Miskatonic Arcihves

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An encyclopedia of strange fiction, its creators, places and mythos. Follow the sources; draw your own conclusions.

Entities & creatures

Entities & creatures

Tsathoggua

Tsathoggua is a deity created by Clark Ashton Smith and adopted into Lovecraft’s fiction. Its characteristic toadlike appearance, lethargy and associations with subterranean worship belong to several related but distinct narratives. A careful account separates the god from its statues and from the shapeless organisms encountered near those statues; sharing a cult does not make these beings identical.

6 min read · 1,051 words

Entities & creatures

Ubbo-Sathla

Ubbo-Sathla is the primordial source of terrestrial life in Clark Ashton Smith’s story of the same name. A vast, unformed being in the earliest marshes of Earth, it produces the first patterns of living things and stands among tablets preserving the wisdom of prehuman gods. The attempt to reach that wisdom turns a modern reader’s investigation into a retreat through identity, ancestry and the origins of life.

6 min read · 1,078 words

Entities & creatures

’Umr at-Tawil

’Umr at-Tawil, rendered in the story as the Prolonged of Life, is the veiled Guide who receives Carter beyond the first threshold in Through the Gates of the Silver Key. Feared in the Necronomicon, he nevertheless offers Carter a welcome and a choice. His role is to prepare and guide passage toward a reality more disturbing than an ordinary encounter with a monster.

4 min read · 715 words

Entities & creatures

Yekubians

The Yekubians are the wormlike, many-limbed inhabitants of the alien world in The Challenge from Beyond. Their crystal probes allow them to capture distant minds and explore through stolen bodies. Lovecraft supplies their physical description and expansionist history; Howard and Long develop the encounter with George Campbell and expose limits that their extraordinary technology does not overcome.

5 min read · 980 words

Entities & creatures

Yig

Yig is the serpent deity whose feared vengeance shapes The Curse of Yig, a story developed by H. P. Lovecraft for Zealia Bishop. Described in the fictional tradition as a partly human father of snakes, he protects his children and punishes those who injure them. The story makes his apparent intervention inseparable from human fear, misinterpretation and a final discovery that unsettles the physician’s attempted natural explanation.

6 min read · 1,260 words

Entities & creatures

Yog-Sothoth

Yog-Sothoth is associated with the boundaries of space and time, the opening of gates, forbidden invocation and a form of existence in which separate identities can become aspects of a larger whole. Its role ranges from the Whateleys’ attempted incursion at Dunwich to Randolph Carter’s encounter beyond the Ultimate Gate.

10 min read · 1,986 words

Entities & creatures

Zoogs

Zoogs are small, secretive inhabitants of the enchanted wood at the entrance to the deeper Dreamlands. They preserve local knowledge, speak in fluttering sounds and deal with Carter through a council, but their curiosity and appetite make their relations with travelers and cats uneasy.

4 min read · 675 words