More Gods and Titans

Ever hungry for new sources of terror, we just received seven gods and titans for use in any Trail of Cthulhu campaign, from player Nick Ingham. He says:

“Some have been mentioned in supplements like the Bookhounds of London, but not properly described like the ones in the core rulebook. Others I just like. In order to avoid “Great Old One creep,” each deity’s entry contains several options tying it to existing beings – or laying a rival claim to another’s characteristic – and at least one option explaining it away as a myth, metaphor or even lie. Following them is a section offering one or two myth, metaphor, error, or lie options for each deity from the core book – barring a couple that already have them – as well as Rhan-Teggoth from Bookhounds of London.”

Thanks, Nick!

 

Byatis

 

“Beware St. Toad’s cracked chimes!” I heard him scream
As I plunged into those mad lanes that wind
In labyrinths obscure and undefined
South of the river where old centuries dream.
– The Fungi from Yuggoth

 

  • Byatis, the Serpent-Bearded, is a vast toad-like entity whose face is obscured by a mass of reaching tentacles.
  • Byatis is trapped in a vast chamber beneath a ruined castle in the Severn Valley. Apparitions caused by its presence have given rise to the legend of the Berkeley Toad.
  • Some regions are subject to Byatis’s unceasing gaze, creating pools of eldritch energy accessible to sorcerers; such regions are cursed with a bloody history, and haunted by both past and future. One such pool is said to be located beneath the London.
  • Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis describes Serpent-Bearded Byatis as one of a triad of divinatory deities, together with Father Yig and Dark Han.
  • Those confronting Byatis’s blazing eye lose their minds and wills and walk to the god to be devoured.
  • Byatis is an avatar of Tsathoggua.
  • Byatis is the greatest of the Xothians not trapped in R’lyeh, and dreams of winning control of his race from Cthulhu.
  • Byatis is the greatest of the Nagaäe, the race of creatures that serves Cyaëgha.
  • Byatis’s essence is the ultimate power that animates vampires.
  • In return for sacrifices, Byatis can offer fragments of its being to act as familiars to witches and sorcerers. Fed on the blood of victims, these familiars can grow to vast size.
  • Byatis is a myth, a conjectured demon from which the toad-like familiars of witches are said to descend.
  • Byatis, based on the legend of the Berkeley Toad, was a claim made by Severn Valley Sorcerer Gilbert Morley to bolster his occult reputation.
  • Witnessing Byatis costs an additional +3 (1) Stability pool points and +2 Sanity pool points.

 

 

Cyaëgha

 

I have seen beyond the bounds of infinity and drawn down daemons from the stars. . . . I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness.

– From Beyond

 

  • Cyaëgha, the Waiting Dark, resembles a vast staring eye surrounded by a mass of writing tentacles. The whole entity floats above the ground, reaching down for prey.
  • Cyaëgha appears as a vast eye superimposed over the Moon, around which rifts open in the sky. Pure darkness flows through these rifts, shaping itself into shifting bodies and appendages.
  • Cyaëgha is both worshipped and imprisoned by a cult in the Jura Mountains, near the borders of Germany, Switzerland, and France. The essence of the god is trapped behind five mystical statuettes, the Vaeyen.
  • Cyaëgha is the genius loci for the whole European continent. A similar entity, Othuyeg, embodies North America.
  • Cyaëgha is one of the Great Old Ones associated with the element of Air, and serves Hastur on Earth.
  • Cyaëgha is served by the insectile, toad-like, and fathomlessly cruel Nagaäe. The god itself is sometimes represented as an even more warped version of these creatures.
  • Cyaëgha is an Outer God, an incarnation of (or a sentient facet of) the processes of entropy in the universe, including its eventual heat death. It cares nothing for worship, seeking only the destruction of all that touches it.
  • Cyaëgha is a manifestation of Byatis’s gaze focussed upon a locality.
    Fragments of Cyaëgha’s essence live independent, seemingly-human lives. These beings are instinctively drawn towards the Jura Mountains, where they seek to free the god.
  • Cyaëgha is the brother of Nyogtha.
  • Cyaëgha is a mythical demon worshipped by a single cult in Germany.
  • Cyaëgha is a metaphorical personification made by a cult in Germany of the place of power near which its members reside.
  • Witnessing Cyaëgha costs an additional +4 (2) Stability pool points and +3 Sanity pool points.

