Potential Scaling For Weaker Cthulhu Mythos Entities?

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Hello everyone.

Currently, all of the weaker Cthulhu Mythos deities, such as Dagon, Cthulhu himself, Yig, the Father of Serpents, and Tsathoggua are listed as Unknown, due to an unfortunate lack of direct feats to rank these entities after Cthulhu's Former High 4-C rating as proven to be a result of misinterpretation of the text.

And for a while it looked like that was it. It appeared that there weren't any other noteworthy feats and so we couldn't do anything about the tiers.

However, recently I discovered some new feats and statements that might help Tier these entities properly. They come both from Lovecraft's own stories and also from his friends in the Lovecraft Circle. This isn't necessarily a very clear revision where I'll just list the feats and tell everyone what the new tier should be. This is more of an open discussion where I'm welcoming diverging opinions and interpretations. Let's figure this out together.

With that all out of the way, let's get started:

Part I: The Call of Cthulhu's Earthquake

In H.P. Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu storyline, there is a description of an earthquake which rattles New England, and when people go to sleep the night after the earthquake, they begin to have strange dreams of Cthulhu and the sunken city of R’lyeh, and someone even sculpts a Cthulhu statue without having any prior knowledge of the god's existence and his cults.

On the occasion of the visit, ran the professor’s manuscript, the sculptor abruptly asked for the benefit of his host’s archaeological knowledge in identifying the hieroglyphics on the bas-relief. He spoke in a dreamy, stilted manner which suggested pose and alienated sympathy; and my uncle shewed some sharpness in replying, for the conspicuous freshness of the tablet implied kinship with anything but archaeology. Young Wilcox’s rejoinder, which impressed my uncle enough to make him recall and record it verbatim, was of a fantastically poetic cast which must have typified his whole conversation, and which I have since found highly characteristic of him. He said, “It is new, indeed, for I made it last night in a dream of strange cities; and dreams are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon.”

It was then that he began that rambling tale which suddenly played upon a sleeping memory and won the fevered interest of my uncle. There had been a slight earthquake tremor the night before, the most considerable felt in New England for some years; and Wilcox’s imagination had been keenly affected. Upon retiring, he had had an unprecedented dream of great Cyclopean cities of titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and sinister with latent horror. Hieroglyphics had covered the walls and pillars, and from some undetermined point below had come a voice that was not a voice; a chaotic sensation which only fancy could transmute into sound, but which he attempted to render by the almost unpronounceable jumble of letters, “Cthulhu fhtagn”.

This verbal jumble was the key to the recollection which excited and disturbed Professor Angell. He questioned the sculptor with scientific minuteness; and studied with almost frantic intensity the bas-relief on which the youth had found himself working, chilled and clad only in his night-clothes, when waking had stolen bewilderingly over him. My uncle blamed his old age, Wilcox afterward said, for his slowness in recognising both hieroglyphics and pictorial design. Many of his questions seemed highly out-of-place to his visitor, especially those which tried to connect the latter with strange cults or societies; and Wilcox could not understand the repeated promises of silence which he was offered in exchange for an admission of membership in some widespread mystical or paganly religious body. When Professor Angell became convinced that the sculptor was indeed ignorant of any cult or system of cryptic lore, he besieged his visitor with demands for future reports of dreams. This bore regular fruit, for after the first interview the manuscript records daily calls of the young man, during which he related startling fragments of nocturnal imagery whose burden was always some terrible Cyclopean vista of dark and dripping stone, with a subterrene voice or intelligence shouting monotonously in enigmatical sense-impacts uninscribable save as gibberish. The two sounds most frequently repeated are those rendered by the letters “Cthulhu” and “R’lyeh”.

Henry Anthony Wilcox wasn't the only person to be besieged by these dreams, several people across New England experienced them for several weeks after the day of the Earthquake, so much so that the local press rationalized it as a case of mass hysteria. In fact, it is so great that there are increasing reports of deliriums, dreams, prophecies, strange sculptures and artworks, cult rituals and activities all happening around the Globe, and they all began the day of the Earthquake.

Here the first part of the manuscript ended, but references to certain of the scattered notes gave me much material for thought—so much, in fact, that only the ingrained scepticism then forming my philosophy can account for my continued distrust of the artist. The notes in question were those descriptive of the dreams of various persons covering the same period as that in which young Wilcox had had his strange visitations. My uncle, it seems, had quickly instituted a prodigiously far-flung body of inquiries amongst nearly all the friends whom he could question without impertinence, asking for nightly reports of their dreams, and the dates of any notable visions for some time past. The reception of his request seems to have been varied; but he must, at the very least, have received more responses than any ordinary man could have handled without a secretary. This original correspondence was not preserved, but his notes formed a thorough and really significant digest. Average people in society and business—New England’s traditional “salt of the earth”—gave an almost completely negative result, though scattered cases of uneasy but formless nocturnal impressions appear here and there, always between March 23d and April 2nd—the period of young Wilcox’s delirium. Scientific men were little more affected, though four cases of vague description suggest fugitive glimpses of strange landscapes, and in one case there is mentioned a dread of something abnormal.

