Dispatches from R'lyeh

A new tack

2010-02-20T19:58:00.000-08:00

I think I will begin to post some of my amateur Mythos fiction. Spes Phthisica, a serial story (or perhaps a series of tightly connected short and short-short stories) about the dark future of humanity, starts, hopefully, next week (spesphthisica.blogspot.com)

(And, yes, I'll get to those Lumley reviews. Sometime.)

More William Hope Hodgson

2010-02-11T22:16:00.000-08:00

When looking back at my first William Hope Hodgson-related post, I noticed that I hadn't put up links to the following stories. They're all in the public domain (Hodgson died in WWI, and anything published 1923 or before is public domain in the US, so any of his works published in his lifetime are PD) and available free online.

So:

The Boats of the Glen-Carrig (novel). One of Hodgson's sea-horror novels, not really the cosmic type like The Night Land and The House on the Borderland.

The Ghost Pirates (novel). Another sea-horror novel.

Carnacki the Ghost-Finder (collection of short stories). An interesting set of stories; while set in the modern day (well, Hodgson's modern day; the earliest 20th century) they use either the same 'cosmology' of supernatural effects and beings as The Night Land, or a very similar one. Carnacki is a sort of occult detective; think The Ghostbusters, except not comedy. Some of the 'hauntings' are real and some are frauds. (Also, on the same website, the Forgotten Futures free RPG: here is the Carnacki setting stuff. The entire Forgotten Futures site is well worth exploring if you have any interest in old SF.

Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani (original magazine title: "The Baumoff Explosive") (short story). A strange short piece about a scientist who tries to replicate the darkness at Jesus's Crucifixion. A bit odd, but quite short (a little over 6500 words), so try it.

Brian Lumley's Titus Crow series: part 1

2009-12-31T23:20:00.000-08:00

Brian Lumley's Titus Crow series - The Burrowers Beneath, The Transition of Titus Crow, The Clock of Dreams, Spawn of the Winds, In the Moons of Borea, and Elysia - is often criticized for being totally un-Lovecraftian in tone. This is certainly a valid criticism - Lumley includes such elements as benevolent Kthanid, the golden-eyed cousin of Cthulhu, Eminence (ruler) of the Elder Gods; Elysia, the Elder Gods' paradise-world; Cthulhu and Kthanid presented as rulers of their respective factions, equal or superior to universal beings like Yog-Sothoth; Nyarlathotep as not an actual being but the telepathy used by the Great Old Ones; et cetera. Furthermore, Lumley's characters are far more resilient and far more proactive than Lovecraft's, tracking down and destroying minions of the Great Old Ones in a variety of locations. Psychic powers flow freely, and Titus Crow is "rebuilt" by alien robots into something of a literal superhero.

However, despite all of the above... the books are highly enjoyable. They are simply not in the same theme, arguably not even the same genre, as Lovecraft's work; they use elements of the Cthulhu Mythos freely, but present a very different interpretation of these beings. This isn't a bad thing, though; Lovecraft himself wrote in what we would now consider distinct genres (though the lines were nearly nonexistent in his time); "In the Walls of Eryx" is undeniably science-fiction, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and "Celephais" nearly pure fantasy. The Titus Crow books, in theme and style, belong to the pulp adventure tradition of writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and C. L. Moore; and they are good pulp adventure, especially for something written so late in the 20th century.

If you come to the Titus Crow books expecting cosmic horror in the manner of Lovecraft, you will likely be disappointed. If you take them for what they were written to be, however, they are very fun reads.

Part 2 will review the first two books of the series - The Burrowers Beneath and The Transition of Titus Crow.

Mysteries of Yith, Part 2: What Were Those Darned Cones?

2009-12-06T22:15:00.000-08:00

Every other Mythos species on Earth seems to either be explicitly alien (Flying Polyps, Elder Things, Star-spawn of Cthulhu, etc.) or have believable relations to known Earth life (the fish- and frog-like Deep Ones, the reptilian Serpent Men, the hominid Voormis, etc.) The one exception are the cone-creatures which the Yithians' minds possessed when they fled to Earth from Yith. These cone-creatures are implied to be a native Earthly evolution, yet have no resemblance to any known form of life. So what are they, and how did they get here?