 

Eihort

 

I knew that I was alone—horribly alone. Alone, yet close to sentient impulses of vast, vague kind; which I prayed never to comprehend nor encounter.
– The Green Meadow

 

  • Eihort resembles a pale oval shape walking on many skeletal legs. Eyes, mouths, and other appendages form out of its surface when needed.
  • Eihort dwells in caverns beneath the Severn Valley in England. These caverns may touch the surface in New England and other places as well.
  • Eihort offers its “bargain” to visitors and others it encounters. Those who accept are implanted with a horde of the spider-like grubs that make up its brood; they may also have their memories of the event erased from their minds. Those who refuse are generally killed.
  • Eihort is an avatar of Hastur.
  • Eihort is one of the Million Favoured Ones of Nyarlathotep.
  • Eihort is a powerful Shoggoth, far evolved past its kin.
  • Eihort is the collective name given to an ecology of parasitic beings that infest both Earthly and alien life, even some Titans.
  • Eihort and its brood dislike the touch of sunlight.
  • Eihort and its brood partly resemble plant matter; the touch of sunlight is required for its brood to grow within a host.
  • Eihort is a myth, a mistaken origin posited by occultists for “its brood.”
  • Witnessing Eihort costs an additional +2 Stability pool points and +1 Sanity pool points.

 

Ghroth

 

Yet when I looked from that highest of all gable windows, looked while the candles sputtered and the insane viol howled with the night-wind, I saw no city spread below, and no friendly lights gleaming from remembered streets, but only the blackness of space illimitable; unimagined space alive with motion and music, and having no semblance to anything on earth.
– The Music of Erich Zann

 

  • Ghroth is a planet-sized entity composed of rock, dust, and gas, which periodically opens itself to reveal a vast staring eye.
  • Ghroth, the Harbinger and Maker, travels ceaselessly among the stars commanding or embodying the cosmic turns that mark stages in the lives of the gods.
  • Visions of Ghroth are a psychic reaction to the witness sensing the gaze of Azathoth on their world.
  • Ghroth is an example of the ultimate evolution of the Sons of Yog-Sothoth; had Wilbur Whateley and his twin succeeded, they and the Earth would have become another entity of similar kind.
  • In the early 20th Century, a small order located in Britchester, England designed a special telescope capable of detecting Ghroth and its movements.
  • Ghroth is the wellspring of magical energy in the universe. Sorcerers seek it out to draw such energy to the Earth. Its great eye is the sorcerer’s own, reflected back at them.
  • Ghroth is a premonition of the Earth as it will be far in the future.
  • Ghroth is an Outer God, an incarnation of (or a sentient facet of) the existence of matter in our cosmos. It wars ceaselessly with Azathoth, the embodiment of chaotic energy.
  • Ghroth is an Outer God, an incarnation of (or a sentient facet of) the fundamental force of gravity in our cosmos.
  • The myth of Ghroth was invented by a faction of the Cult of Cthulhu to lend weight to their specific predictions of R’lyeh’s rise.
  • The myth of Ghroth arose from the misunderstanding of human occultists when shown Mi-Go images of the planet Jupiter (the red spot being the source of its great eye).
  •  The myth of Ghroth is a recent occult extrapolation of the Nemesis Star theory.
  • Witnessing Ghroth costs an additional +6 (4) Stability pool points and +5 (2) Sanity pool points.

 

 

Nyogtha

 

My disordered fancy conjured up hideous and fearsome shapes from the sinister darkness that surrounded me, and that actually seemed to press upon my body.
– The Beast in the Cave

 

