the Supplicant’s very soul! As described by the Cthaat Aquadingen: “Ye Supplicant, a Childe of Dagon who taketh upon himself ye name & burthen of Azazel, invokes ye coronation thereof, thus freely consecrating his soul unto Dagon as ye Crowne of Creation. And thus historie commences anew, ye Invisible Author inscribing unknown letters upon unblemish’d parchment.” The body of the Supplicant is destroyed, but his soul “becomes One with ye Resurrected God.” Because his soul serves as the template for Dagon’s rebirth, the identity of the Supplicant is crucial. If the “childe of Dagon” is human, Dagon incarnates as a human god. But if the Supplicant is not human, the reborn archon may be something quite…different. Furthermore, the Cthaat Aquadingen states that Dagon shall be granted “limitless pow’r o’er ye thrones, dominions & principalities of earth,” his “divine Quiddity crowned with ye humours & desires of ye Supplicant.” In other words, he who resurrects Dagon becomes Dagon. And he who becomes Dagon decides the fate of the world.

Lacunae and Mistranslations

The sections of the R’lyeh Text describing the Ritual of Resurrection are among the text’s most fiendishly difficult to translate. For the most part, the authors of the Cthaat Aquadingen and the other Black Book Codices performed this task heroically, analyzing previous translations and making inspired conjectures. However, there are several places where they stumbled quite clumsily, whether overlooking connections to hermetic tradition or by compounding their ignorance with medieval fripperies. Because these missteps created considerable obstacles to completing the all-important Ritual, they are enumerated below.

The problem begins with the vessels. Not realizing that the “vessels” containing Dagon’s Kha were actually living creatures, the authors of the Cthaat Aquadingen confused the purpose of these vessels (Aza-kha-el) with the nature of the vessels (a-Bhalei). The first word means “Sacred Cage,” while the second means “No-Hearts,” the K’th-thyalei name for the Elder Things. Having no knowledge of alien races, the translators conflated the ideograms into “Azabhael,” or “Sacred Heart.” An ub-Resh from one of these broken vessels was reasonably translated as “shard,” with the Hebrew letter resh unexamined for hidden correspondences. Although the Cthaat Aquadingen occasionally remarks on the similarities between the Old Tongue and the languages of antiquity, it was written before Christian occultists were substantially influenced by the Kabbalah. The idea of “broken vessels” charged with a divine “residue” held no rabbinical significance to the authors, who portrayed these shards as mundane splinters of shattered pottery.

This oversight pales in comparison to their treatment of the Pahn-aat-vohr-aza-Toth-um-Kha. While the authors of the Cthaat Aquadingen recognized that Pahn-aat-vohr referred to “diabolical sounds & infernal musicks,” they inexplicably entitled the composition the “Black Hymn of Azathoth,” inventing a spurious connection that would bedevil occultists to this day. Rather than reproduce the original notation for posterity, they attempted a ham-fisted transposition using frivolous numerology to “interpret” the dot clusters. The resulting “melodies” were crudely hammered into the Daseian musical notation currently in vogue. The so-called hymn produced by this farce sounds less like an ancient, inhuman ritual than a mildly dissonant outtake from the Musica enchiriadis, its atonality tamed by Western scales and its labyrinthine rhythms reduced to monkish polyphony.

But most troubling of all is their misguided treatment of the Iao-Aza-za’el. The copy of the R’lyeh Text possessed by the authors of the Black Book Codices was notoriously incomplete. The original version consisted of 228 wooden strips and nine stone tablets held in a chest fashioned from the wood of an extinct tree. It was first discovered in China towards the end of the Han Dynasty, and entered the West through Constantinople during the Arab-Byzantine Wars. During a prolonged stay in seventh-century Damascus, thirteen wooden strips were pilfered from the chest by thieves. (It’s rumored these found their way into the hands of Abd al-Azrad, and thence into the Kitab al-Azif.) One of these purloined strips contained the Iao-Aza-za’el. Faced with this regrettable omission, the European translators of the R’lyeh Text papered over the lacuna with a Gnostic prayer to Azazel derived from the Book of Enoch. A jarring intrusion completely out of character with the surrounding text, this specious substitution found its way into every Black Book distributed among the monasteries of medieval Europe. Like the “Invocation to the Abyss” and “Black Hymn of Azathoth,” the authentic “Coronation of Azazel” would have to be obtained elsewhere.

