From the Mountains of Madness

Found in Miskatonic University, and catalogued as “Specimen ATMOM1936”, this object is believed to be a portion of the carvings described by Dr. William Dyer. Featuring strange figures, which some have suggested to be an “Elder Thing” with a “Shoggoth.”

Professor B. of Eldritch Provisions brings us this intriguing fragment of a stone carving recovered by the ill-fated Dyer expedition to Antarctica.

 

Wings Over Antarctica Print Logo

The black and white print version of the Miskatonic Antarctic expedition logo. Just click to view the full sized graphic. This one is pristine, but you may want to fade it out a bit and add some noise if you're using it for any kind of documents.

Wings Over Antarctica: The Backtracking

After weighing all the feedback I've decided to stick with using the Dornier Do-J "Wal" as the Dyer expedition aircraft.

There's certainly a case to be made for the Merkur, but in the end I found myself agreeing with those that sided with the Wal. Frankly, it just looks better. The Merkur is a fine little aircraft, but it suffers from looking like all the other single-engined planes of the classic era. The Wal is nothing if not distinctive.

Here's the basic color logo I'll be using for the next run of swag. There are some relatively trivial composition and scale changes, but the biggest difference will be in the background colors. The dark blue of the original design will be lightened a few shades to provide more contrast with the plane in the embroidered versions. The dark grey of the outer text ring is now the same red as the Miskatonic University logo, giving the overall design a bit more pop.

I'll finish up the black and white version, and a stencil template for marking gear and equipment crates, over the next few days.

Wings Over Antarctica, Part Trois

I had originally planned to show the new Miskatonic Antarctic expedition logo tomorrow, but things went better than expected and I was able to finish the roughs early. These are still subject to change, but they're pretty close to being ready. Other than replacing the Dornier Wal with the Dornier Merkur II the changes are relatively minor.

First off, the black and white line art. This would be used for documents, letterheads, envelopes, and such. If it goes over well I'll do a version with slightly heavier line widths and a little grain for a print reproduction.



Next, the color version of the logo. This will be used for small items like the patches and pins. The outer ring has been changed from light grey to Miskatonic red. It's a good tie-in to the University logo and makes the whole design a lot snappier.



Here's a variant of the color logo with more of an Art Deco feel. It takes advantage of countershading to provide dimensionality and uses more muted colors. This is what I'd like to use for larger reproductions like T-shirts.



I still need to work out a stencil version, but these should cover most uses. As always, your thoughts are appreciated.

Wings Over Antarctica, Part Deux

Yesterday I wrote about the history of the Miskatonic University Antarctic expedition logo. Today I want to discuss why the second version of that design used the Dornier Do-J "Wal" as the expedition aircraft, and what ultimately made me change my mind about that identification. If you're not into historical research, or are easily bored, I'd suggest skipping to the end.

The text of Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" provides few hard details about what model of aircraft was flown by Dyer's party. That's understandable given that he was more concerned with crafting a thrilling weird tale than a treatise on aviation. Complicating things is the fact that the information he does share is somewhat confusing. Again, that's not unexpected. Lovecraft was a master at incorporating historic and scientific details that would give his stories a sense of believability, but he never let the real world get in the way of the story. Surprisingly, the vague details in the story point to a single specific aircraft. Here is what he tells us:

"Four large Dornier aëroplanes, designed especially for the tremendous altitude flying necessary on the antarctic plateau and with added fuel-warming and quick-starting devices worked out by Pabodie, could transport our entire expedition from a base at the edge of the great ice barrier to various suitable inland points, and from these points a sufficient quota of dogs would serve us."

"Later, when not using all the other planes for moving apparatus, we would employ one or two in a shuttle transportation service between this cache and another permanent base on the great plateau from 600 to 700 miles southward, beyond Beardmore Glacier."

"Danforth and I, studying the notes made by Pabodie in his afternoon flight and checking up with a sextant, had calculated that the lowest available pass in the range lay somewhat to the right of us, within sight of camp, and about 23,000 or 24,000 feet above sea-level."

"We were now, after a slow ascent, at a height of 23,570 feet according to the aneroid; and had left the region of clinging snow definitely below us."

