The King’s Tatters Those touched by the ribbons and dangling scraps of the King’s bandages are marked by the contact— spiritually rather than physically They will dream of the King that night and every night Their minds will dwell on his poisonous truths until the King returns to them one day to take them away beyond the waking world The Pallid Mask The Mask may in fact be the King himself The rest The King can manifest by possessing or absorbing an individual The King must choose an individual who has great emotional depth, supreme artistic talent, and who is also hopelessly insane, typically criminally so This is a gradual process First the mad artist starts seeing fragments of the King in his works: a tattered yellow ribbon pattern in the rug he is weaving; sentences in his novel or play that he knows he did not write; or bright citrine clouds floating amidst the white in the canvas he is painting of his form may be a human, vitalized and energized Eventually these manifestations become more by the Mask In other words, when the Pallid Mask and more overt until the King appears in full form, is placed on a person’s face, he becomes the King in emerging from the madman's art, and takes the artist Yellow in a real sense by the hand If the artist goes willingly, they blend The Mask is so powerful that it has shed echoes of itself, and there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of lesser pallid masks in existence They are described in the artifacts section The Desecration together to become one new being, who is now wholly the King in Yellow Through Great Art Art produced by a devotee of the King can sometimes bring about the King's appearance, in a manner similar The King’s immediate goal is to harvest souls to bring to appearing through a person In this case, however, about glorious destruction He may use many means to the King is made known to a large number of people accomplish this, but the end result is the same: cities in at once, for example at a theatre where a variant of flames, people shrieking in terror or abasing themselves one of his plays is being performed, an art gallery before the King in frantic pleas, the dead rising up, and featuring art he has influenced, or at the unveiling of a the very air charged with malignant fumes monument designed by a cultist The work of art always Rising of the Dead The King’s footstep brings the dead to life They can return as a wide variety of undead—from simple zombies or ghosts to more powerful vampires His horde always accompanies him Awakening the King The King in Yellow can be brought to a world in several ways The most obvious is by the use (or misuse) of the Pallid Mask 258 Through a Person incorporates the Yellow Sign in some way, either subtly or overtly Everyone sees the horror and beauty of the art, and then they are aghast as the King manifests and steps out into the crowd Through Travel The King is able to move and can simply travel from one spot to another For example, he could be awakened on one world, then fly to a second world on the back of a Byakhee or other cosmic horror