Appalachia.
A word stolen from more than one language, it conjures images of the beauty of God’s creation, and the darkness of man’s various poverties. The simpler way of life here bespeaks a time passed of purity and piety, but turn over a stone… you’ll find the underbelly of suspicion and clannishness. Folk who live here don’t trust easy. There’s whole graveyards full of what we’ve learned about outsiders. And before you judge us as backwood hillbillies or opioid-addicted rednecks, take a minute to understand how we got here. I mean how we really got here.
Old Gods of Appalachia is a podcast fusing the American gothic and cosmic horror genres, by Steve Shell and Cam Collins, and it debuted in 2019 on Halloween night. Distributed by Rusty Quill, creators of The Magnus Archives (2016) and Malevolent (2021), and produced by DeepNerd Media, Old Gods is an anthology of densely interconnected fiction based on Appalachian folklore, and all of the tales ultimately converge as part of the same coherent bigger picture.
The point-of-view characters in the series are numerous on account of the anthology nature of the series, and they range from the painfully realistic, like little orphaned Sarah Avery, to the otherworldly Daughter Dooley, a witch in service to the Green, one of several eldritch deities that define the supernatural landscape of the series. Her greatest nemesis is an emissary of the Dark, The Thing Whose Name Sounds Like Horned Head, But Is Not. Human habitation, coal mining and all its attendant abuse and exploitation of both land and labourers, installation of railroads, and other acts perceived as violence against the mountains, has caused these "old gods" to wake up and take unfriendly interest in the folks who make their homes in the hills and hollers.
The events of each episode are in some way based on real events, the places based on real places, and the characters are likewise references to real people, but always greatly departing from both the particulars and the chronology of real Appalachian history, in order to fit the story's alternate timeline. The story spends time in remote parts of the mountains as well as in company towns where entire family lines stay trapped for generations, by means of debt and indentured servitude to the railroad and coal company.
In the mountains of central Appalachia, blood runs as deep as these hollers and just as dark. Since before our kind wandered into these hills, hearts of unknowable hunger and madness have slumbered beneath them. These are the oldest mountains in the world. How dare we think we can break the skin of a god and dig out its heart without also calling blood and darkness?
In November 2021, Monte Cook Games adapted Old Gods into a tabletop roleplaying game, set in a 1920s and '30s alternate history, and at the time of this writeup, there are two complete game campaigns available in print and digital formats for purchase. Game materials include Scrip coins as tokens and in-game currency, player handbooks, and the core rulebook. It runs off the Cypher System of tabletop as the basis for its rules and gameplay loop, which takes some adjusting for players more familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, or Fudge style rules systems. Apart from this initial adjustment period, the game itself is overall very atmospheric and evocative, and the writing is very suitable to an immersive and uncanny game experience.
Overall, I find both podcast and game to be excellent displays of dedication, each to its respective craft. The themes are timely, offering a clear implied commentary about the threats of climate change and capitalism, approached through the veneer of talking about real historical horrors which by rights the world really should've outgrown by now, but hasn't. Fans of other Rusty Quill productions will have no trouble getting into Old Gods, but I recommend the series especially emphatically to those who have enjoyed The Silt Verses by Jon Ware and Muna Hussen, or the Mabel podcast by Becca de la Rosa and Mabel Martin.
Iron Noder 2023, 18/30