Cthulhu Mythos Revisions (Part 1.5)

[KingPin0422]

Introduction​

Eleven months ago, a project to revise the Cthulhu Mythos began. However, after it was accepted and applied, the promised "part 2" never came. While I would like to get started on that, there are a few corrections that must be made regarding the conclusions reached in part 1, and it is about time we started to address them.

Before I begin, I would like to thank Ultima Reality and ShivaShakti for their continued contributions to the revision project. Without their help, I do not think that this project would be possible. I would also like to thank Darksmash for helping the three of us fact-check some things regarding the verse.

Without further ado, let's begin, shall we?

On the Archetypes​

First and foremost, we need to talk about the Archetypes and our decision to distinguish them from the Ultimate Gods. It primarily came from the apparent inconsistency between how the UGs are portrayed in Through the Gates of the Silver Key and how they are portrayed in other stories, especially in the form of this statement:

After an impressive pause the waves continued, saying that what the denizens of few-dimensioned zones call change is merely a function of their consciousness, which views the external world from various cosmic angles. As the shapes produced by the cutting of a cone seem to vary with the angles of cutting—being circle, ellipse, parabola, or hyperbola according to that angle, yet without any change in the cone itself—so do the local aspects of an unchanged and endless reality seem to change with the cosmic angle of regarding. To this variety of angles of consciousness the feeble beings of the inner worlds are slaves, since with rare exceptions they cannot learn to control them. Only a few students of forbidden things have gained inklings of this control, and have thereby conquered time and change. But the entities outside the Gates command all angles, and view the myriad parts of the cosmos in terms of fragmentary, change-involving perspective, or of the changeless totality beyond perspective, in accordance with their will.

Yeah, so, as we found out during an old attempt to downgrade the verse, this isn't as well-founded as we thought. The primary issue with using the above quote as evidence for a difference between UGs and Archetypes is that "change" in this case simply seems to mean time:

Time, the waves went on, is motionless, and without beginning or end. That it has motion, and is the cause of change, is an illusion. Indeed, it is itself really an illusion, for except to the narrow sight of beings in limited dimensions there are no such things as past, present, and future. Men think of time only because of what they call change, yet that too is illusion. All that was, and is, and is to be, exists simultaneously.

And one of the things we are repeatedly told about the Outer Extension is that it already exists outside of time, with Carter's apparent perception of such being due to his inability to properly grasp its true nature:

For the rite of the Silver Key, as practiced by Randolph Carter in that black, haunted cave within a cave, did not prove unavailing. From the first gesture and syllable an aura of strange, awesome mutation was apparent—a sense of incalculable disturbance and confusion in time and space, yet one which held no hint of what we recognise as motion and duration. Imperceptibly, such things as age and location ceased to have any significance whatever. The day before, Randolph Carter had miraculously leaped a gulf of years. Now there was no distinction between boy and man. There was only the entity Randolph Carter, with a certain store of images which had lost all connexion with terrestrial scenes and circumstances of acquisition. A moment before, there had been an inner cave with vague suggestions of a monstrous arch and gigantic sculptured hand on the farther wall. Now there was neither cave nor absence of cave; neither wall nor absence of wall. There was only a flux of impressions not so much visual as cerebral, amidst which the entity that was Randolph Carter experienced perceptions or registrations of all that his mind revolved on, yet without any clear consciousness of the way in which he received them.

By the time the rite was over Carter knew that he was in no region whose place could be told by earth’s geographers, and in no age whose date history could fix. For the nature of what was happening was not wholly unfamiliar to him. There were hints of it in the cryptical Pnakotic fragments, and a whole chapter in the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred had taken on significance when he had deciphered the designs graven on the Silver Key. A gate had been unlocked—not indeed the Ultimate Gate, but one leading from earth and time to that extension of earth which is outside time, and from which in turn the Ultimate Gate leads fearsomely and perilously to the Last Void which is outside all earths, all universes, and all matter.

Memory and imagination shaped dim half-pictures with uncertain outlines amidst the seething chaos, but Carter knew that they were of memory and imagination only. Yet he felt that it was not chance which built these things in his consciousness, but rather some vast reality, ineffable and undimensioned, which surrounded him and strove to translate itself into the only symbols he was capable of grasping. For no mind of earth may grasp the extensions of shape which interweave in the oblique gulfs outside time and the dimensions we know.

Almost stunned with awe, and with a kind of terrifying delight, Randolph Carter’s consciousness did homage to that transcendent ENTITY from which it was derived. As the waves paused again he pondered in the mighty silence, thinking of strange tributes, stranger questions, and still stranger requests. Curious concepts flowed conflictingly through a brain dazed with unaccustomed vistas and unforeseen disclosures. It occurred to him that, if those disclosures were literally true, he might bodily visit all those infinitely distant ages and parts of the universe which he had hitherto known only in dreams, could he but command the magic to change the angle of his consciousness-plane. And did not the Silver Key supply that magic? Had it not first changed him from a man in 1928 to a boy in 1883, and then to something quite outside time? Oddly, despite his present apparent absence of body, he knew that the Key was still with him.

And one more quote from The Whisperer in Darkness for good measure:

Never was a sane man more dangerously close to the arcana of basic entity—never was an organic brain nearer to utter annihilation in the chaos that transcends form and force and symmetry. I learned whence Cthulhu first came, and why half the great temporary stars of history had flared forth. I guessed—from hints which made even my informant pause timidly—the secret behind the Magellanic Clouds and globular nebulae, and the black truth veiled by the immemorial allegory of Tao. The nature of the Doels was plainly revealed, and I was told the essence (though not the source) of the Hounds of Tindalos. The legend of Yig, Father of Serpents, remained figurative no longer, and I started with loathing when told of the monstrous nuclear chaos beyond angled space which the Necronomicon had mercifully cloaked under the name of Azathoth.

Note that Azathoth is stated to be beyond angled space here. Looking back at the first quote, you can see that the Ultimate Gods in general are stated to "command all angles," by which they may choose to view the cosmos either as a fragmentary, changing thing or as the changeless totality it truly is. Given that "change," again, refers to time, the Outer Extension would logically already exist beyond dimensions/angles, which is supported by the text itself:

Memory and imagination shaped dim half-pictures with uncertain outlines amidst the seething chaos, but Carter knew that they were of memory and imagination only. Yet he felt that it was not chance which built these things in his consciousness, but rather some vast reality, ineffable and undimensioned, which surrounded him and strove to translate itself into the only symbols he was capable of grasping. For no mind of earth may grasp the extensions of shape which interweave in the oblique gulfs outside time and the dimensions we know.

