Gods of Ponapeh (Patreon)

Inspired by Lin Carter and excerpted from Delta Green: The Conspiracy.

In English. Study time: days. Unnatural and SAN loss special.

Miskatonic University Press, 1907. Author Henry Coburn purports to present a new annotation of an 18th-century manuscript hand-written by a New England sea captain, which itself Coburn says was a translation of an ancient codex created by the prehistoric priests of Nan Madol in Pohnpei. Linguists and historians have roundly rejected the described gods’ names as gibberish and the mythology as alien to Micronesia, clearly the invention of a Westerner.

Gods of Ponapeh describes an ancient, long-forgotten pantheon of evil, elemental Old Ones that had rebelled against greater, more ancient gods and been imprisoned or banished. The earliest peoples of Pohnpei, who were descendants of lost Lemuria and Mu, feared and propitiated these imprisoned gods to keep them at peace. Kotolo the god of water languished in a sea-floor prison. Kutagu the god of fire lurked in the star Fomalhaut. Sadokwa the god of earth dreamed and brooded in the underworld. Asturu the god of air ruled Aldeberan but gazed greedily down at Earth.

Each Old One had spawn and servitors with equally nonsensical names in elaborate genealogies, with one child of Kotolo said to be imprisoned in a sea chasm near Pohnpei itself. Each Old One in turn had servitors who still roamed free: Kotolo’s “deep ones,” Kutagu’s “living flames,” Sadokwa’s “formless ones,” Asturu’s “outer ones.” Coburn says the Old Ones are still served by a worldwide cult of secretive madmen.

Coburn’s notes give vague descriptions of ritual prayers and sacrifices to keep the Old Ones and their spawn asleep and at bay. He says the full descriptions were too long for publication but that interested readers can find them among his collected manuscripts at the Kester Library in Salem, Massachusetts.

Coburn’s putative source, Captain Abernathy Hogg of Arkham, Massachusetts, described the original text as a palm-leaf manuscript in the Javanese rontal style, brittle with age. It was supposedly written in hieroglyphics that none of Hogg’s learned friends in the New England universities recognized, but that he was able to translate with the help of a “tattooed Jayakartan named Jero” who had learned the glyphs as a child.

Agents investigating Gods of Ponapeh find no indication that Captain Hogg’s “Jayakartan” helped his university friends expand their knowledge of Pacific languages. Hogg died in a fire, a rumored suicide, in 1791, taking his palm-leaf codex with him if it ever existed. According to Copeland, Hogg had given his handwritten translation to his son Ebenezer at Miskatonic University with an interest in publishing it, but it lingered unpublished in Miskatonic’s library until Coburn stumbled across it in 1901. There is now no such manuscript at Miskatonic. After Gods of Ponapeh, Coburn spent the last 10 years of his career with no opportunities outside occultist meetings. He died of strychnine poisoning in 1917. The death was ruled a suicide.

Kester Library in Salem does have Coburn’s voluminous notes and unedited manuscripts, complete with vividly detailed instructions for rituals to placate the Old Ones and to invoke the strength of their enemies, the Elder Gods. The rituals bear a few touches of traditional Nan Madol ceremonies and sacrifices along with long chanted phrases in gibberish that, according to Coburn, Hogg called “the language of the gods.”

The published, 1907 edition of Gods of Ponapeh grants no Unnatural points and costs no SAN for most readers. A reader who has at least 1% in Unnatural gains +2% in Unnatural and loses 1D4 SAN.

Studying Coburn’s unexpurgated notes at Kester Library takes weeks, adds +5% in Unnatural, and costs 2D4 SAN (or +3% Unnatural and 1D4 SAN if the reader already lost SAN from the published edition). It teaches the rituals The Call of Dagon, Meditation Upon the Favored Ones, and Tower of Flame (described on page XX). It offers no defense whatsoever against the Great Old Ones.

Written by Shane Ivey and © the Delta Green Partnership.