Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia Page 9

  BYAKHEE. Creatures resembling bats, birds, moles, and rotting corpses, but not quite like any of them. Byakhee were once intelligent inhabitants of a city drawn into Carcosa, an experience which drove their species mad. Some say they made a deal with Hastur to support them in a conflict that led to their home world’s destruction. The byakhee now dwell in Carcosa and interstellar space, though they have been known to frequent Yuggoth and other worlds.

  Byakhee serve the Great Old One Hastur, and are often involved in his rituals. They are also used as mounts that may carry a rider between the stars, provided that they have drunk space-mead. By activating an organ in its abdomen called a hune, the byakhee creates a state that allows it to span interstellar distances so quickly that it may seem to be teleportation to the unknowing spectator.

  To summon a byakhee, the wizard waits until a night when Aldebaran is above the horizon. Then they blow a special whistle and chant the following words:

  Iä! Iä! Hastur! Hastur cf’ayak ‘vulgtmm, vulgtmm, vulgtmm! Ai! Ai! Hastur!

  After this is done, the byakhee will fly down from space to the caster. Usually an Elder Sign is also required.

  [Call of Cthulhu has taken its description of the byakhee from the creatures in Lovecraft’s “The Festival”, but it is uncertain whether Lovecraft and Derleth’s creations are one and the same.]

  See Hastur; Legends of the Olden Runes; space-mead. (“The Book of the Gates”, Carter; “The House on Curwen Street”, Derleth (O); “The Watcher from the Sky”, Derleth; Delta Green: Countdown, Detwiller et. al.; Secrets of Japan, Dziesinski; S. Petersen’s Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters, Petersen et. al.; Deities and Demigods Cyclopedia, Ward with Kuntz.)

  BYATIS. Great Old One known as “serpent-bearded Byatis” and “the Berkeley Toad.” As its titles imply, it appears much like a multi-colored, one-eyed, shimmering toad with a proboscis, crab-like pincers, and a row of tentacles below its mouth. Byatis is capable of hypnotizing those it chooses to prey upon, and with each victim devoured by Byatis, the Great Old One grows larger.

  According to Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis, obeisances made to Byatis’ image, which the deep ones brought to earth, called up the Great Old One. The serpent-men of Valusia and the people of the lost continent of Mu worshiped Byatis later on. His cult was strongest in Britain, where the people worshiped him as a fertility god, merging his cult with that of the Greek monster Medusa whom traders had brought to them. Many years later, Roman legionnaires occupying Britain’s Severn River Valley discovered Byatis behind a stone door in an ancient camp. Horrified by what they saw, they imprisoned it with a five-pointed star before continuing on their way.

  From time to time, Byatis broke free of its prison to stalk and feast upon its victims, creating the legend of the “Berkeley Toad”, a monster whose activities were centered on that town. During the 18th century, the wizard Sir Gilbert Morley purchased the Norman castle where Byatis had been chained. In return for sacrifices, Byatis allowed him to communicate with the other Great Old Ones. One day, after Morley had closed the prison of Byatis, he vanished and was never seen again.

  Some sources label Byatis as the son of Yig. It has been said that the Greek worshiped Byatis under the name “Hypnos”, though the two beings have seemed quite different in appearance and motivations when encountered.

  See Atlantis; Camside; De Vermis Mysteriis; deep ones; Notes on Witchcraft …; Revelations of Glaaki; serpent-people. (“The Shambler from the Stars”, Bloch (O); “The Room in the Castle”, Campbell; “Zoth-Ommog”, Carter; “Unseen”, Love; “The Beard of Byatis”, Price.)

  C

  CABALA OF SABOTH. Book of divine (?) lore which may have appeared around 100 BC. A Greek translation of the Cabala was made in 1686, and one copy in Yiddish has also been found. The book contains much angel lore, and the title suggests that it may cover many esoteric topics of Jewish mysticism.

  (“The Mannikin”, Bloch; “The Secret in the Tomb”, Bloch (O); Keeper’s Compendium, Herber; “Beneath the Tombstone”, Price.)

  CABOT MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY. Institution in Boston’s Beacon Hill district that specializes in ancient artifacts not classified as art. The date the Cabot Museum was founded is unknown, but the famous architect Charles Bulfinch helped to design the western wing dedicated to mummies in 1819.

  Until 1932, the museum was famous among scholars for its collections, though few of the public knew of its existence. In the spring of that year, however, a visiting member of the press noticed a mummy found on a Pacific island, and soon the museum was awash with visitors. Events came to a head on December 1st, when two intruders died while trying to steal the mummy. Within the following year, many of the staff died mysteriously, and the museum went into a decline which was only halted in 1940, when Miskatonic University took over the collection.

