Welcome to Arkham

 This nifty "Welcome to Arkham" sign comes to us from Rushing's Rarities.

 

The Miskatonic Railroad

Nick Storm just sent over a link to this amazing Miskatonic Railroad model train layout by John Ott.  It's easily the best Mythos miniature work I've ever seen. 

Click through.  Now.  You won't be disappointed.

The Arkham train station, re-purposed from Salem's old station.  Great minds think alike.  Heh.

Downtown Arkham.  Just look at the sheer variety of buildings.

One of the shops along the street.  The interior is fully detailed and lighted.

One of the Miskatonic Railroad passenger cars.  Mr. Ott has created multiple versions from throughout the conjectural railroad's lifespan.

Arkham, 1775

"Riq1977" brings us this detailed map of Arkham, Massachusetts circa 1775.   I certainly hope he's planning on making prints available.

Lovecraft Country

Sweet fancy Moses, this is fantastic. "BlueCollarLove" brings us this map of Arkham, Massachusetts in the style of a USGS topographic plot.  He mentions in his writeup that it's part of a larger project.  I can't wait to see what it is.

Merry Christmas

From 1922, a painting of students sledding on Hangman's Hill west of Arkham. The view faces north, with the Miskatonic River in the background.



The illustration, taken from the University of Wisconsin's 1922 yearbook, actually shows students sledding on the hill at Picnic Point above Lake Mendota. Based on Lovecraft's original map of Arkham, and a bit of admitted squinting, the view is consistent with a picture from just north of the "Wooded Graveyard" on the hill. Aylesbury St. and River St. would be just below the line of trees, while the Aylesbury St. Bridge is a few degrees to the right.

Arkham Historical Society Postcard

Only in Lovecraft's world would a quaint building like the Arkham Historical Society be such a valuable resource in the fight against eldritch horrors. To produce the finished prop, click through to download the high resolution files and then:

1. Print the front image on cardstock and trim it to 4" X 6".
2. Adjust your printer document size to 4" by 6", flip over your trimmed card, and print the back side.
3. Apply stamp.
4. Run the back side of the card through the printer again to apply the postmark.

Optionally, you can follow that up with a rubdown with fine sandpaper along the corners and edges, then apply a light wash of tea to age the finished postcard.

Postcard front:



Postcard back:



Postmark:

The Arkham Seal, Part Four

I have to stop fiddling with it sometime, so here's the final version of the Arkham town seal. At least for now. Click through for the high resolution version, sized at 1.5" at 300 DPI. I've left it intentionally grainy so it can be used as-is for a stamp. If you want to incorporate it into a document, increasing the contrast and shrinking it slightly will make it look like it came off a printing plate.



Update: Raven put together a handy comparison of the three different takes on the seal by himself, Andrew Leman, and myself. Scroll down to see it in Wednesday's post, or just click here. Seeing them side by side gives you a real chance to appreciate how much alike, yet very different they are. A veritable Neapolitan ice cream of Mythos miscellany! Heh.

The Arkham Seal, Part Three And A Half

The incredibly talented Andrew Leman of the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society left a note on the earlier discussion of the Arkham seal that I wanted to draw attention to.

The HPLHS has been at work on an Arkham seal as well, and I've just updated our site with that addition and an update to the Arkham Library Card PDF, as previously promised. Although our seal looks different (and borrows from different sources), it contains many of the same concepts and the two are quite compatible. Both feature agriculture, shipping, and a nod to Miskatonic.

Mr. Leman's interpretation of the seal, and the downloadable library card featuring it, is available over here at the HPLHS website.

Raven, another talented Mythos fan and frequent contributor here, has another take on the seal over here. There's an in-depth discussion of the symbolism and details of it in this discussion thread on Yog-Sothoth.

I love comparing how three different people drawing on the same resources can create similar, but unique interpretations of the same item. I've said before that Mr. Leman was one of the primary inspirations for this site, and his excellent work speaks for itself. Raven has graciously contributed a huge amount of printable paper items to the site, and his in-depth analysis of Mythos minutia has been invaluable.

Embarrassingly enough, I'm still mucking about with my own interpretation of the seal.

Update: Raven put together this very handy side by side comparison of the three seals.

The Arkham Seal, Part Three

I'm still not done fiddling about with it, but here's the official seal of Arkham as it stands.



The reason for the various elements, and their source:

The latin border text marks the year of Arkham's incorporation. It's taken directly from the phrasing used in Salem's seal, the acknowledged inspiration for Lovecraft's fictional city. As far as I can tell there are no canon sources for the date of incorporation, so I added two years to Salem's. Given that Arkham was founded shortly after Salem I thought it appropriate that it's incorporation follow suit.

The crown in the top of the inner circle references Arkham's founding as a plantation during the era of royal land grants. The graphic is taken from the town seal of Haverhill.

