#RIPHankJohnson
Originally shared by Thomas Greanias
IN MEMORY OF HANK JOHNSON
OK, this is a tough one to post. As one who likes to hold out hope for the best, and who believes nobody is truly "dead," I must now confirm that Hank Johnson has passed from this world to the next.
As many of you know, Hank and I had been working on a big official novel to explain Ingress to the world in a format that would pass government redactions. I had wrapped the manuscript up—or so I thought—only a few weeks ago. But its release in its current form is in doubt as I now must pick up the pieces Hank has left behind and write a new ending.
But with the Austin, Texas anomaly coming up, it seems only fitting to honor Hank and his untold work after the Cross Plains "glyph" event last year.
It's time that story be told.
Here are the first five pages of Hank's further adventure, some of it recasting what you may already know, with more of the story you don't know to follow.
Thomas Greanias
#ingress #alignment
FROM "THE SHAPER KEY"
June 6
Cross Plains, Texas
Nobody winds up in Cross Plains, Texas, by accident, thought Hank Johnson. You have to be drawn there or driven there by some cosmic force. And if you’re actually born there, then that’s no accident either. Hank stood before the tombstone of E. Howard’s grave and stared at it as if it were his own.
Would this be his fate if he succumbed to the effects of the Dark XM now coursing through this mind and body?
He was here to find out.
As fate would have it, he had arrived in town in time for “Robert E. Howard Days,” a festival held yearly to coincide with the anniversary of the horror writer’s death. It was the way Howard died, or rather the
madness that consumed him just before, that prompted Misty Hannah to suggest that Hank investigate
Howard’s correspondence with his fellow pulp writer and penpal
Howard Phillips Lovecraft, better known as H.P. Lovecraft.
Somehow, Hank suspected that Carrie Campbell, being the semiotician and all, was the real source all along, using Misty to plant the bug in his ear. Either way, it worked. He was here, hoping to find a clue that confirmed his exposure to the ancient Shaper glyphs he had seen when he was exposed to Dark XM with his pal astro-archaeologist Conrad Yeats beneath the Luizi Crater in the Congo.
His working theory was that similar glyphs to what he saw may have set off Howard and Lovecraft on their horrific descent to death. By inference, of course, Hank, too, could well be on a similar path, which would explain his obsession beyond a thirst for answers.
Could Howard and Lovecraft both have experienced XM in the form of madness? Did their exposure to Shaper glyphs enhance their literary creativity—or possibly trigger their madness before they died? And could he himself suffer the same fate?
Hank had to find out.
Howard was the more famous of the two writers for creating “Conan the Barbarian,” “Red Sonja,” “Solomon Kane” and “Borak” for the pulp magazines, and most notably “Weird Tales” in the late 20’s and
30’s. But it wasn’t those stories that interested him now, but rather his lesser known horror tales because they overlapped with Lovecraft’s: “The Black Stone,” “The Stone Man,” “The Cairn on the Headland,” "The Children of the Night," "The Fire of Asshurbanipal,” “The Dark Man,” and the “Valley of the Lost.”
While the official story was that the Cthulhu Mythos and the Necronomicon were flights of fancy cobbled together by Lovecraft, and that later on Howard jumped in on the fun, Hank suspected that the truth was a bit darker. Okay, he more than suspected it. Misty tipped him off to the idea that Lovecraft had access to books in the ancient glyphic language, or had come upon them in his occult research, and for one reason or another he had concealed his true source, fictionalizing it as the Necronomicon. But Lovecraft’s search
for evidence of the ancient writings and their meaning was very real.
And so was his.
Hank heard a snicker behind him and turned to see a hunchbacked little Mexican shoveling spades of dirt at a freshly dug grave. He was a bizarre figure, sniveling and snorting, like a character out of a Lovecraft or Howard novel.
“And who are you supposed to be?” Hank asked him.
“The grave digger, senor,” he said with the oddest accent Hank had ever heard. Maybe he wasn’t even Mexican, Hank decided, but some weird Indian off the reservation or something. Whatever he was, he
was damn ugly. And weird. Yet there was something oddly, horribly familiar about him in an evil, twisted way.
“I dig the graves. I dig one for you, you want.”
