The Cthulhu Wars

by Kenneth Hite

  The Mullahs of Leng

  The attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, quickly shifted the discussion among America’s intelligentsia from governing a post-conflict world to aggressively stamping out global dangers, be they supernatural or mundane. For as much damage as the 9/11 attacks had done, high-level intelligence officials were understandably concerned that a similar terrorist group could do much greater damage to the American homeland using even poorly constructed Mythos weapons or partially controlled NREs. Consequently, MAJIC’s decade-long decline was quickly and quietly reversed.

  MAJIC officers were in Afghanistan as early as mid-October 2001, supporting CIA and US Special Forces operations on the ground and leading preemptive strikes against the NREs. Tribes of H. erectus malevolens and other unidentified near-human species who had lived in Afghanistan and Pakistan for centuries took advantage of the chaos to step up their predatory activities. Despite their often disturbing and heretical brands of Islam, the hardy tribes of the arid Leng Plateau in Afghanistan’s Zabul province provided more than their share of terrorist recruits and guerrilla commanders, many of whom attempted to bring other non-human allies into the fight.

  MAJIC officers provided special training to NATO troops operating in the sparsely populated agricultural districts in eastern Farah province in order to help them combat an ongoing infestation of aggressive Ghouls throughout 2004 and 2005, likely summoned to the area by the syncretic “Mullahs” of Leng. The area, known for centuries as Gulistan, had to be pacified by Operation Thurber, a three-month campaign of air strikes beginning in January 2006.

  A MAJIC operative (holding field-bound grimoire) with a US Army communications and coordination team on a rooftop in Hit, Iraq during Operation River Blitz in February 2005. In the chaotic conditions of the Iraq invasion, MAJIC had to keep its footprint light and agile, ready to move on any rumor of NRE activity or artifact discovery. The Cthulhu-cult leader and terrorist known as Zuti al-Tanzil operated out of Hit from 2002 to 2006; he (or a gem he looted from the Baghdad Museum known as the “Fire of Asshurbanipal”) was likely the target for this particular raid. (PD)

  In Operation Mountain Hound in October 2007, MAJIC and Special Forces killed the infamous Mullah Dadullah Akhund Leng outside a long-sealed pre-Islamic temple on the Pakistani border, 80 miles east of Kandahar. The strike came just as Dadullah was concluding an arrangement with a group of Mi-Gö who had operated in the area for centuries. Although several Mi-Gö were killed in the assault, no broader retaliation has occurred as yet.

  The district of Zin, in central Afghanistan between the Orzugan and Daykundi provinces, had been a nogo area for NATO forces since the invasion began. In 2006, a series of sweeps called Operation Mountain Thrust attempted to clear the Taliban out of the mountains with little success. MAJIC analysts noted the commonality of names with the “Azathoth-formed Vaults of Zin” supposedly tangent to the Serpent-folk realm of Yoth, the Dreamlands, and the Plateau of Leng. Further research, recon, and drone imagery pinpointed a pre-Islamic (possibly proto-Bönpa) temple on the slopes of Mount Leng-e Mulla Aman just northwest of Zin. When in 2007 intelligence chatter put the reclusive Mullah Dadullah Akhund Leng in Zin, MAJIC launched Operation Mountain Hound to kill the mullah and if possible shut down the hyperspace gateways to Zin from the temple.

  On October 28, a large combined-arms assault closes in on the temple, unfortunately coinciding with a Mi-Gö embassy to the mullah. Supporting gunfire from the AC130U Spectre aircraft overhead warps and veers in non-Euclidean patterns consistent with previous reports from NRE-infested combat zones. Fire from the ground units is less distorted, but a gravitic interference pattern (the green glow on the ground, seen warping or shriveling soldiers caught inside the field effect) raised by the Lengi defenders saps its inertia and momentum. The short, vulpine, horned “Men of Leng” variously resemble Ghouls, Tcho-Tcho, and Serpent Folk, and may be a hybrid pre-human species. Rather than stop to overwhelm the Blackhawks, the Mi-Gö flew through the gunships and into the sky, escaping. The assault force killed a Mythos-wielding target presumed to be the Mullah of Leng and detonated its remaining heavy explosives inside the temple to unknown effect

  The Coming Strange Times

  Although not common, connections between “traditional” terrorist groups and NRE cults or beings had been unexpectedly frequent in Afghanistan, and by 2006 it was clear that this trend was not limited to central Asia. Even terrorist groups and separatist movements with no previous connection to NREs were being tracked to Mythos sites and found with Mythos documents, as if they were being deliberately encouraged and manipulated by an outside force.

