Hey, neat site!

[MikeFS]

Hello everybody, I just found the site today, and found it to be a great resource for friends of H.P. Lovecraft. Great job, guys! I've been looking for a Cthulhu mythos site which wasn't just involved with the RPG (it's a cool game, but I wanna know more about the writings themselves).

I suppose this is the best place to introduce oneself compared to other forum parts, so I'll do it here. I'm MikeFS (abstaining from telling my real name), a 15-year old Finnish (as in Finland) kid whose all hyped up about Cthulhu and Co. I especially like your page since it's the only place where I've found Cthulhu fan fiction. The stories are great! I've passed thoughts of writing some fiction myself (I'm a very good writer relative to my age), but the stories I write are more action-oriented and direct than Lovecraft's pieces. I've only once tried (as a school essay) to write a horror story, but while it earned me top points, it wasn't very scary (although I believe Mr. Lovecraft himself referred to his stories as dark fantasy and not horror, so...). Also, I'm still clueless to about half of the whole mythos, making it hard to write anything. I've gotten the Deep Ones and the Great Race sorted out, but most other creatures' purpose and background still elude me. Even more hard is that half of the stories I've read have been translated to Finnish, making piecing names together hard.

That brings up, could any of you explain a small detail about the Mythos I'm mixed up about? Are the Elder Things in At the Mountains of Madness and the flying polyps the same thing? And were the Elder Things the ones that the Great Race of Yith deathly feared (the ones locked underground)? All that's still a bit hazy for me. Eh, once I get more stories read through I'll possibly get on track (or go insane in the process).

But anyway, it's great to be a part of your site! I'll go read some more stories now!

[Aleister]

Welcome to the forums!

Well where do I start..

The Flying Polyps were an elder race of creatures who came to Earth 600 million years ago to take over. They existed only halfway in space as we know it. They were blind, and relied on their mind to "see". They could take any shape they wanted and could become invisible as well as fly. They created huge windowless basalt towers across the planet. They could also control the forces of wind.

Yithians (main creatures in 'In The Mountains of Madness') came to Earth about 500 million years ago, taking the bodies of large cone-shaped creatures. They trapped the Polyps in the catacombs beneath their cities using advanced weapons. The Polyps survived underground, planning their revence and small wars took place. The Great Ones (Not to be confused with the Great Old Ones) eventually fleed, travelling into the future to take over the bodies of the great beetle race which ruled the earth after Humans were gone. The cone beings whos bodies the Yithians had taken over, soon fell to the Polyps without the intelligence of the Yiths.


There is so much complexity to all the events of the Mythos.. I am currently trying to think of away to organize all of the information.. but of course organization is only part of it.. the actual collection is whats tricky

[idolcrash]

There is a collection of Lovecraft's work online (when I get back from my vacation within a vacation, I'm going to save the stories to my hard drive just in case something happens to the site), but I don't think Aleister will like it too much if I link it, but it is out there

There is also a large FAQ dedicated to the mythos, if that helps (on my vacation within a vacation I'm on a 266mhz PC with 56k, so I can't search much without killing the computer), but again, I can't find it right now, so you may have to search for it.

The information organization sounds good, but with all the years of new writings coming out (80+?) some of the organization is quite loose, and would take an experienced reader to figure out what fits where (especially with Derleth's stories, while they have a paradigm of Good vs. Evil, he says himself it is only relative to the humans, in his stories the Ancient Ones (I can't believe I don't remember the organization of beings! http://wikipedia.org should help) are fighting the Great Old Ones cast from the place of the Ancient Ones, and the Great Old Ones would probably destroy Earth (according to Derleth, who emphasizes there is no true good or evil in the mythos), while the Ancient Ones wouldn't even notice it).

[Aleister]

The Cthulhu Mythos FAQ is good (as idolcrash mentioned). I am seeing about putting a copy up on the Temple for easy reference.

You made some good points idolcrash

As far as the database, thats why I will need all of your contributions too hehe

[Adrian]

I believe the Mythos is not meant to be totally organized and sorted, as it is based on the Chaos Effect. When room is distorted and time disjointed, one can hardly create a valid and correct, understandable order in them. It is not as much as 'understanding' them, but 'feeling' them. If you would take the Mythos just as fiction and write it as such, then there is no harm done, but therefore, no good either. The Mythos is surely the mis-shape of things to come, not the shape that was. Mythos was always about reaching beyond everything known to us in fiction or non-fiction.

[Aleister]

Nicely worded indeed

Edit: I just received a response from the editor of the 'official' Cthulhu Mythos FAQ, and you should find a copy up at the Temple of Dagon sometime today

[MikeFS]

Gee, I post a simple introduction of myself (ok, it wasn't simple, it rambled on and on) and I spawn a discussion of the organization of the Cthulhu Mythos. Yay me!

Ok, seriously, thanks for the explanation. That helped further my understanding of the stories. It's just confusing how half of the beings in Lovecraft's stories seem to be more or less round and covered with tentacles and have malevolent intentions (and even odder, around 25% are different winged demons that are summoned for humans to ride on). They all seem so similar after speed-reading three collections in a month (I had to return the books to my teacher before school was over, so I had a lot reading to do).