The Angkor Wat Advantage
While these issues definitely impact the Great Work, the Covenant has an advantage over most cults seeking to acquire the Ritual of Resurrection. The Bons pêcheurs have their own copy of the R’lyeh Text, unsullied by Damascene thieves and short-sighted monks. However, neither its original Khmer translators nor Lon Dara attempted to decipher the bizarre texts associated with the Toth-um-Sekh’u. They remain as they were inscribed over 15,000 years ago. Understanding their meaning presented a formidable challenge, but one the Bons pêcheurs would have to overcome if the Great Work was to succeed.

The Covenant’s Supplicant
The Covenant has selected their oldest and most powerful Quéraude to serve as Supplicant: 147-year old Abner Ezekiel Hoag. Upon the fateful day, Hoag will use the Rite of Rapture to focus the Green Flame into himself. Presenting the Head and Hands to the dismembered Stump of Dagon, Hoag will then sacrifice his immortal soul. The Covenant is convinced that the Resurrected God will retain Hoag’s “humours & desires,” and will use his “limitless pow’r” to overthrow the existing Christian order and establish the New Aeon, a brave new world with the Covenant at its center.

Cheating the Devil
Abner Hoag knows being the Supplicant is a one-way trip. In the tradition of sorcerers from time immemorial, he’s devised a way to “cheat the devil.” Hoag has spent years mastering Eucharistia Viridi, and has decided to invoke the Rite of Spontaneous Investiture. Upon the destruction of his vermified body, Hoag’s consciousness will possess a blood relative—the player character Joseph Coffin! In this way Hoag intends to duplicate himself: his soul will animate the resurrected Dagon, while his mind escapes extinction in a healthy young body. That he’d be literally soulless is of little concern. After all, Hoag shall become both man and god. This diabolical plan is known only to Hoag’s fellow Seventh Degree initiates, who are bound by scared oath to obey his wishes. While Absalom Macy and Rowena Tuttle believe he’s making a mistake born from insupportable hubris, Isaiah Tuttle applauds his audacity, and has begun studying the Rite of Investiture himself—just in case. (If Rachel Ward is in the game, the birth of her son presents an opportunity for Isaiah to take Hoag’s place. For more details about these dark plans, see the NPC profiles for Abner Ezekiel Hoag and Isaiah Tuttle, and “Player Character Secrets and Development.”)

Progress 1818–1844

The Covenant has made significant progress over the years, and the Great Work is nearing completion. This section outlines their achievements, and concludes with the clandestine objectives of the Quiddity, which bear a direct impact on the player characters.

Coronation of Azazel
Rowena Tuttle was charged with researching the trio of missing texts required for the Great Work: the Iao-k’th, the Pahn-aat-vohr-aza-Toth-um-Kha, and Iao-Aza-za’el. Her first breakthrough came in 1820, when she linked the “Chant of Baphomet” and the “Consecration of Apodiopompaio” in Book V of John Dee’s Necronomicon with the spurious “Coronation of Azazel” presented in the Cthaat Aquadingen. Through careful study of the Angkor Wat R’lyeh Text, Rowena corrected Dee’s fanciful embellishments of his Latin source, itself a poor translation of the eighth-century Kitab al-Azif. By the end of the year, she had obtained the rightful Iao-Aza-za’el. As Rowena continued her painstaking exegesis, the Covenant combed the Pacific Ocean for signs of the Ancestors.