On earth, on October 7, 1883, a little boy named Randolph Carter was leaving the Snake-Den in the hushed evening light and running down the rocky slope and through the twisted-boughed orchard toward his Uncle Christopher’s house in the hills beyond Arkham—yet at that same moment, which was also somehow in the earthly year of 1928, a vague shadow not less Randolph Carter was sitting on a pedestal among the Ancient Ones in earth’s trans-dimensional extension. Here, too, was a third Randolph Carter in the unknown and formless cosmic abyss beyond the Ultimate Gate. And elsewhere, in a chaos of scenes whose infinite multiplicity and monstrous diversity brought him close to the brink of madness, were a limitless confusion of beings which he knew were as much himself as the local manifestation now beyond the Ultimate Gate.

The world of men and of the gods of men is merely an infinitesimal phase of an infinitesimal thing—the three-dimensional phase of that small wholeness reached by the First Gate, where ’Umr at-Tawil dictates dreams to the Ancient Ones. Though men hail it as reality and brand thoughts of its many-dimensioned original as unreality, it is in truth the very opposite. That which we call substance and reality is shadow and illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality.

While yes, it is also referred to as "dimensioned" on a few occasions, keep in mind that Carter cannot grasp the Outer Extension in full, requiring it to translate itself into a form he can understand. Any hints of dimensionality he may have perceived would just be his mind trying to make sense of the Outer Extension, hence the "dim half-pictures with uncertain outlines" formed of "memory and imagination."

Finally, take note of the Outer Extension being called "an infinitesimal thing" and a "small wholeness." Since it is reached by way of the First Gate, these descriptions have to be referring to the fact that the Outer Extension is a microcosm of the Ultimate Void, which again is supported in the narrative:

The hills behind Arkham are full of a strange magic—something, perhaps, which the old wizard Edmund Carter called down from the stars and up from the crypts of nether earth when he fled there from Salem in 1692. As soon as Randolph Carter was back among them he knew that he was close to one of the gates which a few audacious, abhorred, and alien-souled men have blasted through titan walls betwixt the world and the outside absolute.

By the time the rite was over Carter knew that he was in no region whose place could be told by earth’s geographers, and in no age whose date history could fix. For the nature of what was happening was not wholly unfamiliar to him. There were hints of it in the cryptical Pnakotic fragments, and a whole chapter in the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred had taken on significance when he had deciphered the designs graven on the Silver Key. A gate had been unlocked—not indeed the Ultimate Gate, but one leading from earth and time to that extension of earth which is outside time, and from which in turn the Ultimate Gate leads fearsomely and perilously to the Last Void which is outside all earths, all universes, and all matter.

“Randolph Carter,” IT seemed to say, “MY manifestations on your planet’s extension, the Ancient Ones, have sent you as one who would lately have returned to small lands of dream which he had lost, yet who with greater freedom has risen to greater and nobler desires and curiosities. You wished to sail up golden Oukranos, to search out forgotten ivory cities in orchid-heavy Kled, and to reign on the opal throne of Ilek-Vad, whose fabulous towers and numberless domes rise mighty toward a single red star in a firmament alien to your earth and to all matter. Now, with the passing of two Gates, you wish loftier things. You would not flee like a child from a scene disliked to a dream beloved, but would plunge like a man into that last and inmost of secrets which lies behind all scenes and dreams.

As the waves paused again, Carter began to comprehend, vaguely and terrifiedly, the ultimate background of that riddle of lost individuality which had at first so horrified him. His intuition pieced together the fragments of revelation, and brought him closer and closer to a grasp of the secret. He understood that much of the frightful revelation would have come upon him—splitting up his ego amongst myriads of earthly counterparts—inside the First Gate, had not the magic of ’Umr at-Tawil kept it from him in order that he might use the Silver Key with precision for the Ultimate Gate’s opening.

In short, the Archetypes cannot and should not be treated as separate from the Ultimate Gods for the simple reason that even the Outer Extension, a realm far beneath the Ultimate Void in cosmology, is already an archetypal, trans-dimensional realm beyond the concepts of time and change. The inconsistency between the Ultimate Gods' presentation in Through the Gates of the Silver Key and their presentation in every other story can be handwaved as Lovecraft simply not caring for coherent world-building - after all, Lovecraft never saw the Cthulhu Mythos as serious literature, just a thing that he and his friends messed around with:

I really agree that Yog-Sothoth is a basically immature conception, & unfitted for really serious literature. The fact is, I have never approached serious literature yet. But I consider the use of actual folk-myths as even more childish than the use of new artificial myths, since in the former one is forced to retain many blatant peurilities & contradictions of experienced which could be subtilised or smoothed over if the supernaturalism were modelled to order for the given case.

While the implications this has for the Ultimate Gods themselves is pretty straightforward (i.e., they will lose their tier 0 keys and have the abilities from said keys moved into their High 1-A keys), this change has serious consequences for certain other characters, which I will go over now.

How This Affects Nodens​

Stated to be unafraid of The Ultimate Gods' interference, and is capable of fending off their forces alongside the Nightgaunts, while also standing as a long-time enemy of Nyarlathotep himself and having thwarted his plans in at least one occasion, in spite of the Other Gods' own tendency to enact their vengeance on whoever wrongs those who they oversee. Easily killed the Hunting Horrors, unleashing a searing burst of light that obliterated them entirely, and is far superior to his Nightgaunts, whose mere presence strikes fear in the former and causes them to flee on sight.

Nodens, as far as we are concerned, is a being who does not fear interference from the Ultimate Gods and can even foil the efforts of Nyarlathotep in spite of their tendency to enact vengeance on whoever dares cross them. Because the Ultimate Gods as of this revision will inherit type 3 Transduality, omnipresence, and type 5 acausality, Nodens would presumably need to have extremely good Non-Physical Interaction in order to be able to contend with the Ultimate Gods directly, like we are claiming him to be capable of doing by scaling him to them. I don't know the full details, though, so if there's a good enough explanation as to why Nodens doesn't have it already and shouldn't have it, I'm all ears.

