Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia

by Daniel Harms

  SHAGGAI (also CHAG-HAI?)

  World of two emerald suns from which the shan, or insects from Shaggai, first came. Some say that it is the same as Planet X or Pluto’s moon Charon, but it seems more likely that it irregularly orbits a binary star system in the Andromeda galaxy.

  A rocky inhospitable world with little light, life sensitive to radiation eventually evolved on Shaggai, covering the world with black seas of protoplasm and tremendous jungles filled with carnivorous molds. Large green pyramids attest to the presence of a spacefaring race that worshiped Azathoth before the rise of a native species, the shan or insects from Shaggai. The shan reared huge cities of globular dwellings and conical or pyramidal temples to Azathoth. From their home world, the insects colonized many of the nearby planets, but the majority of the shan remained on Shaggai up until its destruction.

  A strange celestial object (perhaps Ghroth the Harbinger) destroyed this world more than eight hundred years ago. The insects discovered a glowing red body in their sky, moving slowly nearer. Three days later, the object reached Shaggai and annihilated that world in a holocaust of light and flame. Only the shan who were in the teleporting temples of Azathoth or on the otherworldly colonies escaped the ruin of their home planet.

  See Book of Eibon; Glaaki; Massa di Requiem per Shuggay; shan; Xiclotl. (“The Insects from Shaggai”, Campbell; “Shaggai”, Carter; Delta Green: Countdown, Detwiller et. al.; “The Haunter of the Dark”, Lovecraft (O); “The Throne of Achamoth”, Tierney and Price; “Planetfall on Yuggoth”, Wade.)

  SHAGGOTHS

  See shoggoths.

  SHAMBALLAH (or SHAMBHALA)

  City built fifty million years ago by Lemurians in the Great Eastern Desert (probably meaning the Gobi). It still remains there, protected behind a screen of psychic power. The wizard-priest Zanthu of Mu fled to the lands near this city when his home continent sank beneath the waves, and a copy of the Book of Dzyan may be found in the archives here.

  [Buddhist thought places Shamballah in many different places. Some hold that when the entire world is engulfed in warfare, humanity’s savior shall come forth from Shamballah. Lovecraft’s usage derived from Theosophical literature.]

  (“The Thing in the Pit”, Carter; Selected Letters IV, Lovecraft (O); “The Diary of Alonzo Typer”, Lovecraft and Lumley; “The Return of the Lloigor”, Wilson.)

  SHAN (also INSECTS FROM SHAGGAI)

  Species of insects about the size of a bird. They differ from earthly insects in that they have ten legs, a set of feelers below their three mouths, and tentacles sprouting from their legs. The shan are entirely photosynthetic, deriving their nourishment from their sun’s rays, and possess the ability to physically enter and inhabit organic matter.

  The shan originally came from the world of Shaggai, where they evolved the ability to imbibe electromagnetic radiation and thereby exploit their inhospitable environment through an unusual life cycle. Hermaphroditic, shan would mate to fertilize an egg sac. Once hatched, the larvae devoured both the parent and the other larvae, with the survivors dwelling in the oceans until they developed the ability to nourish themselves directly from radiation. Having reached adulthood, a shan could anticipate several centuries of life.

  Possessing three brains and the ability to make tools, the shan rapidly acquired civilization. They lived in grey, globular buildings and worshiped Azathoth in conical metal temples. They conquered the surrounding worlds, with any prisoners taken being used either as slaves or for the insects’ entertainment. The shan were also known as mighty wizards, who were mentioned in the ancient writings only with the greatest abhorrence. It is said that one of the greatest secrets of the Pnakotic Manuscript dealt with something these insects summoned and were forced to imprison within their world.

  When Shaggai was destroyed, the shan were not all killed. They had already colonized several nearby worlds, and the temples of Azathoth were able to teleport away from Shaggai. In this way, many insects escaped destruction.

  The shan have spent many years in exile. The activities of only one group are known, but if this hive’s journeys are any indication, the insects have travelled extensively through space. The group previously mentioned travelled between many worlds, hopping from Shaggai to Xiclotl, then to Thuggon, next to L’ghyx, and finally to Earth. (It is rumored that some had come earlier and been responsible for the building of the pyramids of Egypt before leaving again.) On their final stop, in the woods near the Severn River Valley in 1643, the shan became trapped, as the atmosphere contains an element preventing their temples from teleporting.

