Kingsport Folk Tales

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**Kingsport Folk Tales** is a book in *Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones*.

* *Stanley Fredkin's retelling of local Kingsport legends. Spooky.*

## Description

*As the only book written by the folklorist Stanley Fredkin, this collection contains several obscure folktales from the eponymous fishing town which exists in constant, timeless isolation.*

The book consists of four separate folkloric stories that recount the local superstitions of the Kingsport area, collected within a single volume by Stanley Fredkin.

## Contents

### *The High House In The Mist*

* *By Stankley Fredkin* (pg. 13-14)

*Nestled atop a lofty crag north of Kingsport is a quaint cottage with a grey, peaked roof, floating above the feathery morning mist which rises up from the ocean, as if it was a boat lost in a mystical and primeval impalpability.*

*According to the blatherings of a hoary former sea captain, whose name is whispered amongst the reticent locals as “the Terrible Old Man”, that cloud-kissed hut had already been erected before the first settlers struck their camps at the base of its cliffs. The old man speaks woefully of those who dare to scale its dizzying peak, and return estranged from their once solid convictions. The stories tell of a nameless hermit who keeps that archaic abode, spinning mysterious elder tales for his visitors who can no longer remember them after they depart his presence. But it’s the much dreaded visit of Nodens, the lord of the great abyss, and his sea folks of tritons andnereids, that’s the cause of an irretrievable change in them. As can be expected, such implausible tales are abundant with senile, drunken sailors. The old man last hears the mention of the aquatic deity when he is visited by an ordinary family man by the name of Thomas Olney, who made the ill resolve of visiting that skyward cottage, subsequently leaving his soul amidst the preternatural mists. Mention of Nodens is unsurprising, since he is a member of the Celtic pantheon, whose gods were worshipped by the ancestors of the original settlers.*

*As for why the fear of the hut still persists amongst the townsfolk, one can attribute it to a superstitious belief that the worship of the capricious sea spirits might in time replace the authority of the Baptist Church. Kingsporters know that every visitor to the weird aerie lays bare their souls to the “Other Gods.” Once claimed, all that remains is an amorphous shade, like the soul of Thomas Olney, which vanished beyond the impenetrable whiteness of the morning mists.*

### *The Yuletide Festival*

* *By Stankley Fredkin* (pg. 21-22)

*In this archaic and lonely colonial town of Kingsport, the heritage of the common folk is comprised of numerous superstitions. In centuries past, unfortunate souls beyond count were accused of sorcery or witchcraft, and cruelly executed at the end of haphazard trials.*

*According to hearsay, a strange, swarthy tribe, faring from a land of orchid gardens to the distant south, settled the area long before Kingsport was even founded. Centennially, the descendents of these people, a group riddled with sorcerers and witches, make a pilgrimage to the white church on Central Hill for the Yuletide Festival. A horde of cowled figures, with their faces concealed by devilish waxen masks, worship columns of sickly greenish flames to conduct their strange rites, before they hop onto the backs of eldritch creatures with webbed feet and membranous wings to ride deep into unknown, antediluvian gulfs. The atonal melodies of bone flutes herald their journey through gloaming, twilit grottoes and over viscous black streams, their song a call to madness. The unholy throng fathoms into sinuous depths and deeper still they journey into a labyrinth of tunnels, which writhe in and out of themselves into nameless obscurity.*

*The uncultivated locals, who have a hereditary habit of tallying up immemorial legends, believe that the best sorcerer is not the one who is buried under the earth but one who’s burned to a crisp. Those who are tainted by the devil do not make haste to migrate from this world. Their mortal shells belong to the Worm that gnaws, who thrives on devouring countless bodies infested by profane energies, till it finally grows hungry again after a century, calling its disciples into the bottomless pits to grant it asacrifice once more.*

### *The Terrible Old Man*

* *By Stankley Fredkin* (pg. 37-38)