How This Affects the Nightgaunts and Hunting Horrors​

Implied to be a species native to the Ultimate Void itself, and are easily capable of physically leaving dimensioned space behind and flying straight into the Court of Azathoth at the center of chaos with no ill repercussions to themselves, whereas humans such as Randolph Carter become completely detached from the concepts of space and time past the First Gate, and even Gods such as Hypnos going insane by catching a glimpse of the outer chaos and its inhabitants.

The mere sight of a Nightgaunt is described as striking fear in any Hunting Horror and causing it to immediately flee in a panic, and a group comprised of a mere dozen of them is stated to be more than capable of dealing with any number of shantak-birds.

Yeah, so, this actually leaves out a few crucial details that serve as hard evidence against High 1-A ratings for these two. The biggest one is that the path that Randolph Carter's hunting horror took to the Ultimate Void is one set up by Nyarlathotep himself:

“Easier even than the way of dim memory is the way I will prepare for you. See! There comes hither a monstrous shantak, led by a slave who for your peace of mind had best keep invisible. Mount and be ready—there! Yogash the black will help you on the scaly horror. Steer for that brightest star just south of the zenith—it is Vega, and in two hours will be just above the terrace of your sunset city. Steer for it only till you hear a far-off singing in the high aether. Higher than that lurks madness, so rein your shantak when the first note lures. Look then back to earth, and you will see shining the deathless altar-flame of Ired-Naa from the sacred roof of a temple. That temple is in your desiderate sunset city, so steer for it before you heed the singing and are lost.

And when the shantak-bird reaches Vega, it starts to hear a song, which the narration describes as "outer magic" which was old when the Ultimate Gods were born, and then it says that Nyarlathotep had marked Carter's path to the city of his dreams simply to taunt him:

Then through the glittering vault ahead there fell a hush of portent, and all the winds and horrors slunk away as night things slink away before the dawn. Trembling in waves that golden wisps of nebula made weirdly visible, there rose a timid hint of far-off melody, droning in faint chords that our own universe of stars knows not. And as that music grew, the shantak raised its ears and plunged ahead, and Carter likewise bent to catch each lovely strain. It was a song, but not the song of any voice. Night and the spheres sang it, and it was old when space and Nyarlathotep and the Other Gods were born.

Faster flew the shantak, and lower bent the rider, drunk with the marvels of strange gulfs, and whirling in the crystal coils of outer magic. Then came too late the warning of the evil one, the sardonic caution of the daemon legate who had bidden the seeker beware the madness of that song. Only to taunt had Nyarlathotep marked out the way to safety and the marvellous sunset city; only to mock had that black messenger revealed the secret of those truant gods whose steps he could so easily lead back at will. For madness and the void’s wild vengeance are Nyarlathotep’s only gifts to the presumptuous; and frantick though the rider strove to turn his disgusting steed, that leering, tittering shantak coursed on impetuous and relentless, flapping its great slippery wings in malignant joy, and headed for those unhallowed pits whither no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion where bubbles and blasphemes at infinity’s centre the mindless daemon-sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud.

Additionally, people in the Dreamlands seem to eat Hunting Horror eggs as a delicacy:

Far in the shadows of that tavern Carter saw a squat form he did not like, for it was unmistakably that of the old slant-eyed merchant he had seen so long before in the taverns of Dylath-Leen, who was reputed to trade with the horrible stone villages of Leng which no healthy folk visit and whose evil fires are seen at night from afar, and even to have dealt with that high-priest not to be described, which wears a yellow silken mask over its face and dwells all alone in a prehistoric stone monastery. This man had seemed to shew a queer gleam of knowing when Carter asked the traders of Dylath-Leen about the cold waste and Kadath; and somehow his presence in dark and haunted Inganok, so close to the wonders of the north, was not a reassuring thing. He slipped wholly out of sight before Carter could speak to him, and sailors later said that he had come with a yak caravan from some point not well determined, bearing the colossal and rich-flavoured eggs of the rumoured shantak-bird to trade for the dexterous jade goblets that merchants brought from Ilarnek.

As for the night-gaunts, it's stated that Nodens is the only reason they have nothing to fear from the Ultimate Gods:

He desired to fly to the onyx castle atop unknown Kadath in the cold waste to plead with the Great Ones for the sunset city they denied him, and felt sure that the night-gaunts could take him thither without trouble; high above the perils of the plain, and over the hideous double heads of those carven sentinel mountains that squat eternally in the grey dusk. For the horned and faceless creatures there could be no danger from aught of earth, since the Great Ones themselves dread them. And even were unexpected things to come from the Other Gods, who are prone to oversee the affairs of earth’s milder gods, the night-gaunts need not fear; for the outer hells are indifferent matters to such silent and slippery flyers as own not Nyarlathotep for their master, but bow only to potent and archaic Nodens.

And without him, the Ultimate Gods can deal with them more than easily:

Void as they are of lordship over ghouls and night-gaunts, the mindless, shapeless blasphemies of outer space can yet control them when they must; so that it was not in state as a free and potent master of dreamers that Randolph Carter came into the Great Ones’ throne-room with his ghouls. Swept and herded by nightmare tempests from the stars, and dogged by unseen horrors of the northern waste, all that army floated captive and helpless in the lurid light, dropping numbly to the onyx floor when by some voiceless order the winds of fright dissolved.

In short, there's no real basis for the night-gaunts or the hunting horrors to be High 1-A. Naturally, this also downgrades their speed, as the hunting horrors do not physically fly all the way to the Ultimate Void. I'm not sure what some more accurate ratings would be, though - at the very least, the night-gaunts have a respectable speed/acceleration feat:

Meanwhile the ghoul that was Pickman had glibbered an order to the night-gaunts, and the whole army soared higher into the air. Up toward the stars the grotesque column shot, till nothing stood out any longer against the sky; neither the grey granite ridge that was still nor the carven and mitred mountains that walked. All was blackness beneath as the fluttering legions surged northward amidst rushing winds and invisible laughter in the aether, and never a shantak or less mentionable entity rose from the haunted wastes to pursue them. The farther they went, the faster they flew, till soon their dizzying speed seemed to pass that of a rifle ball and approach that of a planet in its orbit.

