Ancient Races

ANCIENT 1 The Great Race of Yilth

The Great Race ... waxed well-nigh omniscient, and turned to the task of setting up exchanges with the minds of other planets, and of exploring their pasts and futures. It sought likewise to fathom the past years and origin of that black, aeon-dead orb in far space whence its own mental heritage had come – for the mind of the Great Race was older than its bodily form. . . The beings of a dying elder world, wise with the ultimate secrets, had looked ahead for a new world and species wherein they might have long life; and had sent their minds en masse into that future race best adapted to house them – the cone-shaped beings that peopled our earth a billion years ago.

—H. P. Lovecraft, "The Shadow Out of Time"

The Great Race are beings of enormous intellectual and psychic powers that once dwelt on the dying world of Yith. They escaped the destruction of their home planet by transferring their minds to the bodies of a species native to the Earth in the far distant past. They lived on this planet for 200 million years or so, in fierce competition with the flying polyps, whom they initially subdued. However, this enemy over time increased in number and near the close of the Cretaceous era (about 65 million years ago), rose up and finally destroyed the civilisation of the Race of Yith, forcing the Yithians to flee en masse to other bodies located far in the future.

Description:

In the bodies that the Great Race of Yith inhabited on the Earth, they were tall and cone-shaped, rising to a point with four strange appendages, all of which can extend and recede at will to any distance up to about ten feet. Two terminate in claws, the clicking of which acted as a method of communication, a third in four red "trumpets," and the fourth, a yellowish globe featuring three eyes around the central circumference, flower-like ears on top and tentacles on the underside. They have no sexes and reproduce by spores instead, though rarely because of their species longevity. Movement is achieved via expansion and contraction of a grey, rubbery layer at the base of the conical body.

The unique ability of this scientifically advanced race was to travel through time by swapping minds with creatures of another era. This allowed them to satisfy their interest in human culture, science, and occult beliefs. Occupied beings' minds transferred to Yithian bodies against their will; these "captive minds" were queried by skilled inquisitors while the Yithians using their bodies learned as much as possible about the societies in which they dwelt.

Although captive minds were prisoners, they were nonetheless granted some freedoms in exchange for their cooperation. Those captive minds who cooperated with the Great Race were allowed to wander the Yithian cities at will and to browse the Yithians' gigantic library, which contained metallic cases with books, made of an incredibly long-lasting material, that recorded the histories of uncounted alien races, including humanity. Creatures inside a Yithian body could also communicate with other captive minds from across our universe (and beyond) from the past and future. Once the Great Race had learned all they could from a captive mind, the occupied being's intellect was swapped back, with the additional precaution of erasing or suppressing all knowledge of the Great Race. Even so, it is possible for scraps of knowledge or experiences gained from their time with the Great Race to remain in dreams.

Every member of the Great race possess the Temporal Control power of Precognition and the Telepathic power of Dominate Mind these two powers are linked meaning they can only see the future by dominating a mind from it. They also developed advanced PSI boosting machines that allowed them to transfer their minds entirely through time.

Another sub race also has abilities like Ancient 1 - Yekubians a race of grey worm/centipede-like, creatures which have similar abilities to the Great Race of Yith, but without the power of time travel by mind transfer. They use an odd hieroglyph-engraved cubic probe to send out into the cosmos and, once landed on a planet, it is activated by biological interaction and light. This then engages the life form in a similar process to the Yithian's mind transfer. One of these cubes is what apparently landed on the earth during the reign of the Great Race and transferred some of their minds. It was therefore stored away so it couldn't affect them again, but not destroyed as the technology was new to them. This was later "translated" by a man and resulted in the Eltdown Shards.

Coleopterous race

Because the Great Race travelled to the future as well as the past, they foresaw their own destruction by the flying polyps. Before the fateful day, the Great Race transferred their best minds forward through time into the bodies of the "beetle folk" (the Coleopterous race, Ancient 3), Earth's dominant species after humankind (as Ancient 3 biomorphics are due to infest humanity and wipe them out). One of the factors involved may have been the fact that the flying polyps are completely gone by this point in time.

Any creature which is possessed by the Great Race of Yith has the host's mind transferred to the original Yithian's body. Because of this, when the Great Race of Yith felt obliged to transfer their minds to the 'beetle folk' due to their defeat against the flying polyps, the people who originally possessed the bodies of the Coleopterous race would presumably have been destroyed by the victorious polyps.

Pnakotus

The Lost City of Pnakotus (also called the Library City, The Lost City of the Archives and Pnakotis) is located under the Vast clouds of Venus in the Ishtarian Great Sandy Desert. This primordial city is where the Great Race housed their enormous library. It is protected by a Temporal shield and millions of tons of Venusian Sand and soil. The library of Pnakotus held the Pnakotic Manuscripts, a legendary tome containing a detailed chronicle of the Great Race's history, among other things. Copies of this manuscript would later be passed down through the ages, eventually falling into the hands of sinister cults which would guard them into modern times. The wardens have not as yet located any Ancient 1 repositories. Their entire existence is presumed due to evidence left behind from their visits, including Dark cultists who worship them.