  It was then that these earth-bound shan became involved with humanity. They found it possible to physically merge with the brains of humans, thereby infiltrating a group of fugitive Protestants hiding from the authorities. By doing so, they built up a cult dedicated to Azathoth, using their mind control to induce feelings of elation upon their hosts, as well as producing visions which revealed the history and discoveries of the insects to the worshipers. The famous witch-hunter Matthew Hopkins destroyed this cult, and now the shan have no known agents on Earth. Their encounter with the writer Ronald Shea in 1964 revealed to them that humanity was close to space flight, so their interest in our species might be rekindled.

  Even before they left Shaggai, the shan were extremely decadent. Their primary form of entertainment is the torture of their many slave races, making use of curious devices powered by psychic waves.

  See Azathoth; Colour out of Space; L’gy’hx; Revelations of Glaaki; seed of Azathoth; Shaggai; Thuggon; Xada-Hgla; Xiclotl. (“The Insects from Shaggai”, Campbell (O); Delta Green: Countdown, Detwiller et. al.; “The Queen”, Sammarco.)

  SHANTAKS

  Creatures of the Dreamlands that resemble tremendous scaled birds with the heads of horses. Shantaks live in the mountains near to the Plateau of Leng, and have been known to aid the people of that place at times. Some say that these creatures also dwell on other planets in our own dimension, constructing the huge stone towers found in Zimbabwe.

  The shantaks serve Nyarlathotep, Groth-Golka, or the Wendigo. They may act as mounts, though the monster might ignore its rider’s commands and attempt to bear its rider to Azathoth’s court. They are known to fear nightgaunts, a fact that those wishing to avoid them should consider.

  See Fishers from Outside; Gol-goroth; Quumyagga. (“The Fishers from Outside”, Carter; “The Seal of R’lyeh”, Derleth; “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, Lovecraft (O).)

  SHARNOTH

  World beyond the universe that holds the court of Nyarlathotep. Those seeking it in the sky should look in the middle of five stars in the constellation Gemini. A formula from Tartary that involves inscribing five concentric flaming circles about the wizard will allow the user to travel here. Although all things may there be learned, the cost is great.

  (“Darkest Calling”, Conyers; “The Black Tome of Alsophocus”, Lovecraft and Warnes (O).)

  SHATHAK (also CHUSAX and ZISHAIK)

  Wife of the Great Old One Tsathoggua and mother of Ossadogwah. Her origins are unknown.

  See Tsathoggua. (“The Parchments of Pnom”, Smith (O).)

  SHINING TRAPEZOHEDRON (also CRYSTAL OF CHAOS)

  Artifact used in the worship of the Haunter of the Dark avatar of Nyarlathotep.

  The Shining Trapezohedron antedates most earthly life. A species of crustaceans that predated the mi-go created the artifact and brought it to earth. After a great war, the Elder Things destroyed its original owners and placed the Trapezohedron in a box of their own design, using its power to destroy the shoggoths during the rebellion. The serpent people brought it to Valusia, where they learned the secrets of illusion from it before one of that race bore it away to Lemuria to escape the constant infighting over the object. After some time on Lemuria, it came back to Atlantis in the keeping of King Kull, who used its power for his own ends but later cast it into the ocean. A Minoan fisherman found the artifact in his nets and sold it to the pharaoh Nephren-Ka, who kept
it in the labyrinths of Kish, where Nitocris later found and used it.

  The Trapezohedron remained at Kish until 1844, when Professor Enoch Bowen’s archaeological dig unearthed it. The professor bore it back to his home in Providence, Rhode Island, where it became the sacred object of the Starry Wisdom cult. Following the cult’s dissolution in 1877, the Trapezohedron remained in the deserted Starry Wisdom church until 1935, when events connected with its disturbance prompted a local doctor to bear the artifact away and cast it into Narragansett Bay. It is believed that someday the Trapezohedron will be brought out of the waters and form the focus for a new Starry Wisdom cult.

  The Trapezohedron may be used in many ways. It serves as a window in which one may gaze on all time and space. If someone gazes at the Trapezohedron for any length of time and then plunges the item into darkness, Nyarlathotep’s Haunter of the Dark aspect will manifest itself nearby. It maintains a link with the gazer, seeking to possess his or her body and thereby remain in our world. The Trapezohedron’s last power is to accelerate any bodily metamorphosis, such as Deep One transformation which may be taking place in its viewer.