  After a failed attack against a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas 2008 sponsored by al-Qaeda leaders in Yemen, a joint MAJIC–CIA team traced several terrorists from Indonesia, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, and Mali to an established camp just outside the infamous Nameless City in the desert on the Saudi-Yemeni border. Here, signals intelligence (SIGINT) intercepts indicate the cell met with an individual they called Tawil al-‘Umr (an Arabic nom de guerre roughly translated as the “most ancient and prolonged of life”). Facing what appeared to be a Mythos threat, MAJIC ordered a Predator strike from Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, but by the time the drone reached its target, the meeting had ended and the attendees had scattered.

  Two MAJIC Special Forces operators in Yemen in 2013 hunt for al-Azredic carvings or basreliefs in an Abbasid-era ruin. Of the estimated 11,000 epigraphic inscriptions in southern Arabia, only a handful have ever been published or translated; much of MAJIC’s Yemen mission simply consisted of photographing and mapping these carvings. (DOD)

  Interrogations of captured operatives who knew of the meeting, combined with seven years of closely analyzed SIGINT produced by MAJIC’s Mythos analysis unit, suggest that key members of otherwise separate terrorist movements had agreed to a long-term strategy referred to only as Yaji‘u al-Shudhdhadh: “the coming strange times” or “the coming abnormal ones” (YaS in MAJIC jargon). This may be the original form of a term recorded in the Greek Necronomicon as Iok Sotot or Yog-Sothoth. The mysterious Tawil al-‘Umr, in hiding after the failed 2008 drone strike, remains in command of the group, but communicates only by supernatural means to ensure his safety. The 2015 evacuation of American counterterrorist forces from Yemen following the Houthi rebel capture of Sana’a limits MAJIC intelligence and countermeasures against a Yog-Sothoth cult operating on the ground in al-Azrad’s home city.

  THREAT REPORT: MI-GÖ

  “The things come from another planet, being able to live in interstellar space and fly through it… They come here to get metals from mines that go deep under the hills, and I think I know where they come from. They will not hurt us if we let them alone, but no one can say what will happen if we get too curious about them. Of course a good army of men could wipe out their mining colony. That is what they are afraid of. But if that happened, more would come from outside – any number of them. They could easily conquer the earth, but have not tried so far because they have not needed to.”

  –Henry W. Akeley, letter to Professor Albert Wilmarth (May 5, 1928)

  The utterly alien Mi-Gö rule a vast, ancient interstellar empire with outposts throughout the known Galaxy, and maintain a presence on at least three other planetary bodies in our solar system. Although the Mi-Gö have been on Earth for at least 130 million years, MAJIC assesses that there were fewer than 1,000 individual specimens on Earth as of early 2015. More significant populations are believed to reside on Mars, the Moon, and especially on Pluto, where they have erected massive black spires and pyramids that function as both living quarters and mineral processing facilities.

  Mi-Gö range in length from 1.7 to 2.2m, with two large sets of crustacean-like grasping claws attached to a generally tubular body. Membranous dorsal wings serve to propel and maneuver the creatures in the vacuum of space. A wrinkled, ellipsoid head is topped with fleshy tentacles that sense a much wider
spectrum of light than human sight can, and hear several lower registers of sound. Mi-Gö soft tissues are pink and spongiform, and due to a peculiarity of their alien composition they are impossible to capture on film. Electromagnetic interference emitted by the creatures hampers digital video and photography, but does not fully prevent it.