It was from the artists and poets that the pertinent answers came, and I know that panic would have broken loose had they been able to compare notes. As it was, lacking their original letters, I half suspected the compiler of having asked leading questions, or of having edited the correspondence in corroboration of what he had latently resolved to see. That is why I continued to feel that Wilcox, somehow cognisant of the old data which my uncle had possessed, had been imposing on the veteran scientist. These responses from aesthetes told a disturbing tale. From February 28th to April 2nd a large proportion of them had dreamed very bizarre things, the intensity of the dreams being immeasurably the stronger during the period of the sculptor’s delirium. Over a fourth of those who reported anything, reported scenes and half-sounds not unlike those which Wilcox had described; and some of the dreamers confessed acute fear of the gigantic nameless thing visible toward the last. One case, which the note describes with emphasis, was very sad. The subject, a widely known architect with leanings toward theosophy and occultism, went violently insane on the date of young Wilcox’s seizure, and expired several months later after incessant screamings to be saved from some escaped denizen of hell. Had my uncle referred to these cases by name instead of merely by number, I should have attempted some corroboration and personal investigation; but as it was, I succeeded in tracing down only a few. All of these, however, bore out the notes in full. I have often wondered if all the objects of the professor’s questioning felt as puzzled as did this fraction. It is well that no explanation shall ever reach them.

The press cuttings, as I have intimated, touched on cases of panic, mania, and eccentricity during the given period. Professor Angell must have employed a cutting bureau, for the number of extracts was tremendous and the sources scattered throughout the globe. Here was a nocturnal suicide in London, where a lone sleeper had leaped from a window after a shocking cry. Here likewise a rambling letter to the editor of a paper in South America, where a fanatic deduces a dire future from visions he has seen. A despatch from California describes a theosophist colony as donning white robes en masse for some “glorious fulfilment” which never arrives, whilst items from India speak guardedly of serious native unrest toward the end of March. Voodoo orgies multiply in Hayti, and African outposts report ominous mutterings. American officers in the Philippines find certain tribes bothersome about this time, and New York policemen are mobbed by hysterical Levantines on the night of March 22–23. The west of Ireland, too, is full of wild rumour and legendry, and a fantastic painter named Ardois-Bonnot hangs a blasphemous “Dream Landscape” in the Paris spring salon of 1926. And so numerous are the recorded troubles in insane asylums, that only a miracle can have stopped the medical fraternity from noting strange parallelisms and drawing mystified conclusions. A weird bunch of cuttings, all told; and I can at this date scarcely envisage the callous rationalism with which I set them aside. But I was then convinced that young Wilcox had known of the older matters mentioned by the professor.

This Earthquake is doubtlessly supernatural in nature, and the product of Cthulhu himself as he slumbers in his sunken city. However, other than the date of the Earthquake itself (February 28th, 1925), the story is vague on its details. Coincidentally, however, there was a Earthquake that struck New England in real life on the exact same day given by the story: Namely, the 1925 Charlevoix–Kamouraska earthquake. It becomes obvious, then, that the fictional Earthquake in Call of Cthulhu that struck New England on February 28th of 1925 is based on the Real World Earthquake that struck New England on the exact same day.

However, this would normally still be considered too speculatory for the Wiki, were it not for the fact that H.P. Lovecraft flat out confirmed it on Letter Nº 498 written to Robert E. Howard in September 12, 1931 (Selected Letters, Vol. III), where, in the middle of a long-winded racist rant, H.P. said this:

... I have had two sizeable tremors in my vicinity - only one of which I could feel. That was the shock of Feby. 28, 1925, which I use in my story Cthulhu. I was then living in Brooklyn on the second story of an old brownstone house; and the tremor rattled dishes, skewed pictures, rocked chandeliers, and produced a perceptible feeling of swaying in the house.

So we have direct confirmation.

In real life the Charlevoix–Kamouraska earthquake had a 6.2 Magnitude. Using this Earthquake Calculator we get a total "Seismic Moment Energy" of 2.460368e+18 Joules, or about 588.04 Megatons which is Mountain level on our Attack Potency chart.

However, the epicenter of the Real World Charlevoix–Kamouraska earthquake was right on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, whereas in fiction, Cthulhu is slumbering in his sunken city of R’lyeh in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. In fact, Lovecraft was kind enough to give us R’lyeh's Exact Coordinates:

Johansen’s voyage had begun just as he told it to the vice-admiralty. The Emma, in ballast, had cleared Auckland on February 20th, and had felt the full force of that earthquake-born tempest which must have heaved up from the sea-bottom the horrors that filled men’s dreams. Once more under control, the ship was making good progress when held up by the Alert on March 22nd, and I could feel the mate’s regret as he wrote of her bombardment and sinking. Of the swarthy cult-fiends on the Alert he speaks with significant horror. There was some peculiarly abominable quality about them which made their destruction seem almost a duty, and Johansen shews ingenuous wonder at the charge of ruthlessness brought against his party during the proceedings of the court of inquiry. Then, driven ahead by curiosity in their captured yacht under Johansen’s command, the men sight a great stone pillar sticking out of the sea, and in S. Latitude 47° 9′, W. Longitude 126° 43′ come upon a coast-line of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth’s supreme terror—the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh, that was built in measureless aeons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults and sending out at last, after cycles incalculable, the thoughts that spread fear to the dreams of the sensitive and called imperiously to the faithful to come on a pilgrimage of liberation and restoration. All this Johansen did not suspect, but God knows he soon saw enough!

Which puts the fictional sunken city's exact location around here, a continent's away from the Real Earthquake's epicenter.

I'm not sure how to calculate fictional earthquakes but I'm pretty sure that Call of Cthulhu's 1925 Charlevoix–Kamouraska earthquake, if calculated, would be much more powerful than the real deal.

However, I'm not done with listing statements and feats, there's something else that we can look into, and it involves the Deep Ones.

Part II: Dagon & The Deep Ones Sink The Land

In H.P. Lovecraft's Short Story Dagon, the titular monster seemingly raises a gigantic island from the ground, trapping the protagonist in the middle of the ocean, and then apparently easily drags the whole thing down to the ocean.