How This Affects the Supreme Archetype​

The Supreme Archetype is an all-encompassing oneness that exists as "All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self," acting as the animating essence of all existence that subsumes even the "ultimate mystery" which underlies all manifested phenomena and in which the Archetypes themselves participate in, holding even the Ultimate Abyss and its transcendent inhabitants as facets of itself, much like the rest of existence is comprised of fractionary aspects of them, as insignificant and equally distant from itself as regular humans are.

Unlike the Archetypes, the Supreme Archetype is actually going to "stay," in a way - it just becomes baseline 0 now. Look at this quote:

In the face of that awful wonder, the quasi-Carter forgot the horror of destroyed individuality. It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self—not merely a thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence’s whole unbounded sweep—the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike. It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of earth have whispered of as YOG-SOTHOTH, and which has been a deity under other names; that which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vaporous brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable Sign—yet in a flash the Carter-facet realised how slight and fractional all these conceptions are.

The Supreme Archetype is the all-encompassing essence of all of existence, up to and including the "outside worlds" of the Outer Extension(s) and the Ultimate Void. Multiple ideas have been formed regarding the identity of the Supreme Archetype, with human cults naming it "Yog-Sothoth," the fungi from Yuggoth worshiping it as "the Beyond-One," etc., but as Randolph Carter realizes, the Supreme Archetype stands beyond such labels.

The archetypes, throbbed the waves, are the people of the ultimate abyss—formless, ineffable, and guessed at only by rare dreamers on the low-dimensioned worlds. Chief among such was this informing BEING itself . . . which indeed was Carter’s own archetype. The glutless zeal of Carter and all his forbears for forbidden cosmic secrets was a natural result of derivation from the SUPREME ARCHETYPE. On every world all great wizards, all great thinkers, all great artists, are facets of IT.

And here, we see the Supreme Archetype directly refer to itself as chief among the Archetypes/Ultimate Gods. As stated before, it is the All-in-One and the One-in-All, which is an expression of its nature as encompassing all things and being within all things:

Then, in the midst of these devastating reflections, Carter’s beyond-the-gate fragment was hurled from what had seemed the nadir of horror to black, clutching pits of a horror still more profound. This time it was largely external—a force or personality which at once confronted and surrounded and pervaded him, and which in addition to its local presence, seemed also to be a part of himself, and likewise to be coexistent with all time and coterminous with all space. There was no visual image, yet the sense of entity and the awful concept of combined localism, identity, and infinity lent a paralysing terror beyond anything which any Carter-fragment had hitherto deemed capable of existing.

In real life philosophy, a common symbol for the notion that God is in all things and all things are in God is that of a circle with a point in its center, with the understanding that the circle (representing the macrocosm) is infinitely large and the point (representing the microcosm) is infinitely small. What relevance does this have, you may ask? Well, this relationship between the infinite circle and the infinitesimal point is exactly the paradigm that Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth embody. Yog-Sothoth is the all-encompassing, all-knowing circumference of which all things are mere elements:

Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread.

While Azathoth is the Nuclear Chaos and Lord of All Things - the monarch who rules all of existence from his throne at the center of infinity:

There were, in such voyages, incalculable local dangers; as well as that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe, where no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity—the boundless daemon-sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes; to which detestable pounding and piping dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless Other Gods whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.

Eventually there had been a hint of vast, leaping shadows, of a monstrous, half-acoustic pulsing, and of the thin, monotonous piping of an unseen flute—but that was all. Gilman decided he had picked up that last conception from what he had read in the Necronomicon about the mindless entity Azathoth, which rules all time and space from a curiously environed black throne at the centre of Chaos.

Before his eyes a kaleidoscopic range of phantasmal images played, all of them dissolving at intervals into the picture of a vast, unplumbed abyss of night wherein whirled suns and worlds of an even profounder blackness. He thought of the ancient legends of Ultimate Chaos, at whose centre sprawls the blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All Things, encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous dancers, and lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a daemoniac flute held in nameless paws.

The legend of Yig, Father of Serpents, remained figurative no longer, and I started with loathing when told of the monstrous nuclear chaos beyond angled space which the Necronomicon had mercifully cloaked under the name of Azathoth.

Finally, as established before, individuality is an illusion inherent to the inner worlds of space and time that the Ultimate Gods exist beyond, with any associations they receive from lesser beings failing to describe what they truly are. The Supreme Archetype in particular is identified by humans as "Yog-Sothoth," a name which, when placed side-by-side with "Azathoth," is found to be very similar in both spelling and pronunciation. Needless to say, I would consider Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth to be one and the same, and you could even make a case for merging their profiles on that basis, although I'd like you guys to decide for yourselves whether or not that would be a good idea.

Other Potential Revisions​

There are a few other characters that I would like to address in this revision.

The Ancient Ones​

The Ancient Ones reside past the First Gate, in an undimensioned region that exists beyond the infinite-dimensional spacetime of the physical world, as well as the recursions of nested universes existing past it, perceiving all such structures as infinitesimal illusions with no substance, and are responsible for guarding the Ultimate Gate leading to the void inhabited by The Outer Gods, being able to open it and allow for explorers to pass through its threshold using the Silver Key.

Right, so, just to be clear: the Ancient Ones do not actually significantly affect the Ultimate Gate in a way that has direct AP implications. What they do is manifest the Ultimate Gate in front of Randolph Carter through a ritual involving their dreams and assist him in unlocking it with the Silver Key:

At last, continued the Swami, the swaying and the suggestion of chanting ceased, the lambent nimbuses around the now drooping and motionless heads faded away, while the cloaked Shapes slumped curiously on their pedestals. The quasi-sphere, however, continued to pulsate with inexplicable light. Carter felt that the Ancient Ones were sleeping as they had been when he first saw them, and he wondered out of what cosmic dreams his coming had wakened them. Slowly there filtered into his mind the truth that this strange chanting ritual had been one of instruction, and that the Companions had been chanted by the Most Ancient One into a new and peculiar kind of sleep, in order that their dreams might open the Ultimate Gate to which the Silver Key was a passport. He knew that in the profundity of this deep sleep they were contemplating unplumbed vastnesses of utter and absolute Outsideness with which the earth had nothing to do, and that they were to accomplish that which his presence had demanded.

