What follows is a study of the Great Race of Yith, or Yithians. Of all the Mythos races, they are one of the most alien.HISTORY
In elder times, the Great Race lived upon a transgalactic planet called Yith. Little is known of that planet, or of the form that the Great Race took there. The first civilization of the Great Race must have lasted for many aeons, for it was able to make greater technological advances than any other. Eventually, the Yithians even conquered the dimension of time.
There was a day, after many millennia, when doom came to Yith. It left the planet a blackened shell, floating in the sky. But the Yithians did not perish with their homeworld. Instead, they used their mechanical mastery of time to transfer their minds across space and time. They exchanged minds with a cone-like race which was inhabiting Earth over fifty million years before the birth of man. The original intelligences of their new bodies were displaced across the universe, to face a cold, lonely death on Yith.
The cone-beings had a rudimentary intelligence. For ages, they had been enslaved by the flying polyps, a race of utterly alien creatures, never fully visible, and perhaps not even of our universe. With their advanced technology, the Great Race was able to develop the lightning gun, a weapon of peculiar power against the polyps. They used these weapons to drive the dreaded polyps from their basalt cities, into vaults deep beneath the earth.
With these enemies imprisoned, the Great Race began to construct a new civilization. They built cities across the world, the greatest of which was Pnakotos, deep in the heart of the land that would one day become Australia. The goal of this new civilization was learning, and so the Yithians created the greatest libraries the world would ever know. Using their devices of time travel, the Great Race displaced their intelligences throughout all time and space, and began to gather together everything that could and would ever be known in the universe.
The new world of the Great Race was not an entirely peaceful one: Star spawn, elder things, and the mi-go all inhabited Earth as well, and occasionally the Great Race would war against them. However, the Great Race did not truly fear any of these beings; there was only one thing that the Great Race truly feared. From their studies of the future, the Yithians knew that one day the flying polyps would burst forth from their underground tombs and utterly destroy Yithian civilization.
When that day of Armageddon finally came, the Great Race was ready. As one, they transferred their intellects once more, this time into Earth's far future, where they inhabited the bodies of the mighty race of beetles that will follow man upon the Earth. The minds of the beetles where left in the bodies of the cone-beings, helplessly facing the doom of the Polyps.
When Earth's span comes to an end, the Great Race will migrate again, this time to the bodies of the bulbous vegetable entities who inhabit Mercury.
The Great Race in the Modern World
The Great Race has little physical presence in the modern world. They lived aeons ago, and will live again aeons in the future, but they do not exist in the present.
Only twice has the Great Race been known physically to invade the present.
In the 1920's, a Yithian named Kakakatak was physically brought forward through time by means of a very powerful cultist spell. His presence was involuntary, a mere accident.
In the 1960's, a group of Yithians physically transferred their cone-bodies to the present, and then took the form of artificial men. The exact purpose of these Yithians is unknown, though invasion has been suggested. Due to their differing technology, it seems likely that they did not come from the same prehistoric Earthly time where most mind-transferring Yithians originate.
There are typically a few Great Race members mentally present in the modern world. They have transferred their minds through time, temporarily displacing modern intelligences in order to learn more of our present. Several recorded cases of this Yithian mental contact occur every century. They are usually marked by changes in behavior, when the Yithian first possesses its victim, followed by amnesia, when it leaves. The Great Race tends to wipe the memory of their victims' stays in the distant past, lest we learn too much of them.
All known transfers seem to originate at the beginning of history, when the Great Race inhabited the cone-like beings. Whether the methods of the Great Race changed or became more subtle after they inhabited the beetles and the Mercurians is unknown.
A cult of Yithian sympathizers is known to operate in the present. They aid Yithians when they transfer into our age, and do not seem reluctant to murder if they feel it will help protect the secrets of the Great Race. What benefit they derive from this symbiosis is not understood at this time.
Modern adventurers may also stumble across the ruins of the prehistoric civilization of the Great Race. Their books were printed on a sturdy paper and stored in metal boxes. Miraculously, they have survived the ages. In the ruins of Pnakotos or other cities of the Great Race, modern men may find huge stores of books and ancient technology far beyond our own. The Pnakotic Manuscipts is one of the greatest tomes of the Yithians.
BIOLOGY
In essence, the Yithians are mental beings. They abandoned their original bodies long ago and are now roving intelligences, serially possessing the bodies of others as they move across space and time. Even when possessing material bodies, they still maintain some mental and telepathic powers.
The Great Race is probably most associated with the cone-like beings which they possessed during prehistory. Little is known of the intelligence that once possessed the cone-beings, other than the fact that it was of a fairly rudimentary sort.
The cone-beings seem to possess the most definitive aspects of both the animal and plant kingdoms. They are roughly ten feet tall, and are ten feet wide at the base. The body rises cone-like to its apex. Extending from the apex are four separate semi-elastic appendages. Each of these appendages can stretch up to ten feet out. When not in use, they are usually about five feet long and hang limply.
