Favourite creatures from the Cthulhu Mythos?

[Cyril]

Originally Posted by knivesout

I've always found Nyarlathotep fascinating - because he is so vaguely defined.

I can't say why, but I've also been fascinated by Nyarlathotep. And what a name... when I read and hear it, I feel a huge divine power behind a name like that. I think its ancient egyptian resonance helps to increase that feeling.

Originally Posted by knivesout

Cthulhu himself is a pretty scary beastie - this description from 'The Call of Cthulhu' is brilliant.

I always found Cthuluth a bit ridiculous and in the same time very fearsome. There a sort of childhood spirit in it, like a power not yet revealed in gestation... the promise of a future in fact. I never felt that with the rest of Lovecraft bestiary which appears to me more mature. Perhaps this feeling comes from the fact that I better know Lovecraft universe through roleplaying games than the reading of its stories.

[Mors Profundis]

You've got it, all right, you just don't know it yet.
The Great Old Ones are a bit childish, arrogant and foolish at times, too.
The Go'aould on Stargate remind me of the GOO, not as colorful, a lot smaller, but the same sort of personality.
With lots of power, and a great desire to reclaim the Earth for themselves!

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Mors Profundis

Lovecraft borrowed from Welles, perhaps, in the tentacled nature of the Martian enemy.

Has anyone noticed how much the go'aould on Stargate resemble the Great Old Ones,ancient,arrogant, powerful and cruel-just not quite as colorful or outlandish.

The concepts are getting crowded.

Which is good, variations on a theme, exploration of possibilities, whatnot.

Not to mention the fact that the Shadows in Babylon-5 were, according to their creator, directly influenced by Lovecraft's stories. Until the end, they remained quite capable of making the hair on the back of my neck stand at attention!

Favorite beasties, eh? hmmmmm. I'm afraid I don't have a particular favorite; each appeals in a different way. I suppose, overall, if I had to pick, it would probably be Nyarlathotep because he was so malleable; from the "Crawling Chaos" of Lovecraft's earliest stories (and the Tessla-esque charlatan; good for you, Knivesout!) to the monstrous avatar in "The Haunter of the Dark". Oddly, I'd probably put Cthulhu next, as he really appears (and even then offstage) in one of HPL's tales, the rest of the time he's alluded to, or it's a statue of (though there are hints the wax figure in "The Horror in the Museum" -- which, I might point out, Lovecraft intended as tongue-in-cheek -- may be the Big C), etc.; so his power as a symbol of the utter alienness of the universe at large remains. Has it ever occurred to anyone else that the unknown being/force in "The Colour Out of Space" may be Nyarlathotep? Just a possibility; I'm not even sure it's an original thought, but it's one that has occurred to me (the Crawling Chaos aspect). But in picking even this far, I'm straining a bit.

[Nesacat]

It'll have to be Ithaqua the Wind-Walker and that image of him just blotting out the sky with two red stars where eyes should be. All those people mysteriously vanishing only to appear ages later in a distant place all frzen and with odd things in their pockets.

And the High Priest of Leng. He's never ever really described but there's something horribly fascinating and frightening about the fact that this features are quite alright.

[Somebloke]

While I like Cuthulu, he is by no means the best. It's hard to be completely respectful of a god that manages to get bested by- however briefly- a fishing-trawler.

I think that Azathoth- for reasons stated above- is perhaps the best for me- he manages to perfectly capture the cosmic bleakness of Lovecraft's universe. Close runner up would be the Shoggoth, although most of this comes from my first preconception- a slow moving creature such as out of the blob- when it comes rocketting down the tunnel I got the shock of my life.

[Paige Turner]

I think Wilbur Whately—even though he didn't look much like his dad—would be a good guy to know in a pinch. He'd be no good with dogs, but otherwise, a most intriguing fellow.

[Randolph]

I agree with Somebloke on Azathoth, my personal favorite entity. I'm also partial to the color out of space because it is Lovecraft's most mysterious creature, to the extent that it doesn't even have a name. I think HPL may have been kind of angry with himself for being too explicit with his creatures in earlier stories and made up for it with something much more intangible and strange.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Randolph

I agree with Somebloke on Azathoth, my personal favorite entity. I'm also partial to the color out of space because it is Lovecraft's most mysterious creature, to the extent that it doesn't even have a name. I think HPL may have been kind of angry with himself for being too explicit with his creatures in earlier stories and made up for it with something much more intangible and strange.

I'm not sure angry is the correct word, but disappointed... definitely. I'd have to look up the exact reference, but he makes that comment in a letter, that "the chromatic entity of The Colour Out of Space [was] the only one [he] took any real pride in." We also, by the way, don't really have any certainty about it's motivation, or even its sentience. It is one of the few truly alien creatures in all of fantastic fiction. It's been speculated (with some interesting citations to give said speculation substance) that that entity (or, more properly, group of entities, as either one of them, or a part of the whole, is left behind at story's end) may be one of the "masks" of Nyarlathotep. An intriguing thought, and a valid reading, I think, but only one of many, and I doubt it's one HPL had in mind.

It's interesting that neither Nyarlathotep nor Azathoth was developed as fully (as a consistent concept) as Cthulhu, the star-headed Old Ones, the Fungi from Yuggoth, etc.; even though both are mentioned frequently in his stories; I think Lovecraft wanted to keep them ambiguous and even nebulous, more allusive than "on-stage"... something like what we see with Chambers' King in Yellow. One could also argue that, as they (and Yog-Sothoth, for that matter) are among the most powerful of his entities, they are simply beyond our genuine comprehension, and he wanted to keep that feeling of true alienation there, while nonetheless showing how we tend to mythologize what we don't understand it in our attempts to do so....

[pyan]

Guess....!