*Rumors abound regarding the old seamans, possibly the strangest of Kingsport’s many eccentric residents, who lived the life of a pirate captain in the century past. It is baffling to see what fancies take hold of the common folk in a place like Kingsport, far from urban culture and modern mores.*

*According to local legend, the captain and his crew discovers an ageless city from before the time of Atlantis, ruined by sea winds and time, laying crumbled upon an uncharted island. The captain knew this place to be cursed, riddled with traps to reap the souls of foolhardy trespassers. Aside from a skeleton crew left behind to man the ship, he orders his living men on to their certain deaths. The pirates each meet their end by falling victim to their greed for a precious metal, whose luster has blinded mankind since its dawn: Gold. Once a safe route to the treasure had been marked out with the corpses of his men, the cunning old captain seizes the gold and forever leaves behind the accurst city. Unbeknownst to him, his interminable greed would bind his fate to that of his dead crew, for epochs to come.*

*The stories claim that on the very night of his terrible deed, the dead sailors, who who are led by the late first mate of the ship; Cheatin’ Logan Dawkins, run howling down the corridors of his mind with an undying hatred for the old man and an unquenchable thirst for revenge. The unfathomable terror he endured would make the captain forget even his own birth name. From then on, he was to be known simply as “the Terrible Old Man.” That same night, the captain’s remaining crew are viciously slaughtered, but whether by the madman’s own saber, or by the blades of a host of vengeful shadows, the tale is not clear...*

### *The Snake's Den*

* *By Stankley Fredkin* (pg. 45-46)

*The rural folk on the outskirts of Arkham have always shunned a certain cave hidden within the mazy pine barrens north of town, where the sunlight rarely penetrates to warm the hard, frostbitten soil. These ill-bred farmers and laborers, deprived of both scientific reasoning and the faculties to understand it, offer contradicting accounts about its location. Beyond the uncertainty as to its whereabouts, hypotheses diverge on how the cavern came to be called “Snake’s Den”. The most plausible provenance of this name is in my opinion the local indigenous tribe, the Abenaki.*

*Exhorted by their shamans, the Abenaki enter the Dreamworld to shed their spiritual skins, just as a snake literally sheds its own, to free themselves from all earthly restrictions and hearken the call of nature spirits. Hence the name Snake’s Den is given to these grottoes wherein daring seekers pursue their dreams and thence none is ever believed to have returned.*

*Furthermore, superstitious Puritan settlers whisper about a curious silver key whose arabesque manifestation is so outlandish that it’s allegedly the very object with which the daring dreamers can activate a portal inside the unplumbed depths of the den to access their most unattainable visions. The locals I’ve consulted profess that an avid dreamwalker by the name of Carter, whose name I recognized from my acquaintance with his amateur mystery stories, recently entered Snake Den’s in possession of such a key and disappeared, never to be heard from again. Whether or not this is the same person whom I’ve come to know as Randolph Carter is arguable at best, but I must mention that considerable time has passed since I’ve gotten any news of him.*

## Obtaining

This item can be obtained through the following methods:

* Purchasable from Marino at The Old Eel Bar (labeled "Toilet Paper")
* Purchasable from Uncle Rathsack on Main Street
* Purchasable from Joe Clemence at Honest Bill's
* Purchasable from Isidore Schmidt at Schmidt's Antiques
* Found in the console in the hallway of Main Street House #39 (Subterfuge check and Lockpicks required)
* Found on some shelves in Hangar B of Marsh & Sons Warehouse

## Notes

* "The High House In The Mist" and "The Terrible Old Man" together very clearly describe The House of Spectres, The Terrible Old Man, and the Spectres themselves
* "The Yuletide Festival" references the events described in "The Festival" a short story written by H.P. Lovecraft (external link)
* The ageless city described in "The Terrible Old Man" is not unlike H.P. Lovecraft's description of the city of R'lyeh from his short story The Call of Cthulhu
* "The Snake's Den" contains a 'misprint', wherein a large portion of text is repeated across pages
* "The Snake's Den" makes casual reference of both the Abenaki and Randolph Carter