As of today, work has officially begun toward Session Two of “Merciful Things”! I’m currently planning to gather the players and run the session by the end of January, and hopefully begin delivering episodes by the beginning of next month. Other exciting developments will be announced until then so stay tuned!

And what was the answer to the riddle? Coalhada from the storygames.com forums scored with an impressive memory for a very specific scene from the massive epic of James Joyce, Ulysses. While Joyce isn’t exactly a “Lovecraftian” writer, they did write in the same period and, I believe, dealt with similar questions. My intention in the early volumes of the “Corbitt Diaries” was to present, as accurately as I could, the private thoughts of an early twentieth-century “everyday man”. If I was going to make the Diaries a real, physical artifact for the player’s to hold, I certainly wanted it to READ like a diary– not a convenient play-by-play, but not so incoherent and rambling that the reader cannot relate. I had to capture the voice of a sane, reasonable, even somewhat likable human being, to show how the Mythos overpowers the minds it lures. It struck me that Ulysses was the perfect place to turn to get an authentic sample of the stream-of-consciousness of the contemporary mind.

Coalhada would like to thank DailyLit.com, which provides a free novel-by-email service, sending your chosen novel to you in short installments according to a schedule of your choosing. If you’ve been meaning to pick up Ulysses, this is your chance!

The Corbitt House will be the centerpiece of the next session of “Merciful Things”. All signs point to the impossible fact that the house’s eccentric one-time occupant wants the investigators gone– including the loud thump they just heard from the floor above, in the supposedly empty house!