Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia Page 13

DAGON, ESOTERIC ORDER OF. See Esoteric Order of Dagon.

  DAGON, OATHS OF. See Oaths of Dagon.

  DANFORTH, PAUL (or THOMAS or STEVEN). Graduate student, and possibly later professor, at Miskatonic University. He accompanied Professors Pabodie and Dyer on the Pabodie Expedition of 1930-31 and went insane after accompanying Dyer on a survey flight.

  A number of possibilities for Danforth’s future conduct have appeared. Some say he secretly joined a later Antarctic expedition and met his fate in the icy wastes. Others say he recovered through the use of experimental “anti-hallucinogens”, though he did not recall the cause of the insanity, and became a professor of psychology at Miskatonic, becoming involved in the Wilmarth Foundation.

  See Emeritus Alcove. (Beyond the Mountains of Madness, Charles and Joyce Engan; “At the Mountains of Madness”, Lovecraft (O); “The Terror from the Depths”, Leiber; “To Arkham and the Stars”, Leiber; “A Private Inquiry into the Possible Whereabouts of Clara Boyd”, Marsh et. al.; Cthulhu Live: Lost Souls, Salmon et. al.)

  DANNSEYS, (PROFESSOR) PETER. Professor of Medieval Metaphysics at Miskatonic University. Dannseys received his Masters in Library Science at Provo State College and his Ph.D. at Miskatonic. He now serves as the editor for The Journal of the American Kynikos Society, and his most recent publication was Elegant Symmetry: Inversion and Reversion in Dark Dimension Demi-Life (1988, Houghton and Mifflin).

  [See E. C. Fallworth.]

  (“Miskatonic University Graduate Kit”, Petersen and Willis (O); S. Petersen’s Field Guide to Creatures of the Dreamlands, Petersen et. al.)

  DAOLOTH. Being known as the Render of the Veils. Daoloth appears as a shapeless mass of color surrounded by plastic-like rods, between which eyes seem to peer at the viewer. It dwells in a region of space-time anomaly, constantly moving in order to avoid stagnation.

  The seers of Atlantis held Daoloth in esteem, and the inhabitants of Yuggoth and Tond still worship the Render of the Veils. A few groups, such as the Egyptian cult of Ma’at (Truth) and the Gnostic Cult of the Sacred Light, sought to bring the god’s message to the masses.

  Daoloth bestows the ability to view the past and future to his worshipers, and may allow them to perceive higher dimensions. He is also the keeper of the true names of every being; the speaking of a true name causes a person’s hideous inner nature to be revealed to all.

  A person who desires to call Daoloth must wait until a cosmically significant time, and must obtain an image of Daoloth, an object that exists nowhere on this planet. When Daoloth is summoned, the Render of the Veils should be contained within the Pentacle of Planes and allowed to taste a small amount of the caster’s blood. Daoloth will then perform one service for the wizard before vanishing. Daoloth can allow the caller to see the true nature of the universe, though this often drives the caster mad.

  See Atlantis; Outer Gods; Pentacle of Planes; Revelations of Glaaki; Saaamaaa Ritual; We Pass from View. (“The Truth Shall Set You Free”, Ballon; “The Other Names”, Campbell; “The Render of the Veils”, Campbell (O); “Ghostnet”, McConnell.)

  DARK DEMON. See Nyarlathotep (Dark Demon).

  DARK DESTROYER. See Nyarlathotep (Dark Destroyer).

  DARK STONE. Artifact of brown crystal carved in the rough shape of a body. The Dark Stone provides its owner with great physical and psychic power, especially if enhanced with blood sacrifices. Those who hold onto the stone for too long become prey to the telepathic sendings of a being known only as “The Thing Hanging in the Void”.

  (“The Wild Hunt”, Ballon; “Mansion of Madness”, Behrendt (O).)

  DARK YOUNG OF SHUB-NIGGURATH. Creatures that are the spawn of the Outer God. They have tremendous black bodies with many thick tentacles sprouting from their tops, hoofed feet, and slobbering mouths protruding from their sides. Shub-Niggurath’s children normally dwell only in forests where cults of that deity meet.

  Dark young may be summoned by a ceremony in the Book of Eibon. The caller must wait until the dark of the moon and make a blood sacrifice on a stone altar deep within the woods. Only then will the dark young come forth to accept the offering.

  [Bloch’s original description of this creature referred to it as a “shoggoth.”]

  See Thousand Young. (“Notebook Found in a Deserted House”, Bloch; “Mr. Skin”, Milan; Call of Cthulhu Rulebook, 5th edition, Petersen and Willis (O).)

