This is a list of fictional creatures from the Cthulhu mythos of American writer H. P. Lovecraft and his collaborators.
Byakhee
The byakhees or byakhee birds first appeared in Lovecraft's short story "The Festival" and were later featured in August Derleth's tale "The House on Curwen Street." They are the servants of the Great Old One Hastur.
Lovecraft provides a description of the byakhees in "The Festival":
Deep Ones
The Deep Ones first appeared in Lovecraft's novella The Shadow over Innsmouth (1931), but were already hinted at in the early short story "Dagon". The Deep Ones are a race of intelligent ocean-dwelling creatures, approximately human-shaped but with a fishy appearance. They regularly mate with humans along the coast, creating societies of hybrids.
Numerous Mythos elements are associated with the Deep Ones, including the legendary town of Innsmouth, the undersea city of Y'ha-nthlei, the Esoteric Order of Dagon, and the beings known as Father Dagon and Mother Hydra. After their debut in Lovecraft's tale, the sea-dwelling creatures resurfaced in the works of other authors, especially August Derleth.The Deep Ones are a popular fixture in Derleth's Cthulhu Mythos fiction, appearing in about half of his tales. ("Derleth's Use of the Words 'Ichthic' and 'Batrachian, Crypt of Cthulhu #9.)
Lovecraft provides a description of the Deep Ones in The Shadow over Innsmouth:
Lovecraft describes the Deep Ones as a race of undersea-dwelling humanoids whose preferred habitat is deep in the ocean (hence their name). However, despite being primarily marine creatures, they can come to the surface and can survive on land for extended periods of time. All Deep Ones are immortal; none die except by accident or violence, and they can grow to massive size. They are said to serve the beings known as Father Dagon and Mother Hydra, as well as Cthulhu.Robert M. Price suggests that "Dagon" and Cthulhu are actually the same entity, Dagon being "the closest biblical analogy to the real object of worship of the deep ones"—The Innsmouth Cycle, Robert M. Price, ed., p. ix. They are opposed by mysterious beings known as the Old Gods, whose powerful magic can keep them in check. This detail is one of the vestigial hints that August Derleth developed as the mostly unnamed Elder Gods.
Deep One hybrid The backstory of The Shadow over Innsmouth involves a bargain between Deep Ones and humans, in which the aquatic species provides plentiful fishing and gold in the form of strangely formed jewelry. In return, the land-dwellers give human sacrifices and a promise of "mixing"—the mating of humans with Deep Ones. Although the Deep One hybrid offspring are born with the appearance of a normal human being, the individual will eventually transform into a Deep One, gaining immortality—by default—only when the transformation is complete.
The transformation usually occurs when the individual reaches middle age. As the hybrid gets older, they begin to acquire the so-called "Innsmouth Look" as they take on more and more attributes of the Deep One race: the ears shrink, the eyes bulge and become unblinking, the head narrows and gradually goes bald, the skin becomes scabrous as it changes into scales, and the neck develops folds which later become gills. When the hybrid becomes too obviously non-human, it is hidden away from outsiders. Eventually, however, the hybrid will be compelled to slip into the sea to live with the Deep Ones in one of their undersea cities.
Father Dagon and Mother Hydra
Mother Hydra and her consort Father Dagon are both Deep Ones overgrown after millennia ruling over their lesser brethren. Together with Cthulhu, they form the triad of gods worshipped by the Deep Ones (their names are inspired by Dragon, or Dagon, the Semitic fertility deity, and the Hydra of Greek mythology).
Mother Hydra is not to be confused with the entity in Henry Kuttner's story "Hydra".
Y'ha-nthlei "Cyclopean and many-columned Y'ha-nthlei"Lovecraft, The Shadow Over Innsmouth. is the only Deep One city named by Lovecraft. It is described as a great undersea metropolis below Devil's Reef just off the coast of Massachusetts, near the town of Innsmouth. Its exact age is not known, but one resident is said to have lived there for 80,000 years."For eighty thousand years Pht'thya-l'yi had lived in Y'ha-nthlei". Lovecraft, The Shadow Over Innsmouth. In Lovecraft's story, the U.S. government torpedoed Devil's Reef, and Y'ha-nthlei was presumed destroyed, although the ending of the story implies it survived.
The name Y'ha-nthlei may have been inspired by the Lord Dunsany character "Yoharneth-Lahai", "the god of little dreams and fancies" who "sendeth little dreams out of PEGANA to please the people of Earth."Price makes this suggestion in the introduction of Dunsany's "Of Yoharneth-Lahai", The Innsmouth Cycle, p. 1.
Other authors have invented Deep One cities in other parts of the ocean, including Ahu-Y'hloa near Cornwall and G'll-Hoo, near the volcanic island of Surtsey off the coast of Iceland.Brian Lumley, "Rising With Surtsey".
Anders Fager has described the city of "Ya' Dich-Gho" as located in the Stockholm skerries. It is accidentally destroyed in 1982 during a Swedish submarine-hunt. At least two surviving Deep Ones live in Stockholm. One of them sells aquarist's supplies. The destruction of Ya' Dich-Gho is described in "When Death Came to Bod Reef"; the city's history in "Herr Goering's Artefact" and the life of the survivors in "Three Weeks of Bliss".