  See Chandraputra, Swami; Chateau des Faussesflammes. (“Out of the Aeons”, Lovecraft (O); Ex Libris Miskatonici, Stanley.)

  CAMILLA. Character from The King in Yellow.

  See King in Yellow. (“The Repairer of Reputations”, Chambers (O); “Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?”, Ross.)

  CAMSIDE. Village located between Severnford and Berkeley in the Severn River Valley. Byatis, or the Berkeley Toad, often prowled near this town during its brief freedom. Beneath a house in this town is an entrance to Eihort’s labyrinth.

  See Legendry and Customs of the Severn Valley. (“The Church in High Street”, Campbell (O); “The Room in the Castle”, Campbell.)

  CARCOSA. Alien city in the Hyades on the shore of the Lake of Hali (though others have placed it in the Gobi Desert or near the Lake of Galilee). Carcosa is a metropolis of tall, black buildings, mysterious events, and inexplicable sounds and sights. The architecture varies widely in style, and a traveler’s surroundings often change when his or her attention is elsewhere. Across the lake from the city is the palace of Yhtill, where the coming of the King is re-enacted for all eternity. Overhead are the planet’s two moons, as well as Aldebaran and the Hyades.

  Carcosa has connections to our world, though these are often tenuous. Portals, sometimes in the form of works of art, can conduct a person into Carcosa. In addition, a city found to be degraded enough may be incorporated into Carcosa wholesale, after an evaluation of its worthiness by the Pallid Mask.

  Very few have visited Carcosa and returned to tell the tale. It is here that the play The King in Yellow takes place. It has been said that Carcosa was the original home of humanity.

  [Bierce’s original description of Carcosa as a city completely in ruins is not borne out in the work of subsequent authors.]

  See byakhee; Celaeno Fragments; Hali; Hastur; King in Yellow; Naotalba; Pallid Mask; Revelations of Hali; Uoht; Yellow Codex; Yellow Sign; Yhtill. (“An Inhabitant of Carcosa”, Bierce (O); “The Yellow Sign”, Chambers; Delta Green: Countdown, Detwiller et. al; “Tatterdemalion”, Love, Ross, and Watts; “Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?” Ross; The Illuminatus! Trilogy, Shea and R. Wilson; House of the Toad, Tierney.)

  CARTER, (DOCTOR?) RANDOLPH (1873-1928?). Boston author and mystic. Carter’s family was of an old and distinguished line. His ancestor Geoffrey Carter, a Crusader, was imprisoned for eleven years at Alamut, and an Edmund Carter was nearly hung during the Salem witch-trials. Beginning at the age of ten, Randolph himself began to show a gift for prophesying the future that never left him.

  In his early years, Randolph Carter became known as one of the Dreamlands’ greatest travelers. The people of that land still tell the tale of his journey to Kadath in the Cold Waste to ask for the sunset city of his dreams, possibly the greatest task undertaken by any dreamer. As Carter grew older, however, his dream-voyages became less and less frequent, until at the age of thirty they ceased entirely. It was at this time that Carter began a search for personal meaning that would last the rest of his life.

  During World War I, Carter served in the French Foreign Legion. It was here that he made the acquaintance of Etienne-Laurent de Marigny, a
fellow dreamer with whom he travelled into the crypts below the town of Bayonne and forged a friendship that would last for years. He returned home after being nearly killed near the town of Belloy-en-Santerre.

  After his discharge, Carter returned to the United States. Shortly thereafter, he became the pupil of Harley Warren, a scholar who had delved deeply into the occult. One night, Warren vanished after Carter accompanied him to a cemetery in Florida. The police questioned Carter, who gave them a strange account of what had happened, but he was released due to lack of evidence.

  Randolph Carter was a writer of great ability, though he was not well known during his lifetime. His book A War Come Near, published in 1919, detailed his wartime experiences, and his horror story “The Attic Window”, printed in the magazine Whispers in 1922, was so disturbing that many newsstands kept the issue off their shelves. (Shortly after writing it, Carter and a friend were found near Meadow Hill with strange injuries that they never explained.) Carter is best known, though, for his fantasy novels. His earlier ones, written during his years of dreaming, met with little success. The later, more sophisticated ones garnered him some attention, but by the time of his disappearance, Carter had burnt all of his manuscripts, having found his career as an author unsatisfying.