  THE DARKNESS (also MAGNUM TENEBROSUM). Being that is the child of Azathoth, and in turn spawned Shub-Niggurath at Shumath-Ghun in the Black Nebula.

  (“The Shadow from the Stars”, Carter; Selected Letters V, Lovecraft (O).)

  DAVENPORT, ELI. Folklorist and author of the 1839 monograph, Legends of New England, detailing some of the folktales of Vermont. The monograph focussed on the folklore of the native tribes and mountain people of the region. These tales suggested that a species of crustacean-like beings dwelt beneath the mountains of the region.

  (Miskatonic University, Antunes; “The Whisperer in Darkness”, Lovecraft (O).)

  DAVIES, CHANDLER. Noted British weird painter, connoisseur of horror fiction, and friend of Titus Crow. Davies’ work in the field of horrific art remains unparalleled, with his most famous work being “Stars and Faces”, printed in Grotesque magazine and now considered a collector’s item. Nevertheless, Davies is best remembered for the events of the last days of his life. In May of 1962, the artist, working in a feverish trance-state, completed an arrangement in black and grey which he entitled “G’harne Landscape.” His mistress set fire to the painting immediately thereafter, sending Davies into a frenzy of rage. He was committed to Woodholme Sanitorium, where he died several days later.

  (The Burrowers Beneath, Lumley; “The Fairground Horror”, Lumley; “An Item of Supporting Evidence”, Lumley (O); “Rising with Surtsey”, Lumley.)

  DE LA POER (also DELAPORE), THOMAS (c. 1855-?). New England manufacturer who went insane in 1923. The De La Poer line was one of Exham’s most infamous, and a great amount of the region’s folklore testified to their cruelty. After centuries of terror, Walter de la Poer killed the rest of his family and fled to Virginia, where Thomas was later born.

  Northern troops burned the Delapore home at Carfax during the Civil War, and Thomas grew up in Massachusetts. His son Alfred was severely wounded during World War I and died in 1921, following which Thomas decided to re-furbish and move to Exham Priory, his family’s ancestral seat.

  In 1923, during an investigation of newly discovered crypts beneath the Priory, De La Poer (who had adopted the ancestral spelling of his family’s name) was driven homicidally insane and confined.

  See Bolton. (“The Rats in the Walls”, Lovecraft (O); “Exham Priory”, Price.)

  DE MARIGNY, ETIENNE-LAURENT. New Orleans mystic and expert on Eastern antiques, known for his work The Tarot: A Treatise and his translation of the Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan. The De Marigny family name has made its mark on French history; one of the most famous members of this family was Enguerrand de Marigny, a court official who was executed on trumped-up charges of sorcery in 1315. There were unconfirmed rumors that the family associated with a cult of subterranean beings, but the de Marigny name is a distinguished one nonetheless.

  Etienne-Laurent de Marigny numbered such individuals as James Churchward, Ignatius Donnelly, and Margaret Murray among his friends. His closest companion was Randolph Carter, the two meeting in the French Foreign Legion during the First World War. The two’s friendship was sealed during an expedition into the tunnels beneath the town of Bayonne. After Carter’s disappearance in 1928, De Marigny was appointed the executor of his estate, and became involved in a scandal when, at the meeting held to apportion Carter’s property, the Carter family’s lawyer died and a Hindu mystic who had been asked to attend vanished. The particulars of this case are still unknown.

  Later, de Marigny became involved in the Coffin Club, a group of magical adepts based in New Orleans which was dissolved shortly after the death of its founder, Henricus Vanning. In 1940
Silver Key Press of Boston published de Marigny’s translation of the Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan. The exact date of his death is unknown, but some dreamers say that de Marigny rejoined his friend Randolph Carter in the city of Ilek-Vad following his demise.

  See Carter, Randolph; Chandraputra, Swami; De Marigny, Henri-Laurent; Dreamlands; Hiamaldi; Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan; time-clock; Yian-Ho. (“The Secret of Sebek”, Bloch; “The Summoning”, Lotstein; “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”, Lovecraft and Price (O); Clock of Dreams, Lumley; “Lord of the Worms”, Lumley; Ex Libris Miskatonici, Stanley; “Typo”, Winkle.)

  DE MARIGNY, HENRI-LAURENT (1923-?). Son of Etienne-Laurent de Marigny and a famous occultist in his own right. During the late Thirties, when Henri was only a boy, his father sent him to England, where he made the acquaintance of Titus Crow, a mystic who would later enjoy worldwide acclaim and notoriety. The two were virtually inseparable, and de Marigny often accompanied Crow on his occult investigations.

