Article: Lovecraft and the Making of a Good Monster
Monsters are part of many good horror stories, and Lovecraft was the master of monsters. But a good monster needs depth and history while still maintaining horror and mystery. Lovecraft typically struck a good balance between the two, often-times only revealing bits and pieces about the nature of creatures he created in any given story. It was only by reading his full body of work that one was able to get a picture of the true nature of some horrifying being. Here are some of the creatures that play a major role in his work.
1.) Deep Ones-
The Deep Ones are a submarine race of fish-like humanoids that have evolved alongside of humans for millions of years. Although they rose in evolution long after the fall of R’lyeh, they worship Cthulhu as one of their deities. This may be because, living at the ocean floor as they do, they feel a much stronger effect from the psyonic influence of his dreaming than do the surface dwellers. They have two other deities, massive sea-monsters they call Mother Hydra and Father Dagon (beings which may possibly be the last living Star Spawn. See Below.)
The Deep Ones are advanced technologically, and have a great deal of influence over the movements and proliferation of sea-life. Throughout history costal people, islanders, and other groups that rely heavily on fishing for their livelihood have sometimes made an obscene pact with the Deep Ones to ensure that they always get an abundance of fish. The Deep Ones have a greatly depleted population in later years because of inbreeding. As a result, the pact that they make with surface dwellers, is that, in exchange for an abundant haul of fish each year, the surface dwellers allow the Deep Ones to interbreed with them. Consequently, most of the Deep One populations are hybrids. The hybrid Deep Ones are born looking more-or-less human, but continue to look more and more fish-like in appearance as they grow up. They typically do not leave the land until adolescence, when hormonal changes make them take on the characteristic scales, gills, and fins of the Deep Ones.
2.) Elder Things-
The Elder Things colonized earth long before any indigenous life sprang up on the planet. In fact, they may be responsible for the first life-forms to grow on Earth. The appearance of the Elder Things is problematic to describe. They essentially looked like five-lobed cacti with five wings, five tentacle-like arms, a ring of eyes on top, and all kinds of long hairs and tube-like organs fanning off of them. They were highly advanced technologically, with space travel, terraforming, and bioengineering well within their grasp. Equally at home on land and under water, the Elder Things built cities in both environments. They bioengineered a slave-race known as the Shoggoths. Shoggoths were essentially formless blobs of living matter that could reshape themselves at will like giant amebas. They were originally created to be marine creatures, but they rebelled against their masters, leading to the eventual downfall of the Elder Things, and during this period, they began to adapt to living on land.
The Elder Things have colonized the larger portion of the known universe, and have encountered and subsequently battled many of the other space-faring races in the Lovecraftverse including the Flying Polyps, Star Spawn, the Migo, and the Yith.
3.) Flying Polyps-
Flying Polyps are interdimensional creatures that look like a bundle of giant tumors that can fade in and out of existence and between dimensions at will. They are always associated with an eerie whistling sound, and they leave strange footprints wherever they travel, despite having no obvious feet. Flying Polyps have intelligence enough that they conquer other races and build structures, but they are very alien in their intelligence. They came to earth roughly seven hundred fifty million years ago. They managed to build tall, windowless towers out of basalt on the land, and attempted to conquer the sea, but were driven back by the Elder Things. The Flying Polyps later battled with the Great Race of Yith, who managed to drive them under ground and lock them away there. Ages later, the Polyps broke free and utterly destroyed the Great Race.
4.) The Great Race (Yith)-
The Great Race are so-called because they are the only race in the Lovecraftverse to obtain to time-travel. The planet of Yith, from which they hailed, was dying as its sun darkened. Rather than to physically evacuate the planet, The Great Race searched the universe with their incredibly powerful minds and finally located a life-form on a primordial planet that would make good vessels for their minds. They then transferred their consciousness’ into the bodies of these primitive, animal-like life-forms, squelching any consciousness these life forms may originally have had. There is no good description of the physical appearance of the original bodies the Great Race occupied. The racial transfer occurred so long ago, they have lost any record or memory of what their society used to look like.
Their new bodies were primitive life-forms on the planet earth. In the bodies that the Great Race of Yith inhabited on the Earth, they were tall and cone-shaped, rising to a point with four strange appendages, all of which can extend and recede at will to any distance up to about ten feet. Two terminate in claws, the clicking of which acted as a method of communication, a third in four red "trumpets", and the fourth, a yellowish globe featuring three eyes around the central circumference, flower-like ears on top and tentacles on the underside. They have no sexes and reproduce, though rarely because of their species longevity, by spores instead. Movement is achieved via expansion and contraction of a grey, rubbery layer at the base of the conical body.
The Great Race time travel for the purpose of exploration and information gathering fueled by scholarly interest. They do this by transferring their minds into bodies that exist at various places in time. The mind that originally occupied the body gets transferred, against its will, back into the original body the Yithian. While the Yithian that abducted the person’s body explores that person’s world using that person’s body, the abducted mind is interrogated by Yithian scholars, but is allowed some freedom to roam and interact with Yithian society.
Because of their time-travel capabilities, The Great Race foresaw their ultimate defeat at the hands of the Flying Polyps, and transferred consciousness again to a far-future race known as “The Beetle Folk” who occupy earth after the human race becomes extinct.
5.) Mi-go-
The Mi-go are a fungal life form that lives on the planet ‘Yuggoth’ (Pluto) in our solar system. The Mi-go are pink, sightless, crab-like creatures with advanced technology and intelligence. They have multiple appendages that resemble crustacean and insect-like appendages; and a large set of “wings” that sprout from their mid-section. These appear to be used primarily as solar sails for space travel, but can be used in atmosphere for flight. Since the Mi-go seemed to use a process similar to photosynthesis for energy and nutrition, and to have air-tight carapaces, they can fly through space without assistance of technology. They can also go into suspended animation when they are in sections of space too cold to sustain them; reanimating when they are exposed to solar light.
The Mi-Go travel throughout the solar system, including to earth, in order to mine and process a rare (unnamed) metal.
The Mi-Go are capable of effecting disguises that allow them to mingle in human society, and are known to occasionally abduct humans by the process of removing their brains and placing the brain in a “brain-case” that can be hooked up to external sensors so that the abducted brain is able to see, hear, and speak.
The Mi-Go have an alien morality, and appear to simultaneously worship the Elder Gods and to be embattled against them at the same time.
6.) Star Spawn-
The Star Spawn are a race of beings that either came to earth with Cthulhu, or were created by him once he had arrived on earth. In appearance, they resemble the great Cthulhu himself, however they are much smaller. They are described as being made out of matter not of this earth that is “cosmic” in nature. Presumably, they possess some small amount of the great psionic power that Cthulhu wields. They lived in the city of R’lyeh with Cthulhu on primordial earth, and fought against both The Great Race and the Elder Things. These battles were apparently cut short by the disappearance of R’lyeh beneath the sea. Most of the Star Spawn were either killed or locked away with Cthulhu when R’lyeh fell, however some escaped and still dwell in the distant corners of the earth. It is possible that both Dagon and Hydra, worshiped by the Deep Ones, are surviving Star Spawn.
