Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia Read online

  For the most part, the deep ones remain apart from humanity. Chance meetings do occur, however. Some of these encounters have given rise to sailors’ tales of “mermaids” and other people of the ocean, such as the adaro sea-spirits feared in the Solomon Islands. Sometimes deep ones establish cults among coast dwellers that have contacted them by accident or by dropping specially inscribed tablets into the ocean. The most famous of these sects was the Esoteric Order of Dagon, which was destroyed in the government raid on Innsmouth, Massachusetts in 1928. Polynesia is the major center of the deep one’s worship, and other contacts may be suggested through the Babylonian myths of Oannes and the esoteric beliefs of the Dogon of Mali. It might be that government agencies have learned of and signed treaties with the Deep Ones to prevent them from unleashing underwater geothermal events that could cause massive casualties.

  A major part of the rites of the human-deep one cults is the mating between the two races. The children who result from these unions appear to be normal humans (but see Innsmouth look), but after many years they undergo a metamorphosis into deep ones, diving down into the ocean to join their kindred. The length and effects of this change vary widely between individuals. Some never complete the transition, while others, affected in their mothers’ wombs by Cthulhu’s dreams, turn into monstrosities. Rare breeds with powers of hypnosis are given great status in the cult of Cthulhu. Some maintain that the variations are due to the parentage of the half-breeds, with those with human mothers being healthier and more easily integrated. It is interesting in this context to note that both the Romans and the Merovingians of France claimed that their ruling dynasties came about from matings between humans and sea-beings. A transformation into a deep one may also take place in dolphins as well as humans, but little is known of how the deep ones and the dolphins interact.

  See Ahu-Y’hloa; Atlach-Nacha; Atlantis; Book of Dagon; Byatis; Celaeno Fragments; Dagon; De Vermis Mysteriis; Dwellers in the Depths; Fischbuch; G’ll-hoo; Gol-Goroth; Hydra; Laniqua Lua’huan; Legrasse, John Raymond; Lesser Old Ones; Nameless City; Oaths of Dagon; Old Ones; Pth’thya-l’yi; Polynesian Mythology …; Prehistoric Pacific in Light of the “Ponape Scripture”; Shining Trapezohedron; shoggoths; Unter-Zee Kulten; Yatta-Uc; Y’ha-nthlei; yuggs; yuggya. (“The Room in the Castle”, Campbell; “The Shuttered Room”, Derleth and Lovecraft; “The Survivor”, Derleth and Lovecraft; “The Songs of Fantari”, Detwiler and Isinwyll; “The Star of Istanbul”, Donahue; “The Worlds of H. P. Lovecraft—Dagon”, Jones; “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, Lovecraft (O); The Burrowers Beneath, Lumley; “The Return of the Deep Ones”, Lumley; Other Nations, Marsh and Marsh; S. Petersen’s Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters, Petersen; Escape from Innsmouth, Ross; “The Jennifer Morgue”, Stross; “The City in the Sea”, Thomas and Willis; “The Deep Ones”, Wade.)

  DELAPORE. See de la Poer.

  DELTA GREEN. Secretive government organization devoted to the investigation of paranormal events. Delta Green had its roots in the Office of Naval Intelligence’s P Division. During the 1928 raid on Innsmouth, they uncovered evidence of an underwater civilization that constituted a threat to U. S. interests. In 1942 it became affiliated with the Office of Strategic Services under the new title Delta Green, so called for the green triangular stickers placed on the folders of its personnel. The new organization immediately set about exploring the Nazi interest in the occult, playing cat and mouse games with German and Russian agents around the world.

  Delta Green was disbanded after 1945, but was reassembled in 1947 after the Roswell crash. The group carried out operations in Antarctica, Russia, the Congo, and Vietnam, with the goal of eliminating supernatural threats to national security. After a botched operation in Cambodia in 1970, Delta Green was officially disbanded, but its members had other ideas.

  Today, Delta Green exists as an informal network operating illegally within the Federal government. The organization recruits from a wide variety of federal agencies with law enforcement powers. Agents are arranged in cells, with each cell having limited contact with agents in the others. A-Cell, made up of agents Alphonse, Adam, and Andrea, are the leaders of Delta Green, though agents in the field are given a great deal of leeway. Delta Green continues its fight against the forces of the Mythos from the shadows.

  See Ahu-Y’hloa; Karotechia; PISCES; Y’ha-nthlei. (Delta Green, Detwiller, Glancy, and Tynes; “Convergence”, Tynes (O).)

