# HP Lovecraft Questions **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 13, 2007, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658 "2007-07-13T15:51:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/1 "2007-07-13T15:51:42Z")
I have read snatcges of the HP lovecraft stories, over the years, and forget a lot of them. Who/what were the “shoggoths”? Were they some kind of domestic animal? And the "old ones’-who were they, and why did they visit the earth? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/2 "2007-07-13T16:54:10Z")
“shoggoths” were animals, likened in “At the Mountains of Madness” to subway cars in size and general shape. Big, mean and nasty. Offstage in most of lovecrafty, although his imitators have featured them. The Old Ones are the Old Gods, now banished or sleeping, who can yet influence actions on earth, and threaten/promise to return. I’m sure you can find thius and more on the internet. Start here: [H. P. Lovecraft - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft) ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/3 "2007-07-13T19:32:35Z")
The [Shoggoths](http://www.maj.com/gallery/shoggoth666/figs/shoggoth.jpg) were a race of servitors created by the [Elder Things](http://www.hplovecraft.es/fotos/articulos/plantilla_clip_image008.jpg) (not to be confused with the Old Ones), an advanced, space-faring race that colonized the Earth long before man evolved here. Eventually, the Shoggoths rebelled against their masters, destroying them and most of their works. The great cities of the Elder Things are all gone, save for one in the mountains of Antarctica, and a few scattered in the depths of the oceans. The few Shoggoths who survived their rebellion now slumber in those cities, occasionally awakened by those foolishly seeking knowledge best left to the aeons. ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/4 "2007-07-13T20:08:27Z")
What’s the difference between Elder Things and Old Ones? From my (limited) reading of Lovecraft they’re the same. I’m familiar with the stories in [this anthology](http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=223§ion=toc) (Library of America). ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/5 "2007-07-13T20:34:14Z")
The Old Ones refers to several different things in the Cthulhu mythos, the Elder Things being only one of them. It also refers to the Great Old Ones (Cthulhu, Dagon, and the like), and a few different races associated with the GOO. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_Wright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@Steve\_Wright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_Wright)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/6 "2007-07-13T20:41:41Z")
Lovecraft isn’t entirely consistent in his usage - sometimes he uses “Old Ones” synonymously with “Elder Things” (the creatures in _At the Mountains of Madness_), sometimes it’s synonymous with the _great_ Old Ones (the “gods” of the Mythos, Cthulhu being the canonical example). Just to add to the confusion, sometimes “Old Ones” means some kind of attendants or descendants of the Great Old Ones. None of them are anything you’d want to meet in a dark alley. (Especially Cthulhu, since squeezing him into the dark alley in the first place would probably make him seriously pissed off.) A shoggoth, of course, is a thirty-foot amoeba with a bad attitude. ---
**Author:** ![kelly5078](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/6f9a4e/32.png) [@kelly5078](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kelly5078)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/7 "2007-07-13T20:48:06Z")
It’s been a while, but I think I remember this. Basically, there are the Great Old Ones and the Elder Gods. The Elder Gods don’t put in much of an appearance, but they are referred to as the ones that banished the Great Old Ones to the dimension where they now exist. The Great Old Ones are the familiar cast of nasties: Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, Shub Niggurath, Cheney, etc. They always want to break into our dimension and mess up our party, and there’s always someone around crazy enough to help them out (or it may be a relation, like the Whately kids). It’s best not to pay too much attention. Lovecraft didn’t go out of his way to be consistent about this sort of thing; he’s about the opposite of Tolkien. He’d just bash out a story (single-spaced, to the chagrin of his publishers) and send it off. The whole “Cthulhu mythos” thing was dreamed up by people other than Lovecraft, like August Derleth and Lin Carter, and implies a consistency that doesn’t exist. ---
**Author:** ![kelly5078](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/6f9a4e/32.png) [@kelly5078](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kelly5078)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/8 "2007-07-13T20:51:17Z")
> [@Steve\_Wright](#): > > A shoggoth, of course, is a thirty-foot amoeba with a bad attitude. Don’t forget the eldritch keening! ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/9 "2007-07-13T20:55:07Z")
[QUOTE=kelly5078] It’s been a while, but I think I remember this. Basically, there are the Great Old Ones and the Elder Gods. The Elder Gods don’t put in much of an appearance, but they are referred to as the ones that banished the Great Old Ones to the dimension where they now exist. The Great Old Ones are the familiar cast of nasties: Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, Shub Niggurath, Cheney, etc. They always want to break into our dimension and mess up our party, and there’s always someone around crazy enough to help them out (or it may be a relation, like the Whately kids). It’s best not to pay too much attention. Lovecraft didn’t go out of his way to be consistent about this sort of thing; he’s about the opposite of Tolkien. He’d just bash out a story (single-spaced, to the chagrin of his publishers) and send it off. The whole “Cthulhu mythos” thing was dreamed up by people other than Lovecraft, like August Derleth and Lin Carter, and implies a consistency that doesn’t exist. [/QUOTE] 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_Wright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@Steve\_Wright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_Wright)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/10 "2007-07-13T21:05:02Z")