"It did not seem necessary to protect the plane with a snow banking for so brief a time and in so comfortable an absence of high winds at this level; hence we merely saw that the landing skis were safely lodged, and that the vital parts of the mechanism were guarded against the cold."

"At a very high level there must have been great disturbance, since the ice-dust clouds of the zenith were doing all sorts of fantastic things; but at 24,000 feet, the height we needed for the pass, we found navigation quite practicable."

Put that all together and you have the Dyer expedition's airplane - a Dornier model available in late 1929 to early 1930 with a flight range of at least 800 miles and a maximum flight ceiling at or above 24,000 feet. Oh, and it has to have landing skis. There's a good deal of wiggle room about the plane's flight characteristics based on the conjectural modifications carried out by Dornier and Frank Pabodie, but the presence of landing skis narrows it down to only one plane: the Dornier Do-B, most likely the "Merkur II" variant.



All of the other general aviation Dorniers at the time were flying boats that wouldn't need skis to touch down on ice and snow. In fact, the addition of skis to the aircraft, most likely attached to the wingtips, would have been downright dangerous. A block of ice or dip in the terrain could have catastrophically ripped apart the wing.

That leads to an obvious question. Why did I insist that the expedition used the Dornier Do-J "Wal" up until now, when Lovecraft's mention of landing skis conclusively identified the aircraft?



The answer is that I deferred to the expertise of some of the best Lovecraft scholars in the world. The identification of the Wal as the Dyer party's aircraft appears in S.T. Joshi's The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft and again in The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories , credited to Jason C. Eckhardt. From the former:

"More exactly, as Jason C. Eckhardt ("Behind the Mountains of Madness: Lovecraft and the Antarctic in 1930," Lovecraft Studies No. 14 [Spring 1987]:31-38) points out, Dornier Do-J "Wal" airplanes, a twin-engine, single-wing flying boat used primarily for passenger service."

"The Dornier-Wal planes were capable of carrying 7000 pounds of cargo. Eckhardt, basing his calculations on those supplied by Byrd, has conjectured that the total cargo of the Miskatonic Expedition may have come to about 21,000 pounds (12 men = 2400 lbs.; 36 dogs [80 lbs each] = 2880 lbs.; human food = 2160 lbs.; dog food = 3888 lbs.; gasoline = 9000 lbs.; miscellaneous cargo = 1300 lbs.), well within the capacity of the four planes."

That's the citation I relied on. Eckhardt's scholarship makes perfect sense, and is an example of the kind of historical research I delight in, but it ignores the presence of landing skis on the aircraft. I want to make clear that I'm not pointing a finger of blame at either Eckhardt or Joshi, who I have an immense amount of respect for. I just think the seemingly trivial issue of the skis has more importance than they do.

What complicates matters even further is that I think Lovecraft intended the planes to be Wals. We know that Roald Amundsen's expeditions to both the North and South polar areas were among his inspirations for "At the Mountains of Madness". The Wal seems perfect for polar exploration, as Amundsen demonstrated during his historic attempt at reaching the North Pole in 1925. The tough aluminum hull was ideal for operations on ice or water, the dual engines provided a comforting measure of redundancy in case of trouble, and the sheer carrying capacity of the plane allowed for extended operations.

More intriguingly, the Wal's long distance flying characteristics were front page news in the months leading up to Lovecraft writing ATMOM. He penned the tale in February and March of 1931. On August 26th, 1930 Wolfgang von Gronau and his crew completed an epic flight across the Atlantic and landed in the Hudson at New York City. His plane was one of the pair used by Amundsen on his expedition, refurbished and repaired since it's previous adventure. For the rest of the year von Gonau made regular appearances in the news as he and his crew were feted at events across the United States and Europe.

Given all that I don't think it's too much of a stretch that the gleaming silver hull of the Wal was what Lovecraft pictured in his mind as the story of the Dyer expedition flowed out of his pen. It's a distinctive, beautiful plane with a sterling record of exploration and long distance flight that's perfect for the needs of the story.

Then Lovecraft adds landing skis and...poof...reality replaces the Wal with the Merkur II.

Later this week I'll go over a few of the modifications the stock Merkur II would need to bring it in line with Lovecraft's story. Ironically, most of them are the same ones our old friend Herr von Gronau was secretly carrying out on a brand new version of the Wal at the same time ATMOM was being written. Following that I'll have the new logo for the Miskatonic Antarctic expedition featuring the Merkur II.

