Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia

by Daniel Harms

  The forest near Goatswood also has an evil reputation. In the 17th century, a coven met in a clearing there, where they worshiped a stone which had fallen from the sky. After a while, the people of the surrounding countryside grew nervous about this activity and called in Matthew Hopkins, the infamous witch-hunter, who put all of the coven’s members to death.

  Goatswood may have been destroyed in a government raid in 1968, though others maintain it has survived.

  See Glaaki; moon-lens. (“The Church in High Street”, Campbell (O); “The Insects from Shaggai”, Campbell; “The Moon-Lens”, Campbell; “The Curate of Temphill”, Cannon and Price; Delta Green: Countdown, Detwiller et. al.)

  GOD OF THE BLOODY TONGUE

  See Nyarlathotep (God of the Bloody Tongue.)

  GODDESS OF THE BLACK FAN

  Book in classical Chinese, and the central tome for Nyarlathotep’s Cult of the Bloated Woman. The book is a series of poems by the monk Liu Chan-fang, detailing his liaison with the Bloated Woman and the hideous outcome, causing him to write the last poem in his blood after gutting himself with a sickle. A copy is in the hands of the cult’s leaders.

  See Nyarlathotep (Bloated Woman). (“Shanghai,” DiTillio and Willis (O).)

  GODS OF EARTH (also GREAT ONES)

  Weak deities of the Dreamlands who listen to the prayers of humanity. The gods of Earth appear much like humans, but their pointed chins, long-lobed ears, and thin noses set them apart from mortals. At times, these beings come down from their home atop Kadath to mate with human women to create demigods. It is said that wherever the features of the gods are most prominent among the people, Kadath must surely be nearby. For the most part, the Great Ones are weak and forgetful, but their attention is greatly preferable to that of the Other Gods that protect them.

  According to one author, the Great Ones are in fact the Elder Gods. Instead of defeating the Great Old Ones, these Elder Gods arrived from Betelgeuse and found the Great Old Ones already sleeping. The Elder Gods placed their seal upon their tombs and entrusted their care to Nodens. When the Great Old Ones awaken, however, the Elder Gods will be powerless to protect humanity.

  See Barzai; Elder Gods; gugs; Kadath; Nasht and Kaman-Tha; Nath-Horthath; Nyarlathotep; Ubbo-Sathla. (“The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, Lovecraft; “The Other Gods”, Lovecraft (O); “The House of the Worm”, Myers.)

  GOF’NN HUPADGH SHUB-NIGGURATH

  Term applied to worshipers of Shub-Niggurath whom the goddess has found especially worthy of her favor. In a special ceremony, the Black Goat of the Woods devours the cultist, transmogrifies him or her, and regurgitates his or her new form. Following this ceremony, the person may have sprouted horns, the feet of the goat, claw-like hands, or even less human characteristics. The change also “blesses” the victim with virtual immortality. It was sightings of these transformed worshipers that inspired the classical legends of satyrs, dryads, and other fantastic sylvan creatures. Some claim that these beings have become more active in recent years, starting their own cults around the world and interacting on a limited basis with humans.

  See Shub-Niggurath. (“The Moon-Lens”, Campbell (O); Cthulhu Live: Lost Souls, Salmon et. al.)

  GOL-GOROTH

  God of darkness known as the “forgotten Old One”. He is described as a being with tentacles, scales, and ribbed wings. It is likely that Gol-Goroth presents itself in different forms to different observers.

  The people of Bal-Sagoth, a city located on an isle in the Atlantic Ocean, once worshiped Gol-goroth. At every rising and setting of the moon, the god’s priests sacrificed a victim and placed the heart upon its altar. Likewise, he was revered in Stygia in a domed temple overseen by Koth-Serapis.

  A variant species of winged deep ones known as the Golgors serves Gol-Goroth.

  [The first publication of “The Fishers from Outside” made Gol-Goroth the leader of the shantaks, ascribing many of the traits of Groth-Golka to him. Robert M. Price has since edited that story for continuity.]