And now, in that rise of masonry to which his eyes had been so irresistibly drawn, there appeared the outline of a titanic arch not unlike that which he thought he had glimpsed so long ago in that cave within a cave, on the far, unreal surface of the three-dimensioned earth. He realised that he had been using the Silver Key—moving it in accord with an unlearnt and instinctive ritual closely akin to that which had opened the Inner Gate. That rose-drunken sea which lapped his cheeks was, he realised, no more or less than the adamantine mass of the solid wall yielding before his spell, and the vortex of thought with which the Ancient Ones had aided his spell. Still guided by instinct and blind determination, he floated forward—and through the Ultimate Gate.

My suggestion is to downgrade the Ancient Ones to "1-A physically, higher (1-A+) with hax," or something along those lines.

Hypnos​

Easily capable of existing in, effectively navigating, and comprehending the nature of "limitless vacua beyond all thought and entity" that correspond to increasingly deeper and more abstract perceptions of infinity in a world of pure dreams that lies completely beyond a fractal of infinite-dimensional spacetimes. Traversed past the final obstacle leading to the Ultimate Void when his friend was unable to do the same, though what Hypnos saw beyond it drew him to complete insanity and horror.

Being drawn to permanent insanity from the state of being he reached isn't really a physical limitation. Look at SCP-3812 for an example of what I mean. Hypnos not being able to remain stable from the Ultimate Void's nature says more about his state of mind than it does about his strength.

That said, I would like to make two small adjustments to the page. The first one is to add a note that it only indexes Hypnos' astral body rather than his physical form, as the latter is not noteworthy enough to be indexed. The second one is that Hypnos doesn't always have High 1-A potency: the whole story unfolds through Hypnos and his friend continually ascending the hierarchy of vacua over the course of multiple nights, culminating in one fateful night where black winds hurtled them through the hierarchy until coming to the Ultimate Gate. As such, I think Hypnos would more accurately be rated as "1-A, eventually became High 1-A."

Also! Since Hypnos explicitly could not comprehend the higher realms, much in the same way that Randolph Carter could not fully perceive the Outer Extension, let alone the Ultimate Void, his Intelligence should be changed to Unknown. And speaking of Randolph Carter...

Randolph Carter​

Right, this has been a long time coming. Simply put, I believe that Carter deserves not one, but two new keys: one for himself past the First Gate, and one for himself past the Ultimate Gate.

Now the whole assemblage on the vaguely hexagonal pillars was greeting him with a gesture of those oddly carven sceptres, and radiating a message which he understood: “We salute you, Most Ancient One, and you, Randolph Carter, whose daring has made you one of us.”

As Carter sits upon the Ancient Ones' pedestal, he is greeted by the other Ancient Ones, who then tell him that his ambitions have allowed him to become one of them. This is supported much later on in the story, when Carter recalls that the Silver Key's magic transformed him from an adult into a child, and then again into a vague entity outside of time and space:

As the waves paused again he pondered in the mighty silence, thinking of strange tributes, stranger questions, and still stranger requests. Curious concepts flowed conflictingly through a brain dazed with unaccustomed vistas and unforeseen disclosures. It occurred to him that, if those disclosures were literally true, he might bodily visit all those infinitely distant ages and parts of the universe which he had hitherto known only in dreams, could he but command the magic to change the angle of his consciousness-plane. And did not the Silver Key supply that magic? Had it not first changed him from a man in 1928 to a boy in 1883, and then to something quite outside time? Oddly, despite his present apparent absence of body, he knew that the Key was still with him.

This, in turn, is a reference to something that happens near the beginning of Through the Gates of the Silver Key:

For the rite of the Silver Key, as practiced by Randolph Carter in that black, haunted cave within a cave, did not prove unavailing. From the first gesture and syllable an aura of strange, awesome mutation was apparent—a sense of incalculable disturbance and confusion in time and space, yet one which held no hint of what we recognise as motion and duration. Imperceptibly, such things as age and location ceased to have any significance whatever. The day before, Randolph Carter had miraculously leaped a gulf of years. Now there was no distinction between boy and man. There was only the entity Randolph Carter, with a certain store of images which had lost all connexion with terrestrial scenes and circumstances of acquisition. A moment before, there had been an inner cave with vague suggestions of a monstrous arch and gigantic sculptured hand on the farther wall. Now there was neither cave nor absence of cave; neither wall nor absence of wall. There was only a flux of impressions not so much visual as cerebral, amidst which the entity that was Randolph Carter experienced perceptions or registrations of all that his mind revolved on, yet without any clear consciousness of the way in which he received them.

The ritual of the Silver Key transformed Randolph Carter first from an old man to a young boy, and then from a young boy to something outside time altogether. When he does it a third time to open the Ultimate Gate, his ego is shattered across every life he has ever lived, human and non-human, terrestrial and extraterrestrial, etc.

And then, suddenly, he felt a greater terror than that which any of the Forms could give—a terror from which he could not flee because it was connected with himself. Even the First Gateway had taken something of stability from him, leaving him uncertain about his bodily form and about his relationship to the mistily defined objects around him, but it had not disturbed his sense of unity. He had still been Randolph Carter, a fixed point in the dimensional seething. Now, beyond the Ultimate Gateway, he realised in a moment of consuming fright that he was not one person, but many persons.

He was in many places at the same time. On earth, on October 7, 1883, a little boy named Randolph Carter was leaving the Snake-Den in the hushed evening light and running down the rocky slope and through the twisted-boughed orchard toward his Uncle Christopher’s house in the hills beyond Arkham—yet at that same moment, which was also somehow in the earthly year of 1928, a vague shadow not less Randolph Carter was sitting on a pedestal among the Ancient Ones in earth’s trans-dimensional extension. Here, too, was a third Randolph Carter in the unknown and formless cosmic abyss beyond the Ultimate Gate. And elsewhere, in a chaos of scenes whose infinite multiplicity and monstrous diversity brought him close to the brink of madness, were a limitless confusion of beings which he knew were as much himself as the local manifestation now beyond the Ultimate Gate.

There were “Carters” in settings belonging to every known and suspected age of earth’s history, and to remoter ages of earthly entity transcending knowledge, suspicion, and credibility. “Carters” of forms both human and non-human, vertebrate and invertebrate, conscious and mindless, animal and vegetable. And more, there were “Carters” having nothing in common with earthly life, but moving outrageously amidst backgrounds of other planets and systems and galaxies and cosmic continua. Spores of eternal life drifting from world to world, universe to universe, yet all equally himself. Some of the glimpses recalled dreams—both faint and vivid, single and persistent—which he had had through the long years since he first began to dream, and a few possessed a haunting, fascinating, and almost horrible familiarity which no earthly logic could explain.