From the Mountains of Madness: Part Five

The "From the Mountains of Madness" project has been underway since the start of this blog, and odds are that it will never really be finished. Every couple of weeks I think of some new item to include or a minor refinement to the existing presentation, so it steadily keeps getting bigger and better over time. Much of what you'll find here, from the patches and pins to the faux photographs, is a direct result of that process of continual improvement.

This installment is different from all the prior ones in that most of it was written by Robbert Folmer, a fan of both H. P. Lovecraft and fossils that was kind enough to offer his expertise. He's made a huge contribution with his advice on making the fossil samples that are part of the project consistent with both science and the text of "At the Mountains of Madness". Everything that follows was pieced together from our email exchange on the subject and Mr. Folmer deserves all the credit for making it available.


The other day, while I was reading that day’s post, I noticed that the fossil casts in the pictures were not entirely consistent with the original story. In it are described Cambrian and Precambrian fossils, which would place them at about 600 million to a billion years ago, while the trilobite and ammonite you have on display are respectively approximately 400 million and 100 million years of age, which are no minor differences, if you’ll notice. It’s pretty inconsequential, and it’s not a nit I’d normally pick (even gently), but hey, we’re all weird hobbyists here, right? Right?

While there isn’t that much on offer from the Cambrian period, as the late Precambrian and early Cambrian are really the periods when hard-shelled life got started, there are still a few pretty nice specimens for decent prices out there. If you’re looking for trilobites, here’s a good place to find them: Trilobites.com.



The specimens there are from the Wheeler Shale, a locality in Utah bursting with Cambrian fossils. The top category, labeled Elrathia, is really the poster child of the Wheeler Shale; it’s a pretty trilobite, albeit a bit small (I have one that’s 2 inches and that’s a whopper), but available and affordable. If you have any rock/gem stores in your neighbourhood, you should definitely pay them a visit, because if they do have a shelf of fossils in a dusty corner, odds are they’ll have a little pile of these trilobites, often for something around $5 a piece. Of course, the bigger, the more expensive.

As for the crinoids... the earliest known specimens actually date from the Ordovician, which is the time period that follows directly after the Cambrian, about 480 to 440 million years ago. They were probably around before then, but you won’t find any fossils of that, I’m afraid. What you can do, as it would indeed be nice to have something like in the footage, is go to Crinoids.com and simply find yourself a nice specimen anyway. There’s a great variety in prices, starting at $10 and going up to well over $2000.

If I recall, the story also mentions ferns... which would also be impossible, as the only plants in the early Cambrian were simple, single-celled algae called stromatolites. But if you’re willing to make the concession and buy some slightly younger fossils, I recommend FossilPlants.com. Carboniferous ferns go for cheap, and if you’re willing to spend $30, you’ll have a truly beautiful piece of rock.



The only Cambrian fossils that you'll find for sale consistently are those from the Wheeler Shale. Every once in a while there will be a fossil for sale from a site called the Burgess Shale, but it's a rarity and the prices are high. Cambrian fossils have actually been found on Antarctica, but they’re all currently in the possession of scientific institutions.

Other than the above, there are all sorts of sources to buy these fossils. If you Google "Elrathia kingi" you’ll find myriad sites selling them for as little as $5; same goes for crinoids, ferns, sea-urchins, ammonites, and all that once crawled and crawls no more. If you’re feeling confident you can give eBay a spin. Forgeries do abound there, but it’s mostly limited to the more spectacular species, such as Moroccan trilobites (like the one you have) and amber with insects in it, and things like these Cambrian trilobites are a pretty safe bet.

From the Mountains of Madness: Part Four

In Part One of the "From the Mountains of Madness" project I talked about selecting a case to hold all the artifacts and why I chose the one I did. Part Two discussed scientific specimens you might want to include based on what Lovecraft's story actually describes, with a brief foray into making muslin storage bags for the samples. Part Three covered how to obtain rock cores for the project and the creation of Pabodie's plans for his revolutionary drilling rig. In this installment I'll add a few more items to the case and turn a jewelry box into a specimen case.

