the Scarlet Letters

i like that first one best. smoother curves seem appropriate for tentacled beings, and that "control panel" on the front is big enough & blank enough to be accidentally touched by an explorer and spring to life....

The more I think about it, I'm seeing that this "magic mirror" really needs more screen time... It's the thing that is so mysterious that the explorers can't resist touching.

I'm imagining having odd ghosts of electricity dancing across its surface... Until they touch it... At which point the mirror goes black (a moment of suspense?) -- and then the entire thing turns on and starts broadcasting its message.

Hm. I can see I'm going to have to put some work into animating this thing before I can be 100% sure about how the actors need to react.

yes, yes! it will be especially attractive to the explorers if it blinks or the electricity dances, since it will the only shiny thing in the room. ;) or at least, it will be the only 'living' the thing in the room, since the elder things are still in hibernation.

Like the northern lights -- that's what I was trying to say. :-D

Heh. Maybe this is distress beacon's screen saver... ;-)

I've been assuming that the beacon is somehow broken, and the explorers touching it somehow magically fixes the thing... Maybe the Elders intentionally turned it off?

This aspect of the script probably doesn't need to be explained... But I've been surprised more than once now to discover that my story doesn't actually make logical sense when I'm forced to put it into words. [Like with "why did the explorers land their airplane?"]

Hm.

oh, but that's perfect! the explorers landed their plane because they were reading weird radio/signal interference in a place they didn't expect. or maybe they had to land because the beacon signal interfered w/ their plane.

a big shiny beacon also partially explains why they go straight to be the beacon instead of spending more much time among these strange creatures -- they are more likely to think they can fix it or figure it out because "technology" is more familiar to them than aliens.

Interesting midrash!

Mentally I've been linking the appearance of the shoggoth to the beacon being turned on. In which case, I have to wonder what wavelengths the shoggoths can and can't perceive. Maybe they can't perceive the low-level radio interference -- but are alerted by the high-intensity beacon beam.

Or maybe they just followed the airplane to where it landed.

"Radio interference" is probably a more defensible explanation for why they landed than my "forced down by blizzard" concept... Having them just happen to land next to the cave seems too coincidental.

If they landed only because there's radio interference, that might give them more time to set up their tents, too. (Having that shot with an encampment set up -- that's been tough to explain.)

Of course, when you get down to it, it's pretty odd that the explorers don't carry anything with them -- flashlights, a radioactivity detector, something...

But that, there's really just no way to go back and fix.

So, uh, bottomline: The radio interference idea is sounding better all the time! Thank you!