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Tales of Cthulhu Invictus: Nine Stories of Battling the Cthulhu Mythos in Ancient Rome
Long before ivy grew on the walls of Miskatonic University or the Deep Ones first came to Innsmouth, centuries before the mad Arab penned the dreaded Necronomicon, the malevolent powers of the Cthulhu Mythos plagued mankind. During the Age of the Antonines (96 AD–192 AD), when the Roman Empire was at the peak of its power, dark and unknowable forces were at work. Ancient wizards sought ways to cheat death, explorers stumbled on the remnants of alien civilizations, foul cults practiced unholy rites, and inhuman creatures sought to mix their blood with ours.
Across Rome’s vast empire, a few brave men and women rose up to meet these threats for the greater good of mankind. They carried light into the darkness, dispelling a poisonous taint which grows best in the shadows. With steel and spell and burning torch, these heroic investigators of the ancient world defended their civilization from the fearsome powers of the Cthulhu Mythos. Golden Goblin Press is proud to offer up nine tales of their horrific struggles and sacrifices.
TALES OF CTHULHU INVICTUS
Edited by Brian M. Sammons
"Vulcan’s Forge" by William Meikle
"Fecunditati Augustae" by Christine Morgan
"A Plague of Wounds" by Konstantine Paradias
"Tempus Edax Rerum" by Pete Rawlik
"The Unrepeatables" by Edward M. Erdelac
"Magnum Innominandum" by Penelope Love
"Lines in the Sand" by Tom Lynch
"The Temple of Iald-T’qurhoth" by Lee Clark Zumpe
"The Seven Thunders" by Robert M. Price
Across Rome’s vast empire, a few brave men and women rose up to meet these threats for the greater good of mankind. They carried light into the darkness, dispelling a poisonous taint which grows best in the shadows. With steel and spell and burning torch, these heroic investigators of the ancient world defended their civilization from the fearsome powers of the Cthulhu Mythos. Golden Goblin Press is proud to offer up nine tales of their horrific struggles and sacrifices.
TALES OF CTHULHU INVICTUS
Edited by Brian M. Sammons
"Vulcan’s Forge" by William Meikle
"Fecunditati Augustae" by Christine Morgan
"A Plague of Wounds" by Konstantine Paradias
"Tempus Edax Rerum" by Pete Rawlik
"The Unrepeatables" by Edward M. Erdelac
"Magnum Innominandum" by Penelope Love
"Lines in the Sand" by Tom Lynch
"The Temple of Iald-T’qurhoth" by Lee Clark Zumpe
"The Seven Thunders" by Robert M. Price
116 pages, Paperback
First published August 30, 2015
6 people are currently reading
95 people want to read
About the author
Brian M. Sammons
78 books73 followersBrian M. Sammons lives in Michigan, loves horror films and books, writes stories and reviews, edits various books, and is described by his neighbors as “such a nice, quiet man.”
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 27, 2015
This set of 9 stories was a stretch goal for a recent Kickstarter connected with the Cthulhu Invictus tabletop RPG. It generally encompasses people of Ancient Rome encountering the Mythos.
All are somewhat good or better in quality.
My top three: Vulcan's Forge, Lines in the Sand & The Seven Thunders.
OVERALL GRADE: B plus.
All are somewhat good or better in quality.
My top three: Vulcan's Forge, Lines in the Sand & The Seven Thunders.
OVERALL GRADE: B plus.
September 7, 2015
If you like the Cthulhu Mythos and enjoy Roman history, this is a fun read.
Standouts were William Meikle's "Vulcan's Forge" and Pete Rawlik's "Time Devours All", the latter of which I could easily see being expanded into a novella, and Christine Morgan's "Fecunditati Augustae" and Penelope Love's "Magnum Innominandum" both of which feature female protagonists, something often overshadowed in fiction set in Rome, and the latter of which being the best story in the collection being so full of the complexities of gender, ethnicity, and class that was Rome.
Standouts were William Meikle's "Vulcan's Forge" and Pete Rawlik's "Time Devours All", the latter of which I could easily see being expanded into a novella, and Christine Morgan's "Fecunditati Augustae" and Penelope Love's "Magnum Innominandum" both of which feature female protagonists, something often overshadowed in fiction set in Rome, and the latter of which being the best story in the collection being so full of the complexities of gender, ethnicity, and class that was Rome.
October 28, 2015
I'm pleased that Cthulhu Invictus has made the leap from Chaosium Monograph, to a published print line for the Call of Cthulhu RPG, and now into the fiction realm.