Ancient 2 – Elder Things and Polyps

Description of a partial headless body:

Six feet end to end, three and five-tenths feet central diameter, tapering to one foot at each end. Like a barrel with five bulging ridges in place of staves. Lateral breakages, as of thinnish stalks, are at equator in middle of these ridges. In furrows between ridges are curious growths – combs or wings that fold up and spread out like fans. . . which gives almost seven-foot wing spread. Arrangement reminds one of certain monsters of primal myth, especially fabled Elder Things in the

The Elder Things were the first extraterrestrial species to come to the Earth, colonizing the planet about one billion years ago. They stood roughly eight feet tall and had the appearance of a huge, oval-shaped barrel with starfish-like appendages at both ends. The top appendage was a head adorned with five eyes, five eating tubes, and a set of cilia for "seeing" without light. The bottom appendage was five-limbed and was used for walking and other forms of locomotion. The beings also had five leathery, fan-like retractable wings and five sets of branching tentacles that sprouted from their torsos. Both their tentacles and the slits housing their folded wings were spaced at regular intervals about their bodies.

The Elder Things were vegetable-like or echinoderm-like in shape, having radial symmetry instead of the bilateral symmetry of bipeds. They also differed in that they had a five-lobed brain. The Elder Things exhibited vegetable as well as animal characteristics, and in terms of reproduction, multiplied using spores, although they discouraged increasing their numbers except when colonizing new regions. Though they could make use of both organic and inorganic substances, the Elder Things were carnivorous by preference. They were also amphibious.

The bodies of the Elder Things were incredibly tough, capable of withstanding the pressures of the deepest ocean. Few died except by accident or violence. The beings were also capable of hibernating for vast epochs of time. Nonetheless, unlike many other beings of the Mythos, the Elder Things were made of normal, terrestrial matter.

Technology

The technology that the Elder Things is extremely advanced. They are masters of Bio-organic technology and their Space craft have the ability to teach lesser being they Psionic Talent of Ship integration, they created many servitor races during their tenure; the Shoggoths (a menial constuctor and manual task race), the Flying Polyps (predatory Space scouts), protoplasmic Terra-forming creatures (the source of original unicellular life on our planet)

Society

Because they reproduced through spores, there was little biological basis for families to form, and were thus grouped together with others with whom they would get along. Elderian "families" lived in large dwellings, where furniture and other decoration was placed in the center of the rooms, to leave the walls open for murals.

In furnishing their homes they kept everything in the center of the huge rooms, leaving all the wall spaces free for decorative treatment. Lighting, in the case of the land inhabitants, was accomplished by a device probably electro-chemical in nature. Both on land and under water they used curious tables, chairs and couches like cylindrical frames - for they rested and slept upright with folded-down tentacles - and racks for hinged sets of dotted surfaces forming their books. Government was evidently complex and probably socialistic, though no certainties in this regard could be deduced from the sculptures we saw. There was extensive commerce, both local and between different cities - certain small, flat counters, five-pointed and inscribed, serving as money. Probably the smaller of the various greenish soapstones found by our expedition were pieces of such currency. Though the culture was mainly urban, some agriculture and much stock raising existed. Mining and a limited amount of manufacturing were also practiced. Travel was very frequent, but permanent migration seemed relatively rare except for the vast colonizing movements by which the race expanded. For personal locomotion no external aid was used, since in land, air, and water movement alike the Old Ones seemed to possess excessively vast capacities for speed. Loads, however, were drawn by beasts of burden - Shoggoths under the sea, and a curious variety of primitive vertebrates in the later years of land existence.

Although they do not build their own dimensional Gates they are smart enough to know of and make use of those that they find. Their current colony world is a planet in a triple star system (with a yellow, red, and blue star) located "between Hydra and Argo Navis". Acessable by a dimensional portal located in their Deep Base on Europa

History

On Earth, the Elder Things built huge cities, both underwater and on dry land. They may be responsible for the appearance of the first life-forms on Earth, including the entity known as Ubbo-Sathla (a terraforming engine). They created the shoggoths to be their all-purpose slave race. Eventually, however, the shoggoths rebelled—an event that hastened the decline and ultimate collapse of their civilization. Although the Elder Things managed to initially subdue the Shoggoths after their attempted rebellion, the Shoggoths continued to improve physiologically; increasing in intelligence and developing the capacity to live on land.

