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Power in The Cthulhu Mythos

Hat_mchat

Hat_mchat

430
279
Ok I'm going to use this thread to pile on some questions i have regarding power in the Cthulhu Mythos. Yes i have read all the mythos pages and have read Azathoth's excellent respect thread (though i might not remember everything).

Ok to start with, how 1-A exactly are the outer gods. In comparison to other 1-As on this wiki? If they are superior to a particular 1-A character or even all, what makes it so? High 1-A is more of a relative hierachical position in a particular fiction of 1-A characters (i think this is correct), so are there any high 1-A characters from other fictions that the outer gods are comparable to? Could an average outer god match, for example featherine?

This is all for now, more are yet to come.
 
You can't compare the Outer Gods to someone like Featherine

I believe the Outer Gods are on the higher-end of 1-A. Nyarlathotep is one of the weaker ones and he has vastly weaker 1-A avatars that can go to places that drive baseline 1-A characters insane. I think that's how it goes.
 
Why are the outer gods high end 1-A (apart from being more powerful than other 1-A characters in the verse)? Also what makes featherine more powerful?
 
If I'm not wrong also, the strongest Great Old Ones (Baseline 1-A) are fodder to the Elder Gods, who are in turn fodder to Nyar.
 
Are these original lovecraft great old ones? Also which great old ones in particular are 1-A and could you find me a quote or direct me towards finding a quote?
 
Quote about 1-A Great Old Ones:

The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unsee. 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. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man's truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them.
 
Much appreciated thanks. I very much got the picture that hypnos is insignificant to the outer gods, where does it say that the great old ones are insignificant to the outer gods?

EDIT: Going by the quote, shouldn't all great old ones be upgraded to 1-A, such as Cthulhu?
 
Also, what actually makes the outer gods superior to other mythos 1-A beings? I mean like what specifically? Is there an ability the outer gods have that the great old ones don't? The outer gods are beyond dimensions just like the great old ones.

EDIT: what is 'archetypal infinity', apparently Nyarlathotep transcends it? What makes the outer gods type 5 immortals?

EDIT 2: Who is more powerful, Hajun or Nyarlathotep?
 
Hat mchat said:
Why are the outer gods high end 1-A (apart from being more powerful than other 1-A characters in the verse)? Also what makes featherine more powerful?
Click to expand...
The fact that all forms of perspective, conceptions of scale, perceptions of change, etc. are not only facets of the Outer Gods, but things they do not abide by is definitely part of it.

You're getting into conceptual battles of an extremely high scale, here. For instance, if you were to ask "Is Featherine superior to Shub-Niggurath?", the answer is, "Yes, definitely". However, if you were to ask "Could Featherine destroy Shub-Niggurath?", the answer is "No, almost certainly not". Sort of like how, in Demonbane, EGD was superior to Yog-Sothoth in power, but Yog's truly endless scale meant neither could destroy the other.
 
Hat mchat said:
Much appreciated thanks. I very much got the picture that hypnos is insignificant to the outer gods, where does it say that the great old ones are insignificant to the outer gods?
EDIT: Going by the quote, shouldn't all great old ones be upgraded to 1-A, such as Cthulhu?
Click to expand...
The Great Old Ones are just extremely powerful aliens. They are from a completely remote end of cosmic space, but they are still a part of a greater, undimensioned reality.

"They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraven, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly."
 
Featherine and Yog-Sothoth are pretty similar in the nature of being at the exact step below their resident Tier 0 via their fundamental existence, and that both would almost certainly be Tier 0 if said other Tier 0s didn't exist. That's about as simple as I can make it without going into depth for each setting.
 
Determining power between true High 1-As is virtually impossible, so it's not like I could say.

That said, it's probably coterminous with Yog as opposed to beyond it. Lovecraft left it very vague, as it's mentioned maybe once despite its important position in the family tree.
 
According to the tiering system about High 1-A: "Characters that are extremely powerful compared to other characters within this category, and whose power by far exceeds the regular requirements for tier 1-A."

Isn't this essentially saying high 1-A is only relative, so a verse with baseline tier 1-As, but a character who is far above them would be high 1-A. Does this allow comparison between high 1-A characters for verses with varying degrees of 1-A? For example: verse A has 100 baseline 1-A characters and a character who is described as boundlessly beyond them and verse B has infinite 1-A characters who are well within the category and a character who is boundlessly above them.
 
High 1-A and 0 are where things can get pretty specific, because they are essentially judged by the very nature of a character as opposed to simply "power".
 
In most cases, High 1-A and 0 outside of a specific verse can't be properly gauged against each other, because in many cases, the one limit a High 1-A being has is the Tier 0 that exists above it.
 
