Favourite creatures from the Cthulhu Mythos?

[Paige Turner]

I think Wilbur Whately—even though he didn't look much like his dad—would be a good guy to know in a pinch. He'd be no good with dogs, but otherwise, a most intriguing fellow.

 

[Randolph]

I agree with Somebloke on Azathoth, my personal favorite entity. I'm also partial to the color out of space because it is Lovecraft's most mysterious creature, to the extent that it doesn't even have a name. I think HPL may have been kind of angry with himself for being too explicit with his creatures in earlier stories and made up for it with something much more intangible and strange.

 

[j d worthington]

I agree with Somebloke on Azathoth, my personal favorite entity. I'm also partial to the color out of space because it is Lovecraft's most mysterious creature, to the extent that it doesn't even have a name. I think HPL may have been kind of angry with himself for being too explicit with his creatures in earlier stories and made up for it with something much more intangible and strange.

I'm not sure angry is the correct word, but disappointed... definitely. I'd have to look up the exact reference, but he makes that comment in a letter, that "the chromatic entity of The Colour Out of Space [was] the only one [he] took any real pride in." We also, by the way, don't really have any certainty about it's motivation, or even its sentience. It is one of the few truly alien creatures in all of fantastic fiction. It's been speculated (with some interesting citations to give said speculation substance) that that entity (or, more properly, group of entities, as either one of them, or a part of the whole, is left behind at story's end) may be one of the "masks" of Nyarlathotep. An intriguing thought, and a valid reading, I think, but only one of many, and I doubt it's one HPL had in mind.

It's interesting that neither Nyarlathotep nor Azathoth was developed as fully (as a consistent concept) as Cthulhu, the star-headed Old Ones, the Fungi from Yuggoth, etc.; even though both are mentioned frequently in his stories; I think Lovecraft wanted to keep them ambiguous and even nebulous, more allusive than "on-stage"... something like what we see with Chambers' King in Yellow. One could also argue that, as they (and Yog-Sothoth, for that matter) are among the most powerful of his entities, they are simply beyond our genuine comprehension, and he wanted to keep that feeling of true alienation there, while nonetheless showing how we tend to mythologize what we don't understand it in our attempts to do so....

 

[Pyan]

Guess....!