Further Excerpts from the Lighthouse Field Guide

Alexis Rives

First installment can be found here.

As before, all of this is canon, especially the parts that contradict, but not all of it is canon in the same place.

Rebecca "Bec" Shepherd

A veteran of 35 years of Lighthouse fieldwork. An immensely valuable resource, if you can manage to get her in one place for long enough to ask a question. Currently gone to ground to elude pursuers. Known for, among a litany of other accomplishments, leading the cleanup of a haemohelotes hive, recovering the Eye of Providence, and for surviving an unarmed encounter with an Agency inquisitor.

Dragonfly Homunculi

Similar to its namesake save for its size (wingspan of 5-6') and the vaguely human face stretched over the blunt end of its thorax. Lacks an exoskeleton, but retains an iridescent coloring. Generally used as messengers and sentries.

RAWKI

"Reality as we know it" - a once-popular term of uncertain origin for the non-paranormal world. Modern connotation is linked to out-of date surface attitudes towards the Underworld.

The Death of Satan

December 6, 1999 - A sinkhole without apparent cause in a fallow field in Arkansas. A pillar of fire visible for miles is accompanied by the emergence of an entity described as follows:

"A segmented, chitinous body 166' long, deep red in coloration. Bristly black hair sticks out from between armored plates. Each segment bears a pair of humanoid arms with two additional joints, likewise covered in aforementioned hair. Head is caprine, likewise covered in similar hair and consists of three lobes (mouths are separate, but share a single cranium). Eight eyes, bright yellow. Corkscrew horns of dark keratin with metallic sheen, 16' in length. Entity was observed masticating constantly over coarse of event, DNA analysis of gobbets and saliva indicate at least forty humans consumed. Circular structure of golden spikes on cranium (8'), scar tissue and irregular bone healing at base indicate they were implanted via severe brute force trauma."

The entity was killed 21 hours after emergence in a joint mobilization of the National Guard and Air Force.

Highly publicized and sensationalized event, despite no hard evidence of the entity's true nature or origin.

Canto a Capella

Twenty-two men chanting without ceasing in a language that no one can identify, ongoing now in its thirty-ninth year. Analyzing recordings has gone nowhere; while words repeat, there never seems to be a real pattern - there's no grammar to help parse the vocabulary. The chanters eat and sleep in shifts, but otherwise show no indication of any activity beyond the chant.

Paradox Paperbacks

A book that shouldn't exist: an anomalously published version of a lost or destroyed work or a work that was never written by that individual. One of the most common instances of the paranatural as well as one of the most common hoaxes, so they are rarely worth more than normal used paperbacks and are sought out mostly for the sake of novelty. Notable examples include The Last Dangerous Visions (ed. Harlan Ellison), Isle of the Cross (Herman Melville), The Alchemist and His Dog (Mark Twain) and Ramona the Witch (Beverly Cleary). Some collectors classify works with nonexistent authors in this category, but it is somewhat more difficult to determine if those are fakes.

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City street. Daylight filtered through smoke. A woman in an oversized sweatshirt sits atop a throne of corpses underneath the shade of a yellow umbrella. Bright red butterflies sit sunning their wings. Indistinct shouts and chaotic sounds fill background. She is eating a charred shank of meat with a human foot attached. With mouth full, she looks to the viewer and says:

[Mandarin] "The principle act of power is to devour that which cannot defend itself from power."

At ten minutes: [Mandarin] "Are you enjoying this? I'm enjoying this."

At half an hour: [Mandarin] "It's not going to stop, you know."

The video does not have any apparent end point. She just keeps eating, occasionally speaking to the viewer, and the corpse pile grows higher. Longest view time is 10 hours 12 minutes.

Lord Trees

Gigantic petrified trees anywhere from 500' to half a mile in height. Rather than leaves, their stone branches cradle bulbs of amber that drink in the sun's light and keep it through the night. In some instances, an observer can see the faint outline of an embryo's developing bones and dark eye spots.