  Some have connected the Shining Trapezohedron with the magical stone known to alchemists as “Azoth”, Doctor John Dee’s shewstone through which he communicated with the angels, and the curious angles found in many haunted houses and temples.

  See Bowen, Enoch; Black Tome of Alsophocus; Dexter, Ambrose; Hounds of Tindalos; Kish; Nephren-Ka; Necronomicon (appendices); Nitocris; Nyarlathotep (Haunter of the Dark); Starry Wisdom; Yuggoth. (“Coming of Age”, Ballon; Strange Eons, Bloch; The Satanic Rituals, LaVey; “The Haunter of the Dark”, Lovecraft (O); “The Mirror of Nitocris”, Lumley; Other Nations, Marsh and Marsh; “The Prying Investigations of Edwin M. Lillibridge”, Price.)

  SHINY, ALBERT

  Most famous of the shoggoth lords. The lords are the next stage in shoggoth evolution – smaller, more intelligent creatures able to maintain their shapes and masquerade as humans. As a research scientist and doctor, Shiny works toward the return of the Old Ones.

  (“Where a God Shall Tread”, Aniolowski, Isinwyll, and Hike (O); Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game, Cook and Tynes.)

  SHOGGOTHS (also SHAGGOTHS)

  Entities created by the Elder Things as a servitor race billions of years ago. These beings were enormous black masses covered with whatever sensory organs and appendages their masters required. Shoggoths did not age and had astounding regenerative capabilities only slowed by extreme cold. These creatures were immensely strong and easily taught through hypnosis, building the great underwater stone cities of the Elder Things.

  After millions of years serving the Elder Things, the shoggoths had become more intelligent and contemptuous of their taskmasters. This discontent turned into rebellion in the Permian period 150 million years ago. Though the shoggoths were initially successful, the Elder Things suppressed the rebellion, re-trained the shoggoths, and continued to use them with more caution. During the insurrection, the shoggoth proved themselves able to survive out of water, but the Elder Things discouraged such adaptation. When the Elder Things departed the cold Antarctic for their last underwater city, it is believed they took their shoggoths with them.

  There have been some reports of shoggoth sightings in other places than in their normal Antarctic habitat (such as the Vale of Pnath), but thankfully these have been very rare. It is rumored that the deep ones make use of shoggoths in their schemes, and others of their kind protect the tomb of Cthulhu. Some cults, at least in the past, kept shoggoths in great underground pits and used them for initiations and disposing of enemies.

  Variant forms of shoggoths have sometimes been reported. Some of these have been more fixed in a particular shape, though their voracity and hardiness remain the same. After the decline of the Elder Ones, the mi-go in the Himalayas once bred a strain of shoggoths combined with their own genetic material. These ghols, as they were called, proved just as intractable as their ancestors, and the mi-go were forced to confine them in secret caverns.

  A breed known as the shoggoth lords has also come into prominence lately. Smaller and more intelligent than their fellows, they have enough control over their protoplasmic forms to imitate humans, and some have already infiltrated our cultures. Reports suggest that these are even more adept at changing shape than the larger ones, with at least one occasion of a lord forming wings. Another strain, once subjected to a rite requiring a pint of blood taken from a person every month for a year, can precisely imitate the donor.

  Kenneth Grant has linked the shoggoths with the Hebrew term, “beth shaggathai”, or house of fornication. This, along with Alhazred’s denial that shoggoths existed on earth save in drug-induced hallucinations, should impress upon the reader the foulness of these monsters.

  See Cult of the Skull; Elder Things; Ghooric Zone; Ibn-Ghazi; proto-shoggoths; Shining Trapezohedron; Shiny, Albert; Ubbo-Sathla; yuggs. (“A Case of Royal Blood”, Altman; “Weapon Grade”, Conyers; “Perilous Legacy”, DeBill; Nightside of Eden, Grant; “At the Mountains of Madness”, Lovecraft (O); “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, Lovecraft; “The Transition of Titus Crow”, Lumley; A Guide to the Cthulhu Cult, Pelton; “Fat Face”, Shea; “Not What One Does”, Sunseri and Henderson; “Tomb of the Old Ones”, Wilson.)

  SHONHI (also STRONTI)

  Transgalactic world that the people of Yaddith visited often.

  [Uncorrected texts of Lovecraft’s stories (and Carter’s fiction) render this name as “Stronti”, but re-examination of the manuscript has confirmed the spelling “Shonhi.”]

