Miskatonic Arcihves

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

Tagged: Mythology

Entities & creatures

Shoggoths

Shoggoths are mutable organisms created by the Elder Things as living labor. Their changing bodies, developing intelligence, resistance to control and survival beneath the Antarctic ruins turn the history of an ancient civilization into an immediate threat for Dyer and Danforth.

7 min read · 1,354 words

Entities & creatures

Shub-Niggurath

Shub-Niggurath is the invoked power associated with the Black Goat of the Woods and a multitude of young. The name recurs across Lovecraft’s fiction and revisions, acquiring maternal, cultic and protective associations without receiving one sustained eyewitness description of a complete body.

5 min read · 1,023 words

Entities & creatures

The Dunwich Horror

The Dunwich Horror is the otherwise unnamed twin brother of Wilbur Whateley in H. P. Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror. Born to Lavinia Whateley and associated with Yog-Sothoth, it develops into an enormous, normally invisible being concealed inside the Whateley farmhouse. Its escape transforms the family’s secret into a public catastrophe. The final revelation identifies it as a member of that family rather than an unrelated monster summoned at the last moment.

7 min read · 1,373 words

Entities & creatures

The Haunter of the Dark

The Haunter of the Dark is the presence awakened through the Shining Trapezohedron in Lovecraft’s story of the same name. It occupies the darkness of a deserted Providence church, develops an intimate connection with Robert Blake and is identified in his final diary as an avatar of Nyarlathotep.

5 min read · 893 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