The Elder Things are known to have warred against the star-spawn , the Great Race of Yith, and the Mi-go. Despite these conflicts, it was the gradual cooling of the planet during the last ice age that spelled their doom. Retreating to their undersea cities deep in the ocean, they would thereafter have no further dealings with the outer world. Their last surface city, located on a high plateau in the Antarctic, remains frozen in ice. The ruins of this city were discovered in 1981 by two members of an Antarctic expedition from Liverpool University.

The last known, and most significant undersea city, located directly beneath the Elder Thing's ultimate surface city in the Antarctic, was apparently overrun by the Shoggoths. Their only remaining outpost is a Deep Base on Eurpoa where they automated Shoggoth controlled machines watch the actions of the human race reporting to their distant masters. Recently the colonists of Europa have found the outskirts of the base (its some 120 miles in size and a dispersed structure) and are beginning to sell discovered artifacts on the black market. A Shoggoth Infiltrator was sent to recover Gravity drive data that had been sold to Penvy Inc, however alter the failure of the Players to reclaim the data Panvy went live with it “new designs” and triggered an investigation by the wardens, upon finding a “alien” intelligence on Encadelus a “Mail-man” Hit squad was sent to eliminate it. Both parts of the Shoggoth were destroyed but a tiny portion is still on encadelus and is beginning to absorb new pawns to use (think the Thing)

The definitive description of shoggoths is as massive amoeba-like creatures looking like they are made out of tar, with multiple eyes "floating" on the surface. They are described as "protoplasmic", lacking any default body shape and instead being able to form limbs and organs at will. An average shoggoth measured fifteen feet across when a sphere, though the story mentions ones of much greater size. They are cabable of dividing into multiple smaller masses which remain in constant mental contact.

although intelligent to some degree, dealing with problems using their great size and strength. For instance, some have been bred for specific roles such as infiltration or construction.

Origin and history

The shoggoths were created by the Elder Things. Being amorphous, they could take on any shape needed, making them very versatile within their aquatic environment. Though able to "understand" the Elder Things' language, they had no real consciousness and were controlled through hypnotic suggestion.

The shoggoths built the underwater cities of their masters. Over millions of years of existence, some shoggoths mutated and gained independent minds. Some time after this, they rebelled. Eventually, the Elder Things succeeded in quelling the insurrection, but thereafter watched them more carefully. By this point, exterminating them was not an option as the Elder Things were fully dependent on them for labor and could not replace them. It was during this time that, despite their masters' wishes, they demonstrated an ability to survive on land.

Ubbo-Sathla, a god-like entity supposedly responsible for the origin of all life on Earth, is in fact a Terrforming engine with unicelluar life released as discarded experiments in bioengineering.

The engine is still working in the undermantle of earth creating new bacteria and microorganisims triggering algal blooms and pushing humanity into greater acts of polution to terraform the plant back to the temperatures and CO2 levels preferd by the Elder race (Ancient 2)

Flying Polyps

The flying polyps came to Earth from space as conquerors about seven hundred fifty million years ago. Sent as investigators and Probes by the Elder Race (Ancient 2) They also inhabited three other planets in the solar system, including Yaksh (Neptune) and Tond (Eris). On Earth, they built basalt cities with high windowless towers. The polyps were commanded and controlled by the Elder Things.

Their senses did not include sight, but what senses they had could penetrate all material obstructions (Densiometry and Penetrating Gamma burst vision). They were only partially matter, but still solid enough to affect and be stopped by normal materials; this additionally gave them resistance, if not outright invulnerability, to normal means of damage, though they could be destroyed by certain forms of electrical energy. Their minds were so strange that the Great Race of Yith (Ancient 1) could not perform psychic transfers with them.

They are able to levitate and fly despite lacking any visible means of doing so (via internal biogravetic manipulation) and leave telltale massive footprints when on the ground (caused when activating their internal grav organs). Their amorphous bodies can turn invisible at will (by actively bending light via gravitational lensing), though this ability appears somewhat negated by whistling noises associated with them in general.

In battle, their ability to control and direct powerful gravetic forces is put to use as a weapon.

When the Great Race of Yith came to Earth, they warred with the polyps and soon drove them underground with their advanced technology. The Great Race then sealed the entryways to the polyps' subterranean abode with trapdoors, which afterwards were diligently guarded. The polyps' cities were left abandoned, perhaps as a reminder of the horrors that dwelt below.

Eventually, the polyps rose up and exterminated the Great Race, afterwards returning to their subterranean haunts. Having no conception of light, the polyps seem content to remain there, annihilating the few intruders that chance upon them. The entrances to their dwellings are mostly deep within ancient ruins where there are great wells sealed over with stone. Inside these wells still dwell the polyps. These wells also exist on Neptune and Eris, opening them could be a pandoras box that humanity is not ready for. Polyps acts as Starship scale objects and are not harmed by anything short of Plasma guns and Fusion weapons.

Ancient 3 Coleopterous race