Kingmakers

Standard uniform of navy longcoat with gold trim. Total assurance of righteousness of own cause. Appropriate form of address is "Warmage". Do not engage if more than two are present. Do not engage without witnesses. If they speak to you about the 11th God, its recovery, revival, or re-embodiment, make non-committal approval. Do not offer assistance. Do not make any reference to any other gods or powers. Do not make any denial of the 11th God's role as the originator of life on earth. Do not make any denial of the existence of a center to the Labyrinth. Should any reference be made to third parties the Kingmakers are currently in open hostilities with, do not make any statements supporting those third parties. Presume all Kingmakers are armed, competent, and willing to make strikes against soft targets should they find resistance in their expeditions.

Image of an Unnamed Goddess

A mural depicting a grey-skinned woman in a dark robe. The woman's hair is bright orange and is kept in a thick braid and a pair of bushy sideburns. Her halo is moonlight silver. She is making a sign of benediction to the pleading figures at her feet: salt-addicts, dockside prostitutes, barnacle-stricken squidwhalers. In her other hand she holds a severed head to her breast, nursing it. Milk trickles out of the stump of the neck and through her fingers. Behind her is a mountainous grey mass of flesh, replete with more suckling heads.

Mu'annoshan

A creature that looks something like a headless elephant. Thick skin of leathery brown speckled with white diamond patches across the back, each with a bright blue spot in the center like an eye. Where the head would be is a gaping mouth-crevasse, ringed with long, yellowing tusks, and those tusks are ringed with a series of dexterous, prehensile trunks. It does not possess any visible eyes or ears, instead utilizing a finely-tuned ultrasonic sense.

Mr. Carrion

A corvid the size of a large dog, ragged black feathers perpetually caked with dried gore. Long, slender, curved beak. Always seems to show up with the delivery of bad news. Sometimes hates, sometimes enjoys delivering it. Mostly both. He'll chat with you about it if you don't chase him off or offer him some food.

The Dry House

Its representatives, regardless of age, are time-creased and sun-darkened. They are thin, lopsided as if they have grown or shrunk unevenly. They shuffle about in well-worn moccasins. Their hands shake when they raise their pens. They speak quietly, in parched voices. They are chief suppliers of bonedust and artifacts of long-vanished Underworld civilizations, and they often make demands to undercut the power of cults and gods.

No one has ever seen the House itself, but some who have met with its inhabitants will describe dreams of a facade of dark, dusty stone silhouetted by a fat orange moon, the engravings that frame its petrified door worn down by wind and time. Sometimes, the door is open, and the dreamer can glimpse a faint grey light within before they wake.

The Box

A seamless lead cube recovered from the basement archives of a certain research lab in Berlin. It is about a foot and a half across, with smooth edges and rounded-off corners. It maintains a constant temperature of 3.4 C. In its cabinet can also be found a geiger counter and a smeared handwritten note:

“Es ist keine Katze.” 

Trollhunt

Loose network of hobbyist hunters. Their prey: the hunchbacked, clammy-skinned, boil-ridden creatures with scrapyard computers roughly implanted into their brains and spinal columns. They are learning. We are very good teachers of the worst lessons.

Theorized Divisions of the Agency 

The provided names, and even the existence of distinct branches within the Agency, are theoretical and based on common details in compiled eyewitness accounts. No corroborating documentation from within the Agency has been recovered.

• MAGICIAN - Field agents, typical point of contact with the Agency.
• EMPEROR - [REDACTED]
• HEIROPHANT - Presumed transhuman or posthuman agents.
• CHARIOT - Accelerationist apocalyptic religious movement. Internal faction in conflict with other branches. Easy to identify by repeated ideological tags.
• DEATH - Cleanup crews overseeing destruction and suppression of evidence.
• DEVIL - Infosec, memetic engineering, and disinformation.
• TOWER - Exploratory division. Long-term exposure to the Underworld has engendered permanent changes in physiology and mindset.

Taboo

A word or phrase so dense with information that reality rejects it. Requires the natural disarray and scramblement of the human brain to maintain itself: Recordings will deteriorate almost immediately upon their creation. They are typically used as security keys, triggering another effect when spoken