  In the Sixties, de Marigny and Crow became embroiled in the Wilmarth Foundations’s ongoing investigation of Britain’s Mythos horrors. The two took an active part in the battle against the cthonians and served for a time as the heads of the Foundation’s English branch. The opposition took note, and on October 4, 1969, de Marigny was present at Blowne Manor, Crow’s residence on Leonard’s-Walk Heath, when a freak windstorm destroyed that place.

  Though neither his nor Crow’s remains were found in the ruins, de Marigny was given up for dead. Then on September 4, 1979, a boater discovered Henri clinging desperately to a buoy in the Thames, with all of his limbs broken and no recollection of how he had spent the last ten years. In March 11, 1980, de Marigny vanished again, leaving behind a lengthy manuscript to Wingate Peaslee, the director of the Wilmarth Foundation, the contents of which are known only to the members of that organization.

  See Crow, Titus; de Marigny, Etienne-Laurent; time-clock. (The Burrowers Beneath, Lumley; “The Mirror of Nitocris”, Lumley (O); “Name and Number”, Lumley; The Transition of Titus Crow, Lumley.)

  DE VERMIS MYSTERIIS (also MYSTERIES OF THE WORM or the GRIMOIRE). Book written by Ludwig Prinn circa 1542. (Though a date of 1484 has also been given, this time is more historically likely.) Just before the author’s death at the hands of the Inquisition, unknown individuals smuggled this volume out of his cell.

  One year after its author’s death, a Latin edition of De Vermis Mysteriis was published in Cologne. This is considered the sole reliable printing of this manuscript. When the Church found out about the book, they considered it to be so dangerous that Pope Pius V banned it in 1569. In 1587, a black-letter German translation was made in Dusseldorf; this edition, however, is of less usefulness to the scholar, as much of the material found in the Latin edition was expurgated. Another (perhaps Latin?) edition was published in Prague in 1809, though no other information on this run has been found.

  Several English translations of De Vermis Mysteriis have been made over the centuries. The first, which came from the noted fraud and magician Edward Kelley, was published in London in 1573. In 1670, Johann Lindenmuth of Nuremberg translated the book into German as Die geheimnisvollen Wurme; it was never printed, and the location of the manuscript is unknown. During the 19th century, a “Clergyman X” published a heavily expurgated English pamphlet delineating the contents of the book’s most famous chapter, “Saracenic Rituals”, but due to certain omissions, it is almost useless to the serious scholar. A Mr. Charles Leggett translated an English version of the book from the German in 1821, and a few copies, published in a very limited edition and illustrated by woodcuts from the original Latin. However, this book is not considered as valuable as the Latin edition. Another edition, published in 1895 by Starry Wisdom Press, has not yet been located.

  Copies of De Vermis Mysteriis may be found at the Huntingdon Library in California, the Starry Wisdom Church in Providence, and Miskatonic University. The British Museum possesses a complete German edition as well as half of the original Latin, though the latter is in very poor condition. A copy kept at the Brichester University Library was burned in the Sixties.

  One Latin copy was kept at one time in the now-deserted town of Jerusalem’s Lot, Massachusetts, but it probably disappeared with that town’s inhabitants in 1789. A great deal of this copy was written in characters that resembled the runic alphabets of the Celts. It may be that Prinn came upon a copy of the Druidic rituals which the Roman scribes preserved and used it in a portion of his manuscript, or possibly the “runes” are part of a cipher used to conceal matters of great import. With the lack of any readily accessible copy of the book, it is difficult to tell whether this manuscript is unique or if this oddity may also be found in the other editions.

  De Vermis Mysteriis is divided into sixteen chapters, each dealing with a different topic such as divination, familiars, necromancy, elementals, and vampires. The most famous chapter deals with the rituals of the Saracens, from whom Prinn had learned during his imprisonment after the Crusades (see Saracenic Rituals). This book includes spells to call down invisible monsters from the skies, along with tales of Byatis and the worm-wizards of Irem, the true nature of the Egyptian crocodile-god Sebek, the formula of the drug known as Liao, and a series of operations intended to speed the transformation of a human-deep one hybrid. Users should be cautious—a love philter described therein has had unexpected effects, while a rite involving aconite, belladonna, corpse-fat candles, a blue chalk circle, and an animal sacrifice may only bring short-term prosperity to the magician.