Oh, and on an unrelated note, I bought a cute Cthulhu plush toy a week ago (I hadn't even dreamed of them being sold in Finland, so of course I had to buy one) and placed him on top of my computer monitor, then left for a week to our cabin. When I came back, I found that my Internet's stopped randomly crashing! Ok, so maybe removing 160 Spyware files might have also affected it, but I remember the machine crashing even after that. Maybe if I buy a plush Nyarlathotep to accompany my Great Old One, my computer'll download pages faster! :D

[Aleister]

It is quite possible Nyarlathotep will help! Or if nothing else, you can simulate outer-worldly battles while waiting for downloads etc..

Information on the various 'gods' is definently one of the most questionable things in the Mythos. I think that will be the first thing I focus on in the database.

[Adrian]

If this database is to be done, I suggest it done professionally. Quality must be the word reflecting back from ToD in every direction. Suggestion tho: the database needs to be coming from the books, not from the understanding of readers. No definate explanation or definition should be offered or guessed, only ones originating from Lovecraft & Co.

[Aleister]

Very good point. It is making me re-think the way I had intended to set it up

Perhaps the best method would be to just go through the books, making notes as they are read. Would you be interested in helping with this ?

[Adrian]

I surely am, although going through the books is very sufficent, it also means that when CAS mentions f.e. Ubbo-Sathla, we would need to know every other Mythos book that has included the entity in it. Quotes would be included, of course, as with short commentaries that would explain them to newcomers alike. The work could be more or less tedious as I expect, though, so it would be effective if people *not only you and me* would read the Mythos stories and made notes too, and send them to you, where they are categorized, then analyzed and the explained. Or am I making this over-complicated ?

[decadence]

Welcome to the forums!

Well where do I start..

The Flying Polyps were an elder race of creatures who came to Earth 600 million years ago to take over. They existed only halfway in space as we know it. They were blind, and relied on their mind to "see". They could take any shape they wanted and could become invisible as well as fly. They created huge windowless basalt towers across the planet. They could also control the forces of wind.

Yithians (main creatures in 'In The Mountains of Madness') came to Earth about 500 million years ago, taking the bodies of large cone-shaped creatures. They trapped the Polyps in the catacombs beneath their cities using advanced weapons. The Polyps survived underground, planning their revence and small wars took place. The Great Ones (Not to be confused with the Great Old Ones) eventually fleed, travelling into the future to take over the bodies of the great beetle race which ruled the earth after Humans were gone. The cone beings whos bodies the Yithians had taken over, soon fell to the Polyps without the intelligence of the Yiths.


There is so much complexity to all the events of the Mythos.. I am currently trying to think of away to organize all of the information.. but of course organization is only part of it.. the actual collection is whats tricky

hey al, check those words such as FLEED (fled) etc.

[Aleister]

Decadence: If I spent time making sure I never made mistakes on forums I would never get anything done

Adrian: Not over-complicated at all! That sounds like a fine plan. The question is, would it be best to first catalog all mentions of particular entities then go through them and detail the information, or to just start compiling it as it is went through. Keeping a list of what works have been traversed. A possible problem is figuring out when something is mentioned vaguely, trying to determine what they are talking about when no name is mentioned, or specifics that would explain it. Perhaps we can come up with a proper method for people who want to help to reference.

[Aleister]

I changed the 'database' page a bit to explain the plan so far.

http://www.templeofdagon.com/mythos/database.htm

I will start putting together my ideas as well.

[Adrian]

Decadence: If I spent time making sure I never made mistakes on forums I would never get anything done

Adrian: Not over-complicated at all! That sounds like a fine plan. The question is, would it be best to first catalog all mentions of particular entities then go through them and detail the information, or to just start compiling it as it is went through. Keeping a list of what works have been traversed. A possible problem is figuring out when something is mentioned vaguely, trying to determine what they are talking about when no name is mentioned, or specifics that would explain it. Perhaps we can come up with a proper method for people who want to help to reference.

First people who would like to contribute in making the database, should be listed and then, according to their chances of getting Mythos books to go through, make a list about who has what on their hands. Also, if quoted, a referance should be made into the end of the quote to assure its authentity and to set the quote and the commentary apart from each other. Mythos books that the info is to be gathered have to be in the english language. Maybe it would be best if we would let people, who seriously want to work on it and not quit as soon as they hit some sort of a hard spot, send in their workings periodically, so at certain dates we'll get a bucketload of material and then we would be free to sort them out ourselves. Oh, and if random people from the Net start sending us stuff they can find, it would be overly too complicated, no? I suggest it to be made a requirement that all helpers need to be Forum users. That way if someone gets interested he'll/she'll get to take part of the Forum too.
People who think, that f.e. a passage in some story refers to Hastur, but the entity has not been named there, should include the passage in writing, when sending it. All passages, quotes and names need to be written down personally by their finders into their pc-s and then they should e-mail them to the ToD. Of course they need to be titled and the finder should say about what the passage seems to be referring to and so on.