Discovery of Kith Kohr
In 1821 the Virgin discovered an uncharted island that matched the description of Katau Peidi from the Ponape Scripture. The island was inhabited by an advanced tribe calling themselves the Kát. Claiming to have resided on the island for millions of years, the Kát lived in massive stone cities and worshipped the Green Flame. After spending a week in their capital, Captain Barzillai Coffin came to a tentative arrangement with their chieftain, who agreed to an exchange of esoteric knowledge with the Covenant. Upon returning home, “Old Barzo” retired from the sea at the age of 57. He spent the next decade gathering the Coffin Papers, a collection of documents and prophecies about the return of Dagon.

The responsibility of relocating the Wandering Island fell to his eldest son, Ezra Coffin, now captain of the Janus. In 1827, Ezra discovered an uncharted island inhabited by Green Flame worshippers, but it was not Kith Kohr, and the natives bore no relation to the Kát. Living among them was as white deserter named William Pynchon, a former divinity student who had abandoned Salem for adventure on the high seas. Pynchon spent two years on the island studying the Green Flame and translating records left by dead Jesuit explorers. Taking Pynchon onboard the Janus, Ezra initiated him into the Covenant, and the Bons pêcheurs gained one of their most promising new members.

Ezra Coffin and William Pynchon re-discovered Kith Kohr in 1829, over 350 miles from the coordinates recorded a decade earlier. Like his father before him, Ezra communed with the Kát, exchanging knowledge and learning about the Black Leviathans. Returning to the island in 1832, Ezra and Pynchon left the Janus to parlay with the Kát for a third time. They failed to return as scheduled. Before chief mate Seth Warnock could mount a search party, a sudden typhoon blew the Janus out to sea. Warnock searched for the area for weeks, but the island had apparently vanished. Months later, the Janus was attacked by a massive sperm whale off the coast of Mocha Island—the whale sailors call Mocha Dick. During the hunt, the Janus was smashed against the reefs by a sudden squall. The surviving men, including Seth Warnock and Jeremiah Joab, were rescued and returned to Kingsport.

Stranded on Kith Kohr, Ezra Coffin and William Pynchon spent their time working with the Kát. After a year instructing Kát shamans in Western magic, Pynchon was allowed to return home on a passing whaler. But Ezra was not so fortunate, and was “asked” to remain on the island as a permanent ambassador. (See the character profiles of Ezra Coffin and William Pynchon for more details about their experiences.)

Black Hymn of Azathoth
After successfully translating the “Coronation of Azazel,” Rowena Tuttle turned her attention to the “Black Hymn of Azathoth.” In 1831 Judge Whicher acquired the private notes of Benvenuto da Chieti, the infamous Italian composer executed by Pope Clement XIII in 1770. Among his papers was a “pizzicato oratorio” scored for forty-nine stringed instruments played without bows. It was tentatively named Inno alla costellazione nera, or “Hymn for a Black Constellation.” Da Chieti claimed the work was inspired by the “infernal language” of Piedmont cicadas; but his baffling notations bore striking similarities to the Pahn-aat-vohr in the R’lyeh Text.

With the help of a Second Degree initiate named Judith Espírito Santo, a musician fluent in Italian and skilled at composition, Rowena used da Chieti’s notes as a Rosetta Stone to translate the “Black Hymn of Azathoth.” Less a hymn than a mathematical pattern of percussive sounds, the Pahn-aat-vohr lasted twenty minutes and marked the beginning and end of the Rite of Rapture. During a mesmeric trance, Rowena came to the startling realization that the “Black Hymn” could be mechanically reproduced with forty-nine metronomes. (For more on Judith Espírito Santo, aka “Lady Jezebel,” see Chapter 1, Encounter 6. The “Black Hymn” is described in Chapter 9.)

The Quiddity
In 1834, Seth Warnock and Jeremiah Joab were initiated into the Third Degree, and they were finally enlightened about the true nature of Kith Kohr. Given command of the brand-new Quiddity, Captain Warnock was charged with re-locating the island and debriefing Ezra Coffin. Unfortunately, the Wandering Island continued to elude the Covenant for the better part of a decade, during which time Ezra lost his mind in the Kát Dreamlands, Warnock was struck and killed by lightning, and Pynchon was nearly crushed by ice on the Polaris.

