Cthulhu: Which flavor are you using?

[Scorpion13mk2]

CL, Ive been reading about your plans for including Cthulhu in the New Era, and I got to wonderin': Just what kind of Cthulhu are you using? The HPL one, the Lumley one, the RPG one, which?

Just curious.

[Zigra]

<font color='#0000FF'>Clint has answered that question numerous times. He's going with the HPL one, since he pretty much despises all other versions (the Lumely one is the one he seems to hates the most).

[Scorpion13mk2]

But, correct me if Im wrong, isnt he the weakest one?

[Zigra]

<font color='#0000FF'>No. Although his body was blown apart by that collision, the act of blasting his physical body apart doesn't seem to really hurt or even harm him at all, as nonsensical as that may sound. He just reforms and carries on as if nothing ever happened to him, kinda like an overgrown T-1000.

Keep in mind that HPL's Cthulhu is not bound to the laws of physics as we understand them, and is mostly incomprehensible to the human mind. Even if his physical body may not seem so powerful, Cthulhu and his Star-Spawn obviously wield more power than the human mind can even understand. The structures of the city of R'lyeh are built using strange indescribable shapes and geometry that even Euclid himself could have never dreamed of!

Besides, Clint's apparent distaste for the Mythos stories of other authors has nothing to do with how powerful Cthulhu himself is in these stories. It has more to do with how these authors *******ized the themes of Lovecraft's universe to fit their own personal beliefs. Lovecraft's stories portray a universe where human beings are just another animal, and are relatively insignifigant and unimportant in the scheme of the vast cosmos. The god-like beings of his stories aren't really evil (indeed, &quot;good&quot; and &quot;evil&quot; are strictly in the eye of the beholder in the Lovecraftverse), they just don't care about us since we are so insignifigant and unoticable to them.

In the universe that guys like Dereleth and Lumely portray, human beings are indeed the apparent center of concern in all existance. The good &quot;Elder Gods&quot; and evil &quot;Great Old Ones&quot; fight over us in much the same way that Jehovah and Satan fight over us in Chrstian tradition. Lumely especially *******izes Lovecraft's ideas by making Cthulhu and his ilk comprehensible and even beatable for humanity.

[Scorpion13mk2]

Oh, I understand the thing about the ship not doing him any real harm perfectly. Just regen.

But the thing is, he didnt seem all that powerful in that story for a number of reasons...

1. If he was really that mindbending to be around, drove people insane just by being around them, then why didnt the captain lose his mind and go hysterical when he saw ole squid-face crawl out of the tomb? Of when he drove the ship right up and through him?

2. If Cthulhu was really that powerful, why didnt he fry the sailor's mind's with his mad phat psychic powers? Or destroy them with one of his bad-*** spells?

3. Why didnt one of Cthulhu's loyal minions take care of the lowly pests instead of the big C?

[Morgoth]

Ah, the reason is Scorpion, that Cthulhu was not really concerned enough to bother about destroying the survivor. I think at best he was mildly curious. Plus, having just awoken, he was about as disoriented as something like him is capable of being. Notice that even with the ship striking him, not only did it not do any lasting damage to him, but he also did not really seem to even notice it.

There is also a heretical theory that the creature we see in 'The Call of Cthulhu' isn't even Cthulhu but is in fact one of the starspawn! The chief item that supports this is that, aside from Nyarlathotep's avatars, this would be the only time in a non-Dreamlands story that HPL actually definatively presented a Great Old One in the 'flesh' so to speak.

[Cole Deschain]

<font color='#0000FF'>1) The ship's captain had an iron will, and still went bonkers eventually.

2) Why bother? He certainly doesn't need to throw his abilities around for a few insects.

3) Maybe he hadn't woken 'em up yet. Quite possible.