The island in question is so big that it stretches as far as the narrator can see in all directions, despite it being a mostly flat plateau. Also, he can't even hear the sound of the ocean anymore.

The change happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know; for my slumber, though troubled and dream-infested, was continuous. When at last I awaked, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see, and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away.

Though one might well imagine that my first sensation would be of wonder at so prodigious and unexpected a transformation of scenery, I was in reality more horrified than astonished; for there was in the air and in the rotting soil a sinister quality which chilled me to the very core. The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish, and of other less describable things which I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain. Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing, and nothing in sight save a vast reach of black slime; yet the very completeness of the stillness and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed me with a nauseating fear.

The sun was blazing down from a sky which seemed to me almost black in its cloudless cruelty; as though reflecting the inky marsh beneath my feet. As I crawled into the stranded boat I realised that only one theory could explain my position. Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval, a portion of the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface, exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths. So great was the extent of the new land which had risen beneath me, that I could not detect the faintest noise of the surging ocean, strain my ears as I might. Nor were there any sea-fowl to prey upon the dead things.

The narrator walks four four days along the island until he finds a big mound at least several hundred feet in height, which he climbs, and after climbing it he finds that the island still stretches onward like an immeasurable pit or canyon:

On the third morning I found the soil dry enough to walk upon with ease. The odour of the fish was maddening; but I was too much concerned with graver things to mind so slight an evil, and set out boldly for an unknown goal. All day I forged steadily westward, guided by a far-away hummock which rose higher than any other elevation on the rolling desert. That night I encamped, and on the following day still travelled toward the hummock, though that object seemed scarcely nearer than when I had first espied it. By the fourth evening I attained the base of the mound, which turned out to be much higher than it had appeared from a distance; an intervening valley setting it out in sharper relief from the general surface. Too weary to ascend, I slept in the shadow of the hill.

I know not why my dreams were so wild that night; but ere the waning and fantastically gibbous moon had risen far above the eastern plain, I was awake in a cold perspiration, determined to sleep no more. Such visions as I had experienced were too much for me to endure again. And in the glow of the moon I saw how unwise I had been to travel by day. Without the glare of the parching sun, my journey would have cost me less energy; indeed, I now felt quite able to perform the ascent which had deterred me at sunset. Picking up my pack, I started for the crest of the eminence.

I have said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a source of vague horror to me; but I think my horror was greater when I gained the summit of the mound and looked down the other side into an immeasurable pit or canyon, whose black recesses the moon had not yet soared high enough to illumine. I felt myself on the edge of the world; peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal night. Through my terror ran curious reminiscences of Paradise Lost, and of Satan’s hideous climb through the unfashioned realms of darkness.

As the moon climbed higher in the sky, I began to see that the slopes of the valley were not quite so perpendicular as I had imagined. Ledges and outcroppings of rock afforded fairly easy foot-holds for a descent, whilst after a drop of a few hundred feet, the declivity became very gradual. Urged on by an impulse which I cannot definitely analyse, I scrambled with difficulty down the rocks and stood on the gentler slope beneath, gazing into the Stygian deeps where no light had yet penetrated.

At the end of the short story, the narrator comes in contact with Dagon, who appears to drag the island back to the bottom of the ocean, so thoroughly that the people who rescued him found no sign of any land upheaval in the Pacific. Also there was apparently a great storm. The story ends with the narrator speculating that there will come a day when Dagon and his children will rise from the depths of the ocean to drag all of the surface land with them and wipe out mankind.

Then suddenly I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then.

Of my frantic ascent of the slope and cliff, and of my delirious journey back to the stranded boat, I remember little. I believe I sang a great deal, and laughed oddly when I was unable to sing. I have indistinct recollections of a great storm some time after I reached the boat; at any rate, I know that I heard peals of thunder and other tones which Nature utters only in her wildest moods.

When I came out of the shadows I was in a San Francisco hospital; brought thither by the captain of the American ship which had picked up my boat in mid-ocean. In my delirium I had said much, but found that my words had been given scant attention. Of any land upheaval in the Pacific, my rescuers knew nothing; nor did I deem it necessary to insist upon a thing which I knew they could not believe. Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish-God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my inquiries.

It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I see the thing. I tried morphine; but the drug has given only transient surcease, and has drawn me into its clutches as a hopeless slave. So now I am to end it all, having written a full account for the information or the contemptuous amusement of my fellow-men. Often I ask myself if it could not all have been a pure phantasm—a mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken and raving in the open boat after my escape from the German man-of-war. This I ask myself, but ever does there come before me a hideously vivid vision in reply. I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind—of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium.

In Lovecraft's other story concerning Dagon and the Deep Ones, The Shadow over Innsmouth, we get similar statements. We learn that the Deep Ones themselves (Not Dagon, but regular Deep Ones) are able to upheave small islands from the ocean floor to the surface. We are also told of their relationships with the Old Ones, and we are even told that this is happening in the Pohnpei region of the Caroline Islands, so we know that these islands must be rather small (Since they are described as small volcanic islands near the main island), as opposed to the absolutely massive plateau heaved up by Dagon:

“Never was nobody like Cap’n Obed—old limb o’ Satan! Heh, heh! I kin mind him a-tellin’ abaout furren parts, an’ callin’ all the folks stupid fer goin’ to Christian meetin’ an’ bearin’ their burdens meek an’ lowly. Says they’d orter git better gods like some o’ the folks in the Injies—gods as ud bring ’em good fishin’ in return for their sacrifices, an’ ud reely answer folks’s prayers.