Are they Aliens?
Of course, there's the possibility that they are not native to Earth at all, but are relics of some previous alien colonization of Earth. This seems to be a copout, however, in the absence of any evidence of it.

Animals?
The cones are clearly not from any vertebrate lineage.

Perhaps they are some form of mollusk. The large base of the cone, used to move the creature, seems very similar to the foot of a gastropod. The tentacles would not be unusual for a mollusk, either. The 'trumpet' like organs on the tip of one tentacle, and the location of the mouth and pseudo-'head' on another, are a more difficult problem, however. Still, the Yithians would be radically divergent from all existing mollusks simply by the fact of adapting to be large and terrestrial, so it does not seem unusual that they would evolve new organs (the 'trumpets' are likely hearing organs, as hearing that is adapted for water will not function well on land).

A bigger problem is that the Yithians originate too early for any known mollusks - before the appearance of animals at all.

Something Stranger?
The Yithians may well be the last remnant of an otherwise entirely unknown early evolutionary line of eukaryotes, neither animal, plant nor fungus, and not fossilized due to the lack of bones. They may be exceptionally distant relatives of slime molds, which can sometimes achieve surprising sizes.

With their intelligence, the Yithians could have survived the cold of the "Snowball Earth" Cryogenian period and the appearance of true animals, which would have wiped out the rest of the early eukaryote line that produced them.

Serpent People

2009-10-21T07:01:00.000-07:00

The Serpent People, or Serpent Men, are an interesting Mythos race. They have been around essentially from the inception of the Mythos, first appearing in Robert E. Howard's "The Shadow Kingdom", published in 1929.

In "The Shadow Kingdom", Howard's first and best-known (and arguably best) King Kull story, the Serpent People are able to magically disguise themselves as human (and as specific people), and worship the Great Serpent. They form an ancient conspiracy working against Valusia - and, implicitly, they have infiltrated all human civilizations. They, and several other nonhuman intelligences, are said to have dominated the earth until defeated by early humanity; the serpent men survived by concealment and infiltration.

The phrase "Ka nama kaa lajerama", said to be handed down from the days of the wars between early humans and the serpent men, is usable as a test to determine if a person is real or a serpent man in disguise. Serpent men cannot speak the phrase, since their vocal apparatus is different from that of humans. When confronted with it, serpent men seem to change into their true form - but this is probably just a defensive reaction to being discovered, rather than actually being affected by the phrase.

In Clark Ashton Smith's "The Seven Geases", the serpent people are advanced, scientific, urbane alchemists, and not hostile to humans. "Ubbo-Sathla" has a briefer reference to them; their civilization's glory days seem to have been very ancient, probably pre-dinosaurian. Howard's serpent men are ancient and pre-human, but they seem to have directly predated humanity; the serpent men of "Ubbo-Sathla" seem far earlier.

On the other hand, Robert E. Howard also included serpent-like creatures descended from humans or near-humans in his stories. In "Worms of the Earth", a Bran Mak Morn story set in Roman Britain, the titular worms are serpentlike creatures descended from an ancient, possibly not quite human, people who warred with the Picts ages before. They were driven underground, and eventually became snakelike through ages of separate evolution or degeneration. They seem unrealistically snakelike for a human descendant, though, with "viper fangs" and viperlike heads. "Children of the Night" seems to describe the same creatures in an earlier, more humanlike, less degenerate state - but their appearance is still described as suggestive of snakes. The ancient feud in this story is with the Sword People, who seem to have no relation to the Picts.

Howard's "The God in the Bowl" includes a human-headed serpent. It is unclear if this has any relation with the other serpent-people and snakelike human-descendants, but it appears not.