  DEMHE. Lake whose “cloudy depths” are mentioned in references to Hastur and the King in Yellow. The city of Alar may stand on this shore.

  (“More Light”, Blish; “The Repairer of Reputations”, Chambers (O).)

  DENDO, DEEP. See Deep Dendo.

  DERBY, EDWARD PICKMAN. Poet whose most famous book is Azathoth and Other Horrors. Derby grew up in Arkham, and was admitted to Miskatonic University at the age of sixteen. He was a good friend of the poet Justin Geoffrey. When he was eighteen, Derby published Azathoth and Other Horrors, a book of poetry that earned him some acclaim. Some of his later poetry, still uncollected, appeared in the magazine Whispers.

  Following the death of his mother, Derby joined the bohemian circles of the university, where he participated in black magic rituals. It was at one of these gatherings that he met Asenath Waite, a woman from Kingsport and the daughter of the reputed wizard Ephraim Waite. The pair married a few months after they met, afterward moving into the Crowninshield mansion on the outskirts of Arkham.

  At first, Derby was highly satisfied with the union, even writing “To Asenath”, a poem considered almost as praiseworthy as “Azathoth” itself, in his wife’s honor. After three years of increasing tension between the two, Asenath disappeared and Edward applied for a divorce, afterward being committed to the Arkham Sanitarium. After a few months at the institution, he seemed to recover, but then Daniel Upton, a close friend of the poet, shot his friend in an apparent fit of madness.

  Through the efforts of Vartan Bagdasarian, Derby has gained much posthumous fame for his short fiction. Before the young Armenian scholar’s disappearance, Bagdasarian’s Azathoth House imprint released the anthology Forever Azathoth (1947), the collection of “posthumous collaborations” called Son of Azathoth (1948), and The Derby-Geoffrey Letters (1949). Miskatonic University Library has maintained possession of Derby’s other papers.

  [Lovecraft gives no dates for Derby’s life, and the sources often conflict in their information.]

  See Azathoth and Other Horrors; Cult of the Skull; Geoffrey, Justin; People of the Monolith; The Tunneler Below; Upton, Daniel; Waite, Asenath. (“The House of Azathoth” Cannon; “The Revenge of Azathoth”, Cannon; “The Thing on the Doorstep”, Lovecraft (O).)

  D’ERLETTE, COMTE. Title of eccentric French nobleman to whom Cultes des Goules is attributed. (Erlette was a place located near Vyones in France.) Three different individuals bearing this title may have been the author:

  1) Paul Henri d’Erlette, of whom nothing else is known. This name is most likely false. (“The Adventure of the Six Silver Spiders”, Derleth (O).)

  2) Antoine-Marie Augusin de Montmorency-les-Roches (1635-c. 1693), a young man who was interested in the pre-Christian rites practiced by the natives of southern France, especially the Pyrenees. If this hypothesis is correct, Cultes des Goules was published around 1665. Antione-Marie made himself quite unpopular due to his introducing several members of the nobility to the occult, not to mention his anti-Catholic sentiments. He vanished in 1681, most likely as a result of a royal edict, and probably died in prison some years later. (Ex Libris Miskatonici, Stanley (O).)

  3) Francois-Honore Balfour (1678-1724), an extremely eccentric individual who may have been a member of a Parisian cannibal cult. In 1703, the Comte secluded himself until his son found his mutilated body on his estate in 1724. According to his wishes, the Comte was placed in a sealed casket and buried in the family vault. (“Darkness, My Name Is”, Bertin (O); Keeper’s Compendium, Herber.)

  4) The Comte never existed, and the title is a pseudonym
for a real author. Once again, this is of dubious origin. (Peace, Wolfe (O).)

  Whatever the case, the d’Erlettes were forced to flee to Bavaria at the time of the French Revolution, there changing the family name to Derleth. The last titled member of the line died in 1919.

  [As with “Cultes des Goules”, it is uncertain whether this individual was invented by Bloch, Derleth, or Lovecraft, so I have listed the first story appearance. The Comte d’Erlette was supposedly a real title held by Derleth’s ancestors, though no one has found evidence of it.]

  See Cultes des Goules. (“The Suicide in the Study”, Bloch (O); “The Adventure of the Six Silver Spiders”, Derleth; “The Black Island”, Derleth.)

  DEVIL’S HOP YARD. Slope near Dunwich bare of plant life.

