An Artifact of Unspeakable Power
In Chaosium's legendary Call of Cthulhu® campaign Masks of Nyarlathotep, the Eye of Light and Darkness is a physical embodiment of a spell of intense magical power that lurks at the heart of the adventure. This protective ward was broken into halves centuries ago: do you dare join the two halves and unleash its power?
At the HPLHS, we believe that great props make for great gaming. Every now and again, we're able to make a prop available that will take your gaming to the next level. This is one of those. Originally created as a part of our Super Deluxe Masks set, we made a few extra of these and they're now available. The HPLHS' Eye of Light and Darkness is big, imposing, heavy, and so realistic it'll blow your players' minds.
In the campaign, it's described as "a slab of white stone several inches thick. Its irregular edges make it apparent that it was broken from a larger piece of worked stone. On its surface is inscribed a strange symbol which appears to be remarkably similar to the Eye of Horus combined with, possibly, the head of an inverted ankh." We've made a few improvements on Chaosium's design.
We created this as a single sculpture, using actual ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs in the design. We then broke our sculpture in half and molded both halves so they would fit together perfectly. Both pieces of this sacred artifact are cast in hydrostone to give them authentic weight and feel. One piece comes wrapped in Egyptian cotton and the other in Chinese brocade. Join them together if you dare! (Together they're 5.25 lbs, 10 x 12 x 1 inches)
Use it when you run your Masks campaign or in your own LARP game. Heck, just put it on your shelf because it looks cool. It's hard not to feel like Indiana Jones when you have one of these in your collection.
PLEASE NOTE: The fabric wrappings you receive may be a different color than the ones shown in the photograph.
Need more awesome artifacts. Check out The Golden Mirror.
Customer Reviews
nice addition to the props or my MON game. player will be wowed!
Another nicely made relic from HPLHS
Another great prop for my display shelf in my library/gameroom, well made, I recommend this for your collection, get it while you can, unfortunately I missed out one some other great props that may not be produced again
Even setting aside the prominence of this piece in the CoC campaign, this Eye of Light and Darkness has a heft, a size, a sculpt that commands attention in-person that the pictures struggle to show. The color is a much more subtle pink than the pictures, and the piece is weathered at the edges and aged on front to appear as if stolen from somewhere dark, dangerous and very old. Being cast in hydrostone, the Eye is cool to the touch, and sounds and feels as tactile and as rough as stone does. The packaging maintains the overall authenticity, packaging the Eye in fabrics that resemble the appropriate locales in the campaign, and placing everything into a box marked with museum labels and 'handwritten' notes.
Role Playing Games are often described as championing the 'theater of the mind'. Pieces like this - just like the newspapers and shipping logs and auction catalogs that HPLHS make in other products - tear open the imagination of everyone at the table. In this case, have no doubt that it will happen with audible gasps.
Part of an HPLHS parcel today was a very large box with a museum collection label. I expected the parts of the artefact within to individually be smaller than my hand. They were substantial! The separate wrappings - one Asian, one a bit of crumpled, coarse white cloth - reeked (of atmosphere!)
There were three pieces, with a few small chips scattered in the packaging. It struck me as very authentic - til I looked again and found there were only supposed to be two! I guess transit was unkind to the artefacts but, to be frank, it makes no matter. If anything it added to the impression that these were the genuine articles. It would be no big deal for gamers to find two pieces and join them with the third - or for a curator to fussily present the lot, with stern warnings to handle them with reverent caution.
What can I say? Other reviewers have been awed and lost for words. If in doubt, pamper yourself. I don't expect you will be disappointed.