Spring-heeled Jack in the Mythos

2009-10-01T11:12:00.000-07:00

Another "using weird phenomena in the Mythos" post:

"Spring-heeled Jack" was a phenomenon from Victorian England: mysterious figures capable of superhuman feats of jumping, which terrorized people in London and many other parts of England. Spring-heeled Jack was sometimes described as being able to shoot blue or white fire, having burning eyes, or even having sharp claws. (See the Wikipedia article).

Despite popular legend, "Spring-heeled Jack" is not a single individual. At least four are known to have existed, though there were likely more.

Spring-heeled Jacks are named for their amazing leaping abilities. This ability is actually merely a part of their greatly increased agility. The other strange ability they are known for is producing blue-white flame; this is an electrical phenomenon similar to "St. Elmo's fire".

A Spring-heeled Jack is produced by exposing a human being to carefully modulated electrical pulses at a certain amplitude and frequency. If this is done correctly, the person's muscles are supercharged and a "Spring-heeled Jack" is produced. The technique was developed in 1836 by the English doctor Isaac Baker Brown, drawing on experiments by the Italian scientist Luigi Galvani. After three experiments recorded in his book "On Diseases and Conditions of the Muscular System, and their Treatments" (and possibly more unrecorded) he gave up the practice. The only known Spring-heeled Jack that did not result from Brown's experiments was accidentally produced in the small American town of Los Amigos by early experiments in the electric chair. That creature seemed to be more powerful than the normal Spring-heeled Jack, resisting bullets.

(If you're not interested in the RPG side of the Mythos, then ignore the following:)

In game terms: A Spring-heeled Jack's DEX increases by 2, but POW (in d20, Cha) decreases by 2. The St. Elmo's fire ability is harmless, but casts light as if a lantern.

A Spring-heeled Jack lives in this state for one week to three months after transformation. After this, it has a 50% chance of dying of heart attack; if not, it loses its increased DEX and 2 INT, but can live for as much as triple its previously natural lifespan.

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The Los Amigos reference derives from Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Los Amigos Fiasco".

Ghost Lights in the Mythos

2009-09-18T23:45:00.000-07:00

This is the first of (hopefully) a series of posts about tying in 'bizarre' or 'Fortean' phenomena into the Mythos, such as for use in gaming.

Ghost lights are a mysterious phenomenon known from many places around the world.

Marfa Lights: These strange lights appear to "dance" near the town of Marfa, Texas, on many nights. They have been seen in the Marfa area for at least 50 years. They are rarely seen close up. This much is common knowledge, but the true explanation is never mentioned. The Marfa Lights are in fact a strange form of fire vampire, less powerful and aggressive than the normal form.

These differences are caused by the fact that the form of fire vampire known by most Mythos scholars outside Texas is subject to the rulership of Cthugha. This violent, fearsome entity causes all creatures which serve it to become more aggressive; in its fire vampires, the changes affect not only their actions, but their fiery bodies as well.

Though they are not driven by the flaming wrath of Cthugha, any person approaching a Marfa Light too closely may be attacked.

Ropen: These strange lights found in New Guinea are often attributed by cryptozoologists to bioluminescent flying animals, such as relict pterosaurs, but they are generally another example of ghost lights.

(If you're not interested in the RPG side of the Mythos, then ignore the following:)

In d20, the fire vampires of Marfa have Wisdom and Charisma 2 points lower than normal; in BRP, they instead have POW reduced by 2. The Ropen of New Guinea are in fact identical to ordinary fire vampires.

Pre-Mythos Cosmic Horror, Part 2: Machen's "The Great God Pan"

2009-09-01T17:01:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the several-month hiatus. Hopefully I will be able to post more regularly in the future.

Another pre-Lovecraftian story that fits very well into Lovecraftian themes - and in fact was definitely an influence on Lovecraft's mythos - is "The Great God Pan" by Arthur Machen.

