Cthulhu Mythos Revisions (Part 1.5)

[Antvasima]

Okay, I will unlock them, but next time, please write the list in the following manner, so I can easily use my mass-page unlocking/locking script to handle it.

The Ultimate Gods
Nyarlathotep (Cthulhu Mythos)
Shub-Niggurath
Randolph Carter
Hypnos (Cthulhu Mythos)
Azathoth (Cthulhu Mythos)
Yog-Sothoth (Cthulhu Mythos)
Hunting Horrors
Nightgaunts

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Okay, I will unlock them, but next time, please write the list in the following manner, so I can easily use my mass-page unlocking/locking script to handle it.

Ah I see. I didn't know that was how it worked

 

[Antvasima]

No problem.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

So far I edited The Ultimate Gods, Shub-Nigurath and Nyarlathotep. Will do the rest after lunch

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. Thank you for helping out. Tell us here when you are done.

 

[NHTkenshin2]

So far I edited The Ultimate Gods, Shub-Nigurath and Nyarlathotep. Will do the rest after lunch

Nyar still has his boundless rating on his AP

 

[Another_Council]

There was a contradicting AP rating for Azathoth, so I hope it is okay that I changed it to fit with its tier.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Okay I actually want to ask why do the Hunting Horrors scale to the Night Gaunts?

For the purposes of the profile, we are equating the Hunting Horrors with the Shantak Birds, which is actually not the conclusion that later Mythos Media went with. But I feel that it is a fair assumption, given that both are horrific flying beasts that serve Nyarlathotep, with a Shantak Bird being the creature that leads Randolph Carter to the Ultimate Void, and with the "shapeless hunting horrors" chasing after Carter after he jumps out of the aforementioned Shantak. So equating the two is a fairly obvious conclusion when looking at Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath by itself, otherwise the "Hunting Horrors" would only show up for a single paragraph at the end of the story.

This matters because we are repeatedly told throughout the story that the Shantak Birds are scared of the Night Gaunts:

Other views shewed the gaunt grey peaks dividing Leng from Inganok, and the monstrous shantak-birds that build nests on the ledges half way up. And they shewed likewise the curious caves near the very topmost pinnacles, and how even the boldest of the shantaks fly screaming away from them. Carter had seen those caves when he passed over them, and had noticed their likeness to the caves on Ngranek. Now he knew that the likeness was more than a chance one, for in these pictures were shewn their fearsome denizens; and those bat-wings, curving horns, barbed tails, prehensile paws, and rubbery bodies were not strange to him. He had met those silent, flitting, and clutching creatures before; those mindless guardians of the Great Abyss whom even the Great Ones fear, and who own not Nyarlathotep but hoary Nodens as their lord. For they were the dreaded night-gaunts, who never laugh or smile because they have no faces, and who flop unendingly in the dark betwixt the Vale of Pnath and the passes to the outer world.

The ghouls made camp amongst the fallen stones of Sarkomand, despatching a messenger for enough night-gaunts to serve them as steeds. Pickman and the other chiefs were effusive in their gratitude for the aid Carter had lent them; and Carter now began to feel that his plans were indeed maturing well, and that he would be able to command the help of these fearsome allies not only in quitting this part of dreamland, but in pursuing his ultimate quest for the gods atop unknown Kadath, and the marvellous sunset city they so strangely withheld from his slumbers. Accordingly he spoke of these things to the ghoulish leaders; telling what he knew of the cold waste wherein Kadath stands and of the monstrous shantaks and the mountains carven into double-headed images which guard it. He spoke of the fear of shantaks for night-gaunts, and of how the vast hippocephalic birds fly screaming from the black burrows high up on the gaunt grey peaks that divide Inganok from hateful Leng. He spoke, too, of the things he had learnt concerning night-gaunts from the frescoes in the windowless monastery of the high-priest not to be described; how even the Great Ones fear them, and how their ruler is not the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep at all, but hoary and immemorial Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss.

Moved by a gratitude and satisfaction beyond words, Carter made plans with the ghoulish leaders for his audacious voyage. The army would fly high, they decided, over hideous Leng with its nameless monastery and wicked stone villages; stopping only at the vast grey peaks to confer with the shantak-frightening night-gaunts whose burrows honeycombed their summits. They would then, according to what advice they might receive from those denizens, choose their final course; approaching unknown Kadath either through the desert of carven mountains north of Inganok, or through the more northerly reaches of repulsive Leng itself. Dog-like and soulless as they are, the ghouls and night-gaunts had no dread of what those untrodden deserts might reveal; nor did they feel any deterring awe at the thought of Kadath towering lone with its onyx castle of mystery.

In fact, Randolph Carter estimates that a group of ten to fifteen Night Gaunts would be more than capable of fending of any number of Shantak Birds:

A flock of ten or fifteen night-gaunts, Carter glibbered, would surely be enough to keep any combination of shantaks at a distance; though perhaps it might be well to have some ghouls in the party to manage the creatures, their ways being better known to their ghoulish allies than to men. The party could land him at some convenient point within whatever walls that fabulous onyx citadel might have, waiting in the shadows for his return or his signal whilst he ventured inside the castle to give prayer to the gods of earth.

