Contributed by Dustin Wright on Monday July 9, 2007 09:10AM

The Cthulhu Mythos

A Brief Introduction to the Cthulhu Mythos.

Excerpted from Cthulhu Dark Ages, copyright 2004 Chaosium Inc.

H.P. Lovecraft once wrote:
“All my tales are based upon the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large.”

He further imagined that the fundamental truths of the universe were so alien and horrifying that mere exposure to them might result in madness or suicide. While humanity might crave both comfort and the truth, only one or the other was possible to it.

The human mind was an inflexible container. It could not maintain both more truth and complete sanity — more of one poured in must spill out more of the other. Humans desperate for the power cloaked within truth might choose to forgo all remnants of sanity in exchange for becoming adept at manipulating the secrets of time and space. Their devil’s bargains made, these merciless sorcerers would whistle down devastation and doom to this world in new exchange for yet more knowledge and power.

Lovecraft’s working-out of these ideas in his fiction became known as the Cthulhu Mythos. The term encompasses a complex and broad group of sometimes contradictory narratives, stories, essays, letters, and deductions, so extensive as to be impossible to summarize in detail — not the least because new Mythos material continues to be written around the world. Adding to the confusion, one of his perceptions was that the truly alien is genuinely unknowable. The Mythos becomes not just mysterious, but protean and contradictory: not only do we not know it, we never can know it.

As it transpires, we have only our own names for most of these things. We do not even know their names for themselves, or if they have names.

A General Summary

Though their interrelations are dim, we know that some entities of the Cthulhu Mythos are clearly superior or inferior in their powers. Gods are the mightiest, followed (at some distance) by the Great Old Ones. Both may be attended by lesser servitor races, often of a characteristic species.

Outer Gods, Elder Gods, Other Gods

Depending on which author one reads, the universe is ruled by beings variously known as the Elder Gods, Outer Gods, or Other Gods. Only a few of these deities are known by name. The majority are both blind and idiotic. They are all extremely powerful alien beings, and some may be of extra-cosmic origin.

The Outer Gods rule the universe and have little to do with humanity, except for Nyarlathotep. Humans meddling with these entities suffer for it, usually ending mad or dead. Names for a few Outer Gods are known. They appear almost to be true gods, as opposed to the alien horror of the Great Old Ones, and some may personify some cosmic principle. Only a few of these deities seem to take interest in human affairs or to acknowledge the existence of the human race. When they do, they often are shown trying to break through cosmic walls or dimensions in order to wreak new destruction. All the races and lesser deities of the Mythos acknowledge the Outer Gods, and many worship them.

The Outer Gods are controlled to some extent by their messenger and soul, Nyarlathotep. When the Outer Gods are discomforted, Nyarlathotep investigates. Azathoth, the daemon sultan and ruler of the cosmos, writhes mindlessly to the piping of a demon flute at the center of the universe. Yog-Sothoth, either a second-in-command or co-ruler, is coterminous with all time and space, but locked somehow outside the mundane universe. Yog-Sothoth can be summoned to this side only through the use of mighty spells, whereas Azathoth theoretically might be met by traveling far enough through space. A group of Outer Gods and servitors dance slowly around Azathoth, but none are named.

The term Elder Gods sometimes refers to another race of gods, neutral to and possibly rivals of the Outer Gods. The Elder Gods, if they exist, do not seem to be as dangerous to humanity as Azathoth and its ilk, but they have even less contact with humanity. Nodens is the best known Elder God.

Outer and Elder Gods sometimes have been lumped together and confusingly called the Other Gods, though primarily gods of the outer planets and not of our Earth. They would seem seldom called here, but when they do appear they are second to nothing in horror. (And, just to thoroughly confuse you, a set of minor Outer Gods are known collectively as the Lesser Other Gods!)

Species associated with these deities (shantaks, hunting horrors, servitors of the Outer Gods, dark young of Shub-Niggurath) are correspondingly rare on Earth.

The Great Old Ones

They are not as supernatural as the Outer Gods, but are nonetheless god-like and terrible to human eyes. Humans are much more likely to worship Great Old Ones, who are comparatively near at hand and who occasionally participate in human affairs or contact individual humans, than they are to worship Outer Gods. Entire clans or cults may secretly worship a Great Old One. Lone madmen, on the other hand, seem to prefer the Outer Gods. Beings serving the Great Old Ones frequently inhabit the remote fastness of the Earth. Investigators most often encounter their worshipers and alien servants.