A large part of the credit for that goes to (amongst many others) writer/publisher Oscar Rios, and his new imprint GOlden Goblin Press, as well as Brian Sammons (Mythos Editor extrodinaire.)
Not only have they put out this stellar short-story collection, but thye also put out De horrore cosmico: Six Scenarios for Cthulhu Invictus, and The Legacy of Arrius Lurco (the last under the Miskatonic River Press imprint.)
My only minor complaint? This book was far too short! I'd love to see another collectoin of Invictus fiction from Golden Goblin.
4 Mythos-Laden stars.
A large part of the credit for that goes to (amongst many others) writer/publisher Oscar Rios, and his new imprint GOlden Goblin Press, as well as Brian Sammons (Mythos Editor extrodinaire.)
Not only have they put out this stellar short-story collection, but thye also put out De horrore cosmico: Six Scenarios for Cthulhu Invictus, and The Legacy of Arrius Lurco (the last under the Miskatonic River Press imprint.)
My only minor complaint? This book was far too short! I'd love to see another collectoin of Invictus fiction from Golden Goblin.
4 Mythos-Laden stars.
June 9, 2023
I normally think that reviewing anthologies as a whole is a futile task, as they are bound to be widely varied in tone, theme, and quality... But there's a noticeable through line throughout the stories of Cthulhu Invictus of the bitter vengeance of the oppressed and dispossessed - there's also some Christianity-centric appropriation and exaggeration of history in the service of narrative, which is bad.
Overall an enjoyable read, certainly good idea fodder if you wish to put on a Call of Cthulhu campaign set in the ancient world, but its highs are rare and its lows viscerally disappointing.
Story-by-story impressions and reviews:
"Vulcan's Forge" by William Meikle, or "Orginality is for Cowards: The Pre-Modern Icarus" | The opposite of good isn't bad, the opposite of food is boring.
Well... This is not good.
This is the white bread toast left out on the windowsill to dry. This is plain pasta crushed to bits and boiled into mush. This is unseasoned boiled potatoes. This is the rice that comes in bags. This is the off-red pale ketchup sauce packet that came with your frozen mini corn dogs.
The plot you've seen a thousand times: there's a spooky alien thing in a mountain. The hubristic governmental represitive goes like, "we can make a weapon out of this." Hubristic official driven by greed is hubristic. The spooky alien thing eats everyone. There might be more spooky alien things - *clutches bulla, gasps* - o the tragedy! O tempora! O mort! The end. The setting and time might as well be any other, and can easily be exchanged for any other - it's not like anything interesting or resonant has ever happened in the 70s AD Roman Empire, ohno. It's not like the mind boggles at how one manages to make the Eruption of Vesuvius feel boring.
If Lovecraft had written this, there would have been effluent prose. There would have been nerdy gibbering about ancient architecture, and the geological properties of volcanic rock. Or minutia about the taste of plain bread and cheap garum. Maybe a Pliny cameo. And, like, the legion legate would have casually dropped that his gens can trace their lineage to Tarquin the Proud and the blood rivers of Troy's fall - and then, as the Eldritch Mass of Churning Anthropophagic Alien Goo™ had surged up that old soldierly patrician would have suddenly frozen, and uttered an ineffable phrase in an unknown tongue, and greeted The Eldritch Mass of Churning Anthropophagic Alien Goo™ with a bittersweet smile crinkling that old aristocratic face. And would have been delightful. Or something like that. You know, authorial voice, personality, motifs, and other petty trifles of evocative writing like that.
Honestly, skip it. Get to it later. You deserve better beginnings in your life.
"Fecunditati Augustae" by Christine Morgan |
A story of the weight of motherhood in a patriarchal society and a dynastic system - what do you give to continue a legacy? To fulfil your role in society? To see the father of your children smile?
On the first page, a most beautifully viscerall piece of writing cleaves you open.
The rest of the narrative delivers, carrying through a thematically cohesive little story.
Oh, and milf-in-chief the Black Goat with a Thousand Young is there.
Oh, and there's even some commentary on gender roles and the weight of political expectations - and it gets to be the driving force for the plot! And form a coherent thematic hole! *clutches papyrus rolls, tried to ignore the blowflies currently eating it* AND DID I MENTION THE PROSE IS ACTUALLY GOOD. La dee da, I feel downright spoilt.
PS. I cannot confirm whether the Latin in the title makes any sense.
"A Plague of Wounds" by Konstantine Paradias | Speaking of interesting things happening in the 70s AD...
