"... I spoke to Jim Lowell up at Harvard last week and he made mention of a recent and unimaginable discovery. Apparently while collecting mollusks in an obscure little inlet town in T_____ New England, the good doctor came across what he believes to be over a dozen separate pieces of native gold, statuary, and other gold artifacts from the mysterious and ill-fated town of Innsmouth. Have you heard any news of this?"
Brandon Zimmerman brings us this
interesting Dagon idol. It's a shame that so many priceless items ended up being melted down in the Marsh Refinery.
I really like the crudely cast idol in gold. To appreciate the full extent of his work, you need to click on the bottom link of Brandon Zimmerman’s DevianArt site http://mortonskull.deviantart.com/art/PIECE-OF-PURE-NATIVE-INNSMOUTH-GOLD-316373637 . The marine growth is quite nice and the nugget shapes really do appear to be native metal. Gold is one of the most durable, although soft, metals around and figures made of such material could survive millions of years. I’m really glad to see a new and interesting Mythos figure or item. I’m somewhat reminded of a Phonecian Puzuzu (as popularized in the Exorcist movies).
ReplyDeleteThe presence of native gold in or around Arkham would have to be perceived as anomalous and due to non-natural occurrence. The pieces are too large to be due to glacial action. Indeed, formed figures indicate transference by some sapient agency from where the original native metal was found, the closest would be Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, Georgia or ironically, north Florida*. Of course one could argue the Deep Ones brought the gold up from the sea themselves or even fashioned the figures, rather than by human agency.
*Spanish conquistadors were looking for just such a deposit in the 1500s. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_mining_in_the_United_States for gold locations.
Not really sure if that's a valid point considering that Innsmouth gold is never explicitly identified as actually being gold. It's described as an alien looking alloy with a lighter lustrous quality than regular gold.
DeleteI always took it as an alien substance akin to the stone that the Cthulhu Idol is carved from in Call of Cthulhu.