This is proven true when a Shantak Bird is driven to a screaming panic at the sight of the Night Gaunts:

This time no descent was made as the army swept bat-like over the sterile landscape, passing the feeble fires of the unwholesome stone villages at a great altitude, and pausing not at all to mark the morbid twistings of the hooved, horned almost-humans that dance and pipe eternally therein. Once they saw a shantak-bird flying low over the plain, but when it saw them it screamed noxiously and flapped off to the north in grotesque panic.

This makes sense because the Shantak Birds are creatures that roam and guard the Cold Waste leading to Kadath where the gods of men reside, whereas the Night Gaunts are repeatedly stated to be more powerful than the Great Ones.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Edited all pages save Randolph Carter and the Hunting Horrors

 

[Event_Horizon]

Should the intelligence section be edited due to my aforementioned point?

 

[Antvasima]

Edited all pages save Randolph Carter and the Hunting Horrors

Thank you for helping out. It is very appreciated.

@Ultima_Reality @KingPin0422 @Planck69 @Elizhaa

What do you think about the post linked below?

https://vsbattles.com/threads/cthulhu-mythos-revisions-part-1-5.131179/post-4824160

While we're here I was thinking of an addition to the "intelligence" section of the Ultimate Gods page.

It was dark when the galley passed betwixt the Basalt Pillars of the West and the sound of the ultimate cataract swelled portentous from ahead. And the spray of that cataract rose to obscure the stars, and the deck grew damp, and the vessel reeled in the surging current of the brink. Then with a queer whistle and plunge the leap was taken, and Carter felt the terrors of nightmare as earth fell away and the great boat shot silent and comet-like into planetary space. Never before had he known what shapeless black things lurk and caper and flounder all through the aether, leering and grinning at such voyagers as may pass, and sometimes feeling about with slimy paws when some moving object excites their curiosity. These are the nameless larvae of the Other Gods, and like them are blind and without mind, and possessed of singular hungers and thirsts.

The "singular hungers and thirsts" quote seems overlooked as it is quite interesting in of itself. "Singular" here means (and this is common for Gothic writers as well as Lovecraft) "strange, bizarre, out-of-the-ordinary, peculiar", and "hungers and thirsts" (especially considering it's the plural, which makes the phrase more vague and complex than if it where just "hunger and thirst) I take to mean along the lines of "instincts, desires, drives". So this phrase means "possessed of strange/bizarre instincts/desires", indicating perhaps a wholly alien driving force or vague and strange consciousness behind the entities. Thoughts?

Should the intelligence section be edited due to my aforementioned point?

Input would be appreciated regarding this as well.

@Matthew_Schroeder

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Input would be appreciated regarding this as well.

Yeah I think some slight editing is needed. This "They should actually be nigh-omniscient geniuses we just don't understand them" idea isn't true. The Outer Gods don't seem to "think" in the sense that we do, they just sorta exist.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay, so "Unknown" intelligence combined with descriptions regarding their thinking processes then?

 

[Event_Horizon]

Yeah I think some slight editing is needed. This "They should actually be nigh-omniscient geniuses we just don't understand them" idea isn't true. The Outer Gods don't seem to "think" in the sense that we do, they just sorta exist.

Okay, so "Unknown" intelligence combined with descriptions regarding their thinking processes then?

It's really iffy when it comes to intelligence. They definitely aren't "mindless" in the sense that say a single-celled organism or something would be. They get angry at those who try to contact the Dreamlands earthly gods. Their "larvae" and them by extension are "possessed of singular (strange) hungers and thirsts".
They are explicitly stated to have a will in this phrase from Dream-Quest.
""It is understood in the land of dream that the Other Gods have many agents moving among men; and all these agents, whether wholly human or slightly less than human, are eager to work the will of those blind and mindless things in return for the favour of their hideous soul and messenger, the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep".
I'd venture to say that it's a combination of them being both extremely alien as to not possess what we would call a "mind", driven by indescribable and bizarre sets of desires or instincts, and that they are the ultimate embodiments of chaos and irrationality, since where they dwell is beyond dimensioned space altogether.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay, but that seems to fit with what I suggested above.

 

[Antvasima]

Also, I just admin-locked all of the CM pages that I unlocked earlier in this thread, except for the Ultimate Gods.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Well I still gotta edit some.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay, so should I unlock all of the ones in the list from earlier in this thread again then, or just a few, and if so, which ones?

 

[KingPin0422]

I appreciate your help, Matt, but I wanna make a few corrections. First, regarding Yog's AP explanation:

Exists in the Ultimate Void, a changeless, absolute totality beyond all perspectives that likewise transcends all conceptions of being, size, and boundaries, holding the entire cosmos as nothing but an atom in its genuine and ultimate infinity, encompassing both the Ultimate Void itself and all the other Ultimate Gods within itself. Is the Supreme Archetype, the 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 Ultimate Gods 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

I think it should be:

Yog-Sothoth is the Supreme Archetype, the "All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self" which acts as the animating essence of all existence that subsumes both the Ultimate Void itself and all the other Ultimate Gods within itself, much like the rest of existence is comprised of fractional aspects of them, and sees them as being as insignificant and equally distant from itself as regular humans are.