Briefly, the story begins with an experiment intended to allow the subject (the mad scientist involved's foster daughter) to perceive aspects of reality normally invisible to human senses. The experiment is only partially successful - the alteration works, but whatever the girl sees drives her totally insane. Over a decade later, a farm family agrees to raise a mysterious girl named Helen, as her guardian claims that country life would improve her condition (and provides a very generous stipend). Soon, however, other children begin to experience strange events while Helen is around, claiming to see frightful "men in the wood". One boy is so frightened that the mental damage appears permanent, and his father is highly suspicious: but of course nothing can be proved. Another girl is traumatized when Helen vanishes in front of her, in broad daylight. As Helen grows, the events become worse. She marries, and her husband is eventually driven to madness, discarding all his wealth (and becoming a beggar) in the effor to escape her. Eventually it becomes so severe that a single evening's conversation drives upstanding, content men to suicide... [highlight for ending spoilers] She is eventually cornered and forced to commit suicide. Her strange death throes show her inhuman nature more clearly than ever. It is finally revealed by the doctor responsible for the original experiment that Helen is Mary's daughter, conceived by an unknown being at the time of Mary's being driven insane by the vision given her by the experiment.

"The Great God Pan" is somewhat reminiscent of Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror", and I imagine it was one of Lovecraft's inspirations for that story. Quite creepy even today despite its early date, "The Great God Pan" is clearly one of the formative cosmic horror stories.

It is interesting that no use is made in this story of the unpronounceable, alien-sounding names often found in Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and their later imitators. The horrors are referred to by traditional names: 'Pan', 'satyrs', 'demons' - though it is quite clear that the beings in the story are more alien than those that the names normally suggest. It is strongly implied, though, that these beings were the original inspiration for the stories of Pan and the satyrs: "The ancients knew what it meant", the mad doctor says before beginning his experiment.

However, Lovecraft did often associate traditional legends with his invented creatures, and he did not always make use of invented names: "Dagon" never provides any 'true' name for the briefly-glimpsed aquatic horror, and "Pickman's Model" strongly connects the moldy scavengers with tales of changelings, witches, and corpse-eating ghouls.

William Hope Hodgson -- Pre-Mythos Cosmic Horror

2009-05-08T14:28:00.000-07:00

One of the earliest examples of cosmic horror fiction, written well before Lovecraft had gotten into his stride, is the work of William Hope Hodgson. It is quite different from Lovecraft's work; Hodgson wrote many more long works than Lovecraft, and while Lovecraft's characters are usually academics or antiquarians, beginning to investigate a supernatural threat only after it has been forcibly brought to their attention, Hodgson's characters are more proactive. They also run to brawny physical types. (This is due to Hodgson's being very involved in the bodybuilding craze of the beginning of the 20th century, and having worked as a sailor as well.) His sea experience can be seen in many of his novels (The Ghost Pirates, The Boats of the Glen-Carrig, etc.)

The Night Land is a long novel dealing with a heroic quest across the dead wasteland of the distant future Earth, so far in the future that the sun is a dead and lightless cinder and the Earth is frozen - all except for a single vast valley, carved deep into the crust, still warmed by volcanic processes. In this valley the last human beings exist, in a vast pyramid-city called the Great Redoubt, fueled from the "Earth-Current", electricity apparently drawn from the Earth's internal heat or magnetic field. This pyramid is armored and warded with energy shields against horrors that walk the dead lands, vast powers that can inflict a fate worse than death.

The House on the Borderland deals with an eerie house on the English-Scottish border and its reclusive owner's efforts to survive attacks by weird pig-like monsters and to discover their source. As the weird phenomena continue and worsen, he is thrust into visions of the far future and the destruction of the Earth, the solar system, and eventually all the stars of the universe.

The "Carnacki" short stories deal with an 'occult detective': some of the cases he deals with are real horrors, while others are frauds.

This set of stories share a common set of ideas about occult and 'supernatural' forces. Briefly, the human soul can be reincarnated, and people have destined 'soul-mates' whom they are reincarnated to meet; certain monstrous things can destroy soul as well as body, making death complete and permanent; electric and magnetic forces are closely tied to the occult powers, providing defenses (like Carnacki's "electric pentacle" and the Redoubt's Electric Circle) against their attacks, and sometimes strengthening the human spirit.

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Useful links:

The Night Land website run by Andy Robertson, by far the best site based on the book. Includes many stories and artworks set in the Night Land universe.