In 1843 Kith Kohr was re-located during the third voyage of the Quiddity. Captain Joab reestablished contact with his old commander, who had very important news. According to the Kát shamans, the Black Island had recently emerged from the waves, but would sink after the summer solstice of 1846. If the Covenant couldn’t locate Kithaat during the next two years, they wouldn’t have another chance until 1888. Not only that, but Ezra had acquired the Great Key, and confirmed that the Azashael and Azamhael were indeed on Kith Kohr! They were revered as scared artifacts, naturally, and remained under Kát protection. Unless an arrangement could be made with the chieftain, the Head and Hands of Dagon would have to be acquired through deception or force. 

The Madness of Eli Watts
On the way back to Kingsport the Quiddity encountered the Janus’ old nemesis, Mocha Dick. Captain Joab ordered the boats lowered, and once again disaster ensued. Captain Joab lost his leg, and chief mate Nathaniel Warnock was rendered comatose by a blow to the head. With Joab incapacitated, second mate Elijah Watts was forced to assume command, a task for which he was woefully unprepared. Only a First Degree initiate, most of Watts’ occult knowledge was a jumble of Atlantean myth and half-baked Freemasonry. When he unlocked the captain’s sea-chest, he thought he’d find liquor; instead he found a strange ivory whistle, several arcane books, and the Great Key. Watts became obsessed with the Key, a glowing piece of scrimshaw hacked from the bones of Dagon. Seduced by its power, he devoured the Coffin Papers and the Book of Wickedness, quickly getting in over his head. One night he unwittingly summoned a Byakhee. The creature carried him to the Other Place, where his sanity was blasted by a series of incomprehensible visions.

Elijah Watts returned a changed man. Fearing for his immortal soul, he tore three pages from the Coffin Papers and burned the remainder with Cauchés’ grimoire. He concealed one page in his sea-chest, erroneously believing it to be a protection spell. He enclosed the second page in a letter addressed to his girlfriend Maria in Valparaíso, and the third in a letter to an Hawaiian prostitute name Lahaina Lucy. After entrusting the letters to an outbound whaler during an uncharacteristically sober gam, Watts carved a duplicate Key out of scrimshaw and locked the genuine artifact in his sea-chest. He loaded the ship’s blunderbuss and pressed its flared muzzle against Joab’s sleeping head. The delirious captain opened his eyes, fixed his gaze upon the mate, and hissed, “Do it, man. I beg thee.” He then slipped back into unconsciousness. Watts threw down the musket and wept.

Watts began accusing the officers and crew of “conspiring with Satan,” and his behavior grew increasingly more erratic. Driving the Quiddity into a storm around Cape Horn, he finally succumbed to madness, lashing himself to the helm and bashing his teeth to jagged splinters. As Watts bellowed nonsensical sea shanties about dead gods and sunken cities, third mate P.H. Whipple took command of the imperiled ship. Just as the Quiddity was about to capsize, Joab miraculously emerged from his delirium and saved the day. (This event is described in Joab’s NPC profile and in “Chapter 1, Encounter 4.”)

Meanwhile Back On Land…
As the Quiddity was roaming the Pacific, numerous milestones were achieved back home. Discovering a curious page of random letters among her husband’s possessions, Rowena Tuttle realized it was the key to a Baconian cipher. When she applied the key to a mysterious “prophecy” Silas Tuttle had scratched into the Gravesend prison ship in 1723, she was astonished to find the warlock’s enigmatic words concealed the “Invocation to the Abyss!” It was a shocking confirmation of the Covenant’s manifest destiny, undeniable proof they were on the right path. The Covenant had also located three Azabhael shards, fragments from the vessels that once held Dagon’s sundered Kha. Although only one ub-Resh is required for the Rite of Rapture, they judiciously decided to pursue all three. One was held by an Inuit tribe and peacefully purchased by William Pynchon. The other was retrieved from Ponape by Captain Gideon Sleet. The third was located in Chile, in the possession of a Dagon cult willing to trade for a copy of the Codex Dagonensis. Meanwhile, Abner Ezekiel Hoag prepared himself for the Rite of Investiture.