Also, this paragraph in the Ultimate Gods' summary should be removed or at least rewritten, since it is something we no longer accept:

However, these are nothing but fractionary conceptions of far greater things, as the true nature of these beings is that of archetypal entities who hold everything in existence as derivative facets of themselves, inhabiting the true nature of reality as a changeless, impartial totality that exists beyond all divisions and perspectives, with even the local identities identified as "The Ultimate Gods" being merely fragmentary, change-involving perspectives through which the Archetypes can choose to experience reality, in accordance to their own will.

 

[Antvasima]

The Ultimate Gods
Nyarlathotep (Cthulhu Mythos)
Shub-Niggurath
Randolph Carter
Hypnos (Cthulhu Mythos)
Azathoth (Cthulhu Mythos)
Yog-Sothoth (Cthulhu Mythos)
Hunting Horrors
Nightgaunts

@KingPin0422 @Matthew_Schroeder

So which of the pages listed above should I unlock for you again?

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Just
Randolph Carter
Hunting Horrors

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

I appreciate your help, Matt, but I wanna make a few corrections. First, regarding Yog's AP explanation:

I agree with changing the summary but what is the problem with the current AP description?

 

[Antvasima]

Just
Randolph Carter
Hunting Horrors

I have unlocked them. Tell me here when you are done.

 

[KingPin0422]

I agree with changing the summary but what is the problem with the current AP description?

Nothing, necessarily (except for the first line because IDK about Yog existing in the Ultimate Void), but I wanted to condense it into something I consider more readable.

I have unlocked them. Tell me here when you are done.

...err, maybe hold off on that for now. If you don't mind, I wanna put Randolph Carter's page into a sandbox and then make some more adjustments to it, because I have a fairly particular idea of what I want to do. I'll explain in more detail later.

(Also, Matt ended up not editing the pages, as you can see)

 

[Antvasima]

Okay, so should I lock the pages again then?

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

For now I guess. I want to hear @KingPin0422 's thoughts on the Hunting Horrors thing I pointed out.

 

[Antvasima]

For now I guess. I want to hear @KingPin0422 's thoughts on the Hunting Horrors thing I pointed out.

Okay.

What do you think, @KingPin0422 ?

 

[KingPin0422]

It checks out to me. You could argue that the Hunting Horrors should still be comparable to the Wolf-Like Mountains because both of them guard the entrance to Kadath, with the Night-Gaunts then scaling well above them, but I'm not too sure beyond that.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. I suppose that what you accepted is probably fine to apply then.

 

[Event_Horizon]

How's this for a revised intelligence section

Are collectively described as "blind" and "mindless", possessing vague and inscrutable wills that are enacted by their "Soul and Messenger" Nyarlathotep, and driven by strange "hungers and thirsts", possibly indicating a form of consciousness utterly alien to lower-dimensioned beings.

Feel free to tweak this or add stuff or something. I'd like to know what other peoples thoughts or interpretations are as well.

 

[Antvasima]

To me it seems fine to apply at least.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

I think it seems fine.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. I think that the suggested change can be applied then. Is somebody here willing to handle it?

 

[Event_Horizon]

This could be a bit better. Thought a bit of perspective on where they dwell may lead to more insight (if that is even possible haha)

Are collectively described as "blind" and "mindless", possessing vague and inscrutable wills that are enacted by their "Soul and Messenger" Nyarlathotep, and are driven by strange "hungers and thirsts" (possibly indicating a form of consciousness utterly alien to lower-dimensioned beings) and existing in a state of ultimate and absolute Chaos that is completely alien to the physics and logic of any conceivable cosmos.

Again, I'm not always 100% confident in my interpretation and if anyone thinks I'm missing something or misinterpreting something, or think they can reword it better let me know.

 

[KingPin0422]

The Ultimate Gods are collectively described as "blind" and "mindless," possessing vague and inscrutable wills that are enacted by their "soul and messenger" Nyarlathotep, and are driven by "singular hungers and thirsts," possibly indicating a form of consciousness utterly alien to lower beings.

How's this look?

 

[Antvasima]

That seems fine to me.

 

[Event_Horizon]

How's this look?

Hmm, should it be "singular" straight from the quote or rewritten as "strange"? I think a lot of people might misinterpret the word "singular" for meaning "one" rather than "unusual, bizarre", which significantly changes the meaning (though it is definitely the later given the context of both the story and his writing style ) Sorry if I'm being pedantic about a word haha.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

How's this look?

I think it's great and can be applied to the profile.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. Feel free to add it then. Tell us here when you are done.

 

[Event_Horizon]

I was wondering, is the user Ultima_Reality planning a Cthulhu Mythos Revisions Part 2? Maybe he could include some of the points mentioned here as well.