  • Nyogtha, the Thing That Should Not Be, the Black God of Madness, appears as a fluid mass of impenetrable darkness. It is formless and amoeboid, putting out pseudopods to interact with its environment, and is accompanied by a sickening reptilian odour.
  • Nyogtha dwells in a network of caverns deep beneath the Earth. These caverns touch the surface in only a few areas of occult significance.
  • Nyogtha was created by witches as a soul symbol for humanity. This link to humanity makes it vulnerable to religious trappings such as the ankh and holy water.
  • Nyogtha is the blood of Cthulhu, possessed of independent life.
  • Nyogtha is the venom of Yig, possessed of independent life.
  • Nyogtha is tied to certain human bloodlines, most notably the Prinn family – including Ludwig Prinn, author of De Vermis Mysteriis, and Abigail Prinn of Salem. It can grant longevity, immortality, and resurrection to such people.
  • The Earthly Nyogtha is a facet of a greater entity dwelling on a dark world orbiting Arcturus, and summoned here by the Serpent Folk of Yoth.
  • Nyogtha is the larval form of a true god. It sought power from the Elder Things who imprisoned it beneath New Zealand. Manifestations of Nyogtha elsewhere in the world are only tiny fragments of its substance.
  • Nyogtha is the greatest of the Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua.
  • The first shoggoth-matter was drawn from Nyogtha’s substance by the Elder Things.
  • Nyogtha is an Outer God, an incarnation of (or a sentient facet of) the vacuum between solar systems. Only in areas of great power is it safe to draw any of its substance to Earth.
  • Nyogtha grants necromantic power to its worshippers, which makes it an enemy of Mordiggian. Ghoulish worshippers of the two gods have warred for centuries.
  • Nyogtha is the same entity as the Titan Mordiggian, at a different stage of its existence.
  • Nyogtha is a living curse, the embodiment of a sorcerer’s desire to punish or destroy a community.
  • Nyogtha is a myth, a personification given to black magic.
  • Witnessing Nyogtha costs an additional +3 (1) Stability pool points and +2 Sanity pool points.

 

Ubbo-Sathla

 

He has on rare occasions whispered disjointed and irresponsible things about “the black pit”, “the carven rim” … “the original, the eternal, the undying”, and other bizarre conceptions
– At the Mountains of Madness

 

  • Ubbo-Sathla, the Unbegotten Source, the Source and End, resembles a vast and shapeless mass of protoplasm that continually calves off its spawn into the mire (or caverns, or ocean floor) around its bulk.
  • All Earthly life descends, both physically and spiritually from the spawn of Ubbo-Sathla.
  • Ubbo-Sathla is surrounded by an uncountable number of stone tablets on which the secrets of the “Elder Gods” are inscribed.
  • The first shoggoth-matter was drawn from Ubbo-Sathla’s substance by the Elder Things.
  • Ubbo-Sathla is not an entity in itself, but a vat of inert and undifferentiated biomass from which other life forms may be created.
  • Ubbo-Sathla has only ever been perceived through the Orb of Eons, a mystical gem that allows the viewer to cycle back through their incarnations until their first existence as one of the Titan’s many spawn. Those who undertake this journey vanish out of memory, as if they had never existed.
  • Ubbo-Sathla and Quachil Uttaus are metaphorical representations of the extremes of chaos and order as represented within biological structures.
  • Ubbo-Sathla was destroyed long ago by the Elder Things in order to allow their biologically oriented technology to function without interference.
  • Ubbo-Sathla is part of the same metaphorical “source code” as Shub-Niggurath. Where the latter describes the processes of biological change, the former represents the raw states of biomass on which they operate.
  • Ubbo-Sathla a myth, conjectured by human occultists as an origin for Shoggoths.
  • Witnessing Ubbo-Sathla costs an additional +5 (3) Stability pool points and +4 (2) Sanity pool points.

 

 

Yidhra

 

I began to see a hideous relationship in the faces of the human and non-human figures. He was, in all his gradations of morbidity between the frankly non-human and the degradedly human, establishing a sardonic linkage and evolution.
– Pickman’s Model

 