“Matt Eliot, his fust mate, talked a lot, too, only he was agin’ folks’s doin’ any heathen things. Told abaout an island east of Otaheité whar they was a lot o’ stone ruins older’n anybody knew anything abaout, kind o’ like them on Ponape, in the Carolines, but with carvin’s of faces that looked like the big statues on Easter Island. They was a little volcanic island near thar, too, whar they was other ruins with diff’rent carvin’s—ruins all wore away like they’d ben under the sea onct, an’ with picters of awful monsters all over ’em.

We are told that the Deep Ones could wipe out "the whole brood of humanity" as long as they don't have "certain signs such as those once used by the Old Ones".

“Wal, Sir, Obed he larnt that they’s things on this arth as most folks never heerd abaout—an’ wouldn’t believe ef they did hear. It seems these Kanakys was sacrificin’ heaps o’ their young men an’ maidens to some kind o’ god-things that lived under the sea, an’ gittin’ all kinds o’ favour in return. They met the things on the little islet with the queer ruins, an’ it seems them awful picters o’ frog-fish monsters was supposed to be picters o’ these things. Mebbe they was the kind o’ critters as got all the mermaid stories an’ sech started. They had all kinds o’ cities on the sea-bottom, an’ this island was heaved up from thar. Seems they was some of the things alive in the stone buildin’s when the island come up sudden to the surface. That’s haow the Kanakys got wind they was daown thar. Made sign-talk as soon as they got over bein’ skeert, an’ pieced up a bargain afore long.

“Them things liked human sacrifices. Had had ’em ages afore, but lost track o’ the upper world arter a time. What they done to the victims it ain’t fer me to say, an’ I guess Obed wa’n’t none too sharp abaout askin’. But it was all right with the heathens, because they’d ben havin’ a hard time an’ was desp’rate abaout everything. They give a sarten number o’ young folks to the sea-things twict every year—May-Eve an’ Hallowe’en—reg’lar as cud be. Also give some o’ the carved knick-knacks they made. What the things agreed to give in return was plenty o’ fish—they druv ’em in from all over the sea—an’ a few gold-like things naow an’ then.

“Wal, as I says, the natives met the things on the little volcanic islet—goin’ thar in canoes with the sacrifices et cet’ry, and bringin’ back any of the gold-like jools as was ’ to ’em. At fust the things didn’t never go onto the main island, but arter a time they come to want to. Seems they hankered arter mixin’ with the folks, an’ havin’ j’int ceremonies on the big days—May-Eve an’ Hallowe’en. Ye see, they was able to live both in an’ aout o’ water—what they call amphibians, I guess. The Kanakys told ’em as haow folks from the other islands might wanta wipe ’em aout ef they got wind o’ their bein’ thar, but they says they dun’t keer much, because they cud wipe aout the hull brood o’ humans ef they was willin’ to bother—that is, any as didn’t hev sarten signs sech as was used onct by the lost Old Ones, whoever they was. But not wantin’ to bother, they’d lay low when anybody visited the island.

The worshipers of the Deep Ones on the island were apparently all wiped out by the natives of the nearby magics, who apparently did indeed possess the ancient magic of the Old Ones.

“Matt he didn’t like this business at all, an’ wanted Obed shud keep away from the island; but the Cap’n was sharp fer gain, an’ faound he cud git them gold-like things so cheap it ud pay him to make a specialty of ’em. Things went on that way fer years, an’ Obed got enough o’ that gold-like stuff to make him start the refinery in Waite’s old run-daown fullin’ mill. He didn’t dass sell the pieces like they was, fer folks ud be all the time askin’ questions. All the same his crews ud git a piece an’ dispose of it naow and then, even though they was swore to keep quiet; an’ he let his women-folks wear some o’ the pieces as was more human-like than most.

“Wal, come abaout ’thutty-eight—when I was seven year’ old—Obed he faound the island people all wiped aout between v’yages. Seems the other islanders had got wind o’ what was goin’ on, an’ had took matters into their own hands. S’pose they musta had, arter all, them old magic signs as the sea-things says was the only things they was afeard of. No tellin’ what any o’ them Kanakys will chance to git a holt of when the sea-bottom throws up some island with ruins older’n the deluge. Pious cusses, these was—they didn’t leave nothin’ standin’ on either the main island or the little volcanic islet excep’ what parts of the ruins was too big to knock daown. In some places they was little stones strewed abaout—like charms—with somethin’ on ’em like what ye call a swastika naowadays. Prob’ly them was the Old Ones’ signs. Folks all wiped aout, no trace o’ no gold-like things, an’ none o’ the nearby Kanakys ud breathe a word abaout the matter. Wouldn’t even admit they’d ever ben any people on that island.

In the end of the story, the protagonist meets with his Deep Ones ancestors, and we are once again told that the Deep Ones can't die, that only the ancient forgotten magic of the Old Ones can keep them in check, and that one day they will rise to the surface and spread across the land, bringing everyone back into the sea. Also we are told that Cthulhu is above the Deep Ones, since they will bring him tribute:

One night I had a frightful dream in which I met my grandmother under the sea. She lived in a phosphorescent palace of many terraces, with gardens of strange leprous corals and grotesque brachiate efflorescences, and welcomed me with a warmth that may have been sardonic. She had changed—as those who take to the water change—and told me she had never died. Instead, she had gone to a spot her dead son had learned about, and had leaped to a realm whose wonders—destined for him as well—he had spurned with a smoking pistol. This was to be my realm, too—I could not escape it. I would never die, but would live with those who had lived since before man ever walked the earth.