E-text of The Night Land

E-text of The House on the Borderland

Mysteries of Yith, Part 1

2009-05-06T04:19:00.000-07:00

It's stated in The Shadow Out of Time that the cone-shaped bodies of the Yithians were not their original forms. They traveled by mind-transference to escape whatever was destroying their original homeworld, Yith.

It seems likely that Yithians were related to the beings of Yaddith (from Through the Gates of the Silver Key and the pre-Mi-Go inhabitants of Yuggoth (mentioned or implied in The Whisperer in Darkness and The Haunter of the Dark , because the three words sound like they could be different forms of the same root (maybe just meaning "planet" or "home world"); 'Yaddith', seemingly the oldest planet, since it seemed to have died before life on Earth amounted to much, perhaps being the original form; 'Yith' a worn-down elided form; and 'Yuggoth' a corrupted form. (We're never told about the form of the first Yuggoth species or the pre-terrestrial Yithians; they could well have been the Yaddith beings' 'queerly jointed' semi-insectoid semi-reptile bodies.)

We know (Through the Gates of the Silver Key) that Yaddith had space travel technology, and that they faced extinction by Dhole. Perhaps they left their planet near the end, scattering to many worlds. One group, guided by hints accidentally dropped by Randolph Carter/Zkauba and preserved in the race's records, headed toward Sol and established a base on Yuggoth, a planet more easily made suitable for their metabolisms than hot, high-gravity Earth.

Most of their colony worlds failed due to decline or being overtaken by greater powers. Yith, however, had developed the mind transfer technology before its final fall....

Another mystery is why the children of Yithians that had transferred their minds into cone bodies were born with Yithian minds and not whatever the original species had been. However, perhaps being raised in a Yithian culture was sufficient to make them functionally Yithians.

Lloigor

2009-04-02T00:20:00.000-07:00

The name Lloigor was first used by August Derleth in his story "The Lair of the Star-Spawn". In that story, Lloigor was one of the two godlike entities (the other being Zhar) worshipped by the Tcho-tcho. Derleth sent the story to Lovecraft, who later referred to the Tcho-tcho in his own writings, but did not use Zhar or Lloigor.

Colin Wilson wrote a Mythos story called "The Return of the Lloigor", where lloigor were a type of creature, not a singular entity. These lloigor were "vortices of energy" that sometimes took the form of reptile-like monsters. They could drain life energy from human beings or cause painful mutations; they had once used this ability to punish human slaves when they had ruled an empire in Mu. They needed to work through human slaves because the Earth, being a younger planet than their original home, had a nature essentially hostile to the deeply pessimistic lloigor. Oddly, these lloigor were associated with Ghatanothoa (an entity from 'Out of the Aeons' by H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald), not Derleth's god 'Lloigor'.

Magic in Lovecraft's Works: Part 1, Early Stories

2009-03-10T23:32:00.000-07:00

This is the first post of two or three where I will discuss how Lovecraft treated magic in his fiction. In this post, I will deal with stories from 1925 and earlier.

In "The Alchemist", one of Lovecraft's very early stories (1908), the narrator's line is haunted by an ancient curse which kills each member of the family at a certain age. It turns out, though, that this is actually the actions of an ancient wizard who has used the alchemical Elixir of Life to prolong his own life, so that he can slay each member of the family in various means (arrows, poison, etc.). The Elixir of Life is not further explained.

The Terrible Old Man in the story of the same title (1920) seems to be a wizard of some sort as well, since he has bottles which seem to contain trapped souls: "in each a small piece of lead suspended pendulum-wise from a string. And they say that the Terrible Old Man talks to these bottles, addressing them by such names as Jack, Scar-Face, Long Tom, Spanish Joe, Peters, and Mate Ellis, and that whenever he speaks to a bottle the little lead pendulum within makes certain definite vibrations as if in answer", and he unleashes some form of wrath on the robbers who attack him (implicitly these same pirate ghosts, since the corpses are "slashed as with many cutlasses").