  See Antarktos; Bal-Sagoth; Koth-Serapis; Stygia. (“Free the Old Ones”, Henderson; “Kolchak: The Night Stalker: The Lovecraftian Horror”, Henderson; “The Children of the Night”, Howard (O); “The Gods of Bal-Sagoth”, Howard; “Dagon Manor”, Howard and Henderson; “Black Eons”, Howard and Price.)

  GOLDEN GOBLIN PRESS

  New York publishing house founded by Samuel and John Addleton in 1908 and named after a small statuette of Native American manufacture that one of the brothers owned. When founded, their intention was to republish the out of print works that they had used in composing their never-completed opera based on the history of the world. The most famous of these were von Junzt’s Nameless Cults (1909) and Bayrolles’ translation of Revelations of Hali (1913). The publishing house is believed to have closed during World War One, but restarted in Philadelphia a decade later, putting out such books as C. A. Smith’s The Dream of the Spider and the Awakening (1931) and Wingate Peaslee’s The Shadow out of Time (1936). Its most infamous work was The Dream-Script of Yeg’lalanoth, which a judge ordered to be burnt. The publishing house was still putting out books as recently as 1988.

  (“The History of Von Unaussprechlichen Kulten”, Harris; “The Black Stone”, Howard (O); S. Petersen’s Guide to Creatures of the Dreamlands, Petersen et. al.; S. Petersen’s Guide to Cthulhu Monsters, Petersen et. al., “The Skull: A History”, Webb.)

  GORDON, EDGAR HENQUIST

  Author of several horror tales, including “Gargoyle” and “The Principle of Evil.” While Gordon’s work did receive some attention earlier in his career, soon his morbid choice of subjects drove away most publishers and readers. Due to this bias, his first novel Night-Gaunt was a failure. Gordon was forced to publish The Soul of Chaos and three other novels himself. After a while, Gordon disappeared and has not been heard of since.

  (“The Dark Demon”, Bloch (O).)

  GRAY WEAVERS

  Servants of Atlach-Nacha who drink the souls of their victim. Their leader is Tch’tkaa.

  (“The Descent into the Abyss”, Carter and Smith (O); “Rede of the Gray Weavers”, Schwader.)

  GREAT ABYSS

  Region beneath Sarkomand which Nodens is said to rule. Its people have never seen the sun and consider the moon and stars to be myths.

  In another context, Kenneth Grant uses this term to mean the hypothetical space which separates humans from the true knowledge of the true universe, or the human subconscious. Consequently, Nodens’ role as the “Lord of the Great Abyss” may be more important to humanity than has been previously thought.

  See nightgaunts; Nodens; Sarkomand; Yog-Sothoth. (Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God, Grant; “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”, Lovecraft; “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, Lovecraft; “The Strange High House in the Mist”, Lovecraft (O); “The Summons of Nuguth-Yug”, Myers and Laidlaw.)

  GREAT OLD ONES (also OLD ONES, CHTHONIOI or CTHULHU CYCLE DEITIES)

  Ultrapowerful alien beings that have mastery over technology, magic, or some combination of the two. The Great Old Ones seem almost godlike in power, but are still subject to certain laws of nature. The physical appearances and individual abilities of the Great Old Ones may vary widely, but they seem to share several characteristics such as telepathy, great size, and a limited area to which they are confined.

  Millions of years ago, Great Old Ones came down from the stars to take up residence on Earth. (The Great Old Ones probably inhabit many other worlds like ours, and thus the large number of these beings who dwell here may not be a unique condition.) Few decipherable records of this period survive. It was during this time that Cthulhu, the mightiest of the Great Old Ones, ordered his spawn to construct the city of R’lyeh on a continent in the Pacific.

  After thousands or millions of years, a great change occurred. The true cause of this alteration remains a mystery, though scholars have developed two theories. The first hypothesis is that the Great Old Ones were at one time members or servants of beings titl
ed the Elder Gods. The Great Old Ones committed a horrid crime against these beings. Perhaps they practiced black magic, or stole the Elder God’s sacred records, or even attacked the home of the Elder Gods themselves. Whatever the reason, the Elder Gods cast out the Great Old Ones and imprisoned them in various places on Earth, in the stars, and even in other dimensions. Having done this, the Elder Gods returned to their home near the star Glyu-Uho, leaving the Great Old Ones within their prisons. There will come a time, though, when the Great Old Ones will break free of the strictures imposed by the Elder Gods, and they will come forth from their jails to challenge the supremacy of their captors once again.

