I have pretty much exclusively been smoking it recently. Did anyone else grab some up from Baron?
Anybody Else Been Enjoying Miskatonic?
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Nope, wish I had some though. On his suggestion I've tried a couple blends and loved them. Does anybody know if he still has some available?
Some unfortunate souls have...and by the smile on the face of the corpse, he did not regret it one bit....
Miskatonic University Review
or
The Whispering Package
I.
Nigh some weeks had passed since the package had arrived at my less-than-credible domicile. It had arrived in the depth of the summer months, those turgid days of swelter that still shimmer with the distortion of light in the heated air, even in memory. The postman was not heard, nor the bell; strange for that alone, and still stranger that it had arrived around nightfall, far into the evening at that mark on the calendar, far past the time of the appointed rounds. But arrived it had, and announced its presence with the singular smell which accompanied it—the lady of the house remarking that she was convinced it had been mishandled by a wet ferret. Her suspicions of my activities in the study notwithstanding, she proffered the small yet ominous parcel and left me to my devices, her obvious air of dissatisfaction a warning I did not heed.
My habit at that time had been to occlude myself in my study, and so it was that fateful July night that I retired behind the French doors into the dim glow of the apparatuses and accoutrements residing there. The parcel lay on my desk, and my eyes on it, as I finished a pipe of a certain burley blend from London that had always served to even the keel of my mind’s restless vessel. I knew from whom this package had come, certainly—and in that wicked knowledge lay both a terrible fear and an almost predatory delight in prolonging the moments until I open it.
The correspondent in question was a Baron of a small Western nation, an undertaker by trade, rumored to have deep connections in the black and alchemical arts. I was now privy to the fact that those whispered rumors held dark and horrible truths. Whispers…was that only the wind brushing a tree branch at the window, or did I discern faint mumbling incantations at the edge of my hearing? With a sudden and constrained horror I saw my hands moving of their own volition, quite against my own, into the drawer of the desk, withdrawing a compact yet decidedly lethal blade from its depths! It was no small terror that saw those same hands deftly slice open the package, as though they were a butcher’s hands dressing a carcass…or a mortician’s.
In this waking dream state, I emptied its contents before me: a single sheet of paper bearing the scrawl of that lesser noble, and a small bag from which the scent of decay so strongly emanated. The note informed me that I was to be the Baron’s willing victim, nay participant, in experiments most foul. The noxious concoction contained therein purported to be a blend of magickal herbs of various provenance—inky black Cavendish and darkest burley, ribbon from the Eastern Carolinas, mixed with pungent Perique from the voodoo rituals of that parish of Saint James, and lightly spiced with exotic leaf smuggled out of far-flung Cyprus. For all its curious ingredients, though, it belied a rather subtle and balanced air once opened, one which served to soothe and calm my mind that had been a moment before screaming silently. It was the musty waft of ancient tomes, with a faint hint of chocolate, as though one had found a long-forgotten Easter candy hidden away in the attic. I recall there was also the unmistakable salty tang of sea air as well. I was not aware of my heart beating, nor if it ever would again, as the compulsion within me loaded the bowl and touched flame to pipe. It was thus I entered the black abyss.
Cool it smoked, as cool as the earth of the grave, and the fœtid sweetness of decay was at once become as blissful as the morning sunrise, the tendrils slithering up around my alienated body, trapped within its spell, whence there was no chance of escape. Nightmares unbridled themselves in my vision, much to my delight, and the chant of the acolyte came to my ear: “Abomination of abominations! La! Shub-Niggurath! Down the six thousand steps descend, past the Black House where the Five Hundred howl!”
II.
I do not know when it was that I regained my senses, or if I truly have since that night. I came to in my study, just as I had been, the mottled white ashes in my pipe the only evidence of the horrid invocation of the beyond. The desk had been cleared of the package, the Baron’s note studiously filed away; nothing appeared to be amiss. There was a new jar on the shelf in my little apothecary, however, labeled in a hand not at all my own—“Miskatonic University” it read, scrawled in a black and eldritch script. Strange that I did not run screaming then and there from that room. Instead, a thin and inexplicable voice within me purred satisfaction, promising to revisit the blend in the coming weeks. I scribbled a telegram saying as much to the Baron, informing him that I would report my findings more fully to him…should I survive the ordeal.
III.