One of the reasons for such a long delay between this installment and the last one is that I decided to build a large light tent to help improve the quality of my photos. It's just a basic framework of PVC pipe draped with a white sheet, but the diffuse illumination it provides has helped eliminate the glare problems I was having with my earlier photos.



Isn't that better? The diffuse light gives reflective items some nice highlights without generating blinding glare. With a little more tweaking of the light arrangement my pictures might be able to transcend my lack of photographic ability.



Here's the first major addition for this update: a pair of Lemaire Model IV binoculars. Made from leather covered brass, these were produced from the 1880's to the late 1920's at the Lemaire factory in Paris. During that time the design was basically unchanged other than some upgrades to the quality of the optics. Once again, I chose this particular brand because it was carried by the Byrd expedition Lovecraft used as his model for the Miskatonic expedition in "At the Mountains of Madness".




Here's the second major addition: a Lufkin 100 foot surveyor's tape from the late 1920's. It's in amazing condition for it's age, especially since the ruled tape is made from oiled linen. In my mind's eye I can envision Lake carefully marking off the survey grid inside the underground cavern with a tape just like this one.



Finally, this is a specimen box for one of the fossils collected from that same cave. It started life as an off the shelf cotton-lined jewelry display box made from kraft paper. After giving the edges and corners a light sanding I hit it with a spritz of walnut ink to age it and then rubbed it down with cocoa powder and some powdered charcoal to add a little grime. The collection notes were written with a medium nib fountain pen using brown ink.

The trilobite fossil is a resin reproduction that I picked up years ago as part of an educational toy set. Since then I've been desperately trying to find more of them, but it looks like whoever owns the molds quit casting replicas and is now using them to produce soap. The only modification I made to the fossil was the same grimy cocoa and charcoal rubdown I gave to the box.

From the Mountains of Madness: Part Three

In Part One of the "From the Mountains of Madness" project I talked about selecting a case to hold all the artifacts and why I chose the one I did. Part Two discussed scientific specimens you might want to include based on what Lovecraft's story actually describes, with a brief foray into making muslin storage bags for the samples. This segment of the project will deal with a specific example of those samples- the rock cores bored out by Pabodie's revolutionary drilling rig.

One of the nice things about this particular stage of the project is how easy it is to obtain what you'll need. Stop by at any gem and rock shop on the internet (or in the real world) and for just a few dollars you should be able to pick up absolutely authentic examples of the core samples produced by a rock drill. While collectors can inflate the price of borings tied to a particularly interesting historic site or mine you'll find that generic cores are absurdly easy to come by. If you can't find them at a rock shop you can always hit Ebay, where they pop up at reasonable prices on a regular basis. Here's what they look like:



These three are all about 3" in length and cost me around $5. The calipers next to them, another artifact that would logically be part of Dyer's collection, cost $1 at a junk shop/antique store. Add some labels describing where the samples were taken, drop them into one of the sample bags from Part Two, and this part of the project is complete.

Well, almost complete. For the finishing touch you can add a copy of Pabodie's original specification for the drilling rig. Just click through on the example pictures below, print them out, and age them.





The Pabodie rig diagrams are CC licensed, so they're freely available for personal use.

From the Mountains of Madness: Part Two

The first part of the "From the Mountains of Madness" log dealt with choosing a case to hold all the items that will be part of the project. Now we'll start filling it up, beginning with the physical samples collected by the Miskatonic expedition during the course of "At the Mountains of Madness".

Lovecraft's story provides us with a pretty broad list of items to choose from. The first type of specimens mentioned in the story are rock samples brought up by Pabodie's drilling rig and the subsequent blasting efforts. The second group consists of fossils recovered in the same way, both incidental finds from the initial borings and the treasure trove discovered when the Elder Thing cavern was exposed. After that come the star stones and, possibly, biological samples from the Elder Things themselves. The text implies that they were destroyed during the Elder Thing attack, but I don't think it's too much of a stretch to assume that some of them survived.

Now that I have a list of what kind of samples the case would contain I can start gathering them together and getting them ready for presentation. I'll focus on the individual specimens later, but for now I'm going to concentrate on producing the containers that will be holding them. I'll start with a simple sample bag, the kind of thing you would use in the field to hold a small specimen.