  On October 7, 1928, Randolph Carter vanished in the ruins of his family’s ancestral mansion outside Arkham. Searchers discovered his car and a handkerchief that might have belonged to him, but no other trace of Randolph Carter was ever found. A few of his friends asserted that Carter had gone back to the land of dreams to become the king of Ilek-Vad, but this speculation was not taken seriously.

  [Carter was one of Lovecraft’s fictional alter egos, and in many ways represents how Lovecraft would have liked to present himself.]

  See bholes; Chandraputra, Swami; Dreamlands; Elton, Basil; Ilek-Vad; Kadath; Klarkash-Ton; Leng; Marigny, Etienne-Laurent de; Meadow Hill; Phillips, Ward; Silver Key; time-clock; Warren, Harley. (“The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, Lovecraft; “The Silver Key”, Lovecraft; “The Statement of Randolph Carter”, Lovecraft (O); “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”, Lovecraft; “The Unnameable”, Lovecraft; Prey, Masterton; “The Lord of Illusion”, Price.)

  CASSILDA. Character from The King in Yellow.

  See King in Yellow. (“The Repairer of Reputations”, Chambers (O); “Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?”, Ross.)

  CASTAIGNE, (HILDRED). 1) Individual from New York in an alternate reality. He fell under the influence of the play The King in Yellow after a fall from horseback inflicted a head injury. He became obsessed with the play, to the extent of making his own translation. After attempting to kill his brother’s fiancée, he was confined to the Asylum for the Criminally Insane, where he died. (“The Repairer of Reputations”, Chambers (O); “Typo”, Winkle.)

  2) Author of the play The King in Yellow. Almost nothing is known of this individual, save that he disappeared from an institution after writing it. It is uncertain whether he was related to the first Castaigne. (“The Yellow Play”, Houarner; “Tatterdemalion”, Love, Ross, and Watts (O).)

  CASTRO. Ancient sailor captured during a raid on a sacrificial ritual in Louisiana on November 1, 1907. Of all the prisoners taken during that night, Castro proved to be the best informant on the nature of the cult. He said that he was a worshiper of Cthulhu, and had met its immortal leaders who dwelt in China. Castro’s confession later formed a cornerstone of George Angell’s work on the Cthulhu cult.

  See Cthulhu; Legrasse, John; Zuchequon. (“The Call of Cthulhu”, Lovecraft (O).)

  CATHURIA. Land of the Dreamlands that once lay beyond the Basalt Pillars of the West, held to be the land where all ideals are true. Cathuria has many golden cities built of marble and porphyry with roofs of gold. The land is ruled by the king Dorieb, whose people see him as a god. Unfortunately, the gods took Cathuria away from the land of dream, and no one knows where it now lies. The great dreamer Basil Elton failed in his quest to attain this land; his grandson Nathaniel was said to have found this land, but was cast out soon thereafter.

  See Elton, Basil. (“The Return of the White Ship”, Breach; “The White Ship”, Lovecraft (O).)

  CELAENO. One of the seven stars in the Pleiades. On Celaeno’s fourth planet lies the Great Library of Celaeno, where the lore stolen by the Great Old Ones from the Elder Gods is kept. Just how the information is stored is unclear; some references indicate that it is held on books and tablets, but others assert that the elder lore rests in living organisms designed for that purpose. Visitors to the Library should bear the sign of the Elder Ones and not remove any written knowledge from the library, lest the Sleeper of the Lake prevent their escape. The noted scholar Laban Shrewsbury spent much time here, and may have deciphered the Celaeno Fragments from stone tablets he found in this place.

  [Celaeno is an actual star, though no one has ever reported a huge library being found nearby. I am not sure why Derleth chose this particular star, but it is possible that he was considering a link between the byakhee and the harpies of Greek myth, whose queen “Celaeno” is mentioned in the Aeneid.]

  See Barrier of Naach-Tith; Celaeno Fragments; Elder Gods; Naotalba. (“The House on Curwen Street”, Derleth (O); “The Watcher from the Sky”, Derleth; “Halls of Celaeno”, Herber; House of the Toad, Tierney.)

  THE CELAENO FRAGMENTS. Transcript deposited at the Miskatonic University Library in 1915 by Doctor Laban Shrewsbury, who disappeared shortly thereafter. Shrewsbury had seen the original broken stone tablets in the Great Library of Celaeno, and left behind notes which he claimed were a translation of the Fragments, which dated back to at least the mid-Triassic period. Archaeological expeditions have subsequently turned up stone shards inscribed with portions of the Fragments, and a copy also turned up later in the Amos Tuttle Bequest made to the Miskatonic University Library.

