First off… I know. I fail at scripting. This is a very dialogue-driven chapter. If the walls of text offend you, I recommend you go to your local comic shop and give them some cash in return for a copy of Korgi. It’s awesome and stuff.
Now that that’s out of the way, here’s the trippy thing: A lot of the crap in this chapter is based upon folklore and research.
The Hounds of God (and yes, Faith has heard that term before), were, according to one man’s testimony, real bands of Livonian, German, and Russian werewolves that roamed in companies of both men and women in numbers of twenty or thirty back in the day. They practiced traditions that were remarkably similar to the witchlike benandanti of Italy; these werewolves would travel to ‘hell’ to bring back the crops that the witches or sorcerers had stolen for the devil. However, ‘Hell” was located at the end of a lake though the Germans an Russians had their own ‘hells’ to deal with). Hell was said to have its own time, and in Hell, the trees are green instead of barren in Christmas time. However, there was mention of the doors or gateway to hell, and it was indicted that at some times, they were open… Also, it was explained that hell “is not on earth” but underneath it (one source refers to the place as the hell-hole cave, which I will admit is tantalizingly hollow-earth-esque, though I avoided that theory just because it’s slightly less plausible.) This seems to be a very strange kind of place indeed, what with its location, gateway, and unique seasons.
Now, to me it’s pretty clear that The Hounds of God stripped down and sometimes used wolf pelts to become wolves, however, after forming the basics of how I wanted things to work, I was surprised to find a book by Konstantinos that expressed the opinion that The Hounds of God left their bodies astraly, same as how many of the benandanti sent out a fetch and left their bodies that way. When thinking in terms of astral projection and all of that, it is easy to bring into consideration the different planes of existence, which leads us to alternate dimensions.
This is amusing, because it makes for a lovely lead-up to the theory expressed in Linda Godfrey’s books. This theory, as expressed by a remote viewer, is that the werewolves seen in modern day America are travelers through time and space, and come from an alternate dimension. (I swear to whatever deity you like, I’m not making this up.) By looking at “Hell” as an alternate dimension rather than a physical feature on or within earth, it makes life a LOT easier, and ties into things that I’ll discuss at a later date.
Now that we’re on the concept of alternate dimensions… regarding Ley Lines as a way into other dimensions, well, that has folkloric basis as well. I spoke at length about leylines before, back in the second chapter, but I feel the need to revisit them now (and likely will again). I find it interesting that there are similar, though certainly not identical concepts around the world, ranging from leylines to ghost paths to songlines to fairy paths to corpse roads… lines of paranormal significance appear in many places. For instance, Songlines have a certain connection to The Dreamtime, which is sort of a magical, primordial era that exists as dimension alongside our own. Likewise, Corpse roads and such are associated with carrying the dead to cemeteries, and the whole process of death is riddled with stories of moving onto other planes of existence, like heaven, hell, purgatory, or, sometimes, even returning from those planes to haunt this world. Likewise, with fairy paths, depending on what you read (because fairy folklore varies so much) fairies would leave our realm and enter their own, someplace between the living world and the realm of the dead. They had their own paths, which were said to connect fairy places together, and the fae were also at times associated with the spirits of the dead, connecting them back to the corpse paths. Then you could get into things like Shamanic paths, or even a wee bit of offeng shui, and there’s a whole mess of these paranormal paths. By classifying these paths in Eldritch’s universe as all being variants of one another under the P.C. umbrella term “ley lines” it allows me to pick and choose the bits I like and mix them a bit.
So, I basically took all of these elements, plus a few more, wadded them into a ball and made Eldritch. I hope that by providing bits of the research involved, that you’ll better understand where I’m coming from, you know? Hopefully it’ll be interesting to someone.
Also, string theory and membrane theory and Rosen bridges and such. Also, I know, Bridge to Neverland did the Rosen bridge stuff first. Maybe I’ll bother you all with science later, because Seamus isn’t here XD
Please read:
Timpson’s Leylines – John Timpson
Spirit Roads --Paul Devereux
The Beast Within --Adam Douglas
The Night Battles --Carlo Ginzburg
Werewolves --Neigel Suckling
Apollo the Wolf-God --Daniel Gershenson
Witches Werewolves and Fairies --Claude Lecouteux
Hunting the American Werewolf --Linda Godfrey
The Werewolf Handbook -- Dr. Robert Curran
Real Wolfmen --Linda Godfrey
Werewolves: The Occult Truth – Konstantinos