Elder Things The Elder Things (also known as the Old OnesThe term "Old Ones" is ambiguous in the Cthulhu Mythos and can also refer to the Great Old Ones, a separate group of beings described as being enemies of the Elder Things in At the Mountains of Madness. and Elder OnesIn At the Mountains of Madness, Professor Lake dubs the specimens he discovers "Elder Ones" in reference to the Elder Things of the Necronomicon, unaware that they are actually the same beings.) are fictional extraterrestrials in the Cthulhu Mythos. The beings first appeared in H. P. Lovecraft's novella, At the Mountains of Madness (published in 1936, but written in 1931), and later appeared, although not named, in the short story "The Dreams in the Witch-House" (1933). Additional references to the Elder Things appear in Lovecraft's short story "The Shadow Out of Time" (1936).
Description
Description of a partial headless body:
Six feet end to end, three and five-tenths feet central diameter, tapering to one foot at each end. Like a barrel with five bulging ridges in place of staves. Lateral breakages, as of thinnish stalks, are at equator in middle of these ridges. In furrows between ridges are curious growths—combs or wings that fold up and spread out like fans ... which gives almost seven-foot wing spread. Arrangement reminds one of certain monsters of primal myth, especially fabled Elder Things in the Necronomicon. —H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness
In the Mythos canon, the Elder Things were the first extraterrestrial species to come to the Earth, colonizing the planet about one billion years ago.Harms, "Appendix D: Timeline of the Cthulhu Mythos", The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana, p. 384. They stood roughly eight feet tall and had the appearance of a huge, oval-shaped barrel with starfish-like appendages at both ends. The top appendage was a head adorned with five eyes, five eating tubes, and a set of cilia for "seeing" without light. The bottom appendage was five-limbed and was used for walking and other forms of locomotion. The beings also had five leathery, fan-like retractable wings and five sets of branching tentacles that sprouted from their torsos. Both their tentacles and the slits housing their folded wings were spaced at regular intervals about their bodies.
Lovecraft described the Elder Things as vegetable-like or echinoderm-like in shape, having radial symmetry instead of the bilateral symmetry of bipeds. They also differed in that they had a five-lobed brain. The Elder Things exhibited vegetable as well as animal characteristics, and in terms of reproduction, multiplied using spores, although they discouraged increasing their numbers except when colonizing new regions. Though they could make use of both organic and inorganic substances, the Elder Things were carnivorous by preference. They were also amphibious.
The bodies of the Elder Things were incredibly tough, capable of withstanding the pressures of the deepest ocean. Few died except by accident or violence. The beings were also capable of hibernating for vast epochs of time. Nonetheless, unlike many other beings of the Mythos, the Elder Things were made of normal, terrestrial matter.
Technology The technology that the Elder Things possessed was not described at length, but was described as being extremely advanced. They are also revealed in At the Mountains of Madness as being the creators of a servitor race, the shoggoths.
Society Because they reproduced through spores, there was little biological basis for families to form, and were thus grouped together with others with whom they would get along. Elderian "families" lived in large dwellings, where furniture and other decoration was placed in the center of the rooms, to leave the walls open for murals.
In furnishing their homes they kept everything in the center of the huge rooms, leaving all the wall spaces free for decorative treatment. Lighting, in the case of the land inhabitants, was accomplished by a device probably electro-chemical in nature. Both on land and under water they used curious tables, chairs and couches like cylindrical frames for they rested and slept upright with folded-down tentacles and racks for hinged sets of dotted surfaces forming their books.
Government was evidently complex and probably socialistic, though no certainties in this regard could be deduced from the sculptures we saw. There was extensive commerce, both local and between different cities certain small, flat counters, five-pointed and inscribed, serving as money. Probably the smaller of the various greenish soapstones found by our expedition were pieces of such currency. Though the culture was mainly urban, some agriculture and much stock raising existed. Mining and a limited amount of manufacturing were also practiced. Travel was very frequent, but permanent migration seemed relatively rare except for the vast colonizing movements by which the race expanded. For personal locomotion no external aid was used, since in land, air, and water movement alike the Old Ones seemed to possess excessively vast capacities for speed. Loads, however, were drawn by beasts of burden Shoggoths under the sea, and a curious variety of primitive vertebrates in the later years of land existence. —H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness
In "The Dreams in the Witch-House," the central character is sent through a dimensional portal to a planet in a triple star system (with a yellow, red, and blue star) located "between Hydra and Argo Navis", and populated by Elder Things.
History On Earth, the Elder Things built huge cities, both underwater and on dry land. They may be responsible for the appearance of the first life-forms on Earth, including the entity known as Ubbo-Sathla (although sources differ in this regard). They created the shoggoths to be their all-purpose slave race. Eventually, however, the shoggoths rebelled—an event that hastened the decline and ultimate collapse of their civilization. Although the Elder Things managed to initially subdue the shoggoths after their attempted rebellion, the shoggoths continued to improve physiologically, increasing in intelligence and developing the capacity to live on land.