Faced with this realisation, Randolph Carter reeled in the clutch of supreme horror—horror such as had not been hinted even at the climax of that hideous night when two had ventured into an ancient and abhorred necropolis under a waning moon and only one had emerged. No death, no doom, no anguish can arouse the surpassing despair which flows from a loss of identity. Merging with nothingness is peaceful oblivion; but to be aware of existence and yet to know that one is no longer a definite being distinguished from other beings—that one no longer has a self—that is the nameless summit of agony and dread.

He knew that there had been a Randolph Carter of Boston, yet could not be sure whether he—the fragment or facet of an earthly entity beyond the Ultimate Gate—had been that one or some other. His self had been annihilated; and yet he—if indeed there could, in view of that utter nullity of individual existence, be such a thing as he—was equally aware of being in some inconceivable way a legion of selves. It was as though his body had been suddenly transformed into one of those many-limbed and many-headed effigies sculptured in Indian temples, and he contemplated the aggregation in a bewildered attempt to discern which was the original and which the additions—if indeed (supremely monstrous thought) there were any original as distinguished from other embodiments.

So, Randolph Carter as an Ancient One should be 1-A, and Randolph Carter as an ensemble of every life he has ever lived and will live should be High 1-A, via scaling to the respective realms these forms of his have reached.

Conclusion​

TL;DR:

1. Merge the Ultimate Gods' 0 keys with their High 1-A keys.
2. Add Non-Physical Interaction to Nodens.
3. Downgrade the Night-Gaunts and Hunting Horrors to "Up to High Hypersonic+" speed and Unknown everything else.
4. Change the Supreme Archetype's justification slightly.
5. Possibly merge Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth's pages into a single "Supreme Archetype" page.
6. Change the Ancient Ones' tier to "1-A physically, higher (1-A+) with hax."
7. Change Hypnos' tier to "1-A, eventually became High 1-A" and his intelligence to "Unknown."
8. Add two more keys to Randolph Carter, one rated at 1-A, and the other rated at High 1-A.

 

[Tarang123]

I’ll be neutral, but things make sense from what I see

 

[DaReaperMan]

I am completely neutral on the Supreme Archetype page, I think I agree with the rest, nice work!

 

[QuasiYuri]

Highly disagree with merging two different characters. Other stuff looks fine.

 

[Planck69]

Neutral on fusing Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth. Fine with everything else.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I agree with pretty much everything, although I don't think merging Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth is strictly necessarily, since we already have examples of characters who are technically the same being and yet are given separate profiles regardless, like Anu and Padomay, or Aka and Lorkhan.

 

[Apex_Predator_GX]

Oh... I was hoping to see a Cthulhu upgrade or something, is really disappointing to have his page rated as Unknown....

 

[OnsokunoSonic]

Totally on favor on upgrading Carter to H1-A.

 

[KingPin0422]

Quick update: I seem to have made a mistake in the nightgaunt/hunting horror speed thing. I thought it was Massively Hypersonic for some reason, but I checked Wikipedia's article on the Earth's orbit, and the given speed value for the planet's orbital speed actually falls within the High Hypersonic+ range. So, I fixed that.

In any case, I'm fine with keeping Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth as separate pages, given that I forgot about cases like Anu/Padomay and such where two or more characters are actually the same entity, but nonetheless each given their own pages. It was always just something that I put out there as a "maybe," anyway.

 

[KingPin0422]

Bump.

 

[Panpanpanjeidj]

Bump

 

[Event_Horizon]

I think the Ultimate God page should be renamed to Other Gods, as they are more often called that in the mythos. I disagree with the merging of Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth as there is not enough evidence to imply they might be the same entity. It's good to remember TTGOTSK was partially written by E Hoffman Price and uses some of his concepts and beliefs, and isn't 100% Lovecraft-written.

 

[KingPin0422]

Bump.

 

[Roachman40]

sounds good, although I disagree with merging yog and azathoth for reasons mentioned above

 

[Darksmash]

Why is the supreme archetype tier 0 if it is explicitly stated to be a denizen of the ultimate void?

 

[Tarang123]

Why is the supreme archetype tier 0 if it is explicitly stated to be a denizen of the ultimate void?

Have a scan for this? Cause if this is true, then I think tier 0 would he even weirder

 

[Tarang123]

Bump

 

[TheDivineHost]

Have a scan for this?

the difference is negligable enough that some people misinterpret it lol

 

[Darksmash]

the difference is negligable enough that some people misinterpret it lol

Difference between what?

 

[Tarang123]

Bump

 

[Antvasima]

What has been accepted above is probably fine to apply, but I will make a safety check first.

@Matthew_Schroeder @Roachman40 @Udlmaster @The_King_of_Prudence @Edenstar @Planck69 @Elizhaa

What do you think about this?

 

[Planck69]

Like I already said, everything seems fine, though like the others i think that Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth should remain separate.

 

[Elizhaa]

I think Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth's pages should be separated for the reasons discussed aboved. Everything else seems fine.
The verse cosmology page should be updated to reflect the changes.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Also! Since Hypnos explicitly could not comprehend the higher realms, much in the same way that Randolph Carter could not fully perceive the Outer Extension, let alone the Ultimate Void, his Intelligence should be changed to Unknown. And speaking of Randolph Carter...

I agree with pretty much everything else but this strikes me as odd, because the Narrator says that the things Hypnos taught him were beyond the comprehension of men and science and that he couldn't even begin to describe them.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

I also disagree with merging Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

In short, there's no real basis for the night-gaunts or the hunting horrors to be High 1-A. Naturally, this also downgrades their speed, as the hunting horrors do not physically fly all the way to the Ultimate Void. I'm not sure what some more accurate ratings would be, though - at the very least, the night-gaunts have a respectable speed/acceleration feat:

I agree with this. But what about the scene where the Hunting Horrors chase Randolph Carter through infinite birthing and collapsing universes? Is that just them chasing him through time?

 

[KingPin0422]

I agree with pretty much everything else but this strikes me as odd, because the Narrator says that the things Hypnos taught him were beyond the comprehension of men and science and that he couldn't even begin to describe them.