Apprentice21 said:
and how big is the difference between the strongest high 1-B and the weakest 1-A?
Click to expand...
Greater than that between the weakest 11-ðí and the strongest high 1-B.
 
If you add another infinity of dimensions (the difference between 11-C and high 1-B) to the strongest high 1-B, it will still be a high 1-B and infinite-dimensional being.

Just this kind of perspective will not help to overcome the qualitative difference, that's all.
 
On the Umineko page i found this description: "Outside of that ladder is the boundlessness that is the lack of even perspective, the status of the Creator (the identity of a being that reaches this status disappears completely, because it is not limited to even its own life, death, or anything else)."

This is referring to the tier 0 in Umineko if I'm not mistaken. The notable part is that the creator is beyond all perspective and conceptions. Could you explain how this is different to the outer gods in the ultimate void? I believe Azathoth provided a quote about the beyondness of the outer gods that is very similar to this quote.
 
Outer Gods are differ in power and status. This is a hierarchy and perspective. Everything is a dream for Azathoth. This is also a hierarchy and perspective.

Hey, Dark, wait! It's not exactly true! These are just metaphors for phenomena that are beyond our understanding and description!

Well, that's the same thing with Then They Cry.
 
So are they meaningfully comparable?

Also i suppose i should've been clearer about the perspective thing and instead added that the outer gods are beyond all limiting concepts that outreach fancy and mathematics alike etc. Bla bla bla.

Is power at the level of the outer gods comparable at all?
 
Normal three-dimensional people and phenomena that beyond time and place, beyond possibilities, beyond being and nothing, beyond imagination, beyond information/concepts. Such things can be within the same layer. But the difference between them does not mean anything for the higher layer, where it's all just a fiction.

Nevertheless, the layers and their hierarchies or recursions do not mean anything for the creature from the World of Gods/the Almighty World/the higher Domain/the Meta-World. Everything in this world is not what it seems. And any wording cannot convey the fullness of meaning.
 
What differentiates the world of gods from the outer void? Presumably calling lower layers pure fiction is an analogy to the scale in difference, such as the difference between lower and higher dimensional beings. Why is it that beings who are beyond everything etc. are still confined to a lower layer? If they are truly beyond all concepts, why aren't they beyond all layers?
 
What differentiates the world of gods from the outer void?

I do not think that there are many differences.

Presumably calling lower layers pure fiction is an analogy to the scale in difference, such as the difference between lower and higher dimensional beings.

Quite the contrary. And different dimensions exist within the same layer.

Why is it that beings who are beyond everything etc. are still confined to a lower layer?

Because fictional beings that transcend something are still just fictional beings. The same as with Azathoth and his dreams (who are transcend bla bla bla), only on a smaller "scale".
 
So how do you know that beings like Azathoth aren't just meer fiction to beings like Featherine? The Cthulhu Mythos doesn't have a reality-fiction hierachy, what does it have as an analogy, what hierachy (as you said it can't be dimensional hierachy: "quite the comtrary")?
 
I said that the hierarchy of reality and fiction is not exactly an analogy to the scale. More precisely, I mean that dimensions are the best analogy for this. Nevertheless, in this context, they can be a sight at the same thing from different sides.

Loud statements alone do not mean anything without clear feats. Despite the use of terms like "any concept" (or superiority over perspectives in the Cthulhu Mythos), there has not been shown that there are any number of dimensions can been in a single layer. We could assume this, but no. Therefore, the layer hierarchy existing below the World of Gods will be viewed as more complicated version of the dimensional hierarchy or something like this. And the World of Gods will basically resemble the Outer Void.
 
Ok final question regarding reality-fiction hierachies (sorry for bothering you):

What aspect of the reality-fiction hierachy and dimensional hierachy is comparable? What fundamentally makes them similar (is it something to do with higher levels of infinity)?

Oh and thanks for the help.
 
Basically the difference between dimensions is something from the physical and geometrical point of view, and the difference between reality and fiction can be the same thing, but from the informational/abstract point of view.

That is, in the first case, we compare objects, and in the second case we compare the abstract program codes of these objects. That is, we look at the same from a different point of view.

This is a very simplified explanation and there are still a lot of nuances, and we still need to consider each case individually.
 
Basically what Dark said. Stuff like the World of Gods and the Outer Void are good examples of high-end 1-A stuff, and the point where climbing different hierarchies and gaining "power" becomes meaningless. Very different from something only meeting base 1-A qualifications.
 
But they still have their own hierarchies of gods. Nevertheless, one must understand that at their level these are metaphors, and not something with an understandable structure that can be described. And at the very end there is absolute truth. There are not even gods and their hierarchies. There is only Azathoth/only the Creator.
 
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