"The Other Gods" (1921) refers to "spells and barriers" wielded by the gods of Earth, and "unknown magic" used by the titular Other Gods.

"The Festival" (1923) includes a passage from the Necronomicon which states "happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and happy the town at night whose wizards are all ashes. For it is of old rumour that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws". It seems that some users of magic can survive death in a horrible form, just as the ancient ancestor in the story does.

"The Horror at Red Hook" (1925) includes a series of rites which reanimate a very dead corpse to complete the ritual; it's implied that some dark entity is being summoned.

"He" (1925) includes an explanation of the workings of magic: ""To - my ancestor," he softly continued, "there appeared to reside some very remarkable qualities in the will of mankind; qualities having a little-suspected dominance not only over the acts of one's self and of others, but over every variety of force and substance in Nature, and over many elements and dimensions deemed more universal than Nature herself." The story also includes a horde of ghosts of ancient magic-users, and an (apparently summoned) slime monster.

So, to summarize:
-magic can be used to trap souls and summon ghosts and other dark entities
-some users of magic can survive bodily death, either as worm-creatures or ghosts
-the gods, especially the Other Gods, can wield powerful reality-altering magic
-ritual is apparently important in at least some types of magic
-the working principle behind magic seems to be the imposition of will to alter reality

Aliens on Earth -- Part 2: Revisions

2009-01-24T18:30:00.000-08:00

In the last post, I covered the aliens in H. P. Lovecraft's solo work. Moving to his revisions and co-authored stories, the picture gets muddier.

In "The Mound" a race of humans or semi-humans is found in vast caverns under Arizona. Despite their human appearance, though, they claim to have been brought to Earth by Cthulhu. Even they have begun to doubt it at this late date, but they do have strange idols of a metal not found on Earth to back up their beliefs. The rest of humanity is descended from them, and their history seems to cover a vastly greater span of time than that of surface humans - "they knew of the outer world, and were indeed the original stock who had peopled it as soon as its crust was fit to live on." If taken literally, this would mean that their species is billions of years old. I frankly don't think this can be harmonized with Lovecraft's other writings: it seems like they would have shown up in the histories of the Yithians or Elder Things, not to mention all the references to "pre-human" this, that, or the other. It can work, though, if we take "as soon as its crust was fit to live upon" as hyperbole, putting their arrival on Earth sometime in the late Cenozoic (though it might have to be earlier, if they were in fact brought by Cthulhu; the geological period of R'lyeh's sinking is unclear).

In "Out of the Aeons", Ghatanothoa is the god of a race from Yuggoth (that is, Pluto) that came to Earth "before the birth of terrestrial life" and built great cities and fortresses, but then died out. Ghatanothoa, apparently being immortal, is the only survivor, but he may not actually be of that race. It seems that this species is not the Mi-Go/Fungi from Yuggoth from "The Whisperer in Darkness", since the Mi-Go seem to have arrived later in Earth's history, and "The Whisperer in Darkness" says that Yuggoth was once inhabited by another species before the Mi-Go arrived. We are not told why this species settled Earth; but if they were natives of Pluto, Earth would not be far away.

"The Challenge from Beyond" describes a cube used for mental transmissions and transfers by the centipede-like Yekubians; but these had no special interest in Earth until they struck it by accident, having scattered the cubes across all of space where they would hopefully land upon inhabited worlds. Later they made mental contact with the Yithians, and Earth became more interesting to them.

So, in summary: The only species whose reasons to choose Earth are uncertain are the Elder Things, earlier Yuggoth creatures, and Yithians: and all of these have credible reasons. The excessive number of species doesn't seem so excessive after all...

Aliens on Earth: Part 1 (Lovecraft)

2009-01-11T22:22:00.000-08:00

One of the big mysteries about the Cthulhu Mythos universe is – why are there so many alien species on Earth? What is it about our planet that has attracted at least five major alien species (the Mi-Go, the Antarctic Elder Things, the Flying Polyps, the Yithians, and the spawn of Cthulhu) in Lovecraft’s works alone, plus many others in other Mythos stories?

