Tsathoggua

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(Redirected from Cxaxukluth)

Tsathoggua (the Sleeper of N'kai) is a fictional character in the Cthulhu mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. He is the creation of Clark Ashton Smith and is part of his Hyperborean cycle.

Tsathoggua (or Zhothaqquah) is a Great Old One, a godlike being from the pantheon. He first appeared as a hideous idol in Smith's short story "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros", written in 1929. Lovecraft borrowed the entity for his revision story "The Mound".


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Tsathoggua in the mythos

[In] that secret cave in the bowels of Voormithadreth . . . abides from eldermost eons the god Tsathoggua. You shall know Tsathoggua by his great girth and his batlike furriness and the look of a sleepy black toad which he has eternally. He will rise not from his place, even in the ravening of hunger, but will wait in divine slothfulness for the sacrifice.
—Clark Ashton Smith, "The Seven Geases"

Tsathoggua is often found asleep. He is incredibly lazy and refuses to leave his chambers unless mortally threatened. If disturbed, he will usually eat the awakener, unless the awakener has a sacrifice to offer; in which case, Tsathoggua will eat the sacrifice instead and then fall back into hibernation. However, there are exceptions. When the wizard Ezdagor sent the Hyperborean Lord Ralibar Vooz as a sacrifice in Smith's "The Seven Geases", Tsathoggua refused him and bound Ralibar Vooz to a geas, sending him to be eaten by another denizen of Mount Voormithadreth (the next five likewise did the same).

Tsathoggua's shapeshifting ability

Black Tsathoggua moulded itself from a toad-like gargoyle to a sinuous line with hundreds of rudimentary feet. . .
—H. P. Lovecraft, "The Horror in the Museum"

It is likely that Tsathoggua can alter his shape, the better to adapt to whatever environment he is in. When he dwelt on Cykranosh (a planet we know today as Saturn), he probably had a much different form, probably looking more like his paternal uncle Hziulquoigmnzhah, whose head dangles underneath his spheroid-like body.

Tsathoggua's dwelling place

This was a squat, plain temple of basalt blocks without a single carving, and containing only a vacant onyx pedestal. . . It has been built in imitation of certain temples depicted in the vaults of Zin, to house a very terrible black toad-idol found in the red-litten world and called Tsathoggua in the Yothic manuscripts. It had been a potent and widely worshipped god, and after its adoption by the people of K’n-yan had lent its name to the city which was later to become dominant in that region. Yothic legend said that it had come from a mysterious inner realm beneath the red-litten world - a black realm of peculiar-sensed beings which had no light at all, but which had had great civilisations and mighty gods before ever the reptilian quadrupeds of Yoth had come into being.
—H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop, "The Mound"
They’ve been inside the earth, too - there are openings which human beings know nothing of - some of them are in these very Vermont hills - and great worlds of unknown life down there; blue-litten K’n-yan, red-litten Yoth, and black, lightless N’kai. It’s from N’kai that frightful Tsathoggua came - you know, the amorphous, toad-like god-creature mentioned in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon and the Commoriom myth-cycle preserved by the Atlantean high-priest Klarkash-Ton.
—H. P. Lovecraft, "The Whisperer in Darkness"

Tsathoggua dwells deep beneath the earth in N'kai. Tsathoggua once dwelt inside Mount Voormithadreth in Hyberborea, but left after the continent iced over.

The formless spawn of Tsathoggua

The basin ... was filled with a sort of viscous and semi-liquescent substance, quite opaque and of a sooty color... [T]he center swelled as if with the action of some powerful yeast, and ... an uncouth amorphous head with dull and bulging eyes arose gradually on an ever-lengthening neck... Then two arms – if one could call them arms – likewise arose inch by inch, and we saw that the thing was not, as we had thought, a creature immersed in the liquid, but that the liquid itself had put forth this hideous neck and head, and was now forming these damnable arms, that groped toward us with tentacle-like appendages in lieu of claws or hands! ... Then the whole mass of the dark fluid began to rise, and ... poured over the rim of the basin like a torrent of black quicksilver, taking as it reached the floor an undulant ophidian form which immediately developed more than a dozen short legs.
—Clark Ashton Smith, "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros"

Tsathoggua is served by the amorphous beings known as the formless spawn. When resting, these beings look like puddles of black goo. However, when chasing prey that can assume a myriad of forms; oozing through cracks and crevices one moment or walking on rudimentary legs the next.