  Because their wings provide only limited maneuverability in Earth’s atmosphere, the Mi-Gö operate several classes of aircraft built along pseudo-Euclidean lines: glowing spheroid scouts, larger discoid multipurpose craft, and massive conoid “mother-ships” like those seen above Phoenix, Arizona, in 1997. Although wresting air superiority from the Mi-Gö has been a primary mission of numerous “skunk works” aircraft development programs since at least 1955, the US Air Force has been unable to demonstrate consistent success in air-to-air combat.

  Mi-Gö outposts are typically situated in hilly or mountainous regions where they operate extensive mining outposts, sometimes digging miles below the surface to find veins of rare minerals which they apparently require for sustenance. In some cases, Mi-Gö excavations have revealed unstable rifts or gates that allow the Mi-Gö and specially prepared humans to travel to other planets, or even to separate universes vibrating at a different quantum frequency. While the minerals the Mi-Gö harvest hold no present strategic value to humans, the rifts (or more precisely, the NREs believed to be beyond them) represent a genuine danger to American national security.

  The Mi-Gö attempt to avoid contact with humans whenever possible. In unavoidable or extreme situations, Mi-Gö surgically altered to approximate human appearance and speech recruit intermediaries from among nearby human populations, in a few cases forming long-term asset relationships with multiple generations of humans. The Mi-Gö reward successful agents with transhuman immortality, uploading the brain into a metallic cylinder complete with spider-like cybernetic limbs and broad-spectrum sensors.

  Currently the Mi-Gö are not hostile if left to their own devices, but they will defend their bases vigorously if attacked. They hold no special affection for humanity, but seem uninterested in turning their impressive technological advantage toward our extermination. For now.

  The Long War

  Although the full scope of MAJIC’s current operations is known only to a handful of high-ranking officials within the US intelligence community, the group almost certainly continues to operate alongside US special operations troops across the Middle East and North Africa. Facing a disparate threat and with ongoing requirements in at least two still-active war zones, MAJIC has been increasingly forced to work with, and through, local allies to confront NREs indirectly. Joint US-French counter-Mythos teams police the Mi-Gö haunted wastes of Niger and Northern Mali, while MAJIC trains national military units in countries as far apart as Tunisia and Mongolia to address, respectively, Deep One incursions from the Mediterranean and the ongoing threat presented by the city of Carcosa in the Gobi Desert.

  The General Atomics MQ-1C Gray Eagle unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has served a critical role in the United States anti-Mythos war in conflict zones across the globe since 2010. Named for the 19th-century Wichita shaman, the Gray Eagle is the only UAV in active service capable of fielding the Antediluvian anti-NRE sensor package as well as a full complement of air-to-ground weapon systems. MAJIC is believed to have at least 46 of these specially outfitted drones in operation as of late 2015, with most in active intelligence/surveillance/reconnaissance (ISR) missions. (DOD)

  The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) assault on ancient archaeological sites across ancient Mesopotamia, and the resulting sale of thousands of only partially identified NRE artifacts, have forced MAJIC to launch a major counter-proliferation mission in addition to its other commitments. Multiple reports indicate that the most significant items recovered from the deserts of Babylon and Sumer never enter the antiquities market, and are instead funneled into the hands of YaS soldiers to be used in future attacks.

  More recent investigations have suggested that YaS may be funding “alternative worship” sites in several major US cities, whose doctrine bears a striking resemblance to the Cthulhu cult destroyed a century ago. There are also unconfirmed suspicions that the group was responsible for a major K’n-Yani mobilization below Texas in late 2014. MAJIC’s counterattack, initially carried out under cover of the Special Forces exercise Jade Helm, is ongoing.

  We can only hope that MAJIC will be ready when the next stage of the war begins.

  SOURCES

  When addressing a topic such as this one, with no authorized press releases, academic histories, or even large-scale journalistic efforts to rely on, putting this work together would have been impossible without personal communications and interviews. For the most part, I honor my sources’ desire for (often insistence upon) anonymity and secrecy, but my primary source having passed on, I feel I owe it to his memory to thank Dr Ambrose Dexter for his assistance.

