The Fall of the House of Alden by Edgar Allan Weeks

The Fall of the House of Alden By Edgar Allan Weeks





DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been surfing alone, on my computer, through a singularly dreary tract of internet; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy website House of Alden. I know not how it was; but, with the first glimpse of the website, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me-upon the mere website, and the simple landscape features of the domain name-upon the bleak front page-upon the vacant eyes of a pathetic figure carrying a checkerboard-upon a few rank photos-and upon a few poorly worded essays of decayed intellect-with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveler upon opium-the bitter lapse into every-day life-the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart-an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it-I paused to think-what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Alden? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my mouse to the precipitous brink of the website, and gazed down-but with a shudder even more thrilling than before-upon the remodeled and inverted images of the gray borders, and the ghastly web design, and the vacant eyes of the geek.


Nevertheless, in this website of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Scott Alden, had been one of my gaming companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. An e-mail, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country-an e-mail from him-which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness, of a mental disorder which oppressed him, and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only boardgaming resource, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said-it was the apparent heart that went with his request-which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons.



Although, as boys, we had been very active gamers, yet I really knew little of my gaming opponent. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent, yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognizable beauties, of boardgame design. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact that the stem of the Alden race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other-it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the "House of Alden"-an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family website.


I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment of looking down on the website had been to deepen the first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition-for why should I not so term it?-served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the website itself, from its image on the computer screen, there grew in my mind a strange fancy-a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole website and domain name there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity-an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed forums, and the gray web design, and the overbearing admins-a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.



Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the website. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity, almost DOS like. The discoloration of ages had been great. It was like minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine, tangled web-work from the site. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the membership had fallen and even sockpuppetry became commonplace; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual accounts. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old webwork which has rotted for years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external intellectual intelligence. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the code gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible glitch, which, extending from some delay in loading a thread of the forum, making its way down the archives in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the website.



Noticing these things, I decided to meet Alden in person and venture forth to his house. An admin in waiting greeted me at the door, and I entered the Gothic archway of the Alden estate. An admin, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the private room of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me-while the pictures of the cats, the somber photos of the games, the ebon blackness of the gamer attitudes, and the phantasmagoric gaming trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy-while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this-I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the rooms I met the physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The admin now threw open a backdoor and ushered me into the presence of his master.


The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The conversations were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the subject of boardgames as to be altogether mindboggling. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned intelect made their way through the trellised phrases, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent subjects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the text, or the recesses of the hidden archive. Dark attitudes hung in the room. The general language was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many games and musical groups talked about about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.


Upon my entrance, Alden typed a rather quaint phrase littered with smileys, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality-of the constrained effort of the ennuyé man of the world. A glance, however, at his words convinced me of his perfect sincerity. I typed a few phrases; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon this room with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly warped, in so brief a period, as had Scott Alden! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the man in the webcam before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely molded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous luster of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.


In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence-an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy, an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his e-mail than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision-that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation-that leaden, self-balanced, and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.


It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy-a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid addiction to boardgames, he called it "The Cult of the New". He simply could not restrain himself from purchasing boardgames and then to sing their praises on the family website.

To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. "I shall perish," said he, "I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect-in terror. In this unnerved-in this pitiable condition-I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR."



I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the website which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth-in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be restated-an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family website, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit-an effect which the physique of the geek and its code, and of the dim light of the computer monitor into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his existence.

He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin-to the severe and long-continued illness-indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution-of the loss in the Ameritrash Wars . "The Fall of the Euro," he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the "Aldens." While he spoke, Derk Solko (for so was he called) passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded him with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread; and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed his retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon him, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brother; but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears.


The disease of the Derk had long baffled the skill of his physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto he had steadily borne up against the pressure of his malady, and had not betaken himself finally to bed; but on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at the house, he succumbed (as his brother told me at night with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer; and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of his person would thus probably be the last I should obtain-that the Derk, at least while living, would be seen by me no more.


For several days ensuing his name was unmentioned by either Alden or myself; and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavors to alleviate the melancholy of my gaming opponent. We played Descent together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his house rules. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom.


I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus spent alone with the master of the House of Alden. Yet I should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of the occupations in which he involved me, or led me the way. An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphurous luster over all. His long, improvised house rules and die rolls will ring forever in my ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last monster defeated in the game of Descent. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more thrillingly because I shuddered knowing not why,-from these paintings (vivid as their images now are before me) I would in vain endeavor to educe more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely a simple dungeon crawl. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Scott Alden. For me, at least, in the circumstances then surrounding me, there arose out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli.