The formless spawn are usually found in N'kai. But a few may be found on the surface in temples of Tsathoggua, where they reside in large vats or troughs and perhaps serve as guardians.

The formless spawn are believed to have come from the planet Kythanil, which orbits the star Arcturus. Their precise connection to Tsathoggua is not known. (Though it is possible that Sfatlicllp, Tsathoggua's granddaughter, is their "mother").

Tsathoggua's family tree

Tsathoggua is the spawn of Ghisguth and Zystulzhemgni. He is the mate of Shathak and the parent of Zvilpogghua.

Cxaxukluth

Cxaxukluth (or Ksaksa-Kluth) is a Great Old One and is the "son" of Azathoth by spontaneous fission. His progenies are Hziulquoigmnzhah and Ghisguth. He is the grandfather of Tsathoggua.

Cxaxukluth dwells on Yuggoth. His immediate family lived with him for awhile, but soon left because of his cannibalistic appetites.

Ghisguth

Ghisguth (or Ghizghuth or Ghisghuth) is the son of Cxaxukluth and the brother of Hziulquoigmnzhah. He is the mate of Zstylzhemghi and the father of Tsathoggua.

Hziulquoigmnzhah

Hziulquoigmnzhah (also Ziulquaz-Manzah) is the son of Cxaxukluth. He is also the brother to Ghisguth and the uncle of Tsathoggua.

His appearance is much like his nephew, but he has an elongated neck, very long forelimbs, and very short, multiple legs. He has had many homes including Xoth (possibly Sirius B), Yaksh (Neptune), and Cykranosh (Saturn), where he resides to this day.

Knygathin Zhaum

Knygathin Zhaum is the child of Sfaticlip and a Voormi.

He repopulated Hyperborea after humans deserted the cities of Uzuldaroum and Commoriom. Athammaus tried to execute him by beheading, but because of his preternatural heritage, such attempts proved unsuccessful and only served to aggravate him. As a descendant of Cxaxukluth, Knygathin Zhaum reproduced by fission and thus created an Azathothian strain among the Hyperborean Voormi.

Sfatlicllp

Sfatlicllp is the daughter of Zvilpogghua. She is the wife of a Voormi and their progeny is Knygathin Zhaum.

Sfatlicllp was likely born on Kythanil and may have procreated the formless spawn once on Earth. She probably dwells in N'kai with Tsathoggua.

Shathak

Shathak is the wife of Tsathoggua and the mother of Zvilpogghua.

Ycnagnnisssz

Ycnagnnisssz is the being from the dark star Xoth who spawned Zstylzhemghi by fission.

Zstylzhemghi

Zstylzhemghi (Matriarch of the Swarm) is the progeny of Ycnagnnisssz, the wife of Ghisguth, and the mother of Tsathoggua.

Zvilpogghua

Zvilpogghua (the Feaster from the Stars) is the son of Tsathoggua and Shathak, and is the father of Sfatlicllp. Zvilpogghua was conceived on the planet Yaksh (Neptune).

Zvilpogghua is known to the American Indians as Ossadagowah. He usually takes the form of an armless, winged, bipedal toad with a long, rubbery neck and a face completely covered in tentacles. He currently dwells on Yrautrom, a planet that orbits the star Algol.

References

Books

  • Carter, Lin and Clark Ashton Smith. "The Feaster from the Stars" (1984) in The Book of Eibon, Robert M. Price (ed). Chaosium Books, 2002. ISBN 1-56882-129-8.
  • Harms, Daniel. The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana (2nd ed.), 1998. Chaosium, Inc. ISBN 1-56882-119-0.
  • Lovecraft, Howard P. "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1931) in The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre (1st ed.), 1982. Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-35080-4.
—and Zealia Bishop. "The Mound" (1940) in The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions, S.T. Joshi (ed.), 1989. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House Publishers, Inc. ISBN 0-87054-040-8.
—and Hazel Heald. "The Horror in the Museum" (1933). Ibid.
  • Smith, Clark Ashton and Will Murray. The Book of Hyperborea, 1996. Necronomicon Press. ISBN 0-940884-87-9.

Web sites

External links

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