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The Cthulhu Mythos was first revealed in a
group of related stories by the American writer H.P.
Lovecraft. Beginning with "The Call of Cthulhu" in
Weird Tales, Lovecraft began referring in his horror
stories to a pantheon of beings known as the Old
Ones, who had descended to Earth from the stars in
pre-human times. First worshipped by the non-human
races of the planet, the Old Ones were later
banished or locked away by the elder gods. The elder
gods do not enter into the stories much, and their
identity is a mystery. They left the Old Ones
weakened, but not destroyed. When man appeared, he
found traces of the older civilizations and remnants
of the pre-human races. Religions grew up around the
Old Ones and legends of their imminent return to
power -- especially around Cthulhu. Bits of the old
lore were discovered and transcribed into books,
extremely dangerous books.
Lovecraft's friends (who included Clark Ashton
Smith, Frank Belknap Long, Robert Bloch, Robert E.
Howard and August Derleth), wrote stories that "tied
in" with the discovery of pre-human relics, the
revival of ancient worship, or the consequences of
finding a "forbidden book" dealing with the Old Ones
and their secrets. No great effort was made to keep
these stories consistent with each other. After
Lovecraft's death in 1937, August Derleth founded
Arkham House publishing company to reprint his
works. Derleth also wrote a number of stories
dealing with Lovecraftian themes or based on
fragments of Lovecraft's writings. Since then a
number of younger authors, outstanding among whom
are Lin Carter, Ramsey Campbell and Brian Lumley,
have written stories based on the growing Cthulhu
mythology.
Cults of men, and particularly of non-human
creatures, keep alive the worship of the Great Old
Ones and anxiously await their return to power.
Various evil magic-users and priests, desirous of
superhuman powers, experiment with some of the
forbidden books (such as The Necronomicon) and
occasionally unleash some horror on themselves or
their surroundings. Merely speaking the name of one
of the Old Ones results in a 5% chance that the god
named will hear, for these deities are quite attuned
to the Prime Material Plane. If the god does hear
its name spoken, it will appear and attempt to kill
the being so rash as to speak its name (some of the
greater gods will send minions to accomplish this).
If you want to learn this dangerous art inform us. |
Naga Mani