The base for the sample bag is a muslin sack like the ones you find in health food stores and craft shops. I've used them in the past for everything from evidence bags to ju ju pouches, but in this case I'll be customizing them with a Miskatonic University seal applied using a rubber stamp. If you don't happen to have a stamp you can still add the seal to your own bags. Just download the seal over here, mirror the image, print it out on a laser printer or copier that uses toner, and then transfer the image from the paper to the bag using a hot iron.

Here's what you'll end up with:



Age with a little tea stain, add a grease-pencilled ID number, and you're good to go.

From the Mountains of Madness: Part One

Now that Christmas has passed I can start to show some of the work that's going into the "From the Mountains of Madness" project. Why the delay? Because the first iteration was a Christmas gift for a reader of this blog and I agreed not to spoil the surprise.

The concept behind this project is that it represents the materials collected by William Dyer in support of his written account of what actually happened during the Miskatonic University Antarctic expedition of 1930. That record, the story we know as "At the Mountains of Madness", details a number of specific items that I'll be trying to recreate. I'll also be drawing on the history of Arctic and Antarctic exploration during the time period of the story to help "fill in the gaps" and make the project as realistic as possible.

Part of the reason I'm documenting this project is so you can create your own version if you're so inclined. With that in mind I'd like to state up front that there are times when I'm going to choose practicality over authenticity. Whenever possible I'll use real period items, but I'll also settle for "good enough" when a particular item I might want to use is simply too expensive. After all, many of these items are antiques that are sought after by collectors. If you have the cash to buy the real thing, great. If not, I'll try and offer you some cheaper options.

Let's start off with what will likely be the largest expense of the project- the case that holds everything. A lot of projects similar to this one, like the plethora of vampire hunting cases I've talked about in the past, fall back on using modified silverware or instrument cases constructed of solid wood. They have the advantage of being relatively cheap and usually come with a pre-existing patina and the natural weathering that comes with age. Unfortunately, they also lack the basic construction details of something that was intended for hard use under adverse conditions.

Compare one of those modified cases with a period travel trunk and you'll see what I mean. The trunk has reinforced metal corners, protective banding, sturdy locks, hefty carrying handles, and in general is designed to survive being knocked about. The modified case? At best it might have some cheap hinges and an ineffective lock that will spring open the first time it's jostled. It's just not realistic.

With that in mind I've decided that the FTMOM expedition case will be...an actual expedition case. Specifically, one of the custom made cases from the Fibre Products Manufacturing Company of New York, the company that provided gear cases for several of Admiral Byrd's Antarctic expeditions. Here's the case I'll be using:



Why this particular case? Because this one is identical in construction to the one's used in Antarctica. The company manufactured two separate lines of cases throughout it's history. The first was made of rubberized fibreboard and was designed for budget users like salesmen. The second was formed from composite coated steel and served the high-end of the market. Both lines used exactly the same patterns and rivetted construction, differing only in the material used to form the shells and the quality of the hardware. Compare a Fibre Products Manufacturing case from the 30's with one from the 90's and you'll find they're identical.

Which is important, since I'm pretty sure this case was manufactured in the mid-60's because of the address on the label.

Here's a closeup:



Based on ads from camera magazines and old copies of the phone book the company didn't move to 601 W. 26th Street until 1962, but it also changed it's labels to read just "New York, NY" in 1965. Before that they were located at 30 W. 13th Street from 1932-1942, on 31st Street from 1927-1932, and at several different locations in the city from 1921 to 1932. That means the case was produced after 1962, but before 1965 when the company switched to a generic address label.

What's that you say? How could I possible use a case from the 60's if I'm striving for realism? Settling on this particular case is a perfect example of balancing the practicality and authenticity facets of the project I mentioned earlier. It's not an authentic Fibre Products Manufacturing case from the late 20's, but it's structurally identical, manufactured by the same company, and, perhaps most importantly, it looks like a 1920's case would. The natural rust, grime, and wear and tear is absolutely perfect. As a bonus, except for surface wear it's in amazingly good condition, including a functioning(!) lock with key.

Here are a few more shots of the case. I'm not sure what caused the color shift here, since my backdrop is deep red, but it's probably my terrible photography.





Next up, we start filling up the case with goodies.