The Clockwork Mansion

Hi. Last stream Amber talked about wanting to incorporate 'lovecraftian' influences into an illustration of the Dryad Mythos (E. G. the SAIA librarian), which led to me mentioning the art of Dennis Detwiller for Delta Green (Think The Wire but for horror TTRPGs) as a possible inspiration. Then I discovered that I couldn't actually post images in stream chat, so I'm posting them here in case Amber finds anything potentially useful in them. I'm also including some stuff from the game on how to describe monsters (though I'm not as sure Amber will find it useful). And I'm also including examples of (unillustrated) lovecraftian plant-like and angler-fish like monsters as described in the game in case Amber wants to mine those for ideas too.
 

Quote from: Arc Dream PublishingCatechresis and Cubism

When it comes time to present your new-fledged horror, there's no better approach than catachresis and cubism.

Catachresis is the deliberate misuse of language or impossible metaphor to inspire a response: a solid creature "filters" or "seeps," a god resembles a "shin-ing darkness," and so on. Here we get angles that are"both acute and obtuse," elements unknown to science,and descriptions of things as "indescribable."

To catachresis, add cubism: drown the image in details, invoking other images until the result is im-possible. Cthulhu resembles "simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature." The  dissected Elder Things and the disintegrating Wilbur Whateley have so many "surfaces"—scales, barrels,tendrils, wings, tentacles—to examine that they become completely fluid and chaotic. Introduce contra-dictory imagery to describe your creature: "a face not unlike a scarab beetle or a rabid baboon, with something feathery in the outline" evokes Nyarlathotep without ever really looking like anything.

As a visual artist myself I can....kinda...? imagine turning these instructions into some kind of image (Actually my PFP comes from a pic I made along similar principles though I'm not really sure it succeeded)
Possible disturbing content warning for this one. I'm diliberatly redacting some of the details to make it slightly less spoilery.

Quote from: Arc Dream PublishingAside from its enormity and health, the crop doesn't seem remarkable. Heights vary according to planting date. The thickness of the foliage makes it difficult to see even a single row over.

If Agents look closely, they can barely make out translucent insect legs hiding amongst the hairy trichomes of the buds, but only when they twitch. Magnification is required to get a good look at the material. Cultivators tell themselves they're seeing things long before that. At harvest, the translucent legs that ring each bract jealously grasp at buds being plucked away. If damaged or even threatened, the crop's chimerical tissues begin spasming like a dying fly. This causes the rows to sway and rustle threateningly with a sound not unlike a rattlesnake, costing 0/1 SAN from the unnatural. If a ____ is nearby, that triggers  the strain's self-defense. See page __ for details.

There is usually only one worker on duty by day. Most work happens overnight: measurements,fertilizing, checking pH levels, other routine main- tenance that is never actually needed. _3 is always growing just fine. They could dump weed killer in the filters and not kill it  completely.

Quote from: Arc Dream Publishing_4 plants are even more distressing to see than _3, described in MAIN FLOOR on page __. What is subtle in  _3 is overt in  _4. Translucent insect legs grow from buds. Those might be easy to overlook, but anyone entering Room A sees the stalks slightly bend as if in a breeze and sees the translucent legs reaching toward them. The plant's hairs twitch. Milky sacs pulse. It costs 0/1 SAN from the unnatural. Threatening the crop results in even more pronounced spasms and rattling, costing 0/1 SAN from the unnatural. If a ______ is nearby, that triggers the plant's self-defense. See page __  for details

The _5 plants grow so high that they threatens to pierce the vaulted ceiling of the ______ facility. The air sits so thick with earthy skunk that it hides the rot of the corpses in the roots. Stems hard as bamboo are hollowed out by galls, abscessed holes from which the plant's interior glows faintly in the dark. White larval pods grow from each bud.

Watching the twitching pulsations of _5 costs 0/1 SAN from the unnatural. The chitinous tubes within the fluted _5 trunks secrete a mildly phosphorescent, transparent gel that can be absorbed through the skin even after being pressed and washed with solvents.

Quote from: Arc Dream PublishingThe tops of _6 plants push against the sheet metal ceiling of Room C, exploding outwards into hanging vines that rain back down over the growbeds like an alien jungle.

The most recent victim can be seen as a riot of rot in the roots. _____ suspect she is the last fertilizer necessary; _6 could not be stopped if they tried. The room was overtaken barely a week after planting.

Translucent albino insects teem through the pregnant, dripping buds and march up and down the wet interior veins of the thick trunks. They feed bits of flesh, dirt, metal, and each other into mysterious digestive organs deep in the roots. They hatch from the white eggs that form fully only in _6. Moist, bone-white, and winged, Pollinators look like a cross between mantis and aphid. Their thoraxes curve asymmetrically, and their transparent bodies are thin as thumbnails.

Quote from: Arc Dream Publishing_6, in Room C, is [his] most exciting iteration yet. He reserves access for himself. He instinctually understands that anyone not fully infused with the strain's healing vapors lie outside its nature, useful only as fertilizing rot. Exposing others to the crop would see them consumed by its pollinators and its winding, twitching vines. He fantasizes hourly about calling all his workers to Room C for an "emergency meeting" and opening the doors wide. He dreams about being reconsumed by nature itself and becoming a single, sprawling network of creation. He longs to ascend to heaven on a chorus of screams. The only thing stopping him is a greater desire to see how _7 turns out.