The ribbon and shield design is a common heraldic device used by a multitude of Massachusetts towns. The shield with three segments is based on the four segment shield in the Plymouth town seal.

The plow and sheaf of wheat in the upper left of the shield signifies Arkham's origin as an agricultural colony. The graphic is a retouched version of the sheaf and plow found in the Dover town seal.

The three masted schooner in the upper right references Arkham's seafaring history, primarily trade with the Indies. The image is a retouched version of the ship found in the seal of Falmouth.

The building at the base of a hill in the lower shield is a depiction of the academy (created by the Orne bequest) that would eventually become Miskatonic University. The school became the town's major economic engine after the Revolutionary War, a fact I believe the town fathers would find worthy of commemoration in the seal. The building itself is a retouched version of the meeting house in the Dover seal.

The two branches of greenery on either side of the shield are cranberry sprigs, inspired by the ones in the Falmouth seal. The pristine river valley where Arkham was founded surely had bogs filled with native cranberries. The sprig on the left, with it's branches and leaves forming Lovecraft's Elder Sign, is the only "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" element in the design.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

The Arkham Seal, Part Deux

What does the town seal of Arkham, Massachusetts look like?

That's the question I started with yesterday, driven by a desire to add a realistic touch to prop documents from Lovecraft's famed city. I could probably just cobble something together, or adapt an existing seal from the real world, and save myself a whole lot of effort. But where's the fun, much less the defining obsessiveness of true fandom, in that?

The wonderful Town and City Seals of Massachusetts provides detailed examples of the official insignia of every major municipality in the Commonwealth. Examining the seals from cities of comparable size and history to the fictional Arkham should provide us with some helpful design cues, helping the final product look as realistic as possible. We'll start off with Salem, the place most often cited as an inspiration for Lovecraft's creation.

The official seal of Salem, Massachusetts:



Notable elements include:

- A ship under full sail behind a native of the East Indies carrying a parasol. An appropriate device for a city that made it's fortunes from trade with the east.

- The dates of the city's founding and incorporation along the circumference in Latin

- The motto "To the furthest parts of the rich East", again in Latin, displayed in a ribbon device. Another nod to the city's extensive trade history.

- The dove of peace bearing an olive branch above the central shield. Somewhat ironic considering the hundreds of vessels from Salem bearing Letters of Marque during wartime.

Next we have the city of Brockton. Here's their official seal:



Notable elements include:

- The parlay between Chief Massasoit and Myles Standish at Sachem's Rock in 1649. This marked the purchase of the land where Brockport would eventually be.

- The beehive of industry.

- The globe of education.

- The electric bulb of progress. Brockton incorporated from the former Duxbury plantation lands in 1881 and was one of the first cities in the United States to be electrified.

- The two-headed snake symbol of Thulsa Doom's cult from the movie "Conan the Barbarian", directly under the beehive. I suspect this was just a decorative flourish, but it's funny to imagine the sigil of Yig being right out in the open for hundreds of years.


Next we have the official seal of Dover:

Notable elements include:

- A plain, two story meeting house, without a steeple or religious adornment. Dover broke away from the Town of Dedham so the inhabitants could follow their own path of worship in such a building.

- On the left, the town's first school house. Behind it is the highest elevation in the township, Pine Rock Hill.

- On the right, three Native Americans, the original settlers of the area. In the background is Pegan Hill, a native gathering place.

- A plow and sheaf of wheat at the top, symbolizing the town's agricultural history.

Finally, the official seal of Falmouth:

Notable elements include:

- Nobska Lighthouse, surrounded by gulls. Probably the most identifiable geographic landmark in the town.

- A plow, marking the emphasis on farming of the first settlers.

- A three-masted ship under full sail, commemorating the huge whaling fleet that called Falmouth home.

- "Suckanesset", the native name for the area, and "1602", the date the first European visited.

- A sprig of cranberries on either side of the main design.

After looking at these, and other designs from Massachusetts, I'm definitely getting some ideas for Arkham's seal. Many of the historical events that inspired the above imagery have close parallels in the history of Lovecraft's city, which should come as no great surprise. I'm going to take a few days to let the symbolism of the real seals marinate my brain and then start looking at specific correspondences with the Mythos canon. At this point I think Falmouth's seal is a good starting point to work from, since the town's history of an initially agricultural settlement that later developed into a significant seaport matches up with Arkham quite well.

The Arkham Seal

What does the town seal of Arkham, Massachusetts look like?

That's a thought that's been occupying my brain since I began thinking of doing some Arkham municipal documents. Realistically, the city should have a distinctive seal for official documents and property just like the real small cities that fill Massachusetts. Given that, the best source of inspiration for my fictional seal would be the ones used by cities of comparable size and history to Lovecraft's legend-haunted creation.