  See Azathoth; Bast; Blake; Byatis; Chorazin; Feery, Joachim; Han; Jerusalem’s Lot; Liao; Magnum Innominandum; Nyarlathotep; Prinn, Ludwig; Saracenic Rituals, star vampires. (“Black Bargain”, Bloch; “Philtre Tip”, Bloch; “The Secret of Sebek”, Bloch; Real Magic, Bonewitz; “The Shambler from the Stars”, Bloch (O); The Darkest Part of the Woods, Campbell; “The Adventure of the Six Silver Spiders”, Derleth; “The Survivor”, Derleth and Lovecraft; “Castle Dark”, Herber; “Jerusalem’s Lot”, King; “The Invaders”, Kuttner; “The Long-Lost Friend”, Lobdell; “Haunter of the Dark”, Lovecraft; “Lord of the Worms”, Lumley; “Signs Writ in Scarlet”, Ross; Ex Libris Miskatonici, Stanley.)

  DEAN’S CORNERS. Village in north central Massachusetts near the Aylesbury Pike. A mile west of Dean’s Corners is the fork that leads to Dunwich.

  See Aylesbury; Aylesbury Pike. (“The Dunwich Horror”, Lovecraft (O).)

  DEE, (DOCTOR) JOHN (1527-1608). Astrologer and magician in the service of Queen Elizabeth I. Dee was born in Mortlake, and entered Cambridge at the age of fifteen. He soon gained a reputation as an astrologer, and was jailed by Queen Mary for showing her horoscope to her imprisoned sister, Elizabeth. When Elizabeth gained the throne in 1558, Dee was high in her favor, though she was careful not to associate herself too much with him. For his part, Dee is believed to have acted as a spy for the Queen, using his interests in the occult and cryptography to conceal his true dealings.

  In 1581, Dee began his experiments in crystal-gazing. Since he was not a medium, he enlisted the services of scryers, and eventually settling upon the mountebank Edward Kelley. Through his work, he was able to get in touch with “angels” who dictated their language of Enochian. Kelley accompanied Dee during his travels in Europe from 1583-89. In 1586, the two arrived in Prague, and it was there that Dee first came upon the Necronomicon. He was to spend several years translating the book into English.

  Dee’s arrangement with Kelley went sour in 1587 after a summoned “angel” commanded the two to share their wives in common. Dee returned to England in 1589 to find a mob had ransacked his home and library. Queen Elizabeth appointed him Warden of Christ’s College in Manchester, but Dee was unhappy with the post and eventually returned home to Mortlake where he died.

  [All of the information given above is true, save for the part on the Necronomicon. With all his dealings with angels, Dee would have been quite surprised to find himself named as the translator of
the twentieth century’s most notorious grimoire.]

  See Aklo; Aklo Sabaoth; Aklo Unveilings; Necronomicon; Shining Trapezohedron. (Necronomicon: The Book of Dead Names, Hay ed.; “The Space-Eaters”, Long (O).)

  DEEP DENDO. Place where “wicked voorish domes” may be found, and whose people may help a wizard who appeals to them properly. It is to this cavern-world that the people of Voor withdrew after deserting their native land.

  (“The Secret in the Parchment”, Carter; “Something in the Moonlight”, Carter; “The White People”, Machen (O).)

  DEEP ONES. Fish-like humanoid beings that worship Dagon, Hydra, and Cthulhu, though this title may also be applied to other aquatic creatures that worship the Great Old Ones. Some believe that the deep ones came to earth at the same time Cthulhu and his kin arrived and evolved to live in water, but others in direct contact with these creatures believe that these amphibious creatures evolved upon this planet. Most deep ones look much like bipedal frogs with scales, bulging eyes, gills, and webbed hands and feet. Communication between deep ones seems to be telepathic in nature, though they may also speak to their human agents through croaking noises.

  These creatures are immortal, never dying except due to acts of violence. Because of their great lifespans, the deep ones have become scientists and priests of great ability. Over the course of its life, a deep one continues to grow; Father Dagon and Mother Hydra, the leaders of the race, may only be the two largest and oldest of the species. Prolonged starvation may cause the deep one to shrink until it is only a tiny fraction of its former size, but the creature will never die from its condition.

  Deep ones dwell beneath the world’s oceans in cities built of stone and decorated with mother-of-pearl coating. These metropolises, which may be found in all major seas of the world, include Y’ha-nthlei off the coast of Massachusetts, Ahu-Y’hloa near Cornwall, and G’ll-Hoo and Witch’s Hole in the North Sea. Activity within these cities is efficiently coordinated; each deep one carries out what is necessary for the community without question. Though this race is highly individualistic, dissent among deep ones is virtually unknown. The deep ones worship Dagon and Hydra, the leaders of their race, as well as Great Cthulhu; some also revere Byatis and others of the Great Old Ones, but Cthulhu’s cult is definitely the most popular among them.