  The second theory states that the Great Old Ones’ restrictions have been self-imposed for some unguessable purpose. If this is true, however, we are left to wonder why they would do such a thing as a group. A related theory favored by this author holds that, as the earth has its seasons, the cosmos has its cycles. As certain animals hibernate during winter, many of the Great Old Ones have gone into a long, deathlike slumber. For millennia they have dreamt in their tombs, awaiting the time when they will come forth again to conquer the world. For it shall be as the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred wrote:

  That is not dead which can eternal lie,

  And with strange aeons even death may die.

  When humanity first came into being, the dream-sendings of the Great Old Ones reached many of its members. Although some of these telepathic messages may have been distorted, creating the legends of the imprisoned titans and of sleeping heroes in many different mythologies, some clear visions managed to get through to especially sensitive humans. These chosen ones began a number of cults on earth dedicated to the Great Old Ones. With the aid of the “Lesser Old Ones,” alien creatures which do not sleep as their masters do but possess more limited power, these cults hope to reawaken the Great Old Ones so that their gods may be free once more and they shall receive the rewards, real or imaginary, of their labors. Other evidence, however, suggests that the earth will be “cleared off” and made completely uninhabitable before the Old Ones’ return.

  More Great Old Ones exist than can be fully detailed in this entry, but a few of the more important ones are listed below. Great Cthulhu, the octopoid lord of the corpse-city of R’lyeh, sleeps yet beneath the Pacific Ocean. The toad-thing Tsathoggua drowses in the lightless caverns of N’kai. Hastur, Lord of the Interstellar Spaces, may dwell in outer space or might be imprisoned within the Lake of Hali, somewhere near Aldebaran. Ithaqua, the source of the northern Native American’s legends of the Wendigo, is confined to the cold regions of our own planet and other worlds. Though some Great Old Ones might be free, the majority of these beings remain in their lengthy slumber.

  The Great Old Ones are sometimes distinguished from the Outer Gods, which includes such entities as Shub-Niggurath, Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, and Yog-Sothoth. Though the Great Old Ones have some limited power, the Outer Gods seem to represent personified cosmic forces, such as chaos and fertility, and are almost unlimited in range and ability. It should be noted, however, that some confusion may exist over the category in which a given creature should be placed, and many scholars classify both as “Great Old One”.

  [In “The Call of Cthulhu”, the term “Great Old Ones” referred to Cthulhu’s spawn, while in “At the Mountains of Madness”, it was another name for the Elder Things. Subsequent authors have dropped both of these definitions and now use “Great Old Ones” for the beings listed above.]

  See Aklo; Ancient Ones; Atlach-Nacha; Black Brotherhood; Book of Thoth; Borea; Broken Columns of Geph; Brothers of the Yellow Sign; Bugg-Shash; Byatis; Celaeno; Chaugnar Faugn; Cthugha; Cthulhu; Cyäegha; Eihort; Elder Gods; Elder Key; Elder Sign; elemental theory; Forgotten Ones; Furnace of Yeb; Ghadamon; Ghatanothoa; Ghroth; Glaaki; Gloon; Han; Hastur; Ithaqua; Kassogtha; Kthanid; Lam; Leng; Lloigor; Nug and Yeb; Nyarlathotep; Nyogtha; Old Ones; Outer Gods; Pharos of Leng; Quachil Uttaus; Rhan-Tegoth; Sarnath; Shudde-M’ell; That is not dead...; Tsathoggua; Ubbo-Sathla; Ulthar; Vorvadoss; Watchers on the Other Side; Y’golonac; Yibb-Tstll; Yig; Yith; Ythogtha; Zarr; Zathog; Zhar; Zoth-Ommog. (“Zoth-Ommog”, Carter; “The Return of Hastur”, Derleth; “The Thing that Walked on the Wind”, Derleth; The Trail of Cthulhu, Derleth; “The Call of Cthulhu”, Lovecraft (O); The Burrowers Beneath, Lumley; Prey, Masterton; Heir of Darkness, Rahman; “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros”, Smith.)

