Survival Guide

Today’s prompt: “Write a survival guide for a character: Ten things to do in an emergency.”

1. Avoid open spaces in the outdoors. Winged Old Ones and Outer Gods such as Ny-Rakath and Ngirrth’lu will swoop in to devour you.

2. Avoid underground spaces. Subterranean Old Ones and Outer Gods such as Shudde M’ell and Tharapithia will burrow their way to you and devour you.

3. Avoid oceans and other bodies of water. Aquatic Old Ones and Outer Gods such as Dagon and Janai’ngo will find you and devour you.

4. Avoid the woods. Forest-dwelling Old Ones and Outer Gods such as Aylith and Shub-Niggurath will hunt you and devour you.

5. Avoid sculpture gardens. Gloon and Olkoth tend to masquerade as statuary.

6. Avoid ghost ships, forgotten temples, and wandering black holes.

7. Avoid Antarctica (home of Groth-Golka), Egypt (Amon-Gorloth), Texas (Ayi’ig), Memphis (Dhumin), Central Africa (God of the Red Flux), Kansas (Othuyeg), Alaska (Khal’kru), New Mexico (Rhagorthua), Florida (Tulushuggua and Turua), Central American mountain ranges (Xoxiigghua), Myanmar (Zhar and Lloigor), Vermont (Kaunuzoth), and other dimensions in general (so many Old Ones).

8. Avoid anything with tentacles, anything with a formless or nebulous shape, any kind of chimera, anything made out of crystals or goo, and anything that glows. That probably covers a good 85% of the Old One/Outer God population.

9. Avoid black, leafless oak trees that are hot to the touch. Avoid giant sentient plants that are served by mutant rabbits. Avoid were-cats.

10. Ignore all this. The Old Ones and Outer Gods will find a way to kill you anyway.