Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia

by Harms, Daniel

  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 titled 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, t
he 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 they 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 to 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.]

  See Alhazred, Abdul; Brothers of the Yellow Sign; Corsi, Bartolomeo; Eltdown Shards; flying polyps; Lemuria; Nug-Soth; Pnakotic Manuscripts; Pnakotus; Woodville, James; Yekub; Yith. (“False Containment”, Conyers; “The Changeling”, DeBill; “The Dark Brotherhood”, Derleth and Lovecraft; “The Horror from Yith”, DeBill; Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy, Detwiller; “The Shadow out of Space”, Derleth and Lovecraft; “The Shadow from Yith”, Gullette; “The Dreamer”, Herber; “The Shadow Out of Time”, Lovecraft (O); Necronomicon, Tyson.)

  GREAT TREES. Sentient, telepathic plants thousands of feet tall. The Great Trees once lived on a world whose climate was becoming too cold for them to survive. The wizard Ardatha Ell bore away the life-leaves, or “seeds”, of the last three trees and planted them, one in Elysia, one in the hinterlands of Thalarion, and one in an undisclosed location. The trees are very empathic, but are often unable to defend themselves from attacks.

  (Elysia, Lumley; Hero of Dreams, Lumley (O).)

  GREAT WHITE SPACE. Extradimensional belt that connects positions trillions of miles apart. The Old Ones used it to journey through the universe, and hold it in reverence. The Earthly entrance to this place lies somewhere in the mountains of China or Mongolia, where a door five hundred feet high leads to a vast underground cavern with the Space at its far end. The minions of the Old Ones protect the Great White Space, so any journey there is inadvisable.

  See Ethics of Ygor; Trone Tables. (The Great White Space, Copper (O).)

  GREEN BOOK. Diary of an unnamed young girl, in which she tells of her many unwitting experiments in sorcery. Only one copy exists, but its contents have proved invaluable to those investigating the Mythos.

  See Aklo; Alala; Chian; Deep Dendo; Mao; Voor. (“The White People”, Machen (O).)

  GREEN DECAY. 1) Incantation from the Book of Eibon that may convert its victim into a greenish pile of mold. The spell involves the creation of a bronze statue of the victim, which is buried, and the speaking of curses. The spell is slow-acting and degenerative, and many wizards dislike it due to the mess it creates. See Book of Eibon. (“The Man of Stone”, Lovecraft and Heald (O); “The Green Decay”, Price; “The Green Decay”, Sennitt.)

  2) Affliction from which the undead servants of Glaaki suffer after they have served their master for sixty years or more. If one of these servants is exposed to direct sunlight, rapid putrefaction sets in, quickly destroying the servitor.

  According to some, an extract made from those killed by the Green Decay is used in creating the zombies of Haiti. See Glaaki. (“The Inhabitant of the Lake”, Campbell (O).)

  GREEN MAN. See Nyarlathotep (Green Man).

  GREY RITE OF AZATHOTH. Spell from the Book of Eibon that, if performed by nine adepts, is said to force Azathoth to do one’s bidding, an operation of questionable efficacy. A lesser version of the rite might be used to provide some manner of protection. (Selected Letters IV, Lovecraft (O); “The Grey Rite of Azathoth”, Pulver.)

  GRIMLAN, JOHN (March 10, 1630?-March 10, 1930). Occultist. Grimlan’s date of birth is uncertain, and the assertion that he lived three hundred years is probably a misinterpretation of the data. (One scholar, a Von Boehnk, insists that he saw Grimlan in Vienna around 1880 and that he had not aged since, but this is most likely due to his faulty memory.) Whatever his origins, Grimlan was known as a knowledgeable scholar on the subjects of voodoo and Shintoism, though his unpleasant demeanor kept most potential students away. His travels took him as far away as Mongolia, but he spent the last twenty years of his life in a small town just outside San Francisco. After his death, his body was lost in a house fire, and his library was distributed among the bookstores of the nearby city.

  [See note to Zarnak.]

  (“Dig Me No Grave”, Howard (O); “Dope War of the Black Tong”, Price.)

  GROTH-GOLKA. Creature once worshiped on the isle of Bal-Sagoth. It resembles a tremendous bird with one foot and one eye, and dwells under the mountain Antarktos, somewhere near the South Pole. Shantaks revere and serve Groth-Golka.

  Certain inscriptions within the ruins of Zimbabwe, supposedly built by the Fishers from Outside, bear the name of this god as well.

  [See note for Gol-Goroth.]

  (“The Fishers from Ou
tside”, Carter; “The Gods of Bal-Sagoth”, Howard (O).)

  GUGS. Huge black-furred beings native to the Dreamlands. A gug’s arms are split at the elbow, with each of their four forearms ending in a tremendous paw. The most hideous characteristic of a gug, though, is its face, with a pink eye on each side and its fang-lined mouth running vertically down its head. Despite their monumental stone architecture, the gugs seem unintelligent and make little use of tools, weaponry, or fire. Gugs worship the Other Gods, and give especial service to the “Nameless Mist”.

  The gugs once dwelt upon the surface of the earth, where their great monoliths still remain. The gods of Earth, however, grew frightened of the gugs’ worship of Nyarlathotep and the Other Gods. Upon hearing one night of a great blasphemy these creatures had performed, the Great Ones banished the gugs to caverns below the earth’s surface. The gugs now live in a tremendous stone city near the vaults of Zin in the Dreamlands’ Underworld.

  See ghasts; Koth; Koth, Sign of; Nameless Mist; Zin. (“The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, Lovecraft (O); The Complete Dreamlands, Williams and Petersen.)

  GULF OF S’GLHUO. See S’glhuo, Gulf of.

  GUSTAU, THELRED (?-1972). Accomplished scientist who lost much of his standing in the scientific community due to his supposed translation of the Legends of the Olden Runes. After nine years of work with the manuscript, Gustau vanished after a mysterious explosion at his house in Woolwich.

  See Legends of the Olden Runes. (“The House of Cthulhu”, Lumley (O); “Introduction” to The House of Cthulhu, Lumley.)

  GYAA-YOTHN. Animals resembling humans, save for their size, bestial appearance, and horned head. The people of K’n-yan bred these from certain quadrupeds native to the caverns of Yoth and the remnants of conquered peoples. They use beasts for carrying burdens and as mounts. They do possess a rudimentary intelligence that proves useful to their masters. Some have speculated that the ghasts of the Vaults of Zin beneath Yoth and the gyaa-yothn are related in some way.