This is just all the chapters put together into one upload. If you've been following along the whole time, there is nothing new to hear here.
0:00:00 Chapter 1
0:32:02 Chapter 2
0:59:15 Chapter 3
1:39:35 Chapter 4
2:07:03 Chapter 5
2:33:41 Chapter 6
2:58:21 Chapter 7
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You would do well to first read or listen to "The Curse of Yig". Yig is referenced in this story many times, as it is also set in Oklahoma, and it is intimated that the narrator here is the same narrator as in that story. Indeed, a few of the little details here and there are explained at length in that story, like the incessant beating of the tom-toms. Why does that happen? This story doesn't say, but "The Curse of Yig" does.
There is also a nice weaving in of classic Lovecraftian mythology half-way through the story.
The town of Binger in Caddo County is a real place, but there are no mounds in the location described in the story, they are a complete fiction. Burial mounds by Native Americans were real enough throughout the Americas, including in central Oklahoma, just not in the specific location of this story.
Throughout all these stories, even though there is the occasional use of a distinctly British, as opposed to American, term, like 'electric torch' instead of 'flashlight', it never occurred to me to look up 'mould' until this story, despite seeing it in many other stories and kind of scratching my head at what it could have meant in the contexts used. Turns out there is a British usage that we don't really have in the US, at least not that I've ever heard, of 'soft loose earth'. That makes a lot more sense than the furry fungal growth!
But knickerbockers... oh boy! Do the Brits still use that word? I know the New York Knicks are named after that word, and the shortened form of knickers may get occasional use, but I've never heard anybody use the full word outside of historical talk about the NBA team.
You'll have to pardon my Spanish - I never learned the language, so I probably got a fair bit wrong. Also, bear in mind, being in the USA, and growing up in NJ where there were Hispanics enough, whatever Spanish I did hear is New World Spanish. Even though the text given should be spoken in the style of Old World Spanish, that is going to be completely beyond me. To the extent I can muster any Spanish at all, it is unavoidably going to be the New World variety I grew up hearing.
Gll'-Hthaa-Ynn is rather an annoying name. I was hardly consistent in my pronunciation of it, but can you really blame me? :-P
The pictures used are:
Chapter 1: a 1904 photograph of Binger, OK. At the time the population would have been roughly 250 people. The town peaked in population in 1930, with 849. In 1937, they had three whole miles of paved road! And public swimming pool! Amazing. Population today is under 700, and probably closer to 600 (the 2010 census had it at 672, and the 2019 estimate was 632).
Chapter 2: a photo of an Indian burial mound in Saint Paul, taken by Runner1928, and used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en). There are plenty of pics of burial mounds, but few that are overgrown like this. Most of them seem to be pretty well maintained, which I guess is good, but doesn't properly evoke the setting described in this story.
Chapter 3: "Coronado sets out to the north", an oil painting by Frederic Remington. I wonder how much of Coronado's expeditions are covered in schools today? I don't particularly recall getting too much info on the topic, but it certainly was mentioned.
Chapter 4: "Underground City" by tonymtc, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). It's not obvious from the text, at least up to this point, what the city of the K'na Yan should look like, but this is an underground city bathed in a blue glow, so it vaguely fits the bill.
Chapter 5: "Tsathoggua" by Kaek, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Chapter 6: an illustration for the story by Harry Ferman used in Weird Tales. It depicts a gyaa-yoth: imagine here it being the one who fled the escape attempt and informed on Zamacona's flight.
Chapter 7: an illustration for the story by Harry Ferman used in Weird Tales. I believe it is meant to be Zamacona on his descent into the nether realm, but here I use it to depict the narrator making his way down.
The follow along: https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/mo.aspx