I met also that which had been her grandmother. For eighty thousand years Pth’thya-l’yi had lived in Y’ha-nthlei, and thither she had gone back after Obed Marsh was dead. Y’ha-nthlei was not destroyed when the upper-earth men shot death into the sea. It was hurt, but not destroyed. The Deep Ones could never be destroyed, even though the palaeogean magic of the forgotten Old Ones might sometimes check them. For the present they would rest; but some day, if they remembered, they would rise again for the tribute Great Cthulhu craved. It would be a city greater than Innsmouth next time. They had planned to spread, and had brought up that which would help them, but now they must wait once more. For bringing the upper-earth men’s death I must do a penance, but that would not be heavy. This was the dream in which I saw a shoggoth for the first time, and the sight set me awake in a frenzy of screaming. That morning the mirror definitely told me I had acquired the Innsmouth look.

So far I have not shot myself as my uncle Douglas did. I bought an automatic and almost took the step, but certain dreams deterred me. The tense extremes of horror are lessening, and I feel queerly drawn toward the unknown sea-deeps instead of fearing them. I hear and do strange things in sleep, and awake with a kind of exaltation instead of terror. I do not believe I need to wait for the full change as most have waited. If I did, my father would probably shut me up in a sanitarium as my poor little cousin is shut up. Stupendous and unheard-of splendours await me below, and I shall seek them soon. Iä-R’lyeh! Cthulhu fhtagn! Iä! Iä! No, I shall not shoot myself—I cannot be made to shoot myself!

I shall plan my cousin’s escape from that Canton madhouse, and together we shall go to marvel-shadowed Innsmouth. We shall swim out to that brooding reef in the sea and dive down through black abysses to Cyclopean and many-columned Y’ha-nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever.

Obviously these recurring statements of the Deep Ones destroying the whole surface world and bringing all the land down to the sea, as well as their apparent weakness to the magic of the Old Ones, are really vague and hard to properly quantify in any meaningful sense.

Luckily, H.P. Lovecraft wasn't the only person writing for Weird Tales around his time. Which brings up to the last part...

Part III: In Which Crappy Conan The Barbarian Expands On The Deep Ones

One of H.P. Lovecraft's friends was a guy called Henry Kuttner. He was one of many writers writing Short Stories for Weird Tales when Lovecraft was still alive, and is considered a member of the unofficial "Lovecraft Circle". Like many others, he played around with some of Lovecraft's creations in his own stories.

I'll be honest, Henry Kuttner's stories kinda suck. His writing posesses neither the eldritch cyclopean horror of H.P. Lovecraft, nor the wild fantastic imagination of Clark Ashton Smith, or even the pulpy energy and excitement of Robert E. Howard. Nonetheless, he was their contemporary and so his writings are just as valid and acceptable for scaling and lore - In fact, he was the first person to ever objectively bring up the notion that Azathoth Dreams Up Reality - In his 1940 Short Story "The Hydra", so his contributions aren't totally insignificant.

And thus we arrive on the subject of Elak of Atlantis, a series of shitty Swords & Sorcery Short Stories about a noble atlantean warrior guy who Kuttner really wishes was either Conan or Kull. Point is, one of these stories is called The Spawn of Dagon, and that's what we'll focus on.

In it, Elak goes to fight a generic creepy wizard named Zend, and upon arriving on his lair he finds out about Dagon and the Deep Ones, and of the fact that Zend has been channelling the magic of the Old Ones to keep them at a bay and prevent Atlantis from sinking into the ocean. Here are the relevant quotes:

We get a look at the kind of magic that Zend channels, described as an indistinct vision of tremendous cyclopean forces.

Beyond the silver curtain was a room—huge, high-domed, with great open windows through which the chill night wind blew strongly. The room blazed with the coruscating brilliance of the glowing gems, which were set in walls and ceiling in bizarre, arabesque patterns. Through one window Elak saw the yellow globe of the moon, which was just rising. Three archways, curtained, broke the smooth expanse of the farther wall. The chamber itself, richly furnished with rugs and silks and ornaments, was empty of occupants. Elak noiselessly covered the distance to the archways and peered through the curtain of the first.

Blazing white light blinded him. He had a flashing, indistinct vision of tremendous forces, leashed, cyclopean, straining mightily to burst the bonds that held them. Yet actually he saw nothing—merely an empty room. But empty he knew that it was not! Power unimaginable surged from beyond the archway, shuddering through every atom of Elak's body. Glittering steel walls reflected his startled face.

And on the floor, in the very center of the room, he saw a small mud-colored stone. That was all. Yet about the stone surged a tide of power that made Elak drop the curtain and back away, his eyes wide with fear. Very quickly he turned to the next curtain—peered apprehensively beyond it.

Zend gives an info-dump on Dagon and the Deep Ones, and how they have the power to sink the continents and intend to drown out the surface world:

"They are the children of Dagon," Zend said. "Their dwelling-place is in the great deeps of the ocean. Have you never heard of the unearthly ones who worship Dagon?"

"Yes. But I never believed——"

"Oh, there's truth in the tale. Eons and unimaginable eons ago, before mankind existed on earth, only the waters existed. There was no land. And from the slime there sprang up a race of beings which dwelt in the sunken abysses of the ocean, inhuman creatures that worshipped Dagon, their god. When eventually the waters receded and great continents arose, these beings were driven down to the lowest depths. Their mighty kingdom, that had once stretched from pole to pole, was shrunken as the huge land-masses lifted. Mankind came—but from whence I do not know—and civilizations arose. Hold still. These cursed knots——"

"I don't understand all of that," Elak said, wincing as the wizard's nail dug into his wrist. "But go on."

"These things hate man, for they feel that man has usurped their kingdom. Their greatest hope is to sink the continents again, so that the seas will roll over all the earth, and not a human being will survive. Their power will embrace the whole world, as it once did eons ago. They are not human, you see, and they worship Dagon. They want no other gods worshipped on Earth. Ishtar, dark Eblis, even Poseidon of the sunlit seas.... They will achieve their desire now, I fear."

