Elder · Gods, · Inc.

We lost another ship today. While Elder Gods Inc. is in many ways a very modern and innovative company, we have our tentacles in more than a few mundane interests, like shipping. R'lyeh has many exports and all of them are known to the state of California to cause insanity in mortal men.

Most recently we lost a cargo ship that was carrying a load of statues in a terrible storm. Now I've got one unknown buyer and two modern art museums baying at my door, all of them hounding me about their lost shipment. I can't say I'm keen on visiting the green slimy vaults of R'lyeh any time soon or ever again, so I'm spearheading an effort to hunt down a new captain.

Hypnos whispered to me last night, and though I could not make out what he said - the chap never speaks clearly, I'm afraid - I could have sworn he mentioned the name "E. McSorley" and something about him being 'great at handling a ship in a storm'. I'll have the new intern look him up on Tuesday. I should have left work hours ago as it is. Evil never sleeps, but I'm afraid that a sixteen-hour day is as much as I can handle.

PS - speaking of our new intern, Amy is absolutely wonderful. Yesterday morning she made me a cup of coffee with nary a trace of slime - fancy that! The old intern is still around somewhere, probably gibbering in a dark corner somewhere. Couldn't make a good cup of coffee to save his life. Sigh. He never was the same after tearing out his eyes.

Recently, a local fishing in the bay (Narragansett) managed to dredge up the shining trapezohedron. Few people know the back story about it. I would not have known about it at all except for hearing a couple of the Old Ones joking about it around the water cooler a few months ago.

As it turns out, the standard penchant of the Old Ones for tormenting humanity took a novel twist one day (or night - I'm not sure on either really, as I hear that they don't truly exist on Yuggoth) in the form of a glowing crystal. Apparently one of the manifestations of Nyarlathotep thought it would be terribly amusing to promise the gift of deep and terrible arcane knowledge in return for monstrous sacrifices on the part of those who would wish to know such things.

So thus the shining trapezohedron was created; a crystal into which one could gaze and communicate with the Haunter of the Dark (or Fred, as he's known around here) and see other worlds and galaxies while learning things that Man Was Not Meant To Know^TM. Apparently the joke was first played on the Egyptians, who finally figured out that nothing good came of gazing into it, though it apparently took over a thousand Egyptians being entombed alive before anyone understood this. I suppose you might say that for once, the joke was on the Pharaohs. Apparently the Atlantians fell for the joke a few times too, from what I gather.

It made its way to New England and led to Robert Blake's rather unhappy demise, but it was sadly (from the point of view of the Old Ones, that is) tossed in the deepest part of the Narragansett bay, never to be seen again. Well, until about three weeks ago, that is. We keep it out in the lobby to entertain visitors now. It's absolutely hilarious.

I have not updated of late. Crunch time here has begun in earnest, and the bones of mortals do not grind themselves. I have isolated myself in my cubical, if only to avoid the nausea induced by the office architecture. Euclid was a wise man, and whoever designed this place really should have respected him a bit more. Walls should most certainly not do things like that. The lower levels are bad enough with the ever-present fluorescent lighting and stomach-churning paint scheme - is it too much to ask that the floor stay the floor?

HR has gone around my back and hired an entire batch of new recruits. I had previously mentioned that my abilities when it came to selecting those that would do well here far outdid theirs. True as it may have been, I think that perhaps it rubbed them the wrong way. At least, if you can rub gelatinous slimy flesh the wrong way, that is.

Seeing as the entire batch are all quite dead and it hasn't even been a month, I feel rather vindicated. Johnson said that one of the new interns screamed "THERE IS NO HOPE IN THIS PLACE! WE ARE ALL DOOMED!" right before he tore out his own eyes and proceeded to bleed all over his new tweed trousers. I personally think it was quite the over-reaction, but seeing as half of the others died gibbering in terror (They were taken away when they couldn't even file reports - that was the last of them that I saw and I do not presume that they still live in any mortal sense of the word) and the rest died of self-inflicted wounds; slitting their own throats, tearing out their eyes, screaming until blood gushed from their lungs, that sort of thing, that perhaps we need to widen our search for new interns and be a bit more selective in our choices. The average corporate drone does not seem to do well at all here.

In any way though, my argument is moot until I can get HR to see it the way I do. I have little hope in that.

Oh well, back to work. Virgins don't sacrifice themselves!

Of late, the talk around the office water cooler has been all about The Call of Cthulhu movie that is coming out.

Nodens has talked about it non-stop, and being an Elder God, no one wants to try and change the subject. Let us just say that in the past... Well, it did not go very well for the new stock boy when he told Bast that "All of that Egyptian stuff is so boring - did you see the new Edward Norton movie?" While Bast tends to be soft-spoken, she does not take well to being insulted. I believe she had his brains removed through his nose. John told me that considering what she did to the last fellow that insulted her, it was "really rather nice". I fear for my sanity in this place some times...

HR is being cagey again. I will try and update as soon as I know something definite about the positions they wish to hire for.

We've lost another janitor - the second one this month. He went down to Dagon's office to 'get rid of that nasty fish smell'. I do believe the replacement scent was 'lemon fresh'.

This did not go over well with Dagon, to be frank. Not well at all. He had a two hour meeting with the janitor, and the last hour and forty-five minutes was nothing but the most horrible screams.

No one has seen the janitor since then. The fish smell is worse than ever. There is no hope.

Another day at the office, as usual.

On another front, the headhunter we hired to fill a few open positions couldn't even follow basic directions. The word "alive" was stressed and... Well, the poor fellow was too much of a traditionalist, to put it politely. So if you have no problems with non-euclidean alien geometries, please apply for any of our open positions. I'll update again when I get a list of them from HR.

A friend of ours, Jack Chick, has recently published a tract that we're really pleased with. Here's a copy of it:

Let me know what you think - public image is a key part of our company.

I suppose I should post this now - earlier we had a question about our virgin sacrifice quota; namely what would happen if you were a virgin and sacrificed yourself to the deep ones.

That came up over here a while back and one of the top level managers down in marketing thought it was a brilliant idea. I believe he literally said that it was sure to be some "uber awesome dark shit". Ah yes. So he went down to see Dagon and... Well, he came back totally insane. I suppose it is a bit of an occupational hazard around here.

To be honest though, most of Robert's co-workers don't seem to notice the difference. He does tend to drool a lot more, but he's still on top of those marketing accounts like you wouldn't believe.