Most non-gamers are familiar with the basic concept of table-top role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. Characters advance in levels, gaining wealth, experience, notoriety, and power. The character can die, and can either be revived or the player must start anew with a different character. There are other ways for play with a particular character to end. Perhaps an evil wizard entraps them in a magic crystal and then shrinks it down to a microscopic size and buries it in the desert. Perhaps, like my old character, the bardic bear, Poseidon, they become so entranced with the lawful-good plane of Elysium they never want to leave, and wander off one night into it's beautiful forests.
However, there are other role-playing paradigms. One example is Call of Cthulhu, based on the writing of H.P. Lovecraft. CoC presents a world so terrifying and so outside the reach of normal human understanding that your character will typically end play not by dying, but by going completely insane.
With that in mind, please listen to this track by John Peel favorite and well missed hometown heroes, Teen Cthulhu. This track, "Crystal Castles," appeared on a split with Cream Abdul Babar and was released close to the end of their reign. I picked it both because it totally rocks and because its title is "Crystal Castles." They are blowing up.
Teen Cthulhu "Crystal Castles"