Ah, I must have overlooked that part. I'll reread the story later, but if this is true, then I'm going to need to reconsider that point.

I agree with this. But what about the scene where the Hunting Horrors chase Randolph Carter through infinite birthing and collapsing universes? Is that just them chasing him through time?

It's heavily implied to be something like that, yes.

Off that vast hippocephalic abomination leaped the doomed and desperate dreamer, and down through endless voids of sentient blackness he fell. Aeons reeled, universes died and were born again, stars became nebulae and nebulae became stars, and still Randolph Carter fell through those endless voids of sentient blackness.

Then in the slow creeping course of eternity the utmost cycle of the cosmos churned itself into another futile completion, and all things became again as they were unreckoned kalpas before. Matter and light were born anew as space once had known them; and comets, suns, and worlds sprang flaming into life, though nothing survived to tell that they had been and gone, been and gone, always and always, back to no first beginning.

 

[Planck69]

If they're chasing him through time then wouldn't they be Immeasurable?

 

[KingPin0422]

If they're chasing him through time then wouldn't they be Immeasurable?

Maybe? I don't remember the exact consensus I reached with the other CM people, though, so let me ask Ultima about it.

 

[Antvasima]

It seems like everything here has been accepted so far, except for merging Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth.

 

[KingPin0422]

Alright, this is kind of a spur-of-the-moment decision, but I felt that it is important to share.

I've been talking with a couple of other folks on Discord, and I have yet another key addition to propose for Randolph Carter: a tier 0 key for him as the Supreme Archetype. Sounds weird, doesn't it? Well, let me explain: it's true that everyone and everything participates in the Supreme Archetype already (it's called the "All-in-One and One-in-All" for a reason), but Through the Gates of the Silver Key accentuates the Supreme Archetype's additional role as Carter's highest self:

The archetypes, throbbed the waves, are the people of the ultimate abyss—formless, ineffable, and guessed at only by rare dreamers on the low-dimensioned worlds. Chief among such was this informing BEING itself . . . which indeed was Carter’s own archetype. The glutless zeal of Carter and all his forbears for forbidden cosmic secrets was a natural result of derivation from the SUPREME ARCHETYPE. On every world all great wizards, all great thinkers, all great artists, are facets of IT.

For an example of a character who has something like this accounted for on their profile, I refer to Anu. Anu's supreme self, ANU the Godhead, encompasses and permeates all beings and all things, yet ANU is only a key for Anu and not for anyone else because ANU is Anu's higher self directly - their relationship is analogous to the distinction between a person dreaming and said person's presence within their dream. Something similar to this should hold true in the case of Randolph Carter and the Supreme Archetype.

For the record, the High 1-A key should still exist because the Carter that exists as an entity beyond the Ultimate Gate is still considered a mere fragment of the Supreme Archetype:

He began to understand dimly why there could exist at the same time the little boy Randolph Carter in the Arkham farmhouse in 1883, the misty form on the vaguely hexagonal pillar beyond the First Gate, the fragment now facing the PRESENCE in the limitless abyss, and all the other “Carters” his fancy or perception envisaged.

Then the waves increased in strength, and sought to improve his understanding, reconciling him to the multiform entity of which his present fragment was an infinitesimal part.

You might wonder, "Wait, what does this mean for Azathoth?" To be honest, I may need to rethink my considerations of him. We already recognize that there's a distinction between Carter's existence in the Ultimate Void and the Supreme Archetype, and Azathoth is repeatedly stated to be at the center of infinity/the Ultimate Void; he doesn't encompass absolutely everything, we just know that he's called the "Lord of All Things," that he "rules all time and space" from his throne, and that he's apparently important enough that Nyarlathotep serves him and the other Ultimate Gods surround him and play music for him. Beyond all of that and some other stuff like "Azathoth" sounding very similar to "Yog-Sothoth," I don't know if anything proves that he's equal to Yog-Sothoth/the Supreme Archetype in any capacity. It might be in my best interest to consult the other CM experts on this matter, though, so stay tuned, I guess.

 

[Planck69]

I'm alright with a Tier 0 key for Carter.

 

[Antvasima]

Alright, this is kind of a spur-of-the-moment decision, but I felt that it is important to share.

I've been talking with a couple of other folks on Discord, and I have yet another key addition to propose for Randolph Carter: a tier 0 key for him as the Supreme Archetype. Sounds weird, doesn't it? Well, let me explain: it's true that everyone and everything participates in the Supreme Archetype already (it's called the "All-in-One and One-in-All" for a reason), but Through the Gates of the Silver Key accentuates the Supreme Archetype's additional role as Carter's highest self:



For an example of a character who has something like this accounted for on their profile, I refer to Anu. Anu's supreme self, ANU the Godhead, encompasses and permeates all beings and all things, yet ANU is only a key for Anu and not for anyone else because ANU is Anu's higher self directly - their relationship is analogous to the distinction between a person dreaming and said person's presence within their dream. Something similar to this should hold true in the case of Randolph Carter and the Supreme Archetype.

For the record, the High 1-A key should still exist because the Carter that exists as an entity beyond the Ultimate Gate is still considered a mere fragment of the Supreme Archetype:

You might wonder, "Wait, what does this mean for Azathoth?" To be honest, I may need to rethink my considerations of him. We already recognize that there's a distinction between Carter's existence in the Ultimate Void and the Supreme Archetype, and Azathoth is repeatedly stated to be at the center of infinity/the Ultimate Void; he doesn't encompass absolutely everything, we just know that he's called the "Lord of All Things," that he "rules all time and space" from his throne, and that he's apparently important enough that Nyarlathotep serves him and the other Ultimate Gods surround him and play music for him. Beyond all of that and some other stuff like "Azathoth" sounding very similar to "Yog-Sothoth," I don't know if anything proves that he's equal to Yog-Sothoth/the Supreme Archetype in any capacity. It might be in my best interest to consult the other CM experts on this matter, though, so stay tuned, I guess.

@QuasiYuri @Matthew_Schroeder @Ultima_Reality

What do you think about this?