  In October 2005, I was in Las Vegas on a technical writing assignment and found myself dining alone – or rather, waiting to dine alone – at the Golden Steer steakhouse. While at the bar, I struck up a conversation with a distinguished-looking, older gentleman with a very dark tan (I later heard him call it “my Los Alamos makeover”) who introduced himself as “Ambrose Dexter.” Perhaps it was the bourbon talking, but I responded with: “Just like in the Lovecraft story!” He admitted that yes, he had been one of Lovecraft’s correspondents: an early science-fiction fan just getting his degree in metallurgy, fascinated by the visions he saw in those tales, and eager to share his knowledge of physics and chemistry with the master. Dexter told me Lovecraft had used his name in a story as a tip of the nib to his informative pen pal.

  We dined together, the first of many such times as I traveled back and forth to Las Vegas, talking about Lovecraft, jazz horn players, military history and the current wars, and eventually his career. While Dr Dexter (he had several degrees, including one in Egyptology that he assured me was strictly honorary – he and Egyptian Antiquities Minister Dr Zahi Hawass had worked together on some NASA project, it emerged) was initially reserved, he unbent somewhat as we got to know each other better. I think he was lonely: he lived in a large house far out in the Nevada desert with only Bubastis, a mountain lion he’d raised from a cub, for company. (Animals loved him; coyotes constantly wandered onto the porch while we talked.) He strongly disapproved of the Bush administration, which may have eventually inspired him to do what he did. Also, he may have felt the end coming.

  In late 2007, he gave me a large legal manila folder crammed with documents, memos, and his own research notes covering much of the subject matter of this book, especially the variously redirected nuclear tests. Even now, I think it unwise to reveal exactly how Dr Dexter obtained his information and exactly what he provided me, but I can say he had a hand in a great many nuclear and aerospace projects, both military and civilian, for the better part of five decades, and he had a wide range of correspondents and colleagues. I spent several years using the leads he gave me to further my own investigation into what I dubbed the Cthulhu Wars, always knowing that a quick email or phone call to him would inspire and advance the work.

  One day in 2013 (he would have been at least 100 years old by then) his energies must have given out. My emails bounced, his phone number was apparently disconnected – we had avoided surface mail, of course, for years. No government contact I had would even admit that Dr Dexter had ever existed, much less that he had worked for the government, or that he had died. I sometimes still cannot believe that he has left us, preferring to picture him still living out there in the desert somewhere. I will always cherish his urging me to “reveal everything” and always remember his white grin gleaming in the dark of his back porch, where the night would turn his “atomic tan” to pure jet black as he reached down to let the wild animals lick his hands.

  The occultist and anthropologist Friedrich Wilhelm von Junzt (1795–1840) compiled details of the cult worship and practices he encountered
during his travels in Asia, Europe, and Latin America in his magnum opus Unaussprechlichen Kulten (Dusseldorf, 1839). The US government has acquired or destroyed all known copies as strategic resources. (Lee Mayer)

  FURTHER READING, WATCHING, AND GAMING

  H. P. Lovecraft

  With Lovecraft’s fiction in the public domain, it can easily be found on the Internet or in e-book form. S. T. Joshi’s three-volume annotated edition of Lovecraft’s fiction for Penguin Classics is probably the best version for completeness and textual accuracy.

  Lovecraft’s works most relevant to the Global War on Horror appear below. Since they have been variously reprinted over the years, they are dated by year of composition rather than publication.

  “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926). The story that started the “Cthulhu Mythos.” Vast narrative fugue comprises everything from the St. Bernard Parish raid to the global cult of Cthulhu and the Old Ones.

  “Pickman’s Model” (1926). Reveals the existence of the Ghoul warren beneath Boston.

  The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927). Historical necromancy corrupting contemporary Providence, told within a bravura twinned-mystery structure.

  “The Whisperer in Darkness” (1930). Establishes the Mi-Gö as an extraterrestrial threat in the paradigmatic story of alien persecution.

  At the Mountains of Madness (1931). Record of the Miskatonic Antarctic Expedition describes what the survivors found there.