Two of the appendages, located across from each other, end in claws. These are used primarily for lifting and grasping. They are not capable of great dexterity. A third appendage ends in a set of four strange trumpet-like shapes. These are the orifices which the cone-beings use to ingest food. The cone-beings typically subsist on a nutritional, pasty, semifluid substance. The fourth appendage contains the cone-being's sensory array. At the end of this appendage is a circular globe containing three eyes. Four flower-like tendrils extend above the head, providing the cone-being with a sense of hearing. Extending below the head are eight short green tentacles. These semi-elastic tentacles are highly dextrous, and are used by the cone-beings for fine manipulation.
The skin of the cone-beings is wrinkled and ridged. An iridescent rainbow of colors tends to play across the skin, changing as it moves. The ridges in a cone-being's skin are hard to the touch, though there is some give in the flesh between the ridges. The cone-beings rest upon a ventral muscular foot, similar to that of Gastropoda. It is used for locomotion and reproduction.
The cells of the cone-beings have a hyperactive regenerative cycle. Fatigue rarely affects the cone-beings, and they never need to sleep. Further, these bodies are able to live for thousands of years.
TECHNOLOGY
The technology of the Great Race of Yith is nothing short of amazing. It is one of the most highly advanced in the entire universe. In fact, the Great Race are named such because of their singular claim to have conquered time. For unknown reasons, the bestial hounds of Tindalos seem willing to allow this race alone to traverse the angles of time.
They are very adaptive, able to meet any new problem head-on, and quickly invent technology to combat it. The rapid development of the lightning gun to defeat the menace of the flying polyps is an adequate demonstration of this quality.
The Yithians have a great understanding of physiology and are able to construct devices to affect all parts of the body, even the mind. Although they have not been able to defeat entropy, they have built devices which operate on the scantiest ergs of power. Many Yithian devices are large and clunky, but given the right materials and sufficient need, Yithians are also able to construct devices of intricate nanotechnology.
Even with the primitive materials of the modern day, Great Race visitors can construct devices hundreds of years in advance of our own technology.
SOCIETY
The society of the Great Race is one of socialist intellectuals.
Intelligence is greatly valued, and is the main criterion the Great Race have used in choosing who will immigrate to the next bodies. As a result, the societies of the cone-beings and onward have been almost solely those of philosophers and scientists. These intelligent minds are able to come together to decide any questions which face them.
Being a socialist society, everything is shared equally among the Yithians. If something is needed by a certain Yithian, he takes it, with the blessings of his kin.
CULTS
The Great Race worship no known god.
CALL OF CTHULHU ADVENTURES
1. From Beyond - Each time the Great Race's society has fallen toward a final doom, the best and the brightest were chosen to travel onward, displacing another race in a distant time. What happens to those who are left behind? Are they content to live out their final days on a dying world, or do they want something more? In the Earth of the present, a new epidemic hits. Numerous people undergo sudden personality changes and leave behind their past lives. This is the result of an invasion from ancient Yith. These are not the philosopher Yithians which the investigators may be familiar with, but instead are ancient rebels unwilling to die with their world.
Only by allying with the Yithians at the beginning of time will the investigators be able to fight off this invasion. Finding a way to get word to the ancient past should be an adventure in itself, and then the investigators must still convince the cone-beings it's in their best interest to help.
2. The Philosopher - The investigators gain a new patron, a peculiar philosopher who has the most outrageous views of the universe. What they do not realize is that he is actually a Yithian philosopher come back in time from the far-flung future in which they have possessed the race of beetles. He has gained new knowledge and a new understanding of the world in that future time, and seeks to use the investigators to further his own end. He believes that he has found a way to immortalize the universe, by forever staving off the entropy of the Great Old Ones and Elder Gods. While this goal seems a sympathetic one, the human species is an insignificant speck, and the philosopher's plans may just call for its destruction as well. He is an ultimately alien intelligence.
3. The Cult - The modern-day Yithian cult could be used for any number of adventures. The most obvious involve them working against the investigators if they try to reveal too much about the Great Race, or if they are working against the interests of a member of this time-jumping species. A more humorous encounter could occur if the cult falsely believes that a Yithian has possessed one of the investigators.
NEPHILIM ADVENTURES
Although it's not a game about the Mythos, some of the concepts centered on the Great Race of Yith just beg to be exploited in a Nephilim game. Nephilim, after all, are mental beings who jump across space to inhabit bodies. The Yithians are mental beings who jump across not just space, but also time.
Could Yithian-like beings be the next stage of evolution for the Nephilim? Perhaps they are Agarthans, Nephilim possessing Temporal Ka, or something else? Might there be a malevolent race of beings able to jump through time, and displace even Nephilim?
SOURCES
"The Shadow Out of Time", by H. P. Lovecraft
"The Dark Brotherhood", by August Derleth
The Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep, by Larry DiTillio & Lynn Willis
The Fungi from Yuggoth, by Keith Herber
This article was drawn from Starry Wisdom V1 #2, Spring 1997. To regularly receive the newest Starry Wisdom magazine, join the Cult of Chaos