The four-inch seeming sphere turned out to be a nearly black, red-striated polyhedron with many irregular flat surfaces; either a very remarkable crystal of some sort or an artificial object of carved and highly polished mineral matter. It did not touch the bottom of the box, but was held suspended by means of a metal band around its centre, with seven queerly-designed supports extending horizontally to angles of the box's inner wall near the top. This stone, once exposed, exerted upon Blake an almost alarming fascination. He could scarcely tear his eyes from it, and as he looked at its glistening surfaces he almost fancied it was transparent, with half-formed worlds of wonder within. Into his mind floated pictures of alien orbs with great stone towers, and other orbs with titan mountains and no mark of life, and still remoter spaces where only a stirring in vague blacknesses told of the presence of consciousness and will.
HP Lovecraft, The Haunter of the Dark
I've been reading HPL recently, gearing up for the next installment of our most excellent CoC PBEM games with Daddy Grognard at the helm this time, and when I read this passage it hit me that he could be describing something like a d14! It had "seven queerly designed supports extending horizontally" to sides in the box. They could be coming off the sides of a sweet glistening surface of a highly polished mineral d14.
It is likely that HPL was thinking of something more chaotically fashioned, the fact that he called it a sphere at first had me thinking of a d20 or a d30 something like that. But today, I'm going to think about HPL rolling d14's while rocking out to Metallica, drinking Mountain Dew, and criticalling on a Shoggoth!
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