Zend expands on his power source, stating that Atlantis would have sank into the ocean long ago if it weren't for his magic. The Deep Ones are "masters of the earthquake", and they have sank other lands before Atlantis already. Zend claims to have drawn "strength from the stars and the cosmic sources beyond the universe" and that is why he is single-handedly keeping the Deep Ones from sinking Atlantis:

"The gods be thanked!" Zend said fervently. "If I can repair the damage and light the globe again, the children of Dagon will die. That's the purpose of it. The rays it emits destroy their bodies, which are otherwise invulnerable, or almost so. If I hadn't had the globe, they'd have invaded my palace and killed me long ago."

"They have a tunnel under the cellars," Elak said.

"I see. But they dared not invade the palace while the globe shone, for the light-rays would have killed them. Curse these knots! If they accomplish their purpose——"

"What's that?" Elak asked—but he had already guessed the answer.

"To sink Atlantis! This island-continent would have gone down beneath the sea long ago if I hadn't pitted my magic and my science against that of the children of Dagon. They are masters of the earthquake, and Atlantis rests on none too solid a foundation. Their power is sufficient to sink Atlantis for ever beneath the sea. But within that room"—Zend nodded toward the curtain that hid the sea-bred horrors—"in that room there is power far stronger than theirs. I have drawn strength from the stars, and the cosmic sources beyond the universe. You know nothing of my power. It is enough—more than enough—to keep Atlantis steady on its foundation, impregnable against the attacks of Dagon's breed. They have destroyed other lands before Atlantis."

Hot blood dripped on Elak's hands as the wizard tore at the cords.

"Aye ... other lands. There were races that dwelt on Earth before man came. My powers have shown me a sunlit island that once reared far to the south, an island where dwelt a race of beings tall as trees, whose flesh was hard as stone, and whose shape was so strange you could scarcely comprehend it. The waters rose and covered that island, and its people died. I have seen a gigantic mountain that speared up from a waste of tossing waters, in Earth's youth, and in the towers and minarets that crowned its summit dwelt beings like sphinxes, with the heads of beasts and gods and whose broad wings could not save them when the cataclysm came. For ruin came to the city of the sphinxes, and it sank beneath the ocean—destroyed by the children of Dagon. And there was——"

If this is accepted, the upper-bound of Dagon and the Deep Ones' power over earthquakes would be Continent level, and Cthulhu and all the other Great Old Ones would scale unfathomably far above them, since not only do we have confirmation that Cthulhu is far above them from Lovecraft's own Shadow Over Innsmouth, but in here we see that even a single human sorcerer channeling their powers is able to prevent an island-continent from sinking.

Conclusion

I don't have any.

I personally think that Cthulhu's Earthquake feat and Dagon's island-sinking feat from their eponymous H.P. Lovecraft Stories should be calculated and serve as the lower-bound of their tiers "At least [Insert Result]", with the higher "Likely" rating being Continent level going from Kuttner's story.

But others may disagree. What do you people think?

 

[Arceus0x]

seems swell

 

[Antvasima]

@Roachman40 @Udlmaster @The_King_of_Prudence @Edenstar @Planck69 @Ultima_Reality @Elizhaa @LordTracer @KingPin0422

Would you be willing to help out here please?

 

[ShivaShakti]

I agree

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Dumb Calculation for the size of the island in the Short Story Dagon:

Step One:

Upon finding himself in the island, the narrator claims that he can't see the sea in the horizon no matter the direction he stares at. So the island must stretch beyond the horizon (Beyond 5 Kilometres) in all directions. But lets pretend that it only stretches exactly 5 KM in three directions. We are lowballing here. This gives us an Island Width of 10 Kilometres and an Island Length of at least 5 Kilometres.

Step Two:

After that, the narrator walks on a straight line for four days straight, always stopping to rest in the evening before continuing. Let's pretend that he only walked 6 hours a day. The rest of the time he sat still taking breaks, or ate, or slept. And let's also assume that he walked at a rather slow pace of 4 KM/H. Again, we are lowballing here. Nevertheless, this would mean that the narrator walked 96 Kilometres in those four days, adding up to our length.

Step Three:

Finally, the narrator finds the hill / mound, which is described as being over 200 feet tall, and he climbs it to have a better look at the island. Despite that, he still sees no end to the island, seeing it stretching on as far as the eye can see. Since we are lowballing again, let's pretend that the mound is only 200 feet tall and that the added distance from the horizon actually does reach to the end of the island. Using this horizon calculator, we get a horizon of 17.3 miles or 27.8 kilometres.

This means that our final island dimensions are a width of 10 Kilometres and a length of 128.8 kilometres

Step Four:

Assuming that the island is an elipse (Since islands aren't perfect rectangles), we can calculate the total area using this calculator. And it gives us a total area of about 1,011.59 km². This number may seem insane, but according to Wikipedia there are actually about 320 larger islands than it in the world, so it's actually pretty reasonable.

 

[Planck69]

Looks good to me. Honestly, it's a pretty lowballed distance as far as Dagon's island feat goes so the calculation seems fine.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Thank you

 

[Elizhaa]

These proposals seem fine.

 

[Antvasima]

Thanks to everybody who are helping out here.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Still need some more input.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. I called for the main knowledgeable members that I could find above though.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I'm largely fine with using Dagon's feat. Same with Cthulhu"s, although I'm not really familiar with earthquake calculations, truth be told.