  (“The Dunwich Horror”, Lovecraft (O).)

  DEVIL’S REEF. Low outcropping just outside the harbor of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, at 42° 44’ N 71° 16’ W. Captain John Smith, who landed here during an exploration of the New England coast, gave the reef its name. Around the middle of the 19th century, this place saw many visits from Captain Obed Marsh, whom the locals said was looking for pirate treasure hidden within the many caverns dotting the top of the reef. Later, Marsh’s Esoteric Order of Dagon visited the reef until that cult was closed down by Federal agents in 1928. Despite this, the local fishermen still refuse to sail near Devil’s Reef, and the Navy still requires its vessels to report any unusual activity they may encounter nearby. Some maps today name it Allen’s Reef.

  See Innsmouth; Wilmarth Foundation; Y’ha-nthlei. (Delta Green, Detwiller, Glancy, and Tynes; “From Cabinet 34, Drawer 6”, Kiernan; “The Shadow over Innsmouth”, Lovecraft (O); Escape from Innsmouth, Ross.)

  DEVIL’S STEPS. Rock formation located to the northeast of Brichester. Erosion has carved this tremendous outcropping into what appears to be a staircase. No one in memory has climbed this formation, and the locals shun the place.

  (“The Mine on Yuggoth”, Campbell (O).)

  DEWART, AMBROSE (c. 1870-1924). Scholar and lineal descendent of Alijah Billington. Little is known of Dewart’s early life, save that his only son died during the first World War and thereafter he returned to live on his family’s property in Billington’s Wood near Arkham. Even though he was solitary by nature, those who had known him soon noticed a change in his personality, and the area’s inhabitants attributed a series of inexplicable disappearances to him. Shortly after his cousin Stephen Bates vanished in 1924, an unknown assailant slew Dewart on his property.

  See Lapham, Seneca; Phillips, Winfield. (“The Lurker at the Threshold”, Derleth and Lovecraft (O).)

  DEXTER, DOCTOR AMBROSE (1898-December 28, 1973). Renowned physician of Providence who nonetheless maintained an interest in the occult and folklore for much of his career.

  In 1935, Doctor Dexter took a minor role in the mystery of Robert Blake’s death by breaking into the old Starry Wisdom Church and bearing away the Shining Trapezohedron and the church’s library. He had been treating Robert Blake, but his knowledge of the true situation and motivations still remain a mystery. He left Providence for sixteen years following these events, taking up an inexplicable study of nuclear physics and even acting as an adviser at the Manhattan Project.

  Following his return home in 1951, another baffling incident occurred within the doctor’s house, but the police did not detain him. Shortly thereafter, he disappeared and was thought to have defected to the Russians. Documents leaked from British Intelligence show that one of their agents killed Dexter somewhere in the South Pacific in 1973.

  (“Coming of Age”, Ballon; “The Shadow from the Steeple”, Bloch; “Doctor Dexter”, Cabos; “The Haunter of the Dark”, Lovecraft (O).)

  DHO-HNA FORMULA (also DHO-NHA). Incantation that allows the wizard to view the inner city at the two magnetic poles and the ultimate gulf beyond space and time, along with other locations. The repetition of the Dho formula gives the caster a view of the desired location (without the danger of attracting the Hounds of Tindalos). The Hna portion gives the caster the power to travel to the location visualized, as well as allowing contact between different realities that can be amplified with sufficient power.

  Both formulae may also be looped into a protective device to hold entities from other dimensions, but exposure to such a diagram might be fatal for a human.

  The poem “They from the Air” in Azathoth and Others mentions that the Dho formula may be used to manifest certain air-spirits who may then achieve bodily form through the use of human blood. Sometimes the Hna portion of the formula does not perform correctly; it is possible that it will only work when the Great Old Ones return.

  See inner city at the magnetic poles. (“The Book of the Gates”, Carter; The Necronomicon: The Book of Dead Names, Hay, ed.; “The Dunwich Horror”, Lovecraft (O); “Past the Gate of Deepest Slumber”, Pugmire; “The Atrocity Archives”, Stross; “The Concrete Jungle”, Stross; “The Jennifer Morgue”, Stross.)

  DHOL CHANTS. 1) Book from the Plateau of Leng. A Chinese copy was discovered in an Asian monastery of undisclosed location in 1650, and English copies have appeared since then. Metaphysical research has proven a link between this manuscript and the beings known as “Dholes”, but whether or not they influenced its text in some way remains uncertain. Miskatonic University holds a copy of the Dhol Chants.

