The Barman Continues

“Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green,
There hath he lain for age and will lie.
Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by men and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise.”

A line from Lord Tennyson’s The Kraken; Only the End of the World Again, Neil Gaiman. As found in Lovecraft’s Monsters, edited by Ellen Datlow.

The Barmen Speaks

“Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepth…"

A line from Lord Tennyson’s The Kraken; Only the End of the World Again, Neil Gaiman. As found in Lovecraft’s Monsters, edited by Ellen Datlow.

Kahamwoodoo

Kahamwoodoo translated from Zalarapamtranian is the Purple Beast of Stinging Death. The Kahamwoodoo like most creatures found in this dimension of earth’s future is an atmospheric kraken. The creature looked like a “rough disk with a diameter of at least mile and a half and had a thickness of three hundred feet.” From a far it looked like an island.

Kahamwoodoo’s body was purplish and the tentacles, which were mostly coiled up while it traveled, were blood-red. The Kahamwoodoo’s body was able to readjust and reconfigure itself for different situations it might find itself. This creature created havoc and spurned destruction wherever it went.

The Wind Whales of Ishmael, Philip Jose Farmer

The Kraken from the Clash of the Titans

Clash of the Titans

When Zeus gave his brother Hades permission to release the Kraken on the rich city of Joppa for their atrocities against Zeus, the Kraken was released. The Kraken dwarfs any creature on earth and had been pent up in the bowls of the earth. Once it was released it headed toward the city of Joppa bent on destruction. There is only one thing that can kill the Kraken and that is the head of Medusa. Once it lays its eyes on the head of Medusa it will turn to stone.

The Kraken gets a whiff of the princess, Clash of the Titans

The Kraken just before it encounters the head of Medusa and turns to stone.

Clash of the Titans

Another Kraken Rule

Image of the Kraken from Wikipedia Commons

This Kraken rule comes from Precis Intermedia’s: S & S Monsters. “An assortment of monsters for pulp-fantasy games.”

“The Kraken has a lamprey-like mouth and 4 tentacles which it uses to handle its prey. These tentacles are 5 yards long apiece, and can be used for a special ‘grapple’ attacks.” Although this takes one combat action each tentacle can attack a separate target. That is four targets for the price of one, if I am interpreting the rule correctly.

	Mind	Reflexes	Move	Resist	Damage	Size
Kraken	14	14	10 yards/sec.	12	17(bite)	Huge

Kraken, Kraken!

Original full size public domain image can be found here:

“Hunter went to the stern and looked down at the dreadful sight. The bulbous body of the creature was directly astern, and its many tentacles gripped the ship in a dozen places, whipping and snaking this way and that. The entire body of the animal was phosphorescent green in the growing darkness. The creature’s tentacles were snaking into windows of the aft cabins. Its bulbous body was at least twenty feet long, and trailing behind, a tangle of long tentacles, like Medusa’s head.”

Pirate Latitudes, Michael Crichton

The Dead Mans Island Kraken Rule

"6.4.1 When rowing around the island, pirates are far from safe. These waters are the home of a giant squid. At the end of player’s turn they must roll 1d6 for any longboat they occupy on that is not in a cove. On the result of a 1 the occupants must give up an item or a pirate to the beasts tentacles."

Image from Wikipedia-Commons

Dead Man’s Island Board Game

Dead Man’s Island is an economically priced, print and play game. Up to 4 players can play, however it is best played with 1 to 3 players. The downloadable contents include a large game board that measures approximately 16 by 11 inches, 77 assorted game tokens, 4 long boats, 12 pirate tokens in 4 different colors, 24 zombie tokens, 6 treasure tokens, and a 9 page rule booklet.

From Dead Man’s Island Rule Booklet

The object is to land on the island safely, find and dig-up the cursed treasure. While hunting for treasure you may have to fight other pirates that may be looking for the same treasure, and defiantly defend yourself from the zombies who are there to protect the treasure. The pirate and zombie tokens have attack, movement, and defense properties printed in there respected corners.

The game board measures approximately 16 by 11 inches

If you are successful in finding the treasure and staying alive long enough to haul the treasure back to your long boat there are the Kraken to contend with; they live in the deep waters around the island. You may on a roll of die to decide to sacrifice a treasure or one of your crew. (ARR- less crew means more booty for the rest of you)

The objective is to get the required number of treasure:

3 to 4 players: 3 treasures
2 players: 4 treasures
1 player: 6 treasures

A Kraken Attacks the Nautilus

Disney’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Having to travel through the area of the ocean where the mighty kraken existed the Nautilus was inadvertently attacked by a kraken. The kraken presumably mistook the Nautilus to be a whale of the species that it would typically assail.

Disney’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Discharging an electrical current to the outside of the submarine only temporally deterred the kraken’s attack on the Nautilus and it was back on the Nautilus with multiple tentacles. Having burned out the electrical discharge circuit the Nautilus comes to the surface of the ocean during a tempest, to battle the monster with axes and grappling hooks.

Disney’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Several men were either injured or lost during the battle that ensued. It wasn’t until Ned Land the renowned harpooner hit the kraken in one of its eyes did the kraken withdraw.

The Kraken Adventure Card

With its large and powerful tentacles it can crush smaller craft and easily capsize a ship. Any men who might fall overboard are fair game for the mighty Kraken.

There are two Kraken adventure cards included in the Pirates of the Spanish Main card game.

The Monsters mentioned in The Boats of the Glen-Carrig

I believe that the Boats of the Glen-Carrig would make a great plot for some type of game. There times of high adventure and horror. The monsters and aberrations mentioned there were encountered during three unique phases of the crew’s travels.

Land of Lonesomeness

In the Land of Lonesomeness there are the wailing trees and an unidentified monster that is said to shuffle along and be red like the color of beef. The trees seem to have the ability to reach out and grab and entangle their victims. The red creature seems to be about the height of a tall human, in that it was able to suck at an open port in the ship. The wailing trees seemed to contain the souls of men.

Silent Seas

One of the distinguishing features of these seas was the abundance of reeds that were big enough to entrap ships by their running aground on them. “Three separate times we saw hulks of rotting vessels, some of them having the appearance of a previous age, so ancient they seem.” The author refers to this region as the reed continent. The reed continent was home to a number or creatures including giant crabs, the Kraken, and the devil fish. All three of these creatures gave the crew of boat a start at one time or another.

The Island in the Weed

Having passed through the silent seas with their horrors and privations and having spied another island up at head the crew rowed to it. It was on this island that the crew of the boat encountered what was first described as reed men. Not that they looked like a reed, but they had come out of the reed by the hundreds. These creatures moved like monstrous slugs. They were in deed squid men and had many tentacles. They were described as such for they had “great eyes, so big as crown pieces, the bill like to an inverted parrot’s, and moved like a slug-like with undulating white and slimy body”.

The crew fought frantically through the night and it wasn’t until the morning that they realized that one of their number was missing. The story goes on, and the crew of Glen-Carrig were able to help the crew of an English ship grounded on the reeds to free itself and sail for home.

The Impetus for H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu?

It is said that the stimulus for Lovercraft’s The Call of Cthulhu was found in Lord Tennyson’s 1830 poem The Kraken. He might have also been influenced by William Hope Hodgson’s The Boats of the Glen-Carrig, where a creature having some of the same characteristics as the Cthulhu creature is described. In deed Lovercraft even mentioned that he had read the work of Hodgson, although Lovercraft went a lot further in the description of his creature and even added associative mysticisms.
"The Kraken" (1830)
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.