Overall I think the more questionable bit here is rating the Dagon and the Deep Ones' feats at 6-A. The text states they will eventually drag all the continents down to the ocean, sure, but I don't see any elaboration on further specifics regarding the feat, and ontop of that, it is described as being their greatest hope. The most concrete high-end we have here is their feat of being able to sink Atlantis, but:

1. We don't know how big Atlantis is, as far as I'm aware, and evaluating that based on it being called an island-continent probably isn't that reliable, given how arbitrary these labels are.

2. The ease with which they can do that seems to be partly attributed to the fact that Atlantis has no solid foundation. Probably important to take into account.

 

[Antvasima]

Thank you for helping out, Ultima.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

1. We don't know how big Atlantis is, as far as I'm aware, and evaluating that based on it being called an island-continent probably isn't that reliable, given how arbitrary these labels are

I'm sure Robert E. Howard gives some specifics since he's the one who wrote about it the most.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Overall I think the more questionable bit here is rating the Dagon and the Deep Ones' feats at 6-A. The text states they will eventually drag all the continents down to the ocean, sure, but I don't see any elaboration on further specifics regarding the feat,

I think dragging all of the continents to the ocean is more their upper bound and not something they can casually do.

We do have a casual feat in Shadow over Innsmouth where a small group of Deep Ones shoot up an island to the surface which is probably like 7-C or so

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

I'm sure Robert E. Howard gives some specifics since he's the one who wrote about it the most.

Robert E. Howard describes Atlantis as a "small island continent" (Same as Kuttner) and vaguely describes its location:

Known history begins with the waning of the Pre Cataclysmic civilization, dominated by the kingdoms of Kamelia, Valusia, Verulia, Grondar, Thule, and Commoria. These peoples spoke a similar language, arguing a common origin. […] The barbarians of that age were the Picts, who lived on islands far out on the western ocean; the Atlanteans, who dwelt on a small continent between the Pictish Islands and the main, or Thurian Continent; and the Lemurians, who inhabited a chain of large islands in the eastern hemisphere.

The Pictish Islands would later rise to become the tallest mountains of the Americas, while the Thurian Continent is a primordial super-continent that following the "Great Cataclysm" would split and crack into the setting of Conan's Hyborean Age (A mix of Europe, Asia and Northern Africa). This is corroborated by another statement:

Professor Schuyler gave it as his opinion that the myth was somehow connected with the lost Atlantis, which, he maintains, was located between the African and South American continents and to whose inhabitants the ancestors of the Egyptians were tributary.

Henry Kuttner also never gives much description on the size of Atlantis, but we know it contains several kingdoms (Such as Cyrena and Poseidonia - Robert's Atlantis has multiple kingdoms too) and also an Inland Sea:

He bent to scrawl, with a bit of charcoal, a rough map on the table’s top. “Here we are at Poseidonia. We go inland thirty miles to the Central Lake, where I’ve a ship waiting. Then north, down the river through the heart of Atlantis, into the Inland Sea that touches Cyrena. We’ll go with the current, and my oarsmen are strong.”

He also provides this geographical description of Atlantis:

The island continent is, roughly, heart-shaped, split down the middle by a waterway which runs from a huge bay or inland sea at the north down to a lake nearly at the southern extremity, thirty miles from the seacoast city of Poseidonia. For as long as men could remember the northern shores had been harried by red-bearded giants whose long black galleys had swept down from the frozen lands beyond the ocean.

He describes Atlantis as being "roughly heart-shaped". Now, this is purely speculatory, but I believe this is a reference to the shape of Atlantis seen in the Athanasius Kircher Map, which kinda looks like a heart if you squint, and is probably the most famous depiction of Atlantis in a map. Kircher was a crazy guy who believed that the allegorical Atlantis of Plato writings was literally true, and he tried to "scientifically" determine its location, geography and dimensions.

Regardless, all of this to say is that the Atlantis of Robert E. Howard and Henry Kuttner doesn't diverge much in geographical location from Plato's own original, allegorical Atlantis - Being a small island-continent located west of Europe and Africa in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Description of Plato's Atlantis according to Wikipedia:

According to Critias, the Hellenic deities of old divided the land so that each deity might have their own lot; Poseidon was appropriately, and to his liking, bequeathed the island of Atlantis. The island was larger than Ancient Libya and Asia Minor combined, but it was later sunk by an earthquake and became an impassable mud shoal, inhibiting travel to any part of the ocean. Plato asserted that the Egyptians described Atlantis as an island consisting mostly of mountains in the northern portions and along the shore and encompassing a great plain in an oblong shape in the south "extending in one direction three thousand stadia [about 555 km; 345 mi], but across the center inland it was two thousand stadia [about 370 km; 230 mi]." Fifty stadia [9 km; 6 mi] from the coast was a mountain that was low on all sides ... broke it off all round about ... the central island itself was five stades in diameter [about 0.92 km; 0.57 mi].

"Asia Minor" is about 756,000 km² while "Ancient Libya" was a vague description that the Hellenics used to the lands west of Egypt with no real definition. This is based on absolutely nothing but I assume that Atlantis should be at least over 1 Million KM² in size, which would put it around the 30 largest countries in the world, but still pretty small by continent standards.

 

[Antvasima]

So what should we do here exactly?

Also, do you have any suggestions for members that I should call here?

 

[Mantidil]

Bump.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Thank you for the bump.

 

[Antvasima]

@Ultima_Reality @Elizhaa @Planck69

What do you think about Matthew's latest comments?

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

At least Mountain level, likely Country level, possibly Far Higher would be my final tier for Cthulhu

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Of course I would like calculations for the Earthquake taking in account the actual distance and for the island Dagon dragged to the sea.

