I once found what appeared to be an Elder Thing in my back garden. Remembering that Lovecraft described them as part vegetable I watered and nurtured it, patiently waiting for it to communicate, or, as a second best, sprout wings and fly off.

A week later, the ungodly stench permeated the garden, causing much alarums in my neighbours. My brother came over and asked me why there was a partially digested star fruit covered in puke sat in my back garden.

Undaunted, I changed tack and tried to discover the mysterious chain of events that would a) cause someone to make a star fruit curry and b) puke it up in my back garden without visible means of ingress!

"The truth might be out there, but the lies are in your head" 

If you ever find Dargaia�s nectar, you�ll probably be one of the ones who have been looking for it all their lives, and thus won�t need any instructions on what to do with it.Dargaia s Nectar by Pillorian
MasartorioAdded by Masartorio
Just the same, it�s pretty simple, at least to start with. Make sure your affairs are in order (in case you have a bad reaction), and then? Bottoms up.
The coming months are the least pleasant part. You�ll find yourself unable to keep food down long before you�re far enough along to stop needing it. Same with sleep. The color of your blood will be off, and your veins will consequently stand out more. Expect a few ingrown body parts; little things, just fingers and ears and teeth, usually pressing up against the skin. Make sure you�re caught up on your booster shots because you�re never going in for a checkup again. Or wearing anything more revealing than a trenchcoat in public, most likely.

Eventually, a little cut on your belly will start �unhealing�, becoming a puss-filled wound in a few days. Over the coming week, three things will emerge from this. The first object resembles a greasy black beechnut with maybe a tooth or two growing from it. When you�re dead someone will eventually find it and use it to make a new batch of Dargaia�s nectar. Hide it well, make things fun for future generations.

The second object basically looks like a softball-sized cluster of veins, many of them broken and leaking oily black stuff, all wrapped around something. Then it�ll squirm and you�ll notice the twisted little skinless fetus in the middle. It will only survive for about twenty seconds. Burn the remains.

The third object will be a�

Well, let�s just call it �object 3″. It�s easier that way.

You can plant it anywhere you want. I advise some place where you don�t mind spending all your time and no-one else would go. Your back yard or under your cellar works if you don�t have any roommates; as long as there�s fertile soil. Dig at least five feet down. It won�t want to be buried, but just keep piling dirt onto it. If you can still hear it when you�re finished you haven't gone deep enough.

Its veins (or roots, I guess) will eventually spread in all direction about a foot and a half for every year of your life. Grass and weeds will grow stiff and bony, or black and oily, or take on the color and texture of a spider bite, or rice paper. Wood will be infected too; you�ll hear the arteries in your walls pulsing on quiet nights. The ground will rot with dead insect and animal life. Don�t mow your lawn; it bleeds like hell.

This is your sanctuary.

No matter what threats or injuries beset you outside, here you will be safe and healthy. Well, what passes for �healthy� for you now. And if you really hate someone, bring them here. Trick them into coming. They�ll get infected, one way or another; a lungful of spore, a thorn-prick, a bit of residue on their hand. They will vomit blood and the blood will have tiny centipedes in it. They�ll shit out their own spinal fluids. Their eyes will milk over and hatch, little spines and brambles will grow from the sockets. They�ll survive for months or years, doctors will be baffled, it will be completely fucking great.

That�s all for starters. You�ll learn more as you go. Much more. But if I told you everything now you might not do it.

Whatever you do, just guard it with your life, with your very soul. If you think you�re in danger of losing it, dig it up, kill it with a silver needle, let someone else make a new one some day. You�ll feel as if you�ve pierced your own heart, but it�s better than letting it fall into the wrong hands.

Because you�re a Holder now.

And you�d better not let them come together. 

the whole "ancient aliens" /Von Daniken / "aliens built the pyramids" thing is actually ripped off of Lovecraft, through a bad French translation iirc (see the book "H. P. Lovecraft and the Cult of Alien Gods." It was so awesome seeing the ancient aliens stuff on the HISTORY channel! like really! what's next?

Of course the achievements of some ancient civilizations are impressive. But why are we so easily impressed with those things, when we have the internet, the beginnings of commercial space travel, nanotechnology, neuroscience, physicists figuring out what happened a second after the big bang... we figured all those things out without any alien help! 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EMv5KvbrGs 

tronyn, cos the scale is mind boggling? Seriously they are worth checking out in person. 

well I have seen the pyramids (I would be more hesitant to travel to Egypt now!) and other ancient ruins in Egypt, and yes, they were amazing (and I hope to see more such places in the world). But when you think about it, your average ugly skyscraper or (ugh) sports stadium is a more impressive engineering achievement, while mapping the human genome pretty much dwarfs 99% of all civilization's accomplishments before it. 