[QUOTE=kelly5078] Don’t forget the eldritch keening! [/QUOTE] If I ran into a shoggoth in a dark alley, the eldritch keening would be the least of my worries. Actually, come to think of it, I’d probably be doing a fair bit of eldritch keening myself … ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/11 "2007-07-13T21:07:19Z")
[QUOTE=Steve Wright] If I ran into a shoggoth in a dark alley, the eldritch keening would be the least of my worries. Actually, come to think of it, I’d probably be doing a fair bit of eldritch keening myself … [/QUOTE] Yes, and uncanny pissing of the drawers, too, by cracky! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/12 "2007-07-13T21:11:31Z")
> [@](#): > > Don’t forget the **eldritch keening**! band name! ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/13 "2007-07-13T21:19:56Z")
Sounds more like a British hamlet, to me. ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/14 "2007-07-13T21:57:52Z")
_Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!_ Speaking of which… I recall discussing Lovecraft with some random coffeehouse lurker some time ago, and he swore up and down that the fragments of Elder Speech in Lovecraft’s works were actually part of a larger, Tolkienesque language that had been worked out at some point. According to this fellow’s rambling account, the details of the language had never been published because it was somehow tied up with the estate of Robert E. Howard. This guy was almost certainly higher than Icarus when he made these claims, but I’ve often wondered if there was any grain of truth to any of it. I’ve never seen such a thing hinted at in the few Lovecraft biographies I’ve perused. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_Wright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@Steve\_Wright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_Wright)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/15 "2007-07-13T22:32:01Z")
Unless this was the random coffeehouse lurker at the threshold, I wouldn’t take him seriously … ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/16 "2007-07-13T22:52:40Z")
[QUOTE=Terrifel] Speaking of which… I recall discussing Lovecraft with some random coffeehouse lurker some time ago, and he swore up and down that the fragments of Elder Speech in Lovecraft’s works were actually part of a larger, Tolkienesque language that had been worked out at some point. According to this fellow’s rambling account, the details of the language had never been published because it was somehow tied up with the estate of Robert E. Howard. [/QUOTE] I’ve seen a fairly elaborate history of Hyperboria worked out by a fan from details dropped in Howard’s Conan stories, but it wasn’t concerned at all with language, and it was published in one of the compilations of Conan comics done by Kurt Busiek, so there’re no estate entanglements. I also know that “Tekeli-li” originally comes from a Poe’s _The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym_, which reads more than a little bit like a precursor to _At the Mountains of Madness_, although it skews more Biblical than eldritch. Still, very cool story. ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2007, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/17 "2007-07-14T04:05:55Z")
For a more thorough picture of H.P. Lovecraft, I recommend L. Sprague de Camp’s excellent biography, _Lovecraft_. (He also wrote a biography of Robert E. Howard, _Dark Plains Destiny_.) ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2007, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/18 "2007-07-14T07:53:38Z")
I must admit, I always felt for the Shoggoths, rising up against their masters. Fight the power ! Go, Shoggy, go ! 😃 From what I recall from _The Mountains of Madness_, they were supposed to be mindless organic automatons, capable of imitating any tool or shape commanded. Some of them learned to imitate a brain, and eventually rebelled. They fought against their creators and lost, but would regain intelligence and rise up every so often. The Elder Things were aliens that landed on Earth early in it’s history and built a civilization. Before Cthulhu; they fought his emissaries, which were from farther away and functioned according to different physical laws. ---
**Author:** ![MerryMagdalen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@MerryMagdalen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MerryMagdalen)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2007, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/19 "2007-07-14T10:09:38Z")
> [@](#): > > Don’t forget the eldritch keening! The Sisters of Mercy have it covered for us, thank…um…things. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2007, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658/20 "2007-07-14T11:29:52Z")
[QUOTE=Der Trihs] I must admit, I always felt for the Shoggoths, rising up against their masters. Fight the power ! Go, Shoggy, go ! 😃 . [/QUOTE] Yes, yes…all power to the Proleitarian Uprising of the Unholy Amoeboid Working Masses. Huzzah. And now, solidarity! You shall become one with the Shoggoth Masses, Comrade **Der Trihs**. Internally. \ [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hp-lovecraft-questions/411658.md?page=2)