Research:Shadow Valley
This is a research page for systematically decrypting the hidden meaning and references in Shadow Valley. The story of Shadow Valley is still treated as official documentation, but its original context is the archaic Shadow World historical setting. This is seemingly of minimal importance in the case of Shadow Valley. Its original parts seem to have been released in 1995, and the release of its expanded areas occurred after the De-ICE in 1996. There were in-game storyline events, such as Muylari speaking, which are poorly recorded now. This includes the shadow steeds fighting the demon.
Similar to The Graveyard there seems to be a hidden layer of meaning that is a combination of H.P. Lovecraft and comparative mythology pertaining to the Underworld. The Broken Lands seems to have similar themes and subtexts. The relative importance of the Purgatory death mechanics, Shadow World, mythology, and Lovecraft varies between them. It is unclear if any relationship to the mythological subtexts in the Vvrael Quest is intentional.
Related Projects:
The following research pages are interrelated with the subject of this one:
Shadow World
Major Sub-Texts
Mythology
The theory of this research page is that the Shadow Valley story is a GemStone III specific variation of the Chaoskampf mythology. This is a struggle between a storm god and a sea god. In the Indo-European traditions it is a heroic god of thunder who slays a world serpent associated with the seas, often with a lightning themed weapon such as the hammer of Thor or the mace of Indra. There are similar myths in Middle Eastern religions, including the Hebrew Bible with Yahweh striking down Leviathan, and more broadly includes Underworld stories such as the Osiris myth with the battle between Horus and Set.
The basic premise is that the demon of Shadow Valley was a "wyrm", which is a sea serpent, and that the valley is dead with drought with its rivers blocked with sentient black ichor. The shouting that cracked the earth and the return of the shadow steeds to battle the wyrm were instead associated with lightning and thunder. The specific argument is this myth in the Rigveda and the "water horses" of Celtic myth.
Rigveda
Celtic
Lovecraft
The Mound
Call of Cthulhu
There is a one-off allusion to "The Call of Cthulhu" in the original part of the mine shaft of the spectral miners. In the Shadow Valley story there is an otherworldly horror slumbering deep below ground until it is awakened and destroys its surroundings. Cthulhu is a Great Old One who is in a state of sleeping death at the bottom of the ocean in his city R'lyeh until the stars return to the right alignment. The Cthulhu cultists arond the world are unconnected to each other, except for what they receive in their minds from the dreaming Cthulhu. This is the "uninvited memories" of ritual chanting in the room painting.
[Mine Shaft] Faint echoes of a strange singsong chant enter your mind without the courtesy of using your ears. Disturbed, you can find no visible source of the uninvited memories. The walls seem to grow closer as the tunnel continues upward to the east. Obvious exits: east, west
In the collected works of H.P. Lovecraft he used the phrase "sing-song chant" twice, once in "Out of the Aeons" co-written with Hazel Heald, the other as an exact phrase in "The Call of Cthulhu". In "Out of the Aeons" it is strange foreigners coming to see a mummy with a scroll from Yuggoth, which turns out to have an image of Ghatanothoa with the power of mummifying those who look at it. This story notably has Randolph Carter in it in his Swami disguise, and mentions Yig, but otherwise seems irrelevant. In "The Call of Cthulhu" the phrase is immediately before the famous line of Cthulhu sleeping in R'lyeh.
"Only poetry or madness could do justice to the noises heard by Legrasse’s men as they ploughed on through the black morass toward the red glare and the muffled tom-toms. There are vocal qualities peculiar to men, and vocal qualities peculiar to beasts; and it is terrible to hear the one when the source should yield the other. Animal fury and orgiastic licence here whipped themselves to daemoniac heights by howls and squawking ecstasies that tore and reverberated through those nighted woods like pestilential tempests from the gulfs of hell. Now and then the less organised ululation would cease, and from what seemed a well-drilled chorus of hoarse voices would rise in sing-song chant that hideous phrase or ritual:
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
Then the men, having reached a spot where the trees were thinner, came suddenly in sight of the spectacle itself. Four of them reeled, one fainted, and two were shaken into a frantic cry which the mad cacophony of the orgy fortunately deadened. Legrasse dashed swamp water on the face of the fainting man, and all stood trembling and nearly hypnotised with horror."
- "The Call of Cthulhu"; H.P. Lovecraft
This is then translated later in the story when it is discovered a completely unrelated cult of Eskimos had knowledge of the exact same ritual chant.
This data, received with suspense and astonishment by the assembled members, proved doubly exciting to Inspector Legrasse; and he began at once to ply his informant with questions. Having noted and copied an oral ritual among the swamp cult-worshippers his men had arrested, he besought the professor to remember as best he might the syllables taken down amongst the diabolist Esquimaux. There then followed an exhaustive comparison of details, and a moment of really awed silence when both detective and scientist agreed on the virtual identity of the phrase common to two hellish rituals so many worlds of distance apart. What, in substance, both the Esquimau wizards and the Louisiana swamp-priests had chanted to their kindred idols was something very like this—the word-divisions being guessed at from traditional breaks in the phrase as chanted aloud:
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
Legrasse had one point in advance of Professor Webb, for several among his mongrel prisoners had repeated to him what older celebrants had told them the words meant. This text, as given, ran something like this:
“In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”
- "The Call of Cthulhu"; H.P. Lovecraft