Hereticwerks: Purple Clouds in Wermspittle

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Purple Clouds in Wermspittle

"The monstrosities of the Outer Circle are malignant towards all that we consider most desirable, just in the same way a shark or a tiger may be considered malignant, in a physical way, to all that we consider desirable. They are predatory - as all positive force is predatory. They have desires regarding us which are incredibly more dreadful to our minds when comprehended than an intelligent sheep would consider our desires towards its own carcass. They plunder and destroy to satisfy lusts and hungers exactly as other forms of existence plunder and destroy to satisfy their lusts and hungers. And the desire of these monsters is chiefly, if not always, for the psychic entity of the human."

The Hog, by W. H. Hodgson

Purple Cloud
(Worldkillers, Monstrosities of the Outer Circle)

Malevolent, virulent and massive, Greater Purple Clouds operate upon a planetary scale. They gorge upon death and grow bloated as they loom malevolently over the ruins of worlds they have killed with their toxic fumes. These vast, aerial horrors expand and spread upwards into the higher regions of the atmosphere, strangling an entire world in their gaseous grip. Those portions of a Greater Purple Cloud that can be encountered upon the poisoned surface of a given world are crude extensions of the greater cloud above, and act as the cloud's proxies or limbs. The main body of the Greater Cloud remains far, far above and out of reach of most attempts to contact or attack them.

Inevitably, as the Purple Clouds finally conquer a given world, they relent a tiny bit and allow a few unlucky souls to survive their poisonous apocalypse. These survivors become breeding stock for a race of slaves bound to the worship and service of the Purple Clouds and are alleged to be the progenitors of the so-called 'Kings of the Dead Worlds', also known as 'Desert Fathers,' as well as the Purple Horde and the Ledaan. This may be inaccurate, however, based upon the hotly disputed findings of the Kurtz Commission who knowingly and willfully violated several extra-territorial agreements to open negotiations with the self-declared King of Captivon, despite not having any established authority to do such a thing. Captivon is a desolate wasteland and one of the Dead Worlds in close proximity to Wermspittle via a Weak Point. In the furor over how the Kurtz Commission may or may not have over-stepped their bounds, more and more leaders as well as scholars are realizing that we know far too little about these vast, implacable Horrors. There have been calls to form an academic board of review to collect and manage all further investigations in the nature of the Purple Clouds. The Security Council is rumored to have formed a special task force to begin experimenting with ways to combat these things...hopefully, before it is too late...

Prior to the fall of the Western Keep of the Inner Ramparts, there was a specialized corps of Forward Observers dedicated to the study of Purple Clouds. Most of their records and files were left behind when the Guard House was abandoned in the midst of a terrible fire following a suspicious Black Smoke attack that is suspected to have originated from within the Main Keep itself.

Since then, the few reports recovered from the various Dead Worlds in closest proximity to Wermspittle by Foragers, Scavenger-scholars and others regarding Purple Clouds agree on only three things:

Whatever they are, they are purple and seem to be composed mostly of some sort of toxic vapor, possibly cyanide or something related;
The toxic gasses emitted by the Purple Clouds tend to stink of spoilt peaches or almonds, the scent is said to be unmistakable and one should seek to avoid it at all costs;
They appear to be actively hostile and possibly sentient in some bizarre fashion, leading some scholars into much pointless conjecture as to how this might be possible.

More study of these monstrous things is desperately needed, but so far the will, and the funds, have been lacking. However, since it was conclusively proven that there is in fact a direct relationship between the Purple Wisps, Deep Purple Smog, Purple Haze and the Purple Clouds, more funds are expected to be forthcoming...especially since there are signs that more than one Purple Cloud may be moving from world to world through Weak Points or some other means...

Source: The Purple Clouds are horrific planetkiller Outer Monstrosities inspired by M.P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud, with a nod to William Hope Hodgson. You can find a copy of The Purple Cloud via Project Gutenberg, if you're interested, or you might like to try to listen to the audiobook version via LibriVox. The Hog, quoted above, is another of Hodgson's Carnacki stories and a version of it can be found at eBooks Adelaide, among many other places online or in print.