“Maybe another day,” Hank said and left the graveyard behind, and the demented hunchback howled like a hyena to the setting sun.
Hank caught a lucky break the next day in Cross Plains. His search for the lost letters had come up dry at the local library and museum, but a local benefactor told him that the letters were discovered during maintenance at the Howard home, as if Howard or surviving family members had hidden them. Hank could only speculate on that, but was thrilled to have them for a night.
There were three yellowed and worn letters, folded and bound by a string, which Hank carefully untied inside his room at the local inn.
The first letter was comprised of two pages, with blocks of typewritten text. Hank picked it up with trembling fingers and began to read:
Dear H,
I plan to return to the mine as soon as Mother heals up a little bit. It
should be soon; my father is a doctor. There’s no telling what I’m
going to run into out there: Comanche holdouts, holed up bank
robbers (don’t laugh, times are tough here), and other treasure
hunters who might not take kindly to my search. A friend of mine said he would loan me a gun. I’m of two minds about whether to go myself or take on a partner. The problem with partners is they can talk, and they’ve been known to get greedy. As you and I both know, the silver is the least of it, but what a thrill it would be to find the actual mine that Jim Bowie, by some accounts, got a look at. Perhaps he left his knife in there. That would be a great souvenir to have on my desk next to Cleopatra and my Underwood, to hold papers down during twister season. That’s right, you don’t have twisters back East. I wonder how they compare to northeasters. One of these days, I will have to travel back there and meet you man to man or writer to writer. I would greatly look forward to meeting Smith, too.
I learned something intriguing about Jim Bowie while talking
to an old man in town. He says his grandfather actually went with
Bowie and fought alongside him at [BLOTTED OUT]. This may or may
not be true, but my estimation of him went up a notch when he poured out a detail that isn’t publicly known. He said he’d heard talk when he was a kid that Bowie had more than just patriotic reasons for going to the Alamo. Speaking strictly for myself, the fight would have been enough to get me to saddle up, standing there next to Crockett, Travis, and Bowie himself. Staring down the entire Mexican Army dressed up like Napoleon’s Grande Armee would have been a heck of a sight, even if it was the last thing you ever saw.
Here’s the latest lead. As I said before, and you read in Dobie,
the Spaniards had a rich silver mining operation that they inherited
from the Indians, who, of course, didn’t really mine, but picked
nuggets up off the ground and hammered them into crude jewelry.
The Indians inherited this practice from other people, the “Anazktec,” of whom little is known.
The Spaniards made a haul but were constantly harassed by the
Comanches, a brave and vicious race, not unlike the Vikings of the
desert, who still raid and pillage in some sparsely civilized parts of
the state. At some point, the Comanches overran the Fortaleza, and the Spaniards hid the aforementioned silver and made tracks. It is said that they took with them a map and a number of other documents pertaining to the mines, so that they might be found again, as they had removed all trace of their whereabouts.
That map, along with, more importantly, artistic reproductions of petroglyphs and “advanced writings in some unknown language,” like a primitive version of an illuminated manuscript, were then carried to San Antonio. There, as legend has it, they were left for safekeeping, should the Spanish be killed by the Comanche on their way to Mexico, where they were headed to request more conquistadores, harquebuses, and other things useful to
warding off attackers.
I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this. I believe that
Bowie went to the Alamo to find the lost maps and documents because rumor had it that the mines he’d seen were just a glimpse of a vast, hidden mineral wealth.
I wonder if, in those last days of his life, Bowie ever found
these documents. Were they in the room with him when he died
killing Santa Ana’s men with his Arkansas toothpick, or did he put
them back where he found them so that they might escape fire and
theft? Maybe, just maybe, they’re still hidden there, waiting to be
found by yours truly. I thought they would be of great interest to you
because I suspect that the copied artworks might contain something from that lost language you keep talking about in “Necronomicon.”
By the way, a local pastor told me that translates to “Book of the
Dead.” Not that I am in high standing with him, since he was decidedly disturbed by some of my weird stories. “[BLOTTED OUT]” is probably at the top of his list of offending tomes.
Well, I have much to prepare before my journey. I also have
to make sure Father can spare the care for a night or so. As I told you, doctors are in short supply in Cross Plains and environs.
