An origin myth of the Yellow Sign cult.
[I claim no originality at all for this but leave it to the reader to work out where I lifted it from.]
The Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign was founded in Carcosa a century or so prior to its destruction, by supporters of a member of the royal family who ended up on the losing side in a dispute about the succession to the throne. Through a series of political intrigues, the group ended up becoming the power behind the throne but never gained the strength to openly seize the crown.
When a Mi-Go mining and research expedition was discovered to have landed on Carcosa’s planet, the Yellow Sign leadership denounced their activities, believing they would destabilise that world’s precariously balanced orbit (it being in a binary star system), rendering it uninhabitable by humans. After a few years of agitation, war ensued between the fungi and Carcosa. The magicks commanded by the Yellow Sign (mainly based around summoning monsters to fight for them, not from the Outer Void but from the unending nightmares of Carcosan “saints”—spiritually / psychically powerful individuals—who were soultrapped in statues while still alive) were no match for the Mi-Go's advanced technology and Carcosa was devastated, with over 90% of its population killed in the first month or so of fighting.
Realising the city faced total destruction, the leader of the Yellow Sign—a mage and descendant of the Carcosan royal family named Yhtill—embarked on a scheme to save at least a dream or memory of it. Most of the surviving inhabitants—some willingly, some less so—were soultrapped in imperishable crystals set into the side of the mountains overlooking Carcosa, or buried in caverns beneath said mountain, in a permanent dreaming state, that their memories of the city might maintain a lasting simulacrum of its glory days in the Dreamlands, which would endure for æons after the original was reduced to rubble.
In order to protect himself while co-ordinating the summoning of the dream Carcosa, Yhtill constructed a magical shell around himself, anchored in a yellow robe and a full-face mask which he donned. This “shell” was empowered with basic attack and defence functions and inherited a powerful hostility to the Mi-Go.
Something went wrong. In channelling the energies required to coalesce the dream Carcosa, Yhtill went insane and the “shell,” empowered to an unanticipated degree, raged out of control and completed the ruin of the real-world city. The effects of Yhtill’s madness warped the dream Carcosa, populating its night with black stars and moons that seemed to pass in front of the taller towers of the city. In awe of the power of the new being, the surviving Yellow Sign members declared it their god and King.
When a Mi-Go mining and research expedition was discovered to have landed on Carcosa’s planet, the Yellow Sign leadership denounced their activities, believing they would destabilise that world’s precariously balanced orbit (it being in a binary star system), rendering it uninhabitable by humans. After a few years of agitation, war ensued between the fungi and Carcosa. The magicks commanded by the Yellow Sign (mainly based around summoning monsters to fight for them, not from the Outer Void but from the unending nightmares of Carcosan “saints”—spiritually / psychically powerful individuals—who were soultrapped in statues while still alive) were no match for the Mi-Go's advanced technology and Carcosa was devastated, with over 90% of its population killed in the first month or so of fighting.
Realising the city faced total destruction, the leader of the Yellow Sign—a mage and descendant of the Carcosan royal family named Yhtill—embarked on a scheme to save at least a dream or memory of it. Most of the surviving inhabitants—some willingly, some less so—were soultrapped in imperishable crystals set into the side of the mountains overlooking Carcosa, or buried in caverns beneath said mountain, in a permanent dreaming state, that their memories of the city might maintain a lasting simulacrum of its glory days in the Dreamlands, which would endure for æons after the original was reduced to rubble.
In order to protect himself while co-ordinating the summoning of the dream Carcosa, Yhtill constructed a magical shell around himself, anchored in a yellow robe and a full-face mask which he donned. This “shell” was empowered with basic attack and defence functions and inherited a powerful hostility to the Mi-Go.
Something went wrong. In channelling the energies required to coalesce the dream Carcosa, Yhtill went insane and the “shell,” empowered to an unanticipated degree, raged out of control and completed the ruin of the real-world city. The effects of Yhtill’s madness warped the dream Carcosa, populating its night with black stars and moons that seemed to pass in front of the taller towers of the city. In awe of the power of the new being, the surviving Yellow Sign members declared it their god and King.
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