Previously I’ve noted that a problem with a substitution cipher is that it can still look like English – e.g. common letters/symbols recur in obvious patterns. On the other hand, if I’m taking the time and effort to handwrite a paper prop, I’d like it to say something rather than nothing. It’d be all to easy to fill pages with random scrawl, but that would be too far in the opposite direction. Even an entirely unfamiliar script such as Kanji, Arabic or Mandarin has a certain patterning within it. I wanted the text to look slightly alien but recognisably a language of some kind.
For the main body of the text, I used Lovecraft’s own ‘Fungi from Yuggoth’, his exotic and often disturbing cycle of sonnets, available here from the H.P. Lovecraft Archive. Let’s look at an example:
XX. Night-Gaunts
Out of what crypt they crawl, I cannot tell,
But every night I see the rubbery things,
Black, horned, and slender, with membraneous wings,
And tails that bear the bifid barb of hell.
They come in legions on the north wind’s swell,
With obscene clutch that titillates and stings,
Snatching me off on monstrous voyagings
To grey worlds hidden deep in nightmare’s well.
Over the jagged peaks of Thok they sweep,
Heedless of all the cries I try to make,
And down the nether pits to that foullake
Where
But oh! If only they would make some sound,
Or wear a face where faces should be found!
Out of what crypt they crawl, I cannot tell,
But every night I see the rubbery things,
Black, horned, and slender, with membraneous wings,
And tails that bear the bifid barb of hell.
They come in legions on the north wind’s swell,
With obscene clutch that titillates and stings,
Snatching me off on monstrous voyagings
To grey worlds hidden deep in nightmare’s well.
Over the jagged peaks of Thok they sweep,
Heedless of all the cries I try to make,
And down the nether pits to that foul
But oh! If only they would make some sound,
Or wear a face where faces should be found!
My first step was to cut and paste the poems into a Word document. I then lost the Roman numerals. Next I swapped Times New Roman for Microsoft Symbol:
Night-Gaunts
Out of what crypt they crawl, I cannot tell,
But every night I see the rubbery things,
Black, horned, and slender, with membraneous wings,
And tails that bear the bifid barb of hell.
They come in legions on the north wind’s swell,
With obscene clutch that titillates and stings,
Snatching me off on monstrous voyagings
To grey worlds hidden deep in nightmare’s well.
Over the jagged peaks of Thok they sweep,
Heedless of all the cries I try to make,
And down the nether pits to that foul lake
Where the puffed shoggoths splash in doubtful sleep.
But oh! If only they would make some sound,
Or wear a face where faces should be found!
Out of what crypt they crawl, I cannot tell,
But every night I see the rubbery things,
Black, horned, and slender, with membraneous wings,
And tails that bear the bifid barb of hell.
They come in legions on the north wind’s swell,
With obscene clutch that titillates and stings,
Snatching me off on monstrous voyagings
To grey worlds hidden deep in nightmare’s well.
Over the jagged peaks of Thok they sweep,
Heedless of all the cries I try to make,
And down the nether pits to that foul lake
Where the puffed shoggoths splash in doubtful sleep.
But oh! If only they would make some sound,
Or wear a face where faces should be found!
That immediately added an aura of strangeness to it, but on close examination, it was still fairly easy to decipher as English. Those first few words obviously read ‘Out of what…,’ after which it wouldn’t be impossible to work out the rest.
To combat that, I cut out all the usual letter pairs. First to go was ‘th’, turning ‘the’ into ‘te’, ‘they’ into ‘tey’ and so on:
Night-Gaunts
Out of what crypt tey crawl, I cannot tell,
But every night I see te rubbery tings,
Black, horned, and slender, wit membraneous wings,
And tails tat bear te bifid barb of hell.
Tey come in legions on te north wind’s swell,
Wit obscene clutch tat titillates and stings,
Snatching me off on monstrous voyagings
To grey worlds hidden deep in nightmare’s well.
Over te jagged peaks of Tok tey sweep,
Heedless of all te cries I try to make,
And down te neter pits to tat foul lake
Where te puffed shoggoths splash in doubtful sleep.
But oh! If only tey would make some sound,
Or wear a face where faces should be found!
Out of what crypt tey crawl, I cannot tell,
But every night I see te rubbery tings,
Black, horned, and slender, wit membraneous wings,
And tails tat bear te bifid barb of hell.
Tey come in legions on te north wind’s swell,
Wit obscene clutch tat titillates and stings,
Snatching me off on monstrous voyagings
To grey worlds hidden deep in nightmare’s well.
Over te jagged peaks of Tok tey sweep,
Heedless of all te cries I try to make,
And down te neter pits to tat foul lake
Where te puffed shoggoths splash in doubtful sleep.
But oh! If only tey would make some sound,
Or wear a face where faces should be found!
Other common pairings, ‘oo’, ‘ee’ and ‘tt’ for example were next to go. Any such pairings would be replaced by a couple of dots over the letter – similar to the German umlaut – in the handwritten version.
Punctuation can be another clue to a cipher, so I took out the commas and so forth, removed some spaces and broke up others. Once I’d worked through all the sonnets doing this, I printed the finished result so I’d have a ‘working copy’ to transcribe into the Necronomicon, rather than writing it all from scratch. I’m quite pleased with the result.
An illustration of the Night-Gaunts. The town is copied from a medieval woodcut; the little flying critters are my own take on the Children of Nodens.
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