Some months ago, I was cleaning out my quest log on an alt to make room for more. I noticed a quest in Vile Nativity that I had not looked at that had a bit of lore in the form of a poem as quest text. This was the second stage of the quest chain for the Cape of Atlantis (on the way to the puzzle with the lights and the walking statue). Someone at Funcom had some fun, and changed the wording of Edgar Allan Poe's "Conqueror Worm" to include the Lurker at the Threshold.
Original poem here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178359
The Art of Deciphering
II. The Riddle & the Sentinel
A Sentinel guards the Treasury. This riddle
may hint at how to defeat it:
Lo! Act I ends in water, Atlantis drowns in tears.
Enter a theatre of memory,
See a play of hopes and fears,
While the Old Ones breathe fitfully
The music of the Spheres.
Cue the ghastly interlude!
As seraphs sob at seagull beaks
In bloated meat imbued.
Lo! Act II ends in frost, the mimes cry.
Atlantis lost! Where to go?
To cold mountains fly.
A culture dies to savage woe,
Blind to the stage and vast, formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping through space on chiropteran wings,
Lurking the spaces between and below.
Lo! Act III ends in the holy; the Queen gives hope.
The mimes shall not be forgot!
"Build a temple of such scope;
Impress the gods who bless us not."
The mimes cheer and toil with no chagrin.
See the script they cannot,
With much of madness and more of sin
And horror the soul of the plot.
Lo! Act IV ends in poison: the Queen's secret.
The Crawling Chaos intrudes.
A secret festers if ye keep it,
Divinely conceived in solitude.
It writhes! Grows inside with mortal pangs.
Good intentions become its food.
"Vile nativity!" the corpse stars sang.
"All behold the royal brood!"
Lo! Act V ends in the unholy; a door opens.
It bubbles! Oh, it blasphemes!
The grave-shroud curtain falls with a roar,
Over quivering mimes, no time to scream.
Now, perform this play to the Guardian.
Five elemental acts, ye drama worker.
The play is the tragedy, "Atlantean,"
And its hero, the Threshold Lurker.