Crossover of the Week

March 58 BCE

LUCRETIUS’ MAZE

Titus Crow uses his alien clock to time travel to ancient Rome. Ariston tells Crow and Titus Lucretius Carus a story Rael told him involving a Lamia snatching a newborn. Crow and Lucretius are helped against some cultists by another time traveler, Setni, who serves the Great Brains. Crow begins to see Lucretius more and more as an equal to his friend, Henri-Laurent de Marigny. Yog-Sothoth is mentioned. The Great Brains of Kalapol have deprived Setni of his faithful Pentoser. Another time traveler summons Shub-Niggurath to destroy Rome. The defeated and dying villain identifies himself as Montbrison, who came from 1942 in a time-vest invented by a scientist named Noël Essaillon. Montbrison was previously exposed as a murderer by P.I. Nestor Burma. Setni thinks of Maïcha.

Short story by Jean-Guillaume Lanuque in Tales of the Shadowmen Volume 15: Trompe l’Oeil, Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, eds., Black Coat Press, 2018; reprinted in French in Les Compagnons de l’Ombre (Tome 25), Jean-Marc Lofficier, ed., Rivière Blanche, 2019. Titus Crow and Henri-Laurent de Marigny are the protagonists of a series of Cthulhu Mythos novels by Brian Lumley. Yog-Sothoth is one of Lovecraft’s Outer Gods, while Shub-Niggurath is one of the Great Old Ones. Rael is from Genesis’ album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Setni, the Great Brains of Kalapol, Pentoser, and Maïcha are from a series of science fiction novels by Pierre Barbet, which represent yet another of the many possible futures for the CU. Montbrison is from 120, Rue de la Gare, one of Léo Malet’s novels about private eye Nestor Burma. Noël Essaillon is from René Barjavel’s novel Future Times Three.

This crossover writeup is one of over a thousand included in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, coming this summer from Meteor House! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert’s Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!