Leeroy and Joan? (1)

[This is a work of fiction, produced as background material in connection with the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game.]

The Yellow Sign Cult.

The notion of a Yellow Sign cult was probably crystallised by August Derleth in his development of the mythology of Hastur the Unspeakable.  Lovecraft throws in references to Hastur, the Lake of Hali and the Yellow Sign in a long laundry-list of names drawn from Bierce, Chambers, Dunsany, Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and his own writings in The Whisperer in Darkness and later in the same story has pseudo-Akeley refer to a cult connected with “Hastur and the Yellow Sign” as hostile to the fungi from Yuggoth, but made no further reference to these names in his stories.

In one of the stories in The King in Yellow we encounter a delusional individual who believes himself to be a descendant of the Imperial Dynasty of America, and who is in the habit of issuing orders sealed with the Yellow Sign, which in another story, Chambers un-describes as “a curious symbol or letter . . . neither Arabic nor Chinese.”  The King in Yellow appears as a god-like, possibly mythical, figure in these stories; the narrator of “The Repairer of Reputations” believes that even if he can ascend to the Imperial Throne of America he will still be subject to the King in Yellow: “he is a King whom Emperors have served.”  We have only the vaguest hints of any organised cult or society based around the King in Yellow or with the Yellow Sign as their emblem.

The take on the Yellow Sign cult in this background is based on taking Hildred Castaigne’s beliefs as the founding myth of a secret society, rather than one man’s elaborate delusions as fed and developed by a small-time con-artist.  This tied in with the mythology of the Priory of Sion described in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, the ultimate aim of which society was supposedly to set a descendant of the Merovingian Kings (who were in turn, according to the mythology, descended from Jesus of Nazareth and Mary of Magdala) on the throne of a restored French monarchy and ultimately a united Europe.

In this setting, the King in Yellow is a god-like entity (not strictly a GOO, though of similar power level) served by the Yellow Sign cult.  He appears roughly anthropomorphic, the precise details of his form and features hidden by a pallid mask and tattered yellow robes.  Most of his minions are human, although the cult leaders believe (through some highly questionable genealogies) themselves to be descended from various old European noble and royal families, and ultimately from the royal family of a long-lost realm (sometimes represented as being in a distant star system, associated with Aldebaran and the Hyades), and seek to claim the thrones, first of various European nations, then of a united Europe, and ultimately of the whole world under the authority of the King in Yellow; they occasionally summon Byakhee and other minor Cthulhoid entities as servitors.  The cult’s power-centre is the city of Carcosa; long destroyed on the physical plane (there are contradictory stories concerning its original location), it still exists in some kind of “astral” realm (it is not directly accessible from the Dreamlands).  The geography and environs of Carcosa are utterly alien; it appears to be in a binary star system, its night sky marked by three moons, at least one of which appears to pass in front of the taller towers of the city, and ‘black stars.’  Carcosa stands on the shores of the Lake of Hali; the initiation into the highest ranks of the Yellow Sign is reserved for those who have ‘sounded the depths of the Lake of Hali’ which involves voyaging astrally to Carcosa and descending into the lake.  The cult uses the play The King in Yellow to gain converts; hidden messages in the play cause those who read it or see it performed to become susceptible to control by the cult leaders using a kind of post-hypnotic suggestion.  The cult is currently sponsoring a movie production.

The historical origins of the Yellow Sign cult are unclear; while the cult’s leaders claim a fantastical antiquity for their organisation, all that can be said for certain is that it existed in some form in the mid 16th century in England, and probably other European nations as well.  An unpublished and never-performed play by Christopher Marlowe, The King in Rags and Tatters, is believed to have been written as a satire on the cult which was gaining influence in the court of Queen Elizabeth; some conspiracy theorists have suggested that the Yellow Sign arranged Marlowe’s death in a tavern brawl after learning of the work’s existence.   While highly active in Paris in the years prior to the French Revolution, the cult failed in their goal which was to put one of their own members on the throne.  They had heavily infiltrated French Freemasonry, but so had the Illuminati, the Cthulhu cult, and just about every other cabal, cult, conspiracy and secret society in the game, so their plots tended to cancel each other out and the actual course of events took everyone by surprise; the main beneficiaries were the ghoul packs of France.

Decades later, the Yellow sign managed to gain some influence in the “Second Empire” of Napoleon III.  An author called Maurice Joly wrote an exposé of their plans under the title Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu; while on the surface this was simply a satire against the regime, it contained certain double meanings designed to alert those knowledgeable in such things.  Joly was arrested and imprisoned for his pains; the Dialogue was plagiarised by the French anti-Masonic movement of the 1880s and 1890s; the anti-Masonic version was in turn plagiarised by elements in the Russian secret police circa 1900 and modified in the interests of anti-Semitism, becoming the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion [1] (the later ‘Priory of Sion,’ frequently mis-spelt ‘Priory of Zion,’ was a hoax inspired by the Yellow Sign cult).  

The Yellow Sign itself is the characteristic symbol of the cult; it simultaneously suggests a Chinese character, an Arabic ligature and the triskele or three-legged emblem of the Isle of Man, without actually being any of them.  The cult has historically been careful about where it publicly displays the sign, although in recent years some street gangs which the cult uses to terrorise certain urban neighbourhoods have adopted it as a territory marker.  

Hastur in this continuity is not a GOO and is not identical with the King in Yellow, but is the name of one of, or a constellation of, the Black Stars of Carcosa, sometimes superstitiously worshipped as a minor god by the inhabitants of Carcosa; one title of the ruler of Carcosa (who is not the King but subject to him) is ‘the son of Hastur’ and the leaders of the cult claim their position ‘by their right in Hastur.’  The spells Call / Dismiss / Free Hastur the Unspeakble, and Unspeakable Oath / Unspeakable Promise do not exist in this continuity.  The spell Song of Hastur exists and is known to some Yellow Sign cultists but is more often called Song of the Hyades.  Byakhee and the spell Summon / Bind Byakhee exist; the King in Yellow apparently has some limited authority over Byakhee, though they are not an unmitigated servitor race; nor are they the creatures undescribed in “The Festival.”  There is a Contact but no Call / Dismiss spell for the King in Yellow; the King comes and goes as he wills.[2]

Notes.

[1] The anti-Masonic prototype of the Protocols is an invention for the purposes of this background, suggested by (a) references in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (hardly a reliable source of information) which alleges the existence of Masonic references in the Protocols as published and, while acknowledging the connection of the Protocols with Joly’s Dialogue aux enfers suggests that it was nevertheless somehow connected with the Priory of Sion, and (b) Stephen Knight’s Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, an anti-Masonic conspiracy work which alleges that the Jack the Ripper murders were directed, and the police investigation obstructed, by a Masonic clique in order to cover up the birth of the illegitimate child of a member of the British royal family and a Whitechapel shop-girl, in the course of which it is claimed that the Protocols was a genuine document of a Masonic conspiracy prior to being modified in the interests of anti-Semitism.  The fact that the Leo Taxil hoax was taken seriously makes the existence of an anti-Masonic proto-Protocols in 1890s France credible, but I have no positive evidence that any such thing ever happened.

[2] Should it ever be necessary to bring an avatar of the King into play, use the stats for the King in Yellow in 5^th edn. or d20 CoC.  There are rumours that occasionally circulate to the effect that the King is an avatar of Nyarlathotep and that the phrase “the waxen mask and the robe that hides” in the ritual refer to this form.  These rumours are false, and have probably been started by Nyarlathotep himself in the hopes that the Yellow Sign will start worshipping him under one of his actual forms.