One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendor.


I have just spoken of that morbid condition of boardgame addiction which rendered lack of purchase intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain expenses for computer network equipment. It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself to playing Descent, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the rules, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rimed verbal improvisations of monsters), the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Alden, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled "The Haunted Palace," ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:-
I
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace-
Radiant palace-reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion-
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.

II
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This-all this-was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A wingèd odor went away.

III
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-tunèd law,
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.

IV
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.

V
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!);
And, round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

VI
And travelers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh-but smile no more.



I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Alden's which I mention not so much on account of its novelty (for other men 2 have thought thus) as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words to express the full extent or the earnest abandon of his persuasion. The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the dreary website he designed. The conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these bits and bytes-in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them, and of the decayed forums which stood around-above all, in the long-undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of intellectual stimulation. Its evidence-the evidence of the sentience-was to be seen, he said (and I here started as he spoke), in the gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the website. The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had molded the destinies of his family, and which made him what I now saw him-what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will make none.

Our books-the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of the mental existence of the invalid-were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over such works as the "Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition", the moster manual and DM guide. One favorite volume was The League of Untouchable American gamers Guide to Better Gaming written by yours truly and a volume that seemed to enrage Alden with a sense of jealousy the likes I have never seen.


I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having informed me abruptly that Derk was no more , he stated his intention of preserving his corpse for a fortnight (previously to its final interment) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother had been led to his resolution, so he told me, by consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of his medical men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial ground of the family. I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but a harmless, and by no means an unnatural precaution.


At the request of Alden, I personally aided him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep much like the ones we found while playing Descent, and in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been also similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges.


Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between Alden and Derk now first arrested my attention; and Alden, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead-for we could not regard him unawed. The disease which had thus entombed the Derk in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and having secured the door of iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house.


And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue-but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness; for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition terrified-that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influence of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.

It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the seventh or eighth day after the placing of the Derk within the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep came not near my couch, while the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavored to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room-of the dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened-I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me-to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavored to arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.


I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognized it as that of Alden. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan-but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes-and evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor. His air appalled me-but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.


"And you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having stared about him for some moments in silence-"you have not then seen it?-but stay! you shall." Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the storm.


The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the lifelike velocity with which they flew careering from all points against each other, without passing away into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this-yet we had no glimpse of the moon or stars-nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapor, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion.


"You must not-you shall not behold this!" said I, shudderingly, to Alden, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a seat. "These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena not uncommon-or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement—the air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your favorite games, Caylus. Let us play ; and so we will pass away this terrible night together."


The wretched game which I had taken up was the most Euro of Euro games, a fallen symbol in the Ameritrash Wars; but I had called it a favorite of Alden's more in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my gaming opponent. It was, however, the only game immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in the extremeness of the folly which I should play. Could I have judged, indeed, by the wild, overstrained air of vivacity with which he hearkened, or apparently harkened, to the play of the game, I might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design.


No sooner had I built a portion of the castle in Caylus-I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic and clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Alden was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length drank in the hideous import of his words.


"Not hear it?-yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long-long-long-many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it-yet I dared not-oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!-I dared not-I dared not speak! We have put him living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard his first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them-many, many days ago-yet I dared not- dared not speak! And now-to-night-Ethelred-ha! ha!-the breaking of the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!-say, rather, the rending of his coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of his prison, and his struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh, whither shall I fly? Will he not be here anon? Is he not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard his footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of his heart? Madman!"-here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul-"Madman! I tell you that he now stands without the door!"


As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell-the huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust-but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the Derk. There was blood upon his white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of his emaciated frame. For a moment he remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold-then, with a low, moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of his brother, and in his violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.


From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened-there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind-the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight-my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder-there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand members saying, we can't log on, is the website down?-and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "House of Alden".

Holy shit.

I havent even read much of it, but the SIZE of this is immense. One wonder's if Weeks' powers were used for the forces of good, what might come...

Sweet Jesus.

tl;dr

cribs?

[Emperor from Amadeus]

Too many words.

[/Emperor from Amadeus]

[Emperor from Amadeus]

Too many words.

[/Emperor from Amadeus]

If I cut just one word the entire structure would fall just like the House of Alden itself!