Well, nobody really knows, but here are my speculations:

If we look just at Lovecraft’s work, we see that aliens show up for several reasons. Earth is simply one of many planets the Mi-Go visit, useful for mining as well as occasional studies of humans. Their interstellar civilization is said to include not only a major base on Pluto/Yuggoth, but other star systems, other galaxies, and even worlds “beyond the last curved rim of the universe” (The Whisperer in Darkness). Thus, it’s not too surprising they use Earth. We’re not particularly special to them, just one of countless worlds, and a relatively unimportant one at that – there don’t seem to be permanent Mi-Go colonies on Earth.

The Yithians arrived to escape a gigantic cataclysm that destroyed their original world, Yith– it isn’t clear they had much choice in where to go. However, Yith is described as “trans-galactic” (Shadow out of Time); if it’s on the other side of the galaxy, surely we weren’t the nearest acceptable planet? The Yithians could only move their minds, so they needed a planet with an intelligent species. If the Mythos universe is so full of aliens, though, that doesn’t seem too difficult. Perhaps the Cone-Beings they took over were simply easier to control than other species in our galaxy. This does make sense; many Mythos creatures have exceptional mental abilities and might be able to prevent or repel a Yithian mind’s takeover attempt.

The Elder Things, Flying Polyps, and spawn of Cthulhu engaged in full colonization of the Earth, but at separate times. The Elder Things arrived first, before terrestrial life; their colonies centered in Antarctica and the surrounding seas. At some uncertain later point, Flying Polyps arrived and dominated much of the Earth until defeated and trapped underground by the Yithians. The spawn of Cthulhu arrived much later. During long and inconclusive wars with the Elder Things, they seem to have mostly been restricted to a continent which no longer exists, which eventually vanished, trapping them: “all the lands of the Pacific sank” (At the Mountains of Madness). The Yithians and Elder Things left in control of the Earth engaged in wars, but apparently rarely.

The Deep Ones and the Nameless City’s reptilian beings seem to be natives to Earth, though they do form two additional sentient races. It is not clear that the Deep Ones are older than primitive forms of humanity, so they may have arrived on the scene after most of the alien species had departed or been trapped. The Nameless City reptiles seem to have remained in their own area, far from the Yithians and Polyps centering in Australia, the Elder Things centering in Antarctica, and the Cthulhu spawn in the Pacific.

Bholes

2008-12-19T22:18:00.000-08:00

Are they the same things as Dholes, or not? It is hard to tell. Lovecraft sometimes changed the spelling of Mythos terms (”Cthulhu” normally vs. “Tulu” in ‘The Mound’, for example), so the different spelling isn’t necessarily important.

Dholes show up in “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”, where they are infesting the planet Yaddith. The native inhabitants are fighting a long and losing war against the Dholes, which will lead eventually to the extermination of all the planet’s life as the Dholes ravage the hapless world, burrowing through its crust. Dholes are incredibly large (one “reared up several hundred feet”, which implies that its total length must be much greater). They are apparently “bleached, viscous” giant worms, or perhaps slugs better fit a soft viscous body.

Bholes are found in the Dreamlands, in “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”. They are also large subterranean dwellers, but we know nothing of their form, as they have never been seen (living only in pitch darkness). They appear not to be fully as large as Dholes, or Randolph Carter probably wouldn’t have been able to climb out of reach of the Bhole.

I believe they are probably intended to be the same creature, but nothing is conclusive. Bholes do seem smaller, but whether this is simple variation or whether Lovecraft just decided to make them bigger for “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” is unknowable. ‘Bhole’ is clearly the better name, though, as a dhole is a kind of wild dog found in India.

Shaggoths? Shuggoths? Shoggoths!

2008-12-07T22:19:00.000-08:00

How can a creature be both my favorite and my least favorite? I don’t know, but these guys come close. In their original incarnation - “At the Mountains of Madness” and other Lovecraft works - they were awesome. Ancient, shapeless amoeba-blob servitors created by the Elder Things and later used by the Deep Ones. Things created to serve, but rebellious nonetheless. In their creation may lie the origins of all earthly life.