Cordially,
R
Originally shared by Thomas Greanias
IN MEMORY OF HANK JOHNSON
OK, this is a tough one to post. As one who likes to hold out hope for the best, and who believes nobody is truly "dead," I must now confirm that Hank Johnson has passed from this world to the next.
As many of you know, Hank and I had been working on a big official novel to explain Ingress to the world in a format that would pass government redactions. I had wrapped the manuscript up—or so I thought—only a few weeks ago. But its release in its current form is in doubt as I now must pick up the pieces Hank has left behind and write a new ending.
But with the Austin, Texas anomaly coming up, it seems only fitting to honor Hank and his untold work after the Cross Plains "glyph" event last year.
It's time that story be told.
Here are the first five pages of Hank's further adventure, some of it recasting what you may already know, with more of the story you don't know to follow.
Thomas Greanias
#ingress #alignment
FROM "THE SHAPER KEY"
June 6
Cross Plains, Texas
Nobody winds up in Cross Plains, Texas, by accident, thought Hank Johnson. You have to be drawn there or driven there by some cosmic force. And if you’re actually born there, then that’s no accident either. Hank stood before the tombstone of E. Howard’s grave and stared at it as if it were his own.
Would this be his fate if he succumbed to the effects of the Dark XM now coursing through this mind and body?
He was here to find out.
As fate would have it, he had arrived in town in time for “Robert E. Howard Days,” a festival held yearly to coincide with the anniversary of the horror writer’s death. It was the way Howard died, or rather the
madness that consumed him just before, that prompted Misty Hannah to suggest that Hank investigate
Howard’s correspondence with his fellow pulp writer and penpal
Howard Phillips Lovecraft, better known as H.P. Lovecraft.
Somehow, Hank suspected that Carrie Campbell, being the semiotician and all, was the real source all along, using Misty to plant the bug in his ear. Either way, it worked. He was here, hoping to find a clue that confirmed his exposure to the ancient Shaper glyphs he had seen when he was exposed to Dark XM with his pal astro-archaeologist Conrad Yeats beneath the Luizi Crater in the Congo.
His working theory was that similar glyphs to what he saw may have set off Howard and Lovecraft on their horrific descent to death. By inference, of course, Hank, too, could well be on a similar path, which would explain his obsession beyond a thirst for answers.
Could Howard and Lovecraft both have experienced XM in the form of madness? Did their exposure to Shaper glyphs enhance their literary creativity—or possibly trigger their madness before they died? And could he himself suffer the same fate?
Hank had to find out.
Howard was the more famous of the two writers for creating “Conan the Barbarian,” “Red Sonja,” “Solomon Kane” and “Borak” for the pulp magazines, and most notably “Weird Tales” in the late 20’s and
30’s. But it wasn’t those stories that interested him now, but rather his lesser known horror tales because they overlapped with Lovecraft’s: “The Black Stone,” “The Stone Man,” “The Cairn on the Headland,” "The Children of the Night," "The Fire of Asshurbanipal,” “The Dark Man,” and the “Valley of the Lost.”
While the official story was that the Cthulhu Mythos and the Necronomicon were flights of fancy cobbled together by Lovecraft, and that later on Howard jumped in on the fun, Hank suspected that the truth was a bit darker. Okay, he more than suspected it. Misty tipped him off to the idea that Lovecraft had access to books in the ancient glyphic language, or had come upon them in his occult research, and for one reason or another he had concealed his true source, fictionalizing it as the Necronomicon. But Lovecraft’s search
for evidence of the ancient writings and their meaning was very real.
And so was his.
Hank heard a snicker behind him and turned to see a hunchbacked little Mexican shoveling spades of dirt at a freshly dug grave. He was a bizarre figure, sniveling and snorting, like a character out of a Lovecraft or Howard novel.
“And who are you supposed to be?” Hank asked him.
“The grave digger, senor,” he said with the oddest accent Hank had ever heard. Maybe he wasn’t even Mexican, Hank decided, but some weird Indian off the reservation or something. Whatever he was, he
was damn ugly. And weird. Yet there was something oddly, horribly familiar about him in an evil, twisted way.
“I dig the graves. I dig one for you, you want.”