  GREAT ONES

  See Gods of Earth.

  GREAT RACE OF YITH

  Time-travelling beings that dwelt on this world millions of years ago. The Yithians had no true physical forms but took up residence in whatever bodies they desired.

  The Great Race’s history begins on the world of Yith. Though this was not their world of origin, the Yithians eliminated all information in their archives about their history before this migration for reasons that remain a mystery. According to one individual, the Great Race first took over the bodies of an amphibian-like race, which they used to build the spherical mechanical devices in which their minds were to dwell. (According to some, however, these particular details regarding forms actually pertain to a group of Yithians who returned to their world after their exodus to Earth.) The Yithians spent aeons on this world and built many great cities there. In the end, an unknown doom befell them — possibly related to a wormhole technology experiment, or an attack by the flying polyps from the second world of that system — and they were forced to flee to Earth.

  Upon arriving on this world, the Great Race inhabited the bodies of immense cone-shaped creatures. Upon their arrival the Yithians were forced to fight off the flying polyps, the conical entities’ natural predators. With their mastery of technology, the Yithians beat back the invaders, imprisoning them beneath the ground. Periodic resurgences did occur, but the Yithians deal with these quickly and ruthlessly.

  After their victory over the polyps, the Great Race set about building their cities of buildings thousands of feet tall, creating their nuclear-powered vehicles and flying machines, and engaging in historical research. It was in the latter field that they made use of their extraordinary mental time-travel powers. To study the past, certain scientists would project their minds backward in time using a method much like astral projection. The Race was unable to physically interact with the past.

  The Race used a different technique to journey to the future. Usually, one of the exceptional members of the Race sent its mind into the future, selecting a body there from which it could study that time. When it found an individual, usually a scholar of exceptional ability, it exchanged minds with him or her, displacing the host’s mind into the Yithian’s former body. The exchange lasted around five years, during which time the Yithian grasped the basics of life in its new society, afterward embarking on an exploration of the history, sociology, and mythology of the culture. Meanwhile, the host’s mind wrote a history of its own time for the Great Race and, if cooperative, was allowed to make excursions outside the cities, consult the Great Race’s libraries, and speak with other visitors from different worlds and times.

  After the Yithian learned all it could about the period it was visiting, it constructed a device that sent its mind back to the original body. The alien mind was hypnotized to forget the experience, and returned to its own time. One flaw in this procedure was that the alien would have dreams of its imprisonment, and might even recall information about their world that they had learned from the Yithians. The Great Race considered these lapses to be annoyances and often dealt with them by another possession or through their operatives in that period, but did not cease their research because of them.

  The Great Race also started a cult or cults known as the Motion which helped Great Race visitors in assimilating into the new period and silencing those formerly-possessed minds who remembered too much of their captivity. These cults have on occasion set the stage for broader infiltration into a particular period. The Tower of Babel, for instance, is said to have been a massive beacon allowing a physical gateway t
o form between their age and ancient Mesopotamia. Another experiment in modern times involved cloning new bodies for the visitors, but this is believed to have failed.

  Around fifty million years ago, the flying polyps imprisoned by the Yithians rose up and defeated their ancient foes. The Great Race sent the minds of their brightest scientists through time, ensuring the species’ survival. They spent some time on Jupiter and then a dark star near Taurus (where they inhabited forms very similar to those they used on earth), and from there will travel to earth again, taking up the bodies of a coleopterous hive-mind fifty million years in the future. After that cycle comes to a close, they will inhabit the vegetables of Mercury, and continue their civilization in this manner. Some say that the remnants of the Great Race, incapable of possessing bodies, will return to this world someday, becoming known as the Dlyrion Tharkos or Dark Ghosts.

  [A previous entry in this section maintained that the cult of the Yellow Sign that pursued the mi-go also chased members of the Great Race. I was mistaken about this, but it nonetheless served as the inspiration for a series of adventures for the game Dungeons and Dragons published by Green Ronin. Green Ronin was aware that the entry was inaccurate but found the plot compelling enough to continue.]