 

[Elizhaa]

Tier 0 key seems for Carter.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

I don't agree, I just think the "Supreme Archetype" is Carter because everyone's Archetype is a part of the Supreme Archetype

 

[Tarang123]

I don't agree, I just think the "Supreme Archetype" is Carter because everyone's Archetype is a part of the Supreme Archetype

I disagree, I think the quote makes it very clear that it's Carter's own archetype, so I do think he would get a tier 0 key, as his archetype is not simply part of the Supreme archetype, but the literal supreme archetype. At least, from what I read of the first quote in Kingpin's post

 

[Jibz]

I don't agree, I just think the "Supreme Archetype" is Carter because everyone's Archetype is a part of the Supreme Archetype

I was about to make a lengthy comment. Disagreeing with and proving why you were wrong, but i thought about it for a lil bit and i've come to found myself agreeing with you. Let me give the full and complete context of the scan:

"The archetypes, throbbed the waves, are the people of the ultimate abyss—formless, ineffable, and guessed at only by rare dreamers on the low-dimensioned worlds. Chief among such was this informing BEING itself . . . which indeed was Carter’s own archetype. The glutless zeal of Carter and all his forbears for forbidden cosmic secrets was a natural result of derivation from the SUPREME ARCHETYPE. On every world all great wizards, all great thinkers, all great artists, are facets of IT. Almost stunned with awe, and with a kind of terrifying delight, Randolph Carter’s consciousness did homage to that transcendent ENTITY from which it was derived."

Now lets breakdown why i completely agree with you:

"natural result of derivation from the Supreme Archetype"
"On every world all great wizards, all great thinkers, all great artists, are facets of IT."
"Randolph Carter’s consciousness did homage to that transcendent ENTITY from which it was derived."
" He knew that in this ultimate abyss he was equidistant from every facet of his archetype—human or non-human"

The words "derivation" "facets" "homage" and "derived" directly show how Carter is merely just a part of the supreme Archetype, a facet, a derivative of the all encompassing being. The fact the BEING is carter's archetype is because ALL ARCHETYPES are a part of the Supreme Archetype. It's the "All-in-One and One-in-All"

I feel the distinction between Quasi-Carter and the BEING is shown as they quite literally have a conversation, which albeit flimsy shows the difference in their nature as Carter is denoted as "impatient" which completely contradicts the characterisation of the Supreme Archetype. Here's a snippet:

"
When the waves resumed their awesome pulsing Carter knew that his terrible request was granted. The BEING was telling him of the nighted gulfs through which he would have to pass, of the unknown quintuple star in an unsuspected galaxy around which the alien world revolved, and of the burrowing inner horrors against which the clawed, snouted race of that world perpetually fought. IT told him, too, of how the angle of his personal consciousness-plane, and the angle of his consciousness-plane regarding the space-time elements of the sought-for world, would have to be tilted simultaneously in order to restore to that world the Carter-facet which had dwelt there.

The PRESENCE warned him to be sure of his symbols if he wished ever to return from the remote and alien world he had chosen, and he radiated back an impatient affirmation; confident that the Silver Key, which he felt was with him and which he knew had tilted both world and personal planes in throwing him back to 1883, contained those symbols which were meant. And now the BEING, grasping his impatience, signified Its readiness to accomplish the monstrous precipitation. The waves abruptly ceased, and there supervened a momentary stillness tense with nameless and dreadful expectancy."

 

[Jibz]

Im not NOT open to the idea of Carter's Archetype being the supreme archetype, but i feel as for now there is more evidence pointing to otherwise. I'll be rereading through this specific part of TTGOSK to double check im correct in the mean time. If i am wrong, please correct me. I've only recently gotten into Cthulhu mythos.

 

[Jibz]

After rereading parts of TTGOTSK i looked for stuff that can argue Carter being the Supreme Archetype, to which i admit i was extremely hasty when writing my first comment and now that ive properly thought it all out, i could honestly see either way.

Firstly:

"All descended lines of beings of the finite dimensions, continued the waves, and all stages of growth in each one of these beings, are merely manifestations of one archetypal and eternal being in the space outside dimensions. Each local being—son, father, grandfather, and so on—and each stage of individual being—infant, child, boy, young man, old man—is merely one of the infinite phases of that same archetypal and eternal being, caused by a variation in the angle of the consciousness-plane which cuts it. Randolph Carter at all ages; Randolph Carter and all his ancestors both human and pre-human, terrestrial and pre-terrestrial; all these were only phases of one ultimate, eternal “Carter” outside space and time—phantom projections differentiated only by the angle at which the plane of consciousness happened to cut the eternal archetype in each case."

At first i believed this meant, every being had an archetype of themselves from all the infinite possibilities they find themselves existing in, which in turn existed outside of the dimensions themselves. However, looking back at this it can also be seen as all beings in turn exist as one being, the supreme Archetype. Due to me assuming the former, i was instantly opposed to the idea of this. However im starting to believe the latter more.

Next:

"Then the waves increased in strength, and sought to improve his understanding, reconciling him to the multiform entity of which his present fragment was an infinitesimal part."

Arguably, this can be seen as Carter becoming one with the Supreme Archetype, with the quote going hand in hand with the first quote in which Carter is originally an infinitesmal part of the One true archetypal being the Supreme archetype, who then reconciles with it to be able to truly comprehend what is needed to be known.

Thirdly:

"In another moment the dream-sense vanished, and he felt rather as one just awaked from a dream. The ultimate abyss—the BEING—an entity of absurd, outlandish race called “Randolph Carter”

Honestly, i always hated this part of the novel, and it still confuses tf out of me to this day. However it does allow us to further understand this line of reasoning.

Lastly and the original smoking gun:

The archetypes, throbbed the waves, are the people of the ultimate abyss—formless, ineffable, and guessed at only by rare dreamers on the low-dimensioned worlds. Chief among such was this informing BEING itself . . . which indeed was Carter’s own archetype. The glutless zeal of Carter and all his forbears for forbidden cosmic secrets was a natural result of derivation from the SUPREME ARCHETYPE. On every world all great wizards, all great thinkers, all great artists, are facets of IT.


To end off, honestly this deepdive has done nothing but confuse me more. But i believe both sides, believing he isnt the All in one, and that he is the All in one. I just wanted to give my two cents when it comes to the whole thing. Personally, im actually leaning towards him being the All in One for now.

 

[Darksmash]

I guess Lovecraft had a brain aneurysm and just mentioned the supreme archetype as the archetype of all great thinkers because he wanted to be redundant.