Absinthe in Carcosa
The Handout to End All Handouts The City Guide That Shatters Reality At the end of the 19th century¸ an American art student went to Paris¸ read a play¸ and lost his grip on reality. The play was called The King in Yellow. Having read it¸ head reeling from absinthe¸ bedeviled by unseen adversaries¸ he realized that the alien world it described¸ Carcosa¸ had sunk its traces throughout the City of Lights. As he explored Paris in search of its decadent influence¸ he created a scrapbook. A guide for himself¸ and for those who would come after him. Yoked together from existing travelogues¸ newspapers¸ and the disquieting ephemera of the occult tradition¸ it laid out a skewed portrait of a haunted city: Art student life¸ from hazing rituals to fabulous bacchanals at the Moulin Rouge Hangouts and nightspots¸ from everyday beaneries to ghoulish cabarets Neighborhoods and attractions¸ with useful maps Sources of knowledge¸ from museums to institutes of technology Operations of the justice system¸ from the city's police to its prisons Rites of death¸ from funeral fees to the notorious¸ bone-stacked catacombs Details of everyday life¸ including currency¸ communications¸ and essential phrases A timeline of recent historical events In the margins appear the increasingly fervid scrawls of the anonymous compiler. Through them determined investigators of the Yellow Sign mystery will learn: Who to seek aid from Where madness lurks And to never waver in their distrust of clowns