So, you had suspicions that it was written by aliens.

Every religion holds that its sacred text(s) is (are) the direct, unaltered word of God (Jehovah/Yahweh/Allah/Buddha/etc.- yes, that goes for Satanists, Cthluhu worshipers, and Hagunennon who maintain the Universe was sneezed out of the nose of the Great Green Arklseizure, too). Yet every single one was (A) initially passed down as a verbal tradition, (B) finally written down several generations down the road, and (C) eventually codified after much revision, research, and general caterwauling between scholars about which text is the one and only, genuine, original one, into a single text that everyone more-or-less agrees on. Except when it isn't the only one, as per the various versions of the Bible (King James, Essenian, New American, etc., and let's not even talk about the Apocrypha). Even allowing for its relative newness (dating back to the 9th Century A.D., about 600 years "younger" than the Christian Bible and considerably more recent than the Sefer Torah), the fact that "variant" versions of the Qu'ran exist (or may yet be discovered) isn't particularly surprising, especially considering the early schism between the S'ana (Sunni)and Shi'a (Shiite) sects following Mohamed's death. This, if it's the real thing, could be potentially as important to the study of Islamic text as the Qumran (Dead Sea Scrolls) texts were to the Hebraic and Christian textual studies when they were discovered in the late 1940s (1949, if memory serves). The real question is, if these records are in fact valid, how will the Islamic world react?

..[that goes for] Cthulhu Worshippers... It is stated in the Necronomicon, Greek Edition: "Pardon me, boy, is this the way to great Cthulhu?" Of course, abd al-Azrad was certifiably insane when he penned al-Azif. But it IS a work - if demented work - of sheer genius, wrapped in mumbo-jumbo code. Just the opposite of an illiterate camel-herder, who dictated remembered fragments of campfire tales told by members of other religions on caravan. as al-Azrad put it so succinctly: la mayyitan ma qadirun yatabaqa sarmadi fa itha yaji ash-shuthath al-mautu qad yantahi. Mohammed was NEVER so eloquent or creative when he dictated his rambling Quran. And missed the greater mysteries of the universe, unlike abd al-Azrad. and unlike Mohammed, al-Azrad confronted directly some of the demons of pre-Mohammed Arabs, incorporating into his work both the sacred and the profane: al-ghariyun : the dwellers of the Cave Umm ash-Shabab al-Alf : the Mother of the Thousand Dark Ones and her dark progeny: ash-shubab al muthliman - a Young of Blackness (Sidenote - notice how the Quran has expunged all references to worship of the goddess-spirt, and has deliberately suppressed the female side of the religion) al-ghul : the eaters of the living Niyharlat Hotep : the Opener of the Gate the totally evil al-Mu'ell : the Causer of Destruction and of course al-Khadhulu itself. Note that all of these names were applied to the banners of various Arab armies in the first several centuries of expansion. swhitebull

Either you're a serious Call Of Cthlhu game-master, or a very serious Lovecraft fan, SWB. Which is it?

...Either you're a serious Call Of Cthlhu game-master, or a very serious Lovecraft fan, SWB. Which is it? ... BOTH!!! I used to run tournaments for The Chaosium at Gencon for years. Have EVERY SINGLE COC supplement ever printed by The Chaosium (including Delta Green ) and Sandy Petersen and I have collaborated on Beastriders of the Wastelands for Runequest (now Heroquest). Sandy and I are good friends, as well as founder Greg Stafford (one of my VERY good friends - greg and I go back to 1975) swhitebull

Delta Green is probably the only major CoC sourcebook I don't have. However, I do have a signed hardback copy of "Dreams From Rl'yeh", autographed by the late Lin Carter. And one gaming campaign I've been involved in (that I helped start about a decade ago) revolves around an organization called "Black Book", which is basically the "real" MIBs (not the funny, overly-noisy movie version), based on a combination of the old "Conspiracy X" RPG and CoC, transferred to the Hero System. I think we're on roughly the same wavelength.