Present Tense: The Year 1844
All signs indicate that Kithaat, the Black Island, has resurfaced somewhere in the Pacific. While this has been affirmed by the Kát and corroborated through powerful divination magic, there’s also something else: a feeling many Bons pêcheurs have been experiencing, a subliminal attraction to a mysterious location far across the waves. As the Abyss prepares to open—on the Summer Solstice of 1846, exactly 666 years after the founding of the Bons pêcheurs—all Covenant resources have been directed towards completion of the Great Work. And among these is the Quiddity, preparing for its fourth and final voyage.

Ordered around Cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean, the Quiddity must stop at Valparaíso, where Pynchon will secure the third Azabhael shard from the Chilean cult. After cruising the Offshore Grounds and reprovisioning on the Galápagos Islands, the Quiddity will search for Kith Kohr, joining the efforts of the Electra, Celaeno, and Tethys. One of these ships is bound to find the Wandering Island. The lucky captain has been instructed to rescue Ezra Coffin and secure the Azashael and Azamhael by any means necessary. After butchering a Black Leviathan and rendering its body for a map to Kithaat, word must be dispatched to Covenant elders waiting in Hawaii. Upon reaching the Black Island, the Bons pêcheurs will descend into the Abyss, and Abner Ezekiel Hoag will resurrect Dagon and welcome the Apocalypse.

Weaknesses

Well, that’s the plan! But the Covenant’s execution of the Great Work has not been flawless.  Their critical mistakes, missteps, and blind spots are addressed below. Wise player characters may take advantage of these weaknesses to shift the narrative in their favor.

The Call of Dagon
The Covenant is surprisingly unaware of the Call of Dagon. Those Bons pêcheurs who have heard the Call believe their obsession is the natural product of their devotion—of course they feel compelled to seek out Dagon, that’s the whole point of the Great Work! It’s never occurred to the Covenant that other souls may be following the same urges. This collective narcissism will be exposed when the Quiddity discovers Abaddon. (See “Call of Dagon” for details.)

The Ancestors and the Deep Ones
The Covenant learned about the K’th-thyalei from the R’lyeh Text, but adopted the name “Ancestors” from the Cthaat Aquadingen and Ponape Scripture. They view the Ancestors as idealized human beings; a mythic conflation of Atlanteans and angels. The Covenant knows about Deep Ones through their allies on Kith Kohr and neighboring Innsmouth, but they believe them to be the stunted offspring of the Ancestors, a submarine branch of troglodytes bearing scant kinship to the magisterial race that dismembered Dagon. Only Abner Hoag, Ezra Coffin, and William Pynchon suspect the truth, and they will fight for human supremacy at any cost. This misunderstanding of the K’th-thyalei has led the Covenant to underestimate the Kát, whose relationship with the Deep Ones gives them more power than the New Englanders suspect. It may also affect Pynchon’s relationship to the player character Leland Chappell Morgan. (The Kát are described in Chapter 6. See “Player Characters Secrets and Development” for details about Morgan.)

The Iao-k’th
Rowena Tuttle believes she’s the only person to have discovered the Iao-k’th, the “Invocation of the Abyss” that activates the Great Key and opens the prison of Dagon. Her reasons are entirely understandable. Rowena deciphered the spell from the mad ravings of her husband’s uncle. Who else would have access to this cipher and key?

