Blackcroft

Percy-Herbert Blackcroft

There is a frightening notion to Blackcroft’s work as to which came first, his stories or the mythos of which he wrote. Born in Providence, Rhode Island in August of 1890, Blackcroft was a well-read child who watched both parents spiral in syphilis-induced madness. After relatively normal high school years, Blackcroft discovered he was illprepared for the world, having been brought up within an affluent family that squandered its wealth. Fortunately, his early fascination with astronomy, mythology, chemistry, Latin, and a many other subjects proved to be the impetus behind his morbid tales of unique and alien horrors that became part of the popular Nyathuhg Mythos. The income was meager, but between that and his marriage to Sophie, a woman with her own business, his future seemed set as they moved to New York. By 1924, however, Blackcroft’s life began its gradual disintegration.
It began with nightmares that afflicted the couple with insomnia, followed by Sophie’s nervous breakdown. She spoke of rats in the wall and rainbow-hued gas that emerged from the house vents to choke her. She was institutionalized and eventually committed suicide. Blackcroft moved back to Providence at the behest of his two aunts. Despite the nightmares, Blackcroft felt inspired to write at increasingly fevered pace, and churned out more stories that gave his mythos a name with the Beacon of Nyathuhg. Slowly, however, readers began writing to Blackcroft, claiming they’d visited the fictitious New England towns that Blackcroft had manufactured for his stories… Dartholme and Innscourt. The nightmares only increased after that, setting the writer into pitched screaming fits. The two aunts likewise began hallucinating terrible things, but Blackcroft couldn’t stop writing. The madness spread to adjoining houses and soon the two aunts vanished, followed by several neighbors.
The local sheriff eventually raided Blackcroft’s home, and found the grisly remains of the missing people in the basement, pulled apart on a cat’s cradle of hooks. Blackcroft, maintaining his innocence throughout the proceedings, was found guilty and sentenced to hang. Five times the writer marched to the gallows, and five times he survived the drop, twitching and writhing for hours on the end of the rope before they cut him down. He survived execution attempts before a firing squad, by electrocution, and even a go at the experimental gas chamber out in Nevada. And still, the nightmares and disappearances continued, afflicting those around Blackcroft. All this time Blackcroft continued writing. Finally, one psychologist tried something unorthodox and refused to give the writer any paper or pencil. Sure enough, the nightmares subsided a little, and the vanishings stopped entirely, though Blackcroft still proved immortal.
Blackcroft has remained institutionalized since 1937, never aging, never sleeping, never eating; screaming at the waking nightmares trapped inside his own skull, begging for a pen to release them. Often, the nightmares slip through and manifest to those near him as tricks of shadow or things best eft tucked away in a dark corner of the mind. Sometimes, though, the nightmare gains form and somehow claims another victim. Lockdown, however, had no idea what it was in for when it agreed to house Blackcroft. To say they regret the decision is an understatement. So, for now, they leave Blackcroft in his cell, at the back of a deep corridor where lights fail and things shuffle in the shadows. It’s only a matter of time before Warden Creed shuts him into a hole in the mountain… and leaves them forever.
Blackcroft is completely deranged and unable to engage in any hint of conversation. It’s as though his five senses are elsewhere, experiencing horribly alien things nobody should ever have to suffer through. Even if he’s given a pen to bleed away the nightmares, he’ll remain completely engrossed in what he’s writing. Beware, however, for what he writes has a way of coming true.

Current Location

Lockdown

Year of Birth

1890

Gender

Male

Eyes

Black

Hair

Brown

Height

5'9"

Weight

134 lbs