Quote from: Arc Dream PublishingA mason jar is filled with seeds in a clear liquid. These are ______'s first variants of the next iteration, _7. He has no idea what they will grow into. Bathing them in a 100% alcohol solution is the only way to keep them from sprouting early. If spilled, the seeds take root through the cracking concrete floor and can be seen sprouting with the naked eye as if in a time-lapse photo, costing 0/1 SAN from the unnatural. What happens after that, and how quickly, is up to the Handler.

Disturbing content warning for this one also.

Quote from: Arc Dream PublishingThe trace amount of the __ that ____ absorbed during the raid was enough for a sustainable summoning. It constricted some fractal appendage of an extraplanar creature into the prison
of three dimensions, catching it inside __'s nervous system, ethereal flesh snared by the net of human ganglia. The Pledge Dram slammed hypergeometric jaws from endless, writhing tracts in a planar vice, like a hand slammed in a car door but forced to steer. Though agonizing, the constriction was not so severe that the Worm suffocated. The worm did not destroy the vessel. Its kind can endure much agony. The senses of its host sent strange, compelling inputs, visions of a world of prey begging for predation.

Quote from: Arc Dream PublishingIf it existed within the bounds of visible light, temporaneous causality, and understood physics, the Worm might look like a cancerous, fractal tangle of giant flatworms. Whipping, ropy tubes of flesh disgorge fanged proboscises in directions humanity has no words to describe. These "tongues" lick spacetime. They dart out in patterns reminiscent of circuitry, spearing and consuming equally nightmarish prey. The Worm's immortal body churns through a vast, alien ecosystem in higher dimensions. Its cannibalistic, inbred food chain has spawned and fed above, beneath, and through humanity for its entire existence. The thing inside Anton Gully is but one appendage of a single creature in that malignant knot. Orgiastic violence folds itself into the nooks and crannies of mankind's three dimensions, unseen and unheard.

Certain exotic radiations can bleed between the overlapping universes. The Worm's nervous system runs off one such pseudo-electrical charge. Using the correct elements and hypergeometric preparations, that energy can be attracted and leashed to a biological system in our lower dimensions, like lightning drawn into a battery. The ____ has fused the
nervous system of ____ with the animating energy of the Worm. The man is less possessed than grafted on. This process killed Gully and trapped the Worm with the force of a snare. The Worm and the Agents share the same physical space through the instrument of Gully-Worm's body.

Quote from: Arc Dream PublishingC___ is white, 41, and married with two children. He always looks tired. He died on January
17, 2017. His last thoughts were doubts about his job, the [gang], and the things he'd done. For a few seconds, Anton saw the orgy of alien monsters feasting and f***ing across the horizon and through the very soil. He screamed. The things seemed to see him. Then he was dead.

C___-worm "woke up" in the ER waiting room when the Worm figured out how to use human eyes. Though not conscious, the Worm's neural processes—evolved to perform peristalsis through higher dimensions and through time—contain reflexes beyond the complexity of any three-dimensional brain. The rudimentary inputs of human anatomy were nothing to the adaptive power of the creature's raw instinct. But the Worm finds the sensation of inhabiting this flesh agonizing. Were more of its body stuffed into this flattened container, it would abandon this trapped appendage and tear away the flesh at the root. (See page __.)
The Worm uses C___'s brain to imitate him and understand culture. To understand what the alien eyes see, it searches the man's memories and translates the answer into its own bioelectric signals. Thousands of times per second, it queries concepts and definitions, forming approximations into its limited conceptual framework of hunting, gorging, and hiding from predators. If Gully needs to speak, it spools up a limited version of the dead man's consciousness. He is erased all over again by the time the last syllable is uttered. The experiments with _____, the infiltration of [gang name]—the Worm's entire plan was written by the memory of C_____ answering variations on a simple question: "How can I eat everything here?"

The Worm must intuit meaning in the human world by querying memories of its host. As a side effect, C______ speaks at a distance on nearly every subject. Instead of answering "No," he says "I would say no." Instead of simply giving an opinion, he starts with "My take on that would be...." He speaks in constant passive voice and hypothetical asides. The effect is not unlike getting answers from a generative AI chatbot.

Quote from: Arc Dream PublishingOn a critical success [by the worm], the victim sees beyond three dimensions as the Worm's flesh shifts to become coterminous with the victim's own, which costs 1D6 SAN from the unnatural every turn. The Agent sees rippling, rainbow ghost lights tracing a hydra of nightmares that flow above and through everything. It's like waking up to find the entire world shrunk inside a petri dish and being eaten by giant, loathsome molds, bacteria, and parasites fighting in an endless, bloody orgy. Crackling electricity somehow running through everything draws towards the viewer at impossible angles, dragging a snapping Worm-thing closer. The victim may still act, but there is nowhere to run or hide. For every temporary insanity suffered and breaking point reached, the victim loses 1D6 WP. At 0 WP, the victim falls unconscious. SAN loss continues every turn, even when unconscious. At 0 SAN, the host is effectively dead and part of the Worm. Still, allow the player to continue playing the Agent once they wake up. The Agent's consciousness is a perfect imitation, to be dropped and deleted as soon as the Worm gets enough privacy to continue its work.