It’s a fair question; but Rowena failed to take into account why Silas knew the invocation in the first place. In 1722, the Black Island emerged from the ocean and remained above the waves for nearly four years. While the Call of Dagon lacked the power of its current emanation, it was strong enough to effect Silas Tuttle, imprisoned on the Gravesend with the cultists arrested during Eben Hall’s raid. Unable to obey the subconscious imperative of the Call, Silas went mad, the Iao-k’th buzzing in his skull like a nest of hornets. He encoded the invocation using a Baconian cipher disguised as a deranged “prophecy” scratched into the walls of his floating prison. He then arranged to have the cipher key smuggled to his nephew Isaiah. By the time Isaiah received the inscrutable page of letters, Silas had committed suicide with Father Rufus Cheever and eleven other Bons pêcheurs. Silas Tuttle was neither the first nor last madman to hear the Iao-k’th. Ironically, it was Tuttle’s obsession with secrecy that made the invocation so difficult for Rowena to obtain—other visionaries simply transcribed the words verbatim!

The Great Key
The Kingsport Cult also misunderstands the d’Ab-rakh-el. They believe the Great Key is a unique artifact that has existed since the time of Dagon’s imprisonment. In fact, the d’Ab-rakh-el is merely a spell, a counter-ward designed to open the Abyss when the Iao-k’th is spoken. This counter-ward must be ritualistically invested in a physical object; but there are no limits to the number of “Great Keys” that may exist at any given time. The Key obtained by Ezra was just one of several that Kát shamans had inherited from the Deep Ones; a fact they were happy to conceal—why not let the Covenant believe they’ve gained something uniquely valuable?

The Covenant is not wholly to blame for this misunderstanding. The ritual to incarnate the d’Ab-rakh-el is not contained in the R’lyeh Text. It’s found in the Dhol Chants, a series of litanies associated with the “original” R’lyeh Text discovered in China. The version of the R’lyeh Text obtained by Isaiah Tuttle at Angkor Wat lacks these Dhol Chants. Nor does the spell appear in the Cthaat Aquadingen or the Codex Dagonensis. Each of the Black Book Codices contains different arrangements of the Dhol Chants, and this particular spell was assigned to the Codex Maleficium. To make matters worse, the Key obtained by Ezra Coffin on Kith Kohr was replaced with a forgery made by Elijah Watts during his brief command of the Quiddity. He concealed the genuine artifact in his sea-chest, where it will be discovered by the player characters in Chapter 1. Additional Great Keys in White Leviathan include Cardinal Vocasiel’s Cross of Judas, the Weeping Buddha of the Feng Po, and Amon Stockhausen’s Black Seal.

The False Azashael
Ezra Coffin believes that the Azashael and Azamhael are a pair of idols located on Kith Kohr. He is only half right. While the Azamhael is indeed on the island—although not exactly where Ezra thinks!—the Azashael was lost when Kith Kohr was struck by a “comet” some 35 million years ago. It is now located inside Lothon, the White Leviathan. (See Chapter 6 for details.)

The Supplicant
The Covenant has successfully translated the complete Rite of Rapture, a feat thus far accomplished only by Cardinal Vocasiel and the Ministry of Abaddon. But each of these worthies has made the same critical mistake. Based on the generalized use of the word Aza-za’el in the R’lyeh Text, they assume the sorcerer who invokes the Rite of Rapture must be the same person who enacts the “Coronation of Azazel.” In other words, the Supplicant must concentrate the Green Flame within himself as a prerequisite to offering up his soul. In truth, as long as the rites are conducted in the correct order, they may be performed by two different figures—Dagon is just as happy to rip the Kha-inflamed heart from one sorcerer and devour the soul of another! But only the sorcerer who completes the “Coronation of Azazel” is the true Supplicant, the one who becomes Dagon. A wily soul possessing this vital piece of information could surely use it to his advantage… (See Chapter 11, “Coronation of Azazel” for details.)

Sources and Notes

The image in the header is an engraving by Otto Elliger and A. de Blois called “Temple of Dagon.” Dating from 1700, it shows some alarmed Philistines going, “Hey! That Ark of the Covenant thing has really messed up our fish god!” This is an exact translation. I found the Ja’far as-Sadiq quote in Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum.

White Leviathan > Keeper’s Information
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Author: A. Buell Ruch
Last Modified: 24 March 2024
Email: quail (at) shipwrecklibrary (dot) com
White Leviathan PDF: [TBD]