This obsession with BGG seems unhealthy. Can't you join some other forum for a while and take a break from the BGGers? I recommend tcpunk.com, especially the Shitbag sub-forum, as an excellent place to verbally cut loose.

Cliff notes version:

Blah blah blah. Blah BGG Blah
Blah BGG blah blah blah.

This obsession with BGG seems unhealthy. Can't you join some other forum for a while and take a break from the BGGers? I recommend tcpunk.com, especially the Shitbag sub-forum, as an excellent place to verbally cut loose.

What is really unhealthy is the effect of BGG on the gaming hobby. From the recent IGA awards that have no sense of reality , from Agricola being a number one game, from the garbage filled forums with discussions with discussions of pure trash, from Admins stomping on the American spirit and freedom of speech, with microbadges supporting communist ideals. THIS IS UNHEALTHY!

vandemonium wrote:

Cliff notes version:

Blah blah blah. Blah BGG Blah
Blah BGG blah blah blah.

Thanks, Van. Given this summary, I can't say I agree with the author's thesis.

JoelCFC25 wrote:

[Emperor from Amadeus]

Too many words.

[/Emperor from Amadeus]

You think that's too many words...wait 'til ya see the review of Espana 1936 I just submitted.

Dogmatix wrote:

JoelCFC25 wrote:

[Emperor from Amadeus]

Too many words.

[/Emperor from Amadeus]

You think that's too many words...wait 'til ya see the review of Espana 1936 I just submitted.

Yeah, I saw the notification email and about shit a brick. That will be the first review on F:AT to need its own Table of Contents.

Octavian wrote:

vandemonium wrote:

Cliff notes version:

Blah blah blah. Blah BGG Blah
Blah BGG blah blah blah.

Thanks, Van. Given this summary, I can't say I agree with the author's thesis.

I think understanding the underlying thematic archetypes help justify vis-à-vis subliminal demagoguery wherein symbolic vitriol is inherently submitted as factual forces towards an ever expanding understanding of the board gaming hobby (ala the mahjong craze of the 1920's)... Of course since the synaptic overtures can only partially exhume the intent it is up to the audience to subvert the message.

think understanding the underlying thematic archetypes help justify vis-à-vis subliminal demagoguery wherein symbolic vitriol is inherently submitted as factual forces towards an ever expanding understanding of the board gaming hobby (ala the mahjong craze of the 1920's)... Of course since the synaptic overtures can only partially exhume the intent it is up to the audience to subvert the message.

Interesting...I think the parallels between Poe's Usher and Alden are staggering. If we look at Poe's character Usher, he is a hermit. Aldie admits on a recent podcast that he has hardly been out of the house lately, another hermit. The heightened senses of Usher also are similar to Aldie's hypersensitivity over BGG website.

In Poe's story we see the decay of the Usher house and we also see the decay of the BGG website with members leaving and discussions on trash subjects.

The dungeon in Poe's House of Usher is a direct parallel to Aldie's love of descent and recent love of D&D 4th edition.

In Poe's story he entombs his sister while she is still alive in effect shutting her out of his life and we see in the BGG realm that Derk has been shut out of the website but continues to be "alive" with occassional comments and moderation.

"The Fall of the House of Alden" while very funny (if you take the time to read the whole thing) might be a lesson for our friend Aldie. Maybe he shouldn't take the website so seriously because sooner or later it is bound to fall and I would hate to see Alden go down with it!

Ken B. wrote:

Dogmatix wrote:

JoelCFC25 wrote:

[Emperor from Amadeus]

Too many words.

[/Emperor from Amadeus]

You think that's too many words...wait 'til ya see the review of Espana 1936 I just submitted.

Yeah, I saw the notification email and about shit a brick. That will be the first review on F:AT to need its own Table of Contents.

If it's any consolation, that's *after* I cut out more than 3 pages covering elements of the game's approach and additional critique. Did I mention I used to be an academic? I meant to stick a warning at the top that said "read the few paragraphs first, then worry about the rest" but was a bit blind after the editorial cut...

In Poe's story he entombs his sister while she is still alive in effect shutting her out of his life and we see in the BGG realm that Derk has been shut out of the website but continues to be "alive" with occassional comments and moderation.

The above quote is from me earlier today and now I see on BGG that Derk is coming back full time! Maybe he read the story and decided to save his friend from the same ruin the Rodderick Usher suffered!

Great news!!!