The coliseum is tiny when you see it.

Whilst the work scanning the stars or mapping the genome is so big it doesn't fit in my head. 

 

are massive which is what makes them impressive. Some of the behind the scenes engineering is also pretty impressive but not unexpected (using water leveling for the foundations is more a common sense thing for example).

I've seen some ship engineering that would blow the socks off of the Egyptians in everything that they did.

Keep in mind that I have over eight years on nuclear powered submarines and a bit over over two years underwater in total, including sea trials where we weren't 100% sure that it was seaworthy and we might just pop instead (good old Newport news shipyard where tightening bolts on critical seawater piping was apparently a hobby and not a job, luckily we caught it but it delayed our getting out by 4 months as we re-checked every single valve from stem to stern).

You know what, I'm feeling generous right now. Ask me anything about that part of my life and I'll answer it as long as it won't put me in jail over revealing secrets. Considering that all of those boats are long gone by 2 decades (except for one which is now a museum ship, you may have heard of it, the Nautilus) and the specs have been published by the Naval Institute Press I doubt that there isn't anything that you can ask that hasn't already been put out there by the USN in one form or another.

I won't answer any weapons questions however seeing as the same weapons are still in use today although they have been modified and I highly doubt that the specs are the same in any reasonable manner aside from basic operation. 

 

No. Quake was 4 years after I left. Doom was, I guess, 2 years after I got out. My computer gaming was limited to the DOS games at the time. I "Stole" the chief nuke's laptop when he wasn't looking (he gave me his approval to do it though as long as he didn't need it) and played some of the very (VERY) early PC games on it.

I did bring aboard a Commodore 64 and a TV where I modeled a torpedo tube firing sequence (all valves and it was actually quite well received by the instructors in that school when I showed it to them) but computers at that time were pretty much not involved in day to day operations. The only computer aboard was the size of your garage and what you are typing on beats it by miles in capacity.

Yeah, I'm old. 

alien pyramids always struck me as people underestimating those ancient humans. we're not all that much smarter than those guys back then.

it's more than we're standing on the shoulder of giants that makes us seem so and throws our perspective on those old dudes and what they were capable of. 

 

The six simple machines are all well known (although for some reason the Mayans missed the wheel and pulley, those dummies). Those are really all you need to build anything solid. I think that this is why I failed to release anything as a (partial) Quake level. I'm too picky about making it "Real". In other words I always want it to have a sense of place so there's a reason for it being there.

I can sling brushes as well as anyone else in general but I'm never happy with the results. I don't know why but I'm not. 

Ancient societies were in many ways smarter than we are today, technological progress is an ongoing process. It is a mistake to consider ourselves superior to our ancestors in every aspect. Domestication has made the average westerner become more of a proxy to the production process, whilst ancient man lived it. Thus having more respect for the fundamental aspects of life, which brings with it a certain wisdom that is now paradoxically less accessible. 

some ancient societies had the benefit of slavery. if you have unlimited work force and capacities, I guess you can do pretty huge things.

spiney, would you mind sharing some examples of those many ways? 

totally, we have the same brains as our hunter-gatherer ancestors (which explains a lot). I'm not about to go work in a factory or a farm, but being so out of touch with the system that makes what we need to survive can't fail to bite us in the ass. I also think "10 billion currency" worth of equipment/goods, as China produces, can't REALLY be equivalent to "10 billion currency" worth of cellphone games or advertising sneakery, shit has to get real sooner or later.

Quaketree, I am all for a sense of place in a Quake map, and my favourite ones (ie Shadow) have that, but I also think Quake was so abstract that most of the original maps had no reason for their existence, and that was liberating - and remains liberating compared to the level design in modern games. 

pretty amazing, especially from an engineering and/or architectural viewpoint.

You cant really compare that sort of stuff to mapping the human genome. 

them to the average skycraper and/or sport stadiums is also silly IMHO. The mayan and egyptian pyramids hardly have a mm between each rock, not to mention the location of stuff like Macchu Picchu etc. 

I'm not making a case for these things being technologically superior, I was simply pointing out that we should still be amazed by them. 

 

Read this and the comments:

http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/2012/08/transporting-trilithon-stones-baalbek-applied-physics-ancient-aliens/

Also - I would love to visit this place:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baalbek