As I’d said, it has been some weeks since that night of beautiful madness. Autumnal winds now whistle through desiccated trees outside, and no longer is there a lady in the house to complain of the stale air shuttered within my laboratory. Tonight the craving is upon me. Tonight I wish again to witness that cosmic mystery. Returning to that same small prince, the beautifully-grained freehand carved by Tim West, I’ve prepared my testing room—removing all the more delicate vials and retorts and other glasswares lest they suffer destruction at the hands of madness, save one bottle of fine bourbon and an enameled tin cup, which will accompany me on my journey. I note that the passage of time has served to settle the blend within as I open the jar, a much mellower aroma greeting me, yet still redolent with the must of wilted book pages and a hint of leather. The sweetness of the Cavendish in fact stands up, a tartness as I press some of the mottled mixture to my nose, tempered with the mushroom-like lilt of that wicked Perique. Cleansing my palate with a draught of Basil Hayden’s, I pack the pipe easily, deep as the first knuckle of my thumb, and with trembling hand hold the match over the chamber as I descend once more into that infinitely deep horror, the flame, the flame beyond body, beyond life, in the earth….
As before, the dankness erupts slowly from the bowl, curling about my head like so many sweetly-scented snakes. The whiskey helps settle my nerves and mingles sensationally with the woody undertones, and my mind leaps to association with the wooden box which will encase my final rest. My mind wanders to the endless cycle of life and death, the hint of vanilla suddenly apparent and resplendent, the mother’s milk from the universe that nobody ought to know…a cosmic panic subsiding into a nicotinic stupor…Kamog! Kamog! The Goat with a Thousand Young! Bright, sharp knives of Carolinian ancestry tingle along my tongue, resting in gypsy caravans at a campfire in the back of my throat. My lips seem to move, whispering incantations to no-one, to no-thing. Rain pelts the windows, and echoes as drums deep within my psyche and beyond life’s edge. Rain that brings the tang of the salty sea air, the deep beneath the deep, the whispers drowning beneath the waves…la! la! Cthulhu ftagn! ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
IV.
The preceding pages of notes were found along with the strangely smiling corpse of one Mister Roberts, deceased, of Brooklyn. No direct cause for the man’s demise were apparent, and the case remains a mystery. According to the constabulary, that is.
Miskatonic University Review
or
The Whispering Package
I.
Nigh some weeks had passed since the package had arrived at my less-than-credible domicile. It had arrived in the depth of the summer months, those turgid days of swelter that still shimmer with the distortion of light in the heated air, even in memory. The postman was not heard, nor the bell; strange for that alone, and still stranger that it had arrived around nightfall, far into the evening at that mark on the calendar, far past the time of the appointed rounds. But arrived it had, and announced its presence with the singular smell which accompanied it—the lady of the house remarking that she was convinced it had been mishandled by a wet ferret. Her suspicions of my activities in the study notwithstanding, she proffered the small yet ominous parcel and left me to my devices, her obvious air of dissatisfaction a warning I did not heed.
My habit at that time had been to occlude myself in my study, and so it was that fateful July night that I retired behind the French doors into the dim glow of the apparatuses and accoutrements residing there. The parcel lay on my desk, and my eyes on it, as I finished a pipe of a certain burley blend from London that had always served to even the keel of my mind’s restless vessel. I knew from whom this package had come, certainly—and in that wicked knowledge lay both a terrible fear and an almost predatory delight in prolonging the moments until I open it.
The correspondent in question was a Baron of a small Western nation, an undertaker by trade, rumored to have deep connections in the black and alchemical arts. I was now privy to the fact that those whispered rumors held dark and horrible truths. Whispers…was that only the wind brushing a tree branch at the window, or did I discern faint mumbling incantations at the edge of my hearing? With a sudden and constrained horror I saw my hands moving of their own volition, quite against my own, into the drawer of the desk, withdrawing a compact yet decidedly lethal blade from its depths! It was no small terror that saw those same hands deftly slice open the package, as though they were a butcher’s hands dressing a carcass…or a mortician’s.
In this waking dream state, I emptied its contents before me: a single sheet of paper bearing the scrawl of that lesser noble, and a small bag from which the scent of decay so strongly emanated. The note informed me that I was to be the Baron’s willing victim, nay participant, in experiments most foul. The noxious concoction contained therein purported to be a blend of magickal herbs of various provenance—inky black Cavendish and darkest burley, ribbon from the Eastern Carolinas, mixed with pungent Perique from the voodoo rituals of that parish of Saint James, and lightly spiced with exotic leaf smuggled out of far-flung Cyprus. For all its curious ingredients, though, it belied a rather subtle and balanced air once opened, one which served to soothe and calm my mind that had been a moment before screaming silently. It was the musty waft of ancient tomes, with a faint hint of chocolate, as though one had found a long-forgotten Easter candy hidden away in the attic. I recall there was also the unmistakable salty tang of sea air as well. I was not aware of my heart beating, nor if it ever would again, as the compulsion within me loaded the bowl and touched flame to pipe. It was thus I entered the black abyss.