  The Fragments are short, constituting only fifty pages of Shrewsbury’s notes. In most respects, they are quite close to the Eltdown Shards and the Pnakotic Fragments in content. They may include information on the King in Yellow and Carcosa, and a small amount of data on the deep ones.

  See Celaeno; Necronomicon (appendices); Shrewsbury, Laban; Zanthu Tablets. (“Behind the Mask”, Carter; “H. P. Lovecraft: The Gods”, Carter; “The House on Curwen Street”, Derleth (O); “The Gable Window”, Derleth and Lovecraft; Keeper’s Compendium, Herber; A Resection of Time, Johnson; Miskatonic University Graduate Kit, Petersen et. al.; Ex Libris Miskatonici, Stanley.)

  CELEPHÏAS. City of the Dreamlands found in the Valley of Ooth-Nargai. Its marble walls and bronze gates make it one of the most impressive cities in all the Dreamlands. In Celephaïs, time seems not to pass at all, and a visitor may return many years later to find things exactly as they were when he or she left.

  Celephaïs was built in the dreams of Kuranes, a London dreamer of some note. When he passed away, he went to dwell in Celephaïs forever as its ruler.

  See Aran, Mount; Cerenerian Sea; Dreamlands; Kuranes; Nath-Horthath; Nithy-Vash; Ooth-Nargai; Serannian; Tanarian Hills. (“Celephaïs”, Lovecraft (O); “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, Lovecraft.)

  CERENERIAN SEA. Azure ocean of the Dreamlands. It may be crossed between the towns of Hlanith and Celephaïs in only two days, but the journey across it to Inquanok takes three weeks. One who travels on this sea might encounter the cloud-city of Serannian, or the nameless rock inhabited by the moon-beasts.

  See Hlanith; Inquanok; moon-beasts; Oukranos. (“Celephaïs”, Lovecraft (O); “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, Lovecraft.)

  CHAG-HAI. See Shaggai.

  CHALMERS, HALPIN (1891-1928). Noted occultist and horror fiction author. Chalmers was born in Partridgeville, New York, and graduated from Miskatonic University at a surprisingly late date (Class of 1918). Afterward, he moved to Brooklyn, where he served as the Curator of Archaeology at the Manhattan Museum of Fine Arts for some time. He was the author of a large number of occult volumes, including The Secret Watcher, pu
blished by London’s Charnel House Press.

  Chalmers was found dead in his apartment in Patridgeville on July 3, 1928, and his apparent murder has never been solved. Since then, his fiction has achieved immense popularity. The interested reader should consult The Collected Letters of Halpin Chalmers and Fred Carstairs’ memoir Halpin Chalmers: Voyager of Other and Many Dimensions.

  See Einstein Formula; Morton, James; Partridgeville; The Secret Watcher. (“The Letters of Halpin Chalmers”, Cannon; “The Winfield Heritance”, Carter; “The Horror from the Hills”, Long; “The Hounds of Tindalos”, Long (O); Ex Libris Miskatonici, Stanley.)

  CHANDRAPUTRA, SWAMI SUNAND. East Indian individual who first appeared in 1930, taking up residence in Boston’s West End. He is known to have sent letters of inquiry to many occultists, and visited the Cabot Museum to view an ancient mummy housed there. The Swami impressed all who met him as an intelligent man who possessed a prodigious knowledge of uncanny subjects, though his garb and mannerisms made his listeners uneasy.

  In 1932, the Swami left Boston for the New Orleans home of Etienne-Laurent de Marigny so that he might provide evidence of Randolph Carter’s survival. During the reading of the will, however, the Carter family’s lawyer died of apoplexy, and the Swami, who is believed to have been responsible in some way, disappeared.

  See time-clock. (“The Strange Doom of Enos Harker”, Carter and Price; “Out of the Aeons”, Lovecraft and Heald; “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”, Lovecraft and Price (O).)

  CHATEAU DES FAUSSESFLAMES. Ruined manor located in the woods of Averoigne, near the abbey of Perigon. In medieval times, the chateau was the home of Sieur du Malinbous and his wife, who were suspected of practicing witchcraft. Even after the pair’s death, the site’s ill repute remained. Many who visited the ruins of the Chateau did not leave, and even centuries later most curiosity-seekers shun its ruined walls. In 1932, the Cabot Museum in Boston displayed some curious mummies from the crypts beneath the manor.