  • Yidhra is a gestalt entity with no true form, but many constituent bodies spread around the world – some resembling natural creatures, others more monstrous. All of these bodies are linked with a telepathic mind.
  • Cult centres of Yidhra exist, or have existed, in Mesopotamia, South-East Asia, West Africa, and the south-west of North America. Cults of Yidhra are granted a humanoid avatar to serve as their leader; worshippers display progressive genetic mutation as their biology combines with hers.
  • Yidhra’s Mesopotamian cult was led by the Oannes faction of Deep Ones, who helped build the first cities. All Deep Ones once worshipped Yidhra, but the dream-sendings of Cthulhu have drawn most away from the true faith.
  • Yidhra is a parasitic entity that combines its genome with other organisms to ensure its own continuation. It retains the capabilities of creatures it infects or devours.
  • Yidhra is an Outer God, an incarnation of (or a sentient facet of) evolution in our cosmos.
  • Yidhra is known as the dream witch, due to the telepathic illusions with which she hides her (and as time goes on, their) true form from her cultists.
  • Yidhra’s genetic substance partakes of all life that has ever been native to the Earth. She can adopt the semblance of any such organism – though never completely, always with a few elements of some other creature mixed in.
  • Yidhra’s genetic substance is present in all organisms on Earth. All terrestrial life is part of the goddess’s substance.
  • Yidhra is the body of all beings in the universe, the same entity as Nyarlathotep which is their soul.
  • Yidhra is a myth, a misunderstanding of the Million Favoured Ones of Nyarlathotep, in telepathic communion with their master.
  • Yidhra is (or more likely was) a presumptuous high priestess of Shub-Niggurath, who falsely claimed the goddess’s power to be her own.
  • Witnessing Yidhra in a monstrous form costs an additional +4 (3) Stability pool points and +3 (2) Sanity pool points.

 

 

Mythical Options for Existing Deities

 

  • Chaugnar Faugn is an almost-comical misconception that stemmed from the confrontation with a cult of Yog-Sothoth that had hidden itself within a temple of Ganesh, and grew in the telling.
  • Cthugha is a conjectured origin for the Fire Vampires.
  • Cthulhu is a religious figure among both Deep Ones and humans, conjectured and exaggerated from interactions with Xothians.
  • Dagon is a grain-god from Near Eastern mythology, which has become associated with Deep Ones through their membership in an ancient Yidhra (or Shub-Niggurath) cult from that part of the world.
  • “Daoloth” is part of an ancient invocation for seeing the future, misconstrued as a name by later occultists.
  • Ghatanothoa was the mythical “Son of Cthulhu” claimed by the cults of Mu to bolster their status among worshippers of the god of R’lyeh.
  • Ghatanothoa is the Muvian Naacal word for petrifaction. Later occultists misinterpreted this descriptive term for a powerful curse as the name of an originating source.
  • Ghatanothoa is simply one of many legends told about the mythical continent of Mu – perhaps derived from cross-referencing with tales of Cthulhu and R’lyeh.
  • Gol-Goroth is a mythical demon invented by a cult that coincidentally practiced their rites at a true site of mystical power in Mediaeval Hungary.
  • Hastur is a metaphorical figure created by the author of the (quite mundane) play The King in Yellow, to symbolise the death of spirit he feared would result from civilisation.
  • Ithaqua is a mystical “password” used by members of a North American cannibal cult who revere the condition of windigo.
  • Mordiggian is a religious figure among Ghouls, no less mythical than the gods of any human religion.
  • Mordiggian is a metaphorical name given by human necrophages for the process of becoming a Ghoul.
  • Mormo is occult conjecture derived from conflating the many lunar goddess cults (of varying levels of similarity) that existed around the Mediterranean and Near East.
  • Nodens is a human legend conflated with Shub-Niggurath through occult error.
  • Nyarlathotep is a myth that’s grown up among opponents of Mythos forces, and other occultists who have brushed up against its truths: a comparatively understandable devil-figure set against the unknowable cosmos.
  • Nyarlathotep is a fringe-historical hypothesis from the early Twentieth Century; a faceless primal god lying behind all the various cults of Egypt.
  • Quachil and Uttaus were two powerful necromancers of the ancient world, whom later legend conflated, then deified.
  • Rhan-Tegoth is the greatest triumph of George Rogers, waxwork-maker extraordinaire.
  • Tsathoggua was a toad-like totem figure in the barbarian precursors to Hyperborea (no different from Yhoundeh the reindeer god), which Eibon associated with the Formless “Spawn” in order to mislead his rivals.
  • Y’golonac is a figure created by the “Five Fingers” cabal of decadent hedonists to lend license to their debaucheries and definition to their wider “Devouring Hands” servant cult.
  • Yig is a religious figure among Serpent-Folk, no less mythical than the gods of any human religion.
  • Yig is a term in the language of the Serpent-Folk, denoting the right order of things. Humans who heard the word mistook it for the name of a deity.
  • Yog-Sothoth is an ancient symbolic term for travel between worlds, times, and dimensions; the lore of Yog-Sothoth is the body of algebra and geometry needed to describe such journeys, couched in more and more occult terms over the centuries, and eventually personified.

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