The Great Old Ones themselves appear to be immensely powerful alien beings with supernatural- seeming abilities, but not to be true gods in the sense that the Outer Gods are reported. Each Great Old One is independent of the rest, and many seem to be temporarily imprisoned in some way.

It is said that “when the stars are right” the Great Old Ones can plunge from world to world. When the stars are not right, they cannot live. “Cannot live” need not mean death, as the famous couplet from the Necronomicon suggests.

That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.

Cthulhu, the most famous creation of Lovecraft, is a Great Old One. With the rest of his race, he sleeps in a vast tomb at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Cthulhu seems to be the most important Great Old One on Earth. Others of differing forms exist, and they are re­corded as being both less powerful and more free. Ithaqua the Windwalker roams at will across Earth’s arctic latitudes. Hastur the Unspeakable dwells near Aldebaran, and Cthugha near Fo­malhaut. Other Great Old Ones doubtless infest other worlds, and it may be common for a world to be ruled by dominant Great Old Ones. All those known on Earth are invoked or wor­shiped by hu­ mans but, by the evidence of the stories, Cthulhu is worshiped more than the rest put together. Minor Great Old Ones such as Quachil Uttaus usually have no worshipers, but wizards may know spells to summon them. Such entities fill the role of de­mons within the hier­archy of the Mythos.

But even Cthul­hu is known of by few, and interventions by Great Old Ones in hu­man af­fairs are iso­lated. Some com­men­ta­tors suspect that these greater be­ings rare­ly think about hu­ man beings or take them into ac­count. Humanity is negligible and unimportant.

Servitor Races

Particular species are often associated with particular Great Old Ones or Outer Gods — byakhee with Hastur, for instance, or nightgaunts with Nodens. These are servitor species, and frequently a god or Great Old One manifests accompanied by several such servitors. Representatives may act as assassins, messengers, spies, and couriers, frightening off investigators and bulking out confrontations. In comparison, Outer Gods and Great Old Ones should be met with exceedingly infrequently.

Independent Races

Other alien species are also important, and sometimes have been able to hold their own against Great Old Ones. The independent races vary in power, and some are extinct. They are intimately connected with our planet, as described in “At the Mountains of Madness” and “The Shadow Out of Time”. In these stories Lovecraft gives the true history of the Earth. Some species, such as dholes or flying polyps, make no association with particular gods or else, as with elder things and the Great Race, take no special interest in magic. Whether one is greater or lesser seems to depend on the relative danger posed by the average individual.

At the dawn of the Cambrian age, beings known only as the elder things flew to the Earth. They inhabited much of the land, warred with other species, and finally were pushed back to Antarctica. The elder things, perhaps by mistake, bred organisms eventually to evolve into the dinosaurs, mammals, and humanity. They also bred the horrible shoggoths, whose ultimate revolt led to the near-extinction of the elder things.

Eons ago, indigenous cone-shaped beings had their minds taken over by the Great Race of Yith, mental beings from the stars. The Great Race survived in their adopted bodies until about 50 million years ago, when they were defeated by terrible flying polyps not native to this Earth, which the Great Race had imprisoned in vast caverns beneath the surface. However, the Great Race had already transmitted their minds forward in time to escape their doom.

The star-spawn of Cthulhu came down upon the Earth and conquered a vast reach of land in the primordial Pacific Ocean, but were trapped when it sank beneath the surface.

The beings referred to as the fungi from Yuggoth (or mi-go) established their first bases on the Earth in the Jurassic period, about a hundred million years ago. They gradually reduced their bases to the tops of certain mountains, where they maintain mining colonies and such.

Dozens of other races also participated in this antediluvian parade, such as the serpent people who built cities and a civilization in the Permian, before the dinosaurs had evolved, and a winged race which succeeded the Great Race of Yith. Even species from Earth’s future are mentioned, such as the beetle-like organisms which succeed man, and the intelligent arachnids who are prophesied to be the last intelligent life on Earth, billions of years hence.

At present, humans share the planet with deep ones and ghouls (which seem related to humanity in some fashion), and with a handful of mi-go. Other species occasionally visit Earth, or are sleeping, or are dormant.

Dustin O'Chaosium

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