Thursday, December 15, 2016

The Effigy of Nabu Incarnate

Warning: Stop here if you're going to be playing the Call of Cthulhu adventure "The Curse of Nineveh" by Cubicle 7.

Over the last few years the Call of Cthulhu fan site Yog-Sothoth has been running a series of recorded campaigns. Their latest effort is a run through "The Curse of Nineveh" from Cubicle 7.  The adventure features a number of plot tokens that have to be collected by the players, among them a solid gold idol of Nabu Incarnate.
The statuette given to Neve Selcibuc by Archie Glossop, which in turn is given to the investigators at the start of this scenario, is known as “Nabu Incarnate.” It is approximately 20cm (8”) high and made from pure gold. The statuette is of a bearded king who appears to be transforming out of a second, plainer humanoid figure. The effect is to suggest some form of divine conversion or god-like birth. There are no marks or inscriptions save for a small sigil carved on the base, which looks like a rune of some kind: it is in no human language and requires a successful Cthulhu Mythos roll to decipher that it means “Yul’huthris”, a being with a link to the coterminous blasphemy that is Yog-Sothoth.

Wayne Peters was commissioned to create the idol based solely on that description.  He's posted an in-depth look at the process from initial sketch to the final finishing of the 3-d printed piece.  It's a fascinating process, and good look at the future of propmaking.





1 comment:

CoastConFan said...

It’s an interesting piece of work and the build narrative was quite informative. A story that is not based on time worn ancient Egyptian works is a breath of fresh air. Maybe the artist could do something in this vein with the First Emperor of China’s terracotta army.

I personally like Assyrian cylinder seals with their elaborate iconography and story telling. A little Googling will turn up quite a number. They are a great potential for a CoC campaign. Imagine having only a grainy photo of one part of a seal to go on, then turn up an incomplete drawing of the seal in a rare book. You move on to find the seal itself and then take an impression on clay. For that matter they might be number of seals that could be found, along with counterfeits that have to be contended with.

For those of you who are interested in Assyrian art, there is a site that has some excellent replicas of ancient works available, but be prepared, they are expensive http://www.bibleandscience.com/store/catalog/index.php?cPath=39

There are a number of reasonably priced cylinder seal replicas available for eBay. As a caution to those buying cylinder seals sold as “original”, they have been counterfeited for centuries, often using ancient hard stone beads that have been engraved at a much later date. Just because they are ancient and have been drilled with a bow drill, doesn’t make them correct or original pieces.