  (“The Gathering-Place”, Carter; “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”, Lovecraft and Price (O).)

  SHREWSBURY, LABAN (1864–1938?)

  Miskatonic University professor of philosophy and anthropologist. Shrewsbury was born in Wisconsin, but spent much of his life in Arkham, where he occasionally taught at Miskatonic University. Professor Shrewsbury made himself a controversial figure with the publication of his first book, An Investigation into the Myth-Patterns of Latter-Day Primitives with Especial Reference to the R’lyeh Text. In 1915, shortly after the release of his book, Shrewsbury disappeared while walking upon a country lane near his hometown. He was given up for dead, and his collected notes on the latter nineteenth century were printed under the title Cthulhu among the Victorians.

  Twenty years after he had vanished, the professor reappeared, giving no account as to where he had been. Having taken up residence once again in Arkham, he began work on his next book, Cthulhu in the Necronomicon. Sadly, the professor never completed this volume. A mysterious fire gutted Shrewsbury’s house in 1938; the professor was presumed dead in the blaze. It is believed that he worked with the OSS during the Second World War but vanished mysteriously once again. A person of the same name, however, was teaching at Miskatonic University as late as 1987.

  The first section of Shrewsbury’s Cthulhu in the Necronomicon was published posthumously, and the Celaeno Fragments, a manuscript he transcribed, remains in the vaults of Miskatonic University.

  See Boyd, Claiborne; Celaeno; Celaeno Fragments; Cthulhu among the Victorians; Cthulhu in the Necronomicon; elemental theory; An Investigation into the Myth-Patterns…; Nameless City; Necronomicon (appendices); Phelan, Andrew; R’lyeh Text. (Cthulhu by Gaslight, Barton; “The House on Curwen Street”, Derleth (O); Keeper’s Compendium, Herber; Other Nations, Marsh and Marsh; “Stacked Actors”, Worthy.)

  SHUB-NIGGURATH (also THE BLACK GOAT OF THE WOODS WITH A THOUSAND YOUNG or SHUPNIKKURAT or possibly ISHNIGARRAB)

  Outer God of fertility. In the few times it has been summoned, Shub-Niggurath appeared as a great noxious cloud from which hoofed feet and tendrils constantly protruded and were re-absorbed. In the city of Harag-Kolath, it might appear as a dark bulk with myriad eyes. Shub-Niggurath has also assumed the shape of a cloaked figure whose face was hidden, but this was only an isolated instance.

  The residence of Shub-Niggurath remains a mystery. One location that has
been hypothesized is the planet Yaddith, beneath the surface of which it resides with her dhole servitors. Others insist that the Black Goat of the Woods came to earth, building the city Harag-Kolath in a cavern beneath southern Arabia where it awaits the coming of its mate Hastur. (One source maintains that it lives beneath Mount Voormithadreth, but the description of it provided is much closer to that of Abhoth.) It is also possible that Shub-Niggurath remains at the court of Azathoth or even in another dimension entirely. Nonetheless, it may be called in any woodland with a properly consecrated altar during a new moon, especially on May-Eve.

  Shub-Niggurath is usually referred to as female, but has also been known by the title “Ram with a Thousand Ewes.” One reference in the Cthaat Aquadingen says that the Outer God is both male and female. It is likely that Shub-Niggurath signifies the cosmic principle of fertility and childbearing, and attaching sex to any of the Outer Gods is problematic at best.

  Shub-Niggurath’s cults may be the most widespread of any Mythos entity. It is known to have been worshiped by the Tcho-tchos, Hyperboreans, Muvians, Greeks, Cretans, Egyptians, Druids, and the people of Sarnath, as well as by the fungi from Yuggoth, the dholes, and the Nug-Soth of Yaddith. Sicily was a stronghold of Shub-Niggurath’s cult during the ninth century, and the secret rites performed to it in its guise of Artemis of Ephesus are matters of legend. Others worshiped it in the guise of the Norse Heid and the Greek Hecate, and it may also have been propitiated in the guise of the Great Earth Mother around the world. For those who serve it, Shub-Niggurath bestows bountiful harvests and many children to its worshipers in exchange for blood sacrifices. Some authors’ references to Shub-Niggurath (including Ludwig Prinn) assert that there is some similarity between her bodily structure and our own, but the significance of this is uncertain.