“Maybe another day,” Hank said and left the graveyard behind, and the demented hunchback howled like a hyena to the setting sun.
Hank caught a lucky break the next day in Cross Plains. His search for the lost letters had come up dry at the local library and museum, but a local benefactor told him that the letters were discovered during maintenance at the Howard home, as if Howard or surviving family members had hidden them. Hank could only speculate on that, but was thrilled to have them for a night.
There were three yellowed and worn letters, folded and bound by a string, which Hank carefully untied inside his room at the local inn.
The first letter was comprised of two pages, with blocks of typewritten text. Hank picked it up with trembling fingers and began to read:
Dear H,
I plan to return to the mine as soon as Mother heals up a little bit. It
should be soon; my father is a doctor. There’s no telling what I’m
going to run into out there: Comanche holdouts, holed up bank
robbers (don’t laugh, times are tough here), and other treasure
hunters who might not take kindly to my search. A friend of mine said he would loan me a gun. I’m of two minds about whether to go myself or take on a partner. The problem with partners is they can talk, and they’ve been known to get greedy. As you and I both know, the silver is the least of it, but what a thrill it would be to find the actual mine that Jim Bowie, by some accounts, got a look at. Perhaps he left his knife in there. That would be a great souvenir to have on my desk next to Cleopatra and my Underwood, to hold papers down during twister season. That’s right, you don’t have twisters back East. I wonder how they compare to northeasters. One of these days, I will have to travel back there and meet you man to man or writer to writer. I would greatly look forward to meeting Smith, too.
I learned something intriguing about Jim Bowie while talking
to an old man in town. He says his grandfather actually went with
Bowie and fought alongside him at [BLOTTED OUT]. This may or may
not be true, but my estimation of him went up a notch when he poured out a detail that isn’t publicly known. He said he’d heard talk when he was a kid that Bowie had more than just patriotic reasons for going to the Alamo. Speaking strictly for myself, the fight would have been enough to get me to saddle up, standing there next to Crockett, Travis, and Bowie himself. Staring down the entire Mexican Army dressed up like Napoleon’s Grande Armee would have been a heck of a sight, even if it was the last thing you ever saw.
Here’s the latest lead. As I said before, and you read in Dobie,
the Spaniards had a rich silver mining operation that they inherited
from the Indians, who, of course, didn’t really mine, but picked
nuggets up off the ground and hammered them into crude jewelry.
The Indians inherited this practice from other people, the “Anazktec,” of whom little is known.
The Spaniards made a haul but were constantly harassed by the
Comanches, a brave and vicious race, not unlike the Vikings of the
desert, who still raid and pillage in some sparsely civilized parts of
the state. At some point, the Comanches overran the Fortaleza, and the Spaniards hid the aforementioned silver and made tracks. It is said that they took with them a map and a number of other documents pertaining to the mines, so that they might be found again, as they had removed all trace of their whereabouts.
That map, along with, more importantly, artistic reproductions of petroglyphs and “advanced writings in some unknown language,” like a primitive version of an illuminated manuscript, were then carried to San Antonio. There, as legend has it, they were left for safekeeping, should the Spanish be killed by the Comanche on their way to Mexico, where they were headed to request more conquistadores, harquebuses, and other things useful to
warding off attackers.
I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this. I believe that
Bowie went to the Alamo to find the lost maps and documents because rumor had it that the mines he’d seen were just a glimpse of a vast, hidden mineral wealth.
I wonder if, in those last days of his life, Bowie ever found
these documents. Were they in the room with him when he died
killing Santa Ana’s men with his Arkansas toothpick, or did he put
them back where he found them so that they might escape fire and
theft? Maybe, just maybe, they’re still hidden there, waiting to be
found by yours truly. I thought they would be of great interest to you
because I suspect that the copied artworks might contain something from that lost language you keep talking about in “Necronomicon.”
By the way, a local pastor told me that translates to “Book of the
Dead.” Not that I am in high standing with him, since he was decidedly disturbed by some of my weird stories. “[BLOTTED OUT]” is probably at the top of his list of offending tomes.
Well, I have much to prepare before my journey. I also have
to make sure Father can spare the care for a night or so. As I told you, doctors are in short supply in Cross Plains and environs.
Cordially,
R
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