So what’s the problem? Number one, the tendency to misspell the name (dating back to a typo as “shaggoths” in the magazine version of one of Lovecraft’s stories). Sure, that was confusing - but it was also well over 70 years ago, so I think we could get it right by now. I particularly hate “shaggoth” because it sounds like a monster made out of fur or shag carpet.

But the biggest problem is how role-playing game design has made them so powerful that it’s ludicrous for them to fulfill in-game the roles they filled in the original stories! And since many people get their exposure to the Cthulhu Mythos through gaming, shoggoths have become UBERSHOGGOTH! Which is just wrong.

A particularly egregious example is the d20 Call of Cthulhu game. In that game, shoggoths (with a challenge rating of 21) are ranked as more powerful than hunting horrors (CR 20), star-spawn of Cthulhu (CR 14), and even several frickin’ Great Old Ones - Dagon and Hydra (CR 14) and Glaaki (CR 17) - who are statted as, literally,demigods. When created servants are more powerful than demigods, you’ve got a problem.

It’s not unique to d20, though - that game just provides a convenient mechanism to measure relative power.

So where’s the actual story evidence that shoggoths are Teh Uberbeast? Well, in “Mountains of Madness” they rip the heads of Elder Things, who have been established to be super-tough; it’s hard even to cut the skin of Elder Thing corpses for dissection. So, they’re really strong. They also make people go nearly insane from fright at seeing them - but the characters were already disturbed from their previous experiences, and unarmed and thus unable to defend themselves. It’s also said that they were broken to the saddle by armed Elder Thing riders - probably unlikely given the stats, because under the rules shoggoths could kill ARMIES of Elder Things, largely because of their annoying immunity or high resistance to practically everything. Where is *that* from in the stories? And how can the Deep Ones keep them around (in “Shadow over Innsmouth’) if they’re really significantly more powerful than the progenitor/gods of their species?

Two Deep Ones

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The Deep One picture below is based on the descriptions in “Dagon” and “The Shadow over Innsmouth” by H. P. Lovecraft, but focusing on the carven images in “Dagon”. It is portrayed as a humanoid wielding a harpoon as in “Dagon”, but fish-gilled and froglike to fit the “fish-frog” mentions in “Shadow”. This is closer to how I tend to imagine Deep Ones. To be interfertile with humanity — and produce fertile offspring! — means that Deep Ones must be genetically very close to humanity. Their gills are probably artificially engineered, either by some spawn of Cthulhu freed from imprisonment or from an ancient human civilization; in the Cthulhu Mythos setting, there have been many advanced civilizations - human and alien - before ourselves. Besides the gills, the other differences are genetically minor: webbed feet, partially webbed hands, claws (which might be merely narrow claw-like nails). The Deep One in this picture is slightly disproportioned and has only two toes on each foot; disabilities that would be impairing on land by limiting movement would not be so in the sea.

The next image (black and white) is more like the common depictions of Deep Ones. This type of Deep One draws on “Shadow over Innsmouth” but ignores the more human-like descriptions in “Dagon”. (Deep Ones are sometimes illustrated - the d20 Call of Cthulhu gaming book an especially egregious example - with heavy, armor-like scales over their entire bodies. This is incorrect. Lovecraft clearly states in “Shadow” that Deep Ones are mostly ’slimy and slippery’, with scales only on ‘the ridges of their backs’.)
Perhaps this bulkier, frog-like Deep One is a blubber-heavy adaptation to cold waters, while the beings of “Dagon”, dwelling in tropical seas, did not need it.
I imagine (if any scientific justification is desired) that Deep Ones can grow to enormous sizes because - as water dwellers whose weight does not pull on their bodies - genetic abnormalities that cause gigantism are not selected against, as they would be on land.

What this blog is

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This blog will contain my posts on science fiction, fantasy, and horror-related subjects. There will be reviews, or thoughts about, books I’ve read; my amateurish art; role-playing game material; and almost anything else.

As the title suggests, there will be Cthulhu Mythos material — so check your sanity at the e-door!