This is later than I normally like to post. What I thought might be a quick and dirty exploration has become something much bigger. I’m telling yo this right now because when you get into this and feel like I left you hanging, yeah, I did it intentionally. There will be more to this as I dig through more source material.

Nyarlathotep: a Voyage and Discovery

Ok, to start off this might be a bit haphazard at best. I want to start where the thoughts originated with this one. The problem right now is, I am not sure exactly where things started or how. Yeah, cryptic again. But as we dig into this a bit we will find that it remains a bit cryptic. And honestly, I don’t know of a way to fix it as yet.

So I guess we just say what is going on. It was recently that I ended up watching a series of videos on YouTube. All of these videos were doing a bit of a study on Cthulhu creatures and one I can honestly say I hadn’t paid much attention to in the past.

The video mentioned something about Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos. To be honest, I really didn’t know much about this one. So this means not only a search for the story where Nyarlathotep is mentioned but also a jaunt through the Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia.

The listing in the encyclopedia is a bit crazy. We’re talking about at least 4 pages of information based on the different names this extra planar being has been referenced as. These listings give pertinent information i.e. cults and worshippers and stories that the old one has appeared in.

Which leads us to a different book. This time the 6th edition of the Call of Cthulhu rpg. In this one I find the listing of stats for the Old One in the game. Of course, those are meaningless to you if you don’t play the game or have never looked at how RPGs work. But what is important in this listing is the references to other works as source material.

Right off the bat, there is this quote from the story “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.”

“A tall, slim figure with the young face of an antique pharaoh, gay with prismatic robes and crowned with a poshest that glowed with inherent light… the fascination of a dark god or fallen archangel, and around whose eyes there lurked the languid sparkle of capricious humor.”

Much like the story of Nyarlathotep, I also have this one in one of my Lovecraft ebook collections. So right there I have at least two stories to dig through for more information.

And now I forget where it was I was attempting to go with this. It’s the curse of writing when I am overly tired. But even that has some connection to all of this. At least the Dream-Quest has ties to how we enter the dream world and a bit of what happens in there. And to make matters worse, it is in that state of over tired where you succumb to the evils that await you in the dream realm. But I digress…

See, what it all boils down to in this is not so much a creature that simply wants to destroy you. No, Nyarlathotep is one that serves to drive his victims insane. He takes joy in this. When you look at some of his known forms, it is easy to come to this conclusion. I mean, seriously, one of his forms is the God of the Bloody Tongue. This form is humanoid but instead of a head a large tentacle/tongue rests on its shoulders.

And so basically, what this boils down to is this, the more I read the stories in my quest for knowledge, the more I uncover to explore. Essentially, we are looking at a quest to figure out this creature and through that quest I will be looking for new and different ways to define what this creature might be.

With that said, I think I have reached a stopping point for now. I feel like I may have a bit too much to explore in a single segment here. So I will be looking at individual stories as I uncover stuff of note. Yeah, this became a bigger voyage than I was expecting.

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If you enjoy these stories, consider leaving some coffee money in the jar or you could buy a book or two. Either way helps keep the stories flowing.