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Merrylin took science very seriously. So seriously that in his lifetime, especially during the short lived traveling exhibition, he made a lot of enemies within polite society, his scorn at anyone who dared question the teachings of Darwin was well known and in the few times he attended functions, fund raisers or social events with the London Elite, he invariably ended many a conversation in a fit of anger at the sheer stupidity of his peers. He was not a man of the Judaeo-christian God, he was a man of science, logic and truth. Yet his own secular research would lead him to a kernel of knowledge that would open his terrified eyes to other realms of deific possibility;

He was soon to become a man of many gods..

William Dyer, archeologist and known antarctic explorer had donated a series of specimens and cases of notes pertaining to the fated expedition to the Elder city – a now scorned and avoided cyclopean super structure at the crux of the south pole. He had warned all future explorers to avoid the place yet his cries went unheeded. Mission after mission traveled the unenviable wastes of ice, only to glimpse the same blackened edifice of the 300 million year old stronghold, and its surviving abominable inhabitants. Dyer wanted nothing to do with it, he burnt most of his memories and gladly passed what remained on to Merrylin.

The glazed smile upon Merrylins face as he carefully removed the desiccated bodies of infant elder young – the alien forefathers of the fabled city, was often more frightening than the creatures he held so lovingly, his staff avoiding the great library of Merrylin house, where he would mount his samples. He cut into the atrophied muscle and dreamed of the truth. Within Dyers notes, there were drawings, annotations of living gods, and the children of those gods descending upon the earth. And mention of texts, unspeakable books that held the secrets he craved to know.

His money went a long way to secure various artefacts that spoke of far more than the children of these gods. On the peninsula of Gerard way, a stretch of jet rock that rose from the water off the northern most coast of Scotland once a month, he found a tomb. Within this barnacle encrusted shrine he found a tiny black idol of the sea dweller Cthulhu, scrawled upon its surface a series of glyphs, Diminutive letters that formed a word he had seen before – Leng.

Upon the earth there are many forgotten cities – cultures both terrestrial and extra terrestrial – the fortifications of alien species now lost to time, or war, or the unthinking hand of their much worshiped alien gods. Leng was one such place, thought to be the elder city of Antarctica, yet placed elsewhere upon the earth – although its location is no where, and anywhere. After many years of research, he traced the palsied chicken-scratched letters upon many an aged parchment to Asia. The plateau hung above churning yellowed clouds, and atop a peak, on the cold barren wastes of this despicable sky island, he found his goal.

A shunned and hollow citadel, guarded by unspeakable abominations, performing a ritual upon a blood soaked altar. chained to the great black stone a greyish lump of viscous liquid and rubbery flesh, screaming out in the night, the vague resemblance of a baby. Staring down at it with zealous eyes – a nameless priest, a face of writhing tentacles gargling out the words etched upon a human skin bound book. “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!,”-“In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming!”

The clotted clouds curled ominously around the apex of the peak, and as though carved of the very atmosphere, a face appeared in the miasma – a face not unlike that of the child upon the killing rock, the face of the priest, yet massive, wretched, with eyes like voids. Merrylin cried out in terror, pulling an object from his pocket, an object he thrust into the air and screamed “Cthulhu sleeps!” and launched the object at the massing cloud, scattering the congregation of gelatinous half breeds as they jabbered and cooed at the tiny insignificant token now lying upon the earth. It was an elder sign, the emblem and last bastion against the old gods and their hideous followers. The invocation had failed, leaving Merrylin to collect what he had come for.

A manuscript, a collection of rituals bound in human hide. This collection, known to some as the Pnakotic manuscripts was part of a greater whole, which Merrylin would continue to search for in the years to come. Yet he took with him one last specimen, to join his collection of Star children – the sacrifice upon the altar, the now very much dead spawn of Cthulhu.

This cabinet sat in his smoking room, to those who worked for him it was perhaps his prized possession, yet only Merrylin knew the truth. For the followers of ancient extra dimensional gods never die. This is their gift for eternal submission. They wait in the shadows of gloomy inlets, of tired towns, ramshackle churches and fetid caves – they are the children of Tsathoggua,Yig, Yog sothoth and Hastur, of the myriad of alien entities that mold the universe like clay, yet care very little for those who might seek them. And they may not be able to approach Merrylin, the elder sign now with him always, but they will take what is theres, the book, the carven idols, do not doubt them, for they are watching..