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

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.

Lloigor

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'.

Bholes

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!

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?