 

[Antvasima]

@Matthew_Schroeder

Well, we obviously need to use calculations as a basis for the tiering, and cannot use guesswork.

Do you have any calculations or evidence for feats that can be calculated available? I can ask a few of our calc group members for help after you display the evidence, if necessary.

 

[Kiryu-MG3]

I agree with this, nice job Matthew.

 

[Antvasima]

@Matthew_Schroeder

So what, if anything, is left to do here?

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

I would like the feats calculated. I'd have to ask for that tho.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, if you provide all of the evidence here, I can ask some of our calc group members for help to calculate the feats.

 

[Lewis]

so excited,I agree

 

[Antvasima]

I would like the feats calculated. I'd have to ask for that tho.

Well, if you provide all of the evidence here, I can ask some of our calc group members for help to calculate the feats.

@Matthew_Schroeder

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Calculate the Earthquake taking in account the larger distance from the epicenter compared to the real life equivalent:

In real life the Charlevoix–Kamouraska earthquake had a 6.2 Magnitude. Using this Earthquake Calculator we get a total "Seismic Moment Energy" of 2.460368e+18 Joules, or about 588.04 Megatons which is Mountain level on our Attack Potency chart.

However, the epicenter of the Real World Charlevoix–Kamouraska earthquake was right on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, whereas in fiction, Cthulhu is slumbering in his sunken city of R’lyeh in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. In fact, Lovecraft was kind enough to give us R’lyeh's Exact Coordinates:

Which puts the fictional sunken city's exact location around here, a continent's away from the Real Earthquake's epicenter.

I'm not sure how to calculate fictional earthquakes but I'm pretty sure that Call of Cthulhu's 1925 Charlevoix–Kamouraska earthquake, if calculated, would be much more powerful than the real deal.

Calculate Dagon sinking the giant island:

Dumb Calculation for the size of the island in the Short Story Dagon:

Step One:

Upon finding himself in the island, the narrator claims that he can't see the sea in the horizon no matter the direction he stares at. So the island must stretch beyond the horizon (Beyond 5 Kilometres) in all directions. But lets pretend that it only stretches exactly 5 KM in three directions. We are lowballing here. This gives us an Island Width of 10 Kilometres and an Island Length of at least 5 Kilometres.

Step Two:

After that, the narrator walks on a straight line for four days straight, always stopping to rest in the evening before continuing. Let's pretend that he only walked 6 hours a day. The rest of the time he sat still taking breaks, or ate, or slept. And let's also assume that he walked at a rather slow pace of 4 KM/H. Again, we are lowballing here. Nevertheless, this would mean that the narrator walked 96 Kilometres in those four days, adding up to our length.

Step Three:

Finally, the narrator finds the hill / mound, which is described as being over 200 feet tall, and he climbs it to have a better look at the island. Despite that, he still sees no end to the island, seeing it stretching on as far as the eye can see. Since we are lowballing again, let's pretend that the mound is only 200 feet tall and that the added distance from the horizon actually does reach to the end of the island. Using this horizon calculator, we get a horizon of 17.3 miles or 27.8 kilometres.

This means that our final island dimensions are a width of 10 Kilometres and a length of 128.8 kilometres

Step Four:

Assuming that the island is an elipse (Since islands aren't perfect rectangles), we can calculate the total area using this calculator. And it gives us a total area of about 1,011.59 km². This number may seem insane, but according to Wikipedia there are actually about 320 larger islands than it in the world, so it's actually pretty reasonable.

 

[Antvasima]

Thank you.

@Mr._Bambu @Wokistan @Armorchompy @Migue79

Would any of you be willing to calculate this please?

https://vsbattles.com/threads/potential-scaling-for-weaker-cthulhu-mythos-entities.134849/post-4820548

 

[Lewis]

Bump.

 

[Antvasima]

@Executor_N0 @Spinosaurus75DinosaurFan @Therefir @DMUA @DemonGodMitchAubin @Jasonsith @Psychomaster35 @CloverDragon03

Would any of you be willing to calculate this, and then tell us here, please?

https://vsbattles.com/threads/potential-scaling-for-weaker-cthulhu-mythos-entities.134849/post-4820548

 

[Mantidil]

Bump

 

[Antvasima]

@Executor_N0 @Spinosaurus75DinosaurFan @Mr._Bambu @Therefir @DMUA @DemonGodMitchAubin @Jasonsith @Wokistan @Armorchompy @Migue79 @Psychomaster35 @CloverDragon03 @KLOL506 @Dark-Carioca @AbaddonTheDisappointment @Aguywhodoesthings @Damage3245

Would any of you be willing to calculate this, and then tell us here, please?

https://vsbattles.com/threads/potential-scaling-for-weaker-cthulhu-mythos-entities.134849/post-4820548

 

[Therefir]

If an earthquake originating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean was powerful enough to be felt in New England, the entire continent would have felt it, but okay.

Distance from New England to Galápagos Islands (closest thing I could find to the sunken city of R’lyeh): 5,297 km

Magnitude At Epicenter = (Magnitude at distance)+6.399+1.66*log10((Distance/110)((2π)/360))

Magnitude At Epicenter = (6.2)+6.399+1.66*log10((5297/110)*((2*pi)/360)) = 12.47

Energy = 10^[1.5*(12.47)+4.8] = 3.19*10^23 Joules, 76.24 Teratons of TNT, Country level+

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Country level Cthulhu actually lines up with my estimation of how big Atlantis should be nice.

 

[Therefir]

I will make a blog about it, I think I can get even higher results.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Can you also calc the Dagon feat where he sinks the island?

 

[Antvasima]

Thank you for helping out, Therefir.