Every town and city in Massachusetts has an official seal to serve as an authenticity marking for the various forms of official paper that governments produce in abundance. Some of them date back to designs that existed before the United States was brought into existence, but the the majority were created after independence as settlements expanded and eventually incorporated. That process reached a crescendo in 1899, when the Commonwealth legislated that every municipality was required to have one within a year.

So where do we find pictures of the hundreds of seals in use over the years? Luckily, history obsessed antiquarians are more than the protagonists of Mythos fiction. The best record of the various seals in use is probably Town and City Seals of Massachusetts, a two volume set of books by Allan Forbes and Ralph M. Eastman published by the State Street Trust Company, a regional bank, in the 1950's. Back in those bygone days the books were given away as civic-minded premiums to potential customers of the bank, so it's easy to find single copies and complete sets on Ebay and Amazon.

Tomorrow I'll have some scans of interesting and inspirational examples for the Arkham seal project.

Arkham Postcards

Here's a look at the first two "Life in Arkham" postcards- the Hotel Miskatonic and the Arkham Train Station.

The whole idea behind these is that they can serve as both postcards and props. As postcards they're a fun little item that Lovecraft fans would appreciate getting in the mail. Just keep in mind to use an appropriate amount of postage, not the price back in the roaring 20's! As props they're an immersive way to convey information to the players, either for messages sent to their characters directly or as documents discovered in the course of an investigation. Later this week I'll be posting some resources like faux stamps and postmarks to help with that, or you can use the whimsical stamps from the great folks at the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society.

The images on the cards are reproductions of actual 1922 postcards featuring the pastel overprinting style of color common at the time. The "Arkham Train Station" is actually the old Boston and Maine station in Salem, Massachusetts, one that Lovecraft himself probably traveled through many a time. The "Hotel Miskatonic Lobby" is the main lobby of the Maryland Hotel, a stand-in I chose because of the fine appointments in the sitting area- marble floors and columns, polished brass lamps and ashtrays, and potted ferns scattered about. If you look closely at the photograph you'll also see two details that might be of relevance to investigators visiting the hotel, the house phone on the extreme right side of the picture and the newstand/sundries counter in the background.

These will be for sale starting Sunday night for $1.00 apiece. If there's enough interest I'll go forward with more cards so that I can eventually offer a whole set of notable locations.

That said, you're also free to download the images here and make your own postcards under the Creative Commons license down at the bottom of the page. That's right- help yourself. Click through on the thumbnails below and you'll find high resolution versions all ready to be printed out on cardstock for your personal, non-commercial use. Just provide an appropriate attribution for where they came from.

Hotel Miskatonic Postcard Front:


Hotel Miskatonic Postcard Back:


Arkham Train Station Postcard Front:


Arkham Train Station Postcard Back:

Arkham Postcard

The source material for this project is a vintage postcard from 1919 depicting the Salem, Massachusetts railroad and trolley station. I chose that particular card for a couple of reasons. First, Lovecraft based many of the details of Arkham on Salem so it's only natural that we can map the period features of the real town to his fictional creation. Second, the station is a named location in the "Arkham" supplement from Chaosium that players are likely to visit or at least be aware of. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the original card was produced before the magic year of 1923. That means it's now in the public domain and I'm free to use it any way I want without any copyright worries.

After scanning the original I did some basic cleanup work to remove the dust and dirt that had accumulated on the card over the last eighty some years. I had originally intended to replace the existing Salem-specific caption with a new one generated using a matching font, but after fiddling around for an hour I couldn't find one that matched the lettering on the card. Since that's about the limit of my short attention span I decided to recycle the existing caption and generate any additional letters using bits of the printed text.



The letter "K" in Arkham is a bit dodgy, but it's good enough to pass a casual inspection.

Here's the final file at 300 DPI sized to reproduce the 5 7/16" by 3 1/2" measurements of the original. Just click through for the high resolution version.



And here's the back of the card:

Arkham Trolley Ticket

If you're running a prop-heavy "Call of Cthulhu" game this Arkham trolley ticket makes a nice wallet filler, but it can also serve as a useful clue to someone's movements around the town. It looks best if it's printed out on a light-colored sheet of construction paper or card. If you have a color printer you might want to modify the ticket number to print out in blue or red ink for a more realistic appearance. Since it's sized for a 1" by 2" ticket you can print out a couple of copies at once on a sheet of paper and then trim each ticket out individually.

If you're really dedicated there are a couple of things you can do to make it even more realistic. Duplicating the perforations of a real roll ticket can be accomplished by running a pounce wheel along the short sides. Hit the corners with a hole punch and you'll have a good facsimile of the notches used to make ripping the tickets off the roll easier. If you have a any custom punches you can use them to simulate a ticket that's been used on a transfer.

Just click on the picture for the full-sized version.