was something like this (I'm adding a bit and likely forgetting a bit more)

In the Great War (during Lovecraft's era), two stray soldiers (British, whatever) stationed in the middle East accidentally discover a horrible buried/ruined city in the desert built by a pre-human civilization. They are found, stumbling and rambling madly in an immense sandstorm, and are taken as prisoners by the Turkish army. Somehow, both survive both the horrors of the city and its effect on sanity as well as years of brutal POW time. Returned after the war, it takes them years to recover and attempt to regain their normal lives. By some unspoken agreement, they never speak of the horrible city again.

Many years later, Our Hero recieves an invitation from his friend to join him at his mansion on urgent business (the two had drifted apart over the years), the first contact between either in long years. It seems his friend was twisted by the experience and became obsessed and addicted to the study of the occult; his invitation boasts of a great discovery.

The player arrives at the mansion; it is empty.
This would be the first map; you can walk around and etc until you find a secret bookshelf and make your way into caverns beneath the mansion...

The gist of the story that happens after this is: the player goes through caves and finds strange blue arcane structures built into the underground areas, and eventually finds that there is a strange sort of sky with odd arabic characters floating in it - certainly not the sky he saw outside the mansion. The structures begin to be more broken and chaotic. Odd organic fleshy structures appear. Then after several levels, he meets his friend.

The explanation is this: His friend found the Necromomicon, which is not only a book but a place: upon touching the book, the player did not move a bookshelf and go under the house, but rather went into the book. The arabic writing in the sky and elsewhere is the handwriting of Abdul Alhazred, the Necronomicon's mad author, which serves as a sort of DNA-style blueprint for the nightmare world they are in. The openings to black void and broken areas represent areas where the text is lacking. The flesh sections and horrible monsters represent the influence of "certain entities." The player fights his friend as the boss, and then wakes up outside the empty mansion... 

ever heard of the "eternal champion" concept by micheal moorcock?

So basically an eternal warrior [you] who goes through time fighting the evil monsters... 

The levels are chapters of the Necronomicon? And the starting mansion is like a difficulty selection level before going under into the caves or something? I'm kinda confused... 

My current conception of my own idea is a huge tower (something along the lines of Mexx9's Tower of Twilight) where you enter through the dungeons below and end up sticking a bloody great obelisk into Shub-Niggurath, which is sitting atop the tower. Needless to say, we're talking about "game over" territory here. (Not to mention Freudian :)

The thing is, I'm unsure how such a tower would fit into the "lost in the Necronomicon" theme...

...And I'm not sure about how much I'll be able to work on it. I'm futzing with some architectural studies now, but I still need to develop decent large-scale designs before Uni begins. And get the QC together as well. 

That's just the story idea Kell and I had. Doesn't mean we're using it.
The pack will probably just be a series of loosely connected, diversely themed Arcane maps. So, we'll need a different story that works with that, instead of the one I posted which deals with specific environments, cut-scenes etc. I posted that mostly for interest's sake, not because I intended that that's what the story would be. 

I would recusing picture examples from the level Avanipaala Praasaada which uses a whitened version of the IkBlue textures.

Fat Controller, you are scaring with those Mexx9 references. I've been looking at its code as well; specifically the cut scene code and the possibilaties it raises for scripting. Quake can use all the entity scripting code that can be mustered no matter how primitive it may be in relation to what has been done in Half-Life and UnRealScript. 

recusing -- uhm like the judge in the Peterson case? Mo. I meant 'recommend using' all apologies. 

We aren't using that story.
And, even if we were, I think those textures, though I like them a lot (see my Ethereal Hell review of the map if you don't believe me), aren't gritty, brooding or evil enough for a storyline like that. The desert city would probably be better using a texture set converted from another game, like unreal or maybe heretic2, or even quake3, if it was ever made.

So Fatty, with your idea I'm assuming yours would be the boss map? hehe. 

http://www.edgefiles.com/file.x?id=/quakepit.com/ewerd/kell.zip

there it is, have fun :) 

Well, that link might not work for a day or two... edgefiles is weird like that, it doesn't always upload the file to ALL the servers right away. 

hmmm this looks like a fun project,
I may work on a map for this,
if I can fit some time into my UNI
schedule between now and summer.
I suggest OGRO textures would be arcane
enough for part of this project :)
Somewhere deep within the hidden recesses of
my map scrapyard lies the scattered remains of
an ogro temple area, atrocious brushwork,
but I would be rebuilding it from scratch.
Also, I have some QC for making monsters drop
items (keys, weapons, whatever; I'm sure this
has been done before) if you want it let me know. 

The code for the pack is primarily CoE with knobs on. Once I find out about the barons I'll do a proper write up and bung it somewhere. 

As I failed to mention before, I am interested in this project, but here is my idea on what you guys were thinking.

Since all the maps will be quite different, it'll be hard to link it all together with a specific story... so, to build onto what Tronyn's story there, why not base it on dimensional passage ways within that "book," or whatever it is. This way, it would make sense for all these different styles and texturesets to be linked. 

just base it off of a bunch of different books from Lovecraft's world, not just the Necronomicon, such as the Pnakotic Manuscripts. Each different but still fits the theme ?_? 

Say, some sort of spooky manse/Miskatonic Library with a few books on lecterns (strange ones, with pages made of starfluid.) Approach 'em and you get sucked in.

In theory, if we could get five people wreaking, er, working on maps, we could have something like a pack of mini-episodes... Hmm.

Now, what titles were there in the mythos...
Necronomicon
Pnakotic Manuscripts
De Vermiis Mysteriis
R'lyeh Text
Ceaelano Fragments
Revelations of Glaaki
The Book of Eibon 

its like Myst! I have read the first 3 books, i dunno if there are more (and played the games) 

that's German for "unspeakable cults" by Von Junzt as well?

I like the idea you guys have come up with: each different map (or series of maps, whatever) represents a different book of the unspeakable. Actually, this allows for a great diversity of themes - R'lyeh text I think would probably do well for a slimy map, for example.

Then, we could end it with the player going insane after having completed "learning" from all the books - maybe even a showdown with tons of monsters teleporting into the library start map! 

like I think Fatty's suggeting, each book would lead to a series of maps rather than a single map, one way to do this would be to hold a speedmapping session with arcane themes. Then each mini-episode could be speedmap, large map, boss map, or something like that? Just an over-ambitious suggestion, as always, of course ;) 

over-ambition can *sometimes* be good.

remember soul of evil, it was worth the wait. :) 

I think one map per theme is a better and more realistic idea.

Bu tthen again, I'm biased against speedmaps as proper releases. 

But then again, I'm biased against speedmaps as proper releases

i tend to agree with this. 

Let's have a few maps only, of the usual unfeasibly high quality :P

Anyway, I've started "researching" Mexx9B, and I'm surprised how simple the basic structure is. Gotta remember that once I get a handle on the looks. 

...is what you're thinking of, Tronyn 

I think is the literal translation, Lovecraft kinda screwed it up. 

I was intending to possibly sputter out with a "graveyard" themed map in time for Halloween, so I'll think about that too. Right now I'm trying to settle on textures for that and the tower, so I'll get back to that once the damn sun goes down.