...The hat had endured since the day after the dawn of time or thereabouts, though its form had altered to suit the fashion of the moment.
Its first recorded appearance was among the Ookabolaponga of Madagascar, where it had taken the shape of a large spotted breadfruit and for centuries became the glabrous ritual headgear of the chief, imparting wisdom along with visions of far-off crepuscular landscapes where leviathan creatures shambled among the jagged outcrops. Its significance in the social evolution of these now-extinct people cannot be underestimated, and has been studied exhaustively by Professor Oliver O. Oxenfree at Arkham College, where reside as well original drawings in bat guano on stone of the Ookabolaponga chief's headdress. At some distant Ogygian moment, the cryptic chapeau was stolen by a warring tribe, and it is this event that Professor Oxenfree has linked to the demise of that small insular culture. Over centuries the hat made its way across the map of Africa where, one by one, civilizations rose and fell under its tutelage. Oxenfree's intensive studies reveal that in each case these civilizations were working toward a momentous occasion, an event unequaled in gravity and magnitude -- which was to rip open some kind of temporal doorway into another realm, a chthonian dimension only hinted at in the darkest tomes, where dwell what each in their own language called "The Old Ones." Only the vagaries of existence and humankind's penchant for jealousy and appropriation of others' property had kept the rituals from completion and the race, nay, the world itself from utter destruction should these wlatsome behemoths be provided ingress. The hopes of these celestial horrors depended entirely upon the successful transmission of the necessary rituals to whoever wore the hat. The hat had compatriots hereabouts, although it had failed thus far to convene with any of them. They were, it seemed, being systematically killed off.
Most recently the hat had teamed up with an individual named Masterson, whose skill as a tough had as a result become legendary. Here the hat thought it had found someone at last who lacked any moral compass, who could be turned easily into an agent of the Elder Gods' release. And this might have been the case had the aforementioned Masterson not been dumped, cataleptically drunk, in the same alley where the fatuitous Dub had taken up residence in the shipping crate of the town's new safe. Dub saw no reason not to commandeer the lovely bowler hat that lay buzzing beside Masterson's cranium. In one swift movement, he swung apelike out of his box and snatched the thing. It sensed him -- sensed him with a cosmic dread the like of which it had never known, not even in the aeons it had floated through the vast emptiness of space, seeking intelligences that it might dispose to release its infernal lords. It had once been placed briefly upon the brow of a camel, and even that diminished encephalon had proffered more possibility than the mind of Dub. Nevertheless, rules were rules, and so the hat transformed to accommodate the new cranium, and laid its plans. Dub must travel to the town of Las Rhages in the Valley of R'hudy, where the doorway to the Old Ones' world would next open. There they must be when the time was nigh, to meet whatever other worshippers were drawn by the call. To succeed, they must first stop that fiendish, shadowy bandit whose every exploit indicated that he knew of the approaching day and that he stood opposed to it; it was he who was systematically eliminating those whom the hat hoped to join. Dub must remove him -- the last obstacle to the hat's wide-ranging plans. Then and only then might the new masters of this world devour these base and pathetic creatures, none of which was more base or pathetic than Dub himself....