Alright, this is not the 70s AD. The narrator, to my great diappointment at page 2 contextual clues, is not Flavius Iosephus. Instead, we are in the 130s, in the last stages of the Third Jewish Revolt, and the air of oppression and powerlessness - at the hands of the Powers That Be or a still greater horror - hangs choking thick in the air of Palestine. It's a neat tale - parchance a bit vague, but in a way that plays into the strengths of horror fiction. There's bitterness, and no moral good, and the catharsis of endless destruction.
"Tempus Edax Rerum" ("Time Devours All") by Peter Rawlik | Okay, okay, okay, I promise this is set in the 70s AD this time.
Well, 60s, technically, but close enough. There is a Flavius knocking around the place, off the page - of the Caesar kind, not the pseudo-soothsayer historian kind, and that will have to do.
The Sybilline books are mentioned. Superstitious romans, power-hungry aristocrats and patient servitors of timeless and alien gods are a match made in Heaven. Or Hell.
Very punchy, but a tad trite - there's a lot of machinations that the story alludes to in the vaguest of terms. I feel like a clue or two towards the grander ineffable designs would have been nice.
"The Unrepentables" by Edward M. Erdelac |
A chariot racer is weary of defying death and wishes for the deathless body of a god. Only, this is the world of the Cthulhu Mythos, gods do not look as if Phidias sculpted them.
Does a lot of good world-bulding in a brief amount of time. For the stoic straightman type, Modius Macula has a plenty of character. A++
"Magnum Innominandum" by Penelope Love |
Spit all the plagues of Egypt on the rich. Metaironic A-
"Lines in the Sand" by Tom Lynch |
Randomly misogynistic setup, full of exposition dump stilted dialogue, grossly mismanages the King in Yellow, turning an incomprehensible usurper god, a twister of minds, an unvailer of inner madnesses into your mere standard villain, showing up to your door ahead of an army.
Here I knew that God had opened his tattered mantle, and there was only my bookshelf to cry my unshed tears to.
"The Temple of Iald-T'qurhoth" by Lee Clark Zumpe |
Fits really well into the anthological narrative, you can see the ending for miles away, but, oh well... love me some gross horror bugs and some well-chosen epigraphs.
"The Seven Thunders" by Robert M. Price |
Technically uninspired, but nevertheless quite bold and interesting in its gospelesque authorial voice. Questionably hopeful for a Mythos tale.
Overall an enjoyable read, certainly good idea fodder if you wish to put on a Call of Cthulhu campaign set in the ancient world, but its highs are rare and its lows viscerally disappointing.
Story-by-story impressions and reviews:
"Vulcan's Forge" by William Meikle, or "Orginality is for Cowards: The Pre-Modern Icarus" | The opposite of good isn't bad, the opposite of food is boring.
Well... This is not good.
This is the white bread toast left out on the windowsill to dry. This is plain pasta crushed to bits and boiled into mush. This is unseasoned boiled potatoes. This is the rice that comes in bags. This is the off-red pale ketchup sauce packet that came with your frozen mini corn dogs.
The plot you've seen a thousand times: there's a spooky alien thing in a mountain. The hubristic governmental represitive goes like, "we can make a weapon out of this." Hubristic official driven by greed is hubristic. The spooky alien thing eats everyone. There might be more spooky alien things - *clutches bulla, gasps* - o the tragedy! O tempora! O mort! The end. The setting and time might as well be any other, and can easily be exchanged for any other - it's not like anything interesting or resonant has ever happened in the 70s AD Roman Empire, ohno. It's not like the mind boggles at how one manages to make the Eruption of Vesuvius feel boring.
If Lovecraft had written this, there would have been effluent prose. There would have been nerdy gibbering about ancient architecture, and the geological properties of volcanic rock. Or minutia about the taste of plain bread and cheap garum. Maybe a Pliny cameo. And, like, the legion legate would have casually dropped that his gens can trace their lineage to Tarquin the Proud and the blood rivers of Troy's fall - and then, as the Eldritch Mass of Churning Anthropophagic Alien Goo™ had surged up that old soldierly patrician would have suddenly frozen, and uttered an ineffable phrase in an unknown tongue, and greeted The Eldritch Mass of Churning Anthropophagic Alien Goo™ with a bittersweet smile crinkling that old aristocratic face. And would have been delightful. Or something like that. You know, authorial voice, personality, motifs, and other petty trifles of evocative writing like that.
Honestly, skip it. Get to it later. You deserve better beginnings in your life.
"Fecunditati Augustae" by Christine Morgan |
A story of the weight of motherhood in a patriarchal society and a dynastic system - what do you give to continue a legacy? To fulfil your role in society? To see the father of your children smile?
On the first page, a most beautifully viscerall piece of writing cleaves you open.
The rest of the narrative delivers, carrying through a thematically cohesive little story.