  This book contains five hundred and fifty-five different “chants”, which are not meditative in nature. They include one which calls the “Blue Glow” (whatever that may be), and others which are used to command spirits. The reader should be warned, though, that the beneficial spells within are often ineffectual, while the spells of vengeance (pp. 101–127) usually only take effect after the caster’s death.

  See Leng; Nyarlathotep (Ahtu); Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan. (“The Horror in the Museum”, Heald and Lovecraft (O); “Spaghetti”, Lumley; “Yohk the Necromancer”, Myers; Ex Libris Miskatonici, Stanley.)

  2) Before World War I, Heinrich Zimmerman wrote a German volume of the same name. The book deals with similarities between the music of the Caribbean and that of West Africa, but also presents a number of songs from these traditions.

  The chants in the books may be performed by a human voice or a unfretted stringed instrument, such as a violin. One of the chants, when used in conjunction with a golden amulet, will call up Nyarlathotep’s avatar Ahtu, while others can invoke lesser spirits. Also mentioned are a pair of binoculars capable of viewing other dimensions. Zimmerman’s volume may have incorporated material from the original Dhol Chants, whether the author credited his sources or not.

  (“Dead of Night”, Herber (O); “Asakusa Ryôunkaku”, Yasujiro.)

  DHOLES (also DOEL or DHOL or DOL). 1) Creatures which resemble huge white worms with an open cavity at one end which serves as a mouth. From this cavity, the dhole may spit a huge quantity of mucus that engulfs its target.

  Dholes usually are only encountered in the Vale of Pnath, but they may also be found at other ossuaries in the Dreamlands’ Underworld. They have even been reported living on other worlds, tunneling through them and thereby making them uninhabitable. Dholes have destroyed many worlds, including Yaddith, in this manner.

  How these beings travel between worlds is unknown. Some suggest that dholes are the spawn of the Dreamland beings known as bholes, who send their children through the universe through wormholes. More recent findings indicate that infant dholes are parasitic organisms, taking up residence in the bodies of other beings. Their waste products stop the host’s aging process, and so long as the host obtains suitable narcotics, the dhole’s growth will be stunted. Some say the Egyptian pharaohs used this dangerous method of obtaining eternal life.

  In most cases, dholes have been described as being larger than an ocean liner, but their sizes often vary. Much smaller ones with pig-like snouts have been reported, for instance, and the parasitic stage can take the form of wormlike colonies or a single dhole the size of a snake in a person’s abdominal cavit
y.

  In the earlier copies of the Book of Eibon, there was a formula for the calling of dholes to earth. Fortunately, the last edition to contain this ritual was the Egyptian, of which all copies have been lost.

  It has been also said that the dholes have the ability to follow those who escape them through their dreams and various incarnations, but no one knows how these beasts may use this power. The dholes might also be the servitors of Shub-Niggurath who pave the way for the arrival of her other minions on a world.

  [This is undoubtedly one of the most confusing problems in Mythos scholarship. Machen made a passing reference to “Dôls” in his story “The White People.” Lovecraft, likely inspired by this, created a work called the “Dhol chants”. When his friend Frank Long created the creatures known as “Doels” in one of his stories (possibly with the same inspiration), Lovecraft alluded to them in “The Whisperer in Darkness”. However, none of these are the wormlike creatures Mythos fans are familiar with. In his “Dream-Quest”, Lovecraft mentions these beings as “bholes”. August Derleth misread this as “dholes”, and Mythos authors since then have read the incorrect spelling and included “dholes” into their fiction. In his corrected editions of Lovecraft, S. T. Joshi has restored the spelling “bholes”, which has created new problems (see bholes).]

  See bholes; Book of Eibon; Dhol Chants; Ghorl Nigral; hounds of Tindalos; Nug-Soth; Pnath, Vale of; Shub-Niggurath; Yaddith; Zkauba. (The Art of Playing Mythos, Aniolowski et. al.; “Dreams in the House of Weir”, Carter; “The Lambton Worm”, Hatherley; “Locked Room”, Henderson; “Sands of Time”, Herber; “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”, Lovecraft and Price; “The White People”, Machen (O); Cthulhu Live: Shades of Gray, McLaughlin et. al.; S. Petersen’s Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters, Petersen; “Sabbath of the Black Goat”, Rainey.)