Cool it smoked, as cool as the earth of the grave, and the fœtid sweetness of decay was at once become as blissful as the morning sunrise, the tendrils slithering up around my alienated body, trapped within its spell, whence there was no chance of escape. Nightmares unbridled themselves in my vision, much to my delight, and the chant of the acolyte came to my ear: “Abomination of abominations! La! Shub-Niggurath! Down the six thousand steps descend, past the Black House where the Five Hundred howl!”
II.
I do not know when it was that I regained my senses, or if I truly have since that night. I came to in my study, just as I had been, the mottled white ashes in my pipe the only evidence of the horrid invocation of the beyond. The desk had been cleared of the package, the Baron’s note studiously filed away; nothing appeared to be amiss. There was a new jar on the shelf in my little apothecary, however, labeled in a hand not at all my own—“Miskatonic University” it read, scrawled in a black and eldritch script. Strange that I did not run screaming then and there from that room. Instead, a thin and inexplicable voice within me purred satisfaction, promising to revisit the blend in the coming weeks. I scribbled a telegram saying as much to the Baron, informing him that I would report my findings more fully to him…should I survive the ordeal.
III.
As I’d said, it has been some weeks since that night of beautiful madness. Autumnal winds now whistle through desiccated trees outside, and no longer is there a lady in the house to complain of the stale air shuttered within my laboratory. Tonight the craving is upon me. Tonight I wish again to witness that cosmic mystery. Returning to that same small prince, the beautifully-grained freehand carved by Tim West, I’ve prepared my testing room—removing all the more delicate vials and retorts and other glasswares lest they suffer destruction at the hands of madness, save one bottle of fine bourbon and an enameled tin cup, which will accompany me on my journey. I note that the passage of time has served to settle the blend within as I open the jar, a much mellower aroma greeting me, yet still redolent with the must of wilted book pages and a hint of leather. The sweetness of the Cavendish in fact stands up, a tartness as I press some of the mottled mixture to my nose, tempered with the mushroom-like lilt of that wicked Perique. Cleansing my palate with a draught of Basil Hayden’s, I pack the pipe easily, deep as the first knuckle of my thumb, and with trembling hand hold the match over the chamber as I descend once more into that infinitely deep horror, the flame, the flame beyond body, beyond life, in the earth….
As before, the dankness erupts slowly from the bowl, curling about my head like so many sweetly-scented snakes. The whiskey helps settle my nerves and mingles sensationally with the woody undertones, and my mind leaps to association with the wooden box which will encase my final rest. My mind wanders to the endless cycle of life and death, the hint of vanilla suddenly apparent and resplendent, the mother’s milk from the universe that nobody ought to know…a cosmic panic subsiding into a nicotinic stupor…Kamog! Kamog! The Goat with a Thousand Young! Bright, sharp knives of Carolinian ancestry tingle along my tongue, resting in gypsy caravans at a campfire in the back of my throat. My lips seem to move, whispering incantations to no-one, to no-thing. Rain pelts the windows, and echoes as drums deep within my psyche and beyond life’s edge. Rain that brings the tang of the salty sea air, the deep beneath the deep, the whispers drowning beneath the waves…la! la! Cthulhu ftagn! ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
IV.
The preceding pages of notes were found along with the strangely smiling corpse of one Mister Roberts, deceased, of Brooklyn. No direct cause for the man’s demise were apparent, and the case remains a mystery. According to the constabulary, that is.
I can't even remember how many ounces I bought but Baron will have to continue making it for next year.
:clap:
Excellent writing romeowood! The narrative crawled across this digital threshold and came creeping into my skull with exquisite tendrils of sublime smoke glowing phosphorescent like an eerie phantasm!
:clap:
Excellent writing romeowood! The narrative crawled across this digital threshold and came creeping into my skull with exquisite tendrils of sublime smoke glowing phosphorescent like an eerie phantasm!
:clap:
Hehe, thanks mrlower. I can only apologise that it sat in my backlogged files for so long, a disservice to Baron's efforts. Totally worthy of the Lovecraftian legacy.
The blend has done well, though maybe a little too well. I find myself picking it up again and again and I wonder if I'll have enough to smoke until I can create more. Dagon Dark will be good though. Loved Romeowood's review!
As an aside, Romeowood has written a few articles for PipesMagazine.com, and we will have a new one from him going up today or tomorrow.
He's done some tobacco reviews and an article on tea and tobacco - with more to come in both of those areas.
He's done some tobacco reviews and an article on tea and tobacco - with more to come in both of those areas.
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