Oh, and milf-in-chief the Black Goat with a Thousand Young is there.
Oh, and there's even some commentary on gender roles and the weight of political expectations - and it gets to be the driving force for the plot! And form a coherent thematic hole! *clutches papyrus rolls, tried to ignore the blowflies currently eating it* AND DID I MENTION THE PROSE IS ACTUALLY GOOD. La dee da, I feel downright spoilt.
PS. I cannot confirm whether the Latin in the title makes any sense.
"A Plague of Wounds" by Konstantine Paradias | Speaking of interesting things happening in the 70s AD...
Alright, this is not the 70s AD. The narrator, to my great diappointment at page 2 contextual clues, is not Flavius Iosephus. Instead, we are in the 130s, in the last stages of the Third Jewish Revolt, and the air of oppression and powerlessness - at the hands of the Powers That Be or a still greater horror - hangs choking thick in the air of Palestine. It's a neat tale - parchance a bit vague, but in a way that plays into the strengths of horror fiction. There's bitterness, and no moral good, and the catharsis of endless destruction.
"Tempus Edax Rerum" ("Time Devours All") by Peter Rawlik | Okay, okay, okay, I promise this is set in the 70s AD this time.
Well, 60s, technically, but close enough. There is a Flavius knocking around the place, off the page - of the Caesar kind, not the pseudo-soothsayer historian kind, and that will have to do.
The Sybilline books are mentioned. Superstitious romans, power-hungry aristocrats and patient servitors of timeless and alien gods are a match made in Heaven. Or Hell.
Very punchy, but a tad trite - there's a lot of machinations that the story alludes to in the vaguest of terms. I feel like a clue or two towards the grander ineffable designs would have been nice.
"The Unrepentables" by Edward M. Erdelac |
A chariot racer is weary of defying death and wishes for the deathless body of a god. Only, this is the world of the Cthulhu Mythos, gods do not look as if Phidias sculpted them.
Does a lot of good world-bulding in a brief amount of time. For the stoic straightman type, Modius Macula has a plenty of character. A++
"Magnum Innominandum" by Penelope Love |
Spit all the plagues of Egypt on the rich. Metaironic A-
"Lines in the Sand" by Tom Lynch |
Randomly misogynistic setup, full of exposition dump stilted dialogue, grossly mismanages the King in Yellow, turning an incomprehensible usurper god, a twister of minds, an unvailer of inner madnesses into your mere standard villain, showing up to your door ahead of an army.
Here I knew that God had opened his tattered mantle, and there was only my bookshelf to cry my unshed tears to.
"The Temple of Iald-T'qurhoth" by Lee Clark Zumpe |
Fits really well into the anthological narrative, you can see the ending for miles away, but, oh well... love me some gross horror bugs and some well-chosen epigraphs.
"The Seven Thunders" by Robert M. Price |
Technically uninspired, but nevertheless quite bold and interesting in its gospelesque authorial voice. Questionably hopeful for a Mythos tale.
January 5, 2019
Last year I reread all of Richard L. Tierney's amazing Simon of Gitta fiction, set in the 1st century Roman Empire, so it seemed logical to pick this collection up as well. Tierney, it ain't. While only one or two of the stories are truly not very good, few are really brilliant. The first tale, purporting to tell why Vesusvius erupted in 79 AD is a clever idea, written in a style so devoid of any clear knowledge of the setting, that it could as easily have been written about the eruption in the 1940s. The last three tales, by veterans Penelope Love and Robert M. Price, plus Lee Clarke Zumpke are quite good, Price's in particular, but three of nine isn't a great record for a collection. There is nothing really bad here, but little inspired or new.
September 29, 2019
I am a huge fan of reading Lovecraftian stories in historical settings, Ancient Rome being one of the most fertile to explore, so was very excited to read this. For the most part, these are all well written tales that examine the horror from various angles, and you'll recognize a few that use or reference the same characters. A shorter collection, under 150 pages, with nine stories, but nonetheless there were some dense, satisfying stories, I just had to keep an encyclopedia nearby so I could reference all the Latin/Roman words I didn't know...so in a way, it's educational AND creepy.
Halloween Read 7/13 for 2019
Halloween Read 7/13 for 2019
February 29, 2020
Eh. Okay with anthologies like this you'll get some good, some bad, some middling. But I'm afraid the ratio of good to bad wasn't great in this volume.
A couple of the stories were decent. But... Some of them really needed a lot more polishing before they were published.
A couple of the stories were decent. But... Some of them really needed a lot more polishing before they were published.
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February 4, 20163.5 stars from Jason: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews