Specialists Van Kauran and Carter reconnoiter the slopes of Nanga Ranik near Nuriab during a MAJIC liaison mission with the local chief Amir Barzai Agah in Kunar Province, Afghanistan in 2009. (PD)
THE GLOBAL WAR ON HORROR (1991–)
“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such.”
–Francis Fukuyama, The National Interest
The ancient Near East was the cradle of civilization, with complex human cultures springing up for the first time thanks to the concurrent advent of urban settlements and writing. By the 4th millennium BC, Mesopotamian trading networks stretched from India to Spain, and the men of that epoch knew beyond the shadow of doubt that they were not alone in the world. They had, after all, built their civilizations on the ruins of cities built by older beings. But as the epochs passed, their heirs sought the favor of gods that their forebears had instead known to appease, bringing ruin upon their cities and settlements until at last their true nature was hidden or forgotten, with only a scattered few bearing the truth and the power that came with it.
Specialists Van Kauran and Carter reconnoiter the slopes of Nanga Ranik near Nuriab during a MAJIC liaison mission with the local chief Amir Barzai Agah in Kunar Province, Afghanistan in 2009. (PD)
Around 2600 BC, a secretive sect of priests founded temples on the banks of the Euphrates dedicated to the most powerful of these dreaming deities. As the old Assyrian Empire rose around them, the temples grew into cities. Both were called Tuttul, in honor of the god known to MAJIC as Cthulhu. The largest stood on the site of present-day Hit, Iraq until terrified invading Medes and Cimmerians burned it to the ground in 614 BC. The other (also dedicated to the god Dagan, or Dagon) still stands above a rocky Syrian village called Tell Bi’a, nine miles north of Ar-Raqqah. It is perhaps no coincidence that in the closing years of the 20th century, the United States found its security interests so closely tied to the stability of the old centers of NRE worship in the Middle East, Africa, and Southern Europe.
The HAARP facility in Gakona, Alaska. Although scheduled to be shut down in summer 2014 and then again in summer 2015, it remains open, officially under the control of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. (PD)
A New World Order
By the 1990s, Iraq had come to represent a particularly dangerous source of human-enabled NRE activity, with an increasingly isolated regime more than willing to employ Mythos weapons in the service of its national interests. During its long war with Iran, Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath regime had uncovered a prehistoric shoggoth left behind by Deep Ones in the Tigris delta. The Ba’athists deployed weaponized shoggoth quasi-matter against its own people at Qandil and Soka in 1985 and 1987, respectively, to quell local unrest. In addition, limited intelligence reporting suggested that teams of Iraqi archaeologists working under Republican Guard command had uncovered several more lost Mythos sites – including the famed “city of the bells” of the daemon sultan Azathoth – that had the potential to significantly alter the regional balance of power.
MAJIC saw Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait as an indication either that the regime believed other items or sites of power could be found in Kuwaiti territory, or that Saddam’s magi believed they had already amassed enough power to ensure that a more aggressive regional policy could not be easily halted.
As a result, when the United States decided to intervene, specially trained teams of MAJIC officers embedded with infantry and armor units crossing into Iraq from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in February 1991. MAJIC officers directed precision air strikes against half-excavated temple sites and ziggurats, and quietly removed stockpiles of ancient tablets, scrolls, and grimoires from underground bunkers while the “normal” war raged around them.
With the Soviet Union on the edge of collapse, MAJIC for the first time openly used weapons developed since the 1940s for a broader global war against a similarly armed superpower. They rooted serpent folk infiltrators working for Saddam out of coalition ranks using techniques developed during CIA snake hunts in the 1970s, neutralized Iraqi-bred shoggoths with repurposed Megarkaruan technology, and used electro-magnetic “keys” developed during MAJIC’s study of the Mi-Gö to close toroidal stargates that the Iraqis had opened beneath ancient Uruk and Lagash.
HAARP
Pinched by shrinking defense and intelligence budgets, MAJIC had to partner with the Air Force, the Navy, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in order to construct the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) in Alaska in 1993.
MAJIC intended to deploy this complex energy weapon terrestrially against Itlaqqa, and in the ionosphere against the flying polyps and the Mi-Gö. The additional requirements levied on the array by MAJIC’s well-intentioned but unqualified partners lengthened the development cycle and left its core functionality weakened.
The first HAARP strike against Itlaqqa was worse than ineffectual, causing a major Arctic outbreak in early December 2000 that temporarily drew Itlaqqa to the north and west of the continental United States. Before a second, corrected test restrained the ancient being in the far north, confused civilian authorities fielded a flurry of murder cases involving cannibalism and a drastic uptick in Homo hirsutus activity in the same areas.
Keeping The Peace
MAJIC’s official support dwindled as the Pentagon mistakenly conflated the end of the Cold War with the end of the Cthulhu Wars. MAJIC officers operating alongside NATO forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina prevented a degenerate Serbian sect from sacrificing a squad of Polish UN peacekeepers at an ancient black monolith in the ruins of Buŭim Castle in October 1995. Although the ritual failed, MAJIC nevertheless called in air strikes that failed to destroy the black stone, but badly damaged the ongoing peace talks. With no apparent ongoing threat, critics of MAJIC’s extensive mandate suggested that the need for the special unit had passed.
By 1996, MAJIC would be forced to deploy to Liberia and Sierra Leone without official authorization, to combat resurgent cults of Azathoth, Hastur, and Nyarlathotep that had risen to limited power on the margins of the diamond-rich countries’ civil wars. Declaring themselves priests of the true “traditional” indigenous religions, the cult leaders and false priests had urged warlords and desperate political leaders to perform human and child sacrifices to the “old gods” in exchange for invincibility in battle. Lacking official sanction and unable to oppose these cults openly, MAJIC instead used private military contracting as cover for their activities. They assassinated several key cult leaders, and intimidated several others into providing intelligence on regional cult activities and abandoning their bloodthirsty practices.
A grave complex from the megalithic El Infiernito site in Colombia, dated to ca. 900 BC. As a subterranean chamber, this site was likely dedicated to the Muisca god of floods, Chibchacum, imprisoned underground by the hero Bochica. Chibchacum may be the local representation of Cthulhu, who has a surprisingly strong cult presence in the Andes region. MAJIC private military contractors carried out an unknown mission at El Infiernito in 2006. (PD)
The attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, quickly shifted the discussion among America’s intelligentsia from governing a post-conflict world to aggressively stamping out global dangers, be they supernatural or mundane. For as much damage as the 9/11 attacks had done, high-level intelligence officials were understandably concerned that a similar terrorist group could do much greater damage to the American homeland using even poorly constructed Mythos weapons or partially controlled NREs. Consequently, MAJIC’s decade-long decline was quickly and quietly reversed.
MAJIC officers were in Afghanistan as early as mid-October 2001, supporting CIA and US Special Forces operations on the ground and leading preemptive strikes against the NREs. Tribes of H. erectus malevolens and other unidentified near-human species who had lived in Afghanistan and Pakistan for centuries took advantage of the chaos to step up their predatory activities. Despite their often disturbing and heretical brands of Islam, the hardy tribes of the arid Leng Plateau in Afghanistan’s Zabul province provided more than their share of terrorist recruits and guerrilla commanders, many of whom attempted to bring other non-human allies into the fight.
MAJIC officers provided special training to NATO troops operating in the sparsely populated agricultural districts in eastern Farah province in order to help them combat an ongoing infestation of aggressive Ghouls throughout 2004 and 2005, likely summoned to the area by the syncretic “Mullahs” of Leng. The area, known for centuries as Gulistan, had to be pacified by Operation Thurber, a three-month campaign of air strikes beginning in January 2006.
A MAJIC operative (holding field-bound grimoire) with a US Army communications and coordination team on a rooftop in Hit, Iraq during Operation River Blitz in February 2005. In the chaotic conditions of the Iraq invasion, MAJIC had to keep its footprint light and agile, ready to move on any rumor of NRE activity or artifact discovery. The Cthulhu-cult leader and terrorist known as Zuti al-Tanzil operated out of Hit from 2002 to 2006; he (or a gem he looted from the Baghdad Museum known as the “Fire of Asshurbanipal”) was likely the target for this particular raid. (PD)
In Operation Mountain Hound in October 2007, MAJIC and Special Forces killed the infamous Mullah Dadullah Akhund Leng outside a long-sealed pre-Islamic temple on the Pakistani border, 80 miles east of Kandahar. The strike came just as Dadullah was concluding an arrangement with a group of Mi-Gö who had operated in the area for centuries. Although several Mi-Gö were killed in the assault, no broader retaliation has occurred as yet.
The district of Zin, in central Afghanistan between the Orzugan and Daykundi provinces, had been a nogo area for NATO forces since the invasion began. In 2006, a series of sweeps called Operation Mountain Thrust attempted to clear the Taliban out of the mountains with little success. MAJIC analysts noted the commonality of names with the “Azathoth-formed Vaults of Zin” supposedly tangent to the Serpent-folk realm of Yoth, the Dreamlands, and the Plateau of Leng. Further research, recon, and drone imagery pinpointed a pre-Islamic (possibly proto-Bönpa) temple on the slopes of Mount Leng-e Mulla Aman just northwest of Zin. When in 2007 intelligence chatter put the reclusive Mullah Dadullah Akhund Leng in Zin, MAJIC launched Operation Mountain Hound to kill the mullah and if possible shut down the hyperspace gateways to Zin from the temple.
On October 28, a large combined-arms assault closes in on the temple, unfortunately coinciding with a Mi-Gö embassy to the mullah. Supporting gunfire from the AC130U Spectre aircraft overhead warps and veers in non-Euclidean patterns consistent with previous reports from NRE-infested combat zones. Fire from the ground units is less distorted, but a gravitic interference pattern (the green glow on the ground, seen warping or shriveling soldiers caught inside the field effect) raised by the Lengi defenders saps its inertia and momentum. The short, vulpine, horned “Men of Leng” variously resemble Ghouls, Tcho-Tcho, and Serpent Folk, and may be a hybrid pre-human species. Rather than stop to overwhelm the Blackhawks, the Mi-Gö flew through the gunships and into the sky, escaping. The assault force killed a Mythos-wielding target presumed to be the Mullah of Leng and detonated its remaining heavy explosives inside the temple to unknown effect
The Coming Strange Times
Although not common, connections between “traditional” terrorist groups and NRE cults or beings had been unexpectedly frequent in Afghanistan, and by 2006 it was clear that this trend was not limited to central Asia. Even terrorist groups and separatist movements with no previous connection to NREs were being tracked to Mythos sites and found with Mythos documents, as if they were being deliberately encouraged and manipulated by an outside force.
After a failed attack against a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas 2008 sponsored by al-Qaeda leaders in Yemen, a joint MAJIC–CIA team traced several terrorists from Indonesia, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, and Mali to an established camp just outside the infamous Nameless City in the desert on the Saudi-Yemeni border. Here, signals intelligence (SIGINT) intercepts indicate the cell met with an individual they called Tawil al-‘Umr (an Arabic nom de guerre roughly translated as the “most ancient and prolonged of life”). Facing what appeared to be a Mythos threat, MAJIC ordered a Predator strike from Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, but by the time the drone reached its target, the meeting had ended and the attendees had scattered.
Two MAJIC Special Forces operators in Yemen in 2013 hunt for al-Azredic carvings or basreliefs in an Abbasid-era ruin. Of the estimated 11,000 epigraphic inscriptions in southern Arabia, only a handful have ever been published or translated; much of MAJIC’s Yemen mission simply consisted of photographing and mapping these carvings. (DOD)
Interrogations of captured operatives who knew of the meeting, combined with seven years of closely analyzed SIGINT produced by MAJIC’s Mythos analysis unit, suggest that key members of otherwise separate terrorist movements had agreed to a long-term strategy referred to only as Yaji‘u al-Shudhdhadh: “the coming strange times” or “the coming abnormal ones” (YaS in MAJIC jargon). This may be the original form of a term recorded in the Greek Necronomicon as Iok Sotot or Yog-Sothoth. The mysterious Tawil al-‘Umr, in hiding after the failed 2008 drone strike, remains in command of the group, but communicates only by supernatural means to ensure his safety. The 2015 evacuation of American counterterrorist forces from Yemen following the Houthi rebel capture of Sana’a limits MAJIC intelligence and countermeasures against a Yog-Sothoth cult operating on the ground in al-Azrad’s home city.
“The things come from another planet, being able to live in interstellar space and fly through it… They come here to get metals from mines that go deep under the hills, and I think I know where they come from. They will not hurt us if we let them alone, but no one can say what will happen if we get too curious about them. Of course a good army of men could wipe out their mining colony. That is what they are afraid of. But if that happened, more would come from outside – any number of them. They could easily conquer the earth, but have not tried so far because they have not needed to.”
–Henry W. Akeley, letter to Professor Albert Wilmarth (May 5, 1928)
The utterly alien Mi-Gö rule a vast, ancient interstellar empire with outposts throughout the known Galaxy, and maintain a presence on at least three other planetary bodies in our solar system. Although the Mi-Gö have been on Earth for at least 130 million years, MAJIC assesses that there were fewer than 1,000 individual specimens on Earth as of early 2015. More significant populations are believed to reside on Mars, the Moon, and especially on Pluto, where they have erected massive black spires and pyramids that function as both living quarters and mineral processing facilities.
Mi-Gö range in length from 1.7 to 2.2m, with two large sets of crustacean-like grasping claws attached to a generally tubular body. Membranous dorsal wings serve to propel and maneuver the creatures in the vacuum of space. A wrinkled, ellipsoid head is topped with fleshy tentacles that sense a much wider spectrum of light than human sight can, and hear several lower registers of sound. Mi-Gö soft tissues are pink and spongiform, and due to a peculiarity of their alien composition they are impossible to capture on film. Electromagnetic interference emitted by the creatures hampers digital video and photography, but does not fully prevent it.
Because their wings provide only limited maneuverability in Earth’s atmosphere, the Mi-Gö operate several classes of aircraft built along pseudo-Euclidean lines: glowing spheroid scouts, larger discoid multipurpose craft, and massive conoid “mother-ships” like those seen above Phoenix, Arizona, in 1997. Although wresting air superiority from the Mi-Gö has been a primary mission of numerous “skunk works” aircraft development programs since at least 1955, the US Air Force has been unable to demonstrate consistent success in air-to-air combat.
Mi-Gö outposts are typically situated in hilly or mountainous regions where they operate extensive mining outposts, sometimes digging miles below the surface to find veins of rare minerals which they apparently require for sustenance. In some cases, Mi-Gö excavations have revealed unstable rifts or gates that allow the Mi-Gö and specially prepared humans to travel to other planets, or even to separate universes vibrating at a different quantum frequency. While the minerals the Mi-Gö harvest hold no present strategic value to humans, the rifts (or more precisely, the NREs believed to be beyond them) represent a genuine danger to American national security.
The Mi-Gö attempt to avoid contact with humans whenever possible. In unavoidable or extreme situations, Mi-Gö surgically altered to approximate human appearance and speech recruit intermediaries from among nearby human populations, in a few cases forming long-term asset relationships with multiple generations of humans. The Mi-Gö reward successful agents with transhuman immortality, uploading the brain into a metallic cylinder complete with spider-like cybernetic limbs and broad-spectrum sensors.
Currently the Mi-Gö are not hostile if left to their own devices, but they will defend their bases vigorously if attacked. They hold no special affection for humanity, but seem uninterested in turning their impressive technological advantage toward our extermination. For now.
The Long War
Although the full scope of MAJIC’s current operations is known only to a handful of high-ranking officials within the US intelligence community, the group almost certainly continues to operate alongside US special operations troops across the Middle East and North Africa. Facing a disparate threat and with ongoing requirements in at least two still-active war zones, MAJIC has been increasingly forced to work with, and through, local allies to confront NREs indirectly. Joint US-French counter-Mythos teams police the Mi-Gö haunted wastes of Niger and Northern Mali, while MAJIC trains national military units in countries as far apart as Tunisia and Mongolia to address, respectively, Deep One incursions from the Mediterranean and the ongoing threat presented by the city of Carcosa in the Gobi Desert.
The General Atomics MQ-1C Gray Eagle unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has served a critical role in the United States anti-Mythos war in conflict zones across the globe since 2010. Named for the 19th-century Wichita shaman, the Gray Eagle is the only UAV in active service capable of fielding the Antediluvian anti-NRE sensor package as well as a full complement of air-to-ground weapon systems. MAJIC is believed to have at least 46 of these specially outfitted drones in operation as of late 2015, with most in active intelligence/surveillance/reconnaissance (ISR) missions. (DOD)
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) assault on ancient archaeological sites across ancient Mesopotamia, and the resulting sale of thousands of only partially identified NRE artifacts, have forced MAJIC to launch a major counter-proliferation mission in addition to its other commitments. Multiple reports indicate that the most significant items recovered from the deserts of Babylon and Sumer never enter the antiquities market, and are instead funneled into the hands of YaS soldiers to be used in future attacks.
More recent investigations have suggested that YaS may be funding “alternative worship” sites in several major US cities, whose doctrine bears a striking resemblance to the Cthulhu cult destroyed a century ago. There are also unconfirmed suspicions that the group was responsible for a major K’n-Yani mobilization below Texas in late 2014. MAJIC’s counterattack, initially carried out under cover of the Special Forces exercise Jade Helm, is ongoing.
We can only hope that MAJIC will be ready when the next stage of the war begins.
