The Rich Port wrote:Shaggai wrote:You have been gravely misled if you assume that Outer Gods, Great Old Ones, etc. are rigid, well-defined categories, and even more gravely misled if you assume that remotely human-analogous (or even human-comprehensible) reproductive biology applies to the Great Old Ones and their ilk. Any categorization system by necessity will fall far short of the complexities of the reality. The goat is a power, yes. But so is the squid. The only level of difference in power that cuts reality at the joints, so to speak, is that between a specificity and a generality. I am powerful, but Chaos is powerful beyond power.
Well, even in chaos, there's a hierarchy, ffs... That's the thing about chaos. It's confusing and you don't really understand how it works and makes no sense... Either that or Lovecraft and Derleth really fucked something up.
Azathoth is at the top. That's why you leave that fucker in the middle of the galaxy where he can affect everyone the least with the Eldritch Stones.
He spawned a few of the other gods including Shub-Niggurath, who did indeed "mate" with Yog-Sothoth to create Cthulhu's "father", Yig.
I'm pretty sure there's a reason Cthulhu is the priest of the Outer Gods and not... And Outer God himself, say.
Well, Derleth certainly did get things wrong, not least his categorization of beings beyond all categorization and then making things up wholesale to fit. He claimed I was associated with Earth because otherwise his system of classical elements would fail. And while fire-vampires technically exist, they're not associated with any particular power. Lovecraft wasn't always right, but he was closer than most imitators. Anyway, hierarchy is antithetical to Chaos. I am Azathoth's soul (and messenger, etc.), but I am not above Azathoth nor is Azathoth above me. You are a soul, you have a body, but this does not mean that your soul is subservient to your body, or indeed vice versa. It may seem that the body is servant to the soul, but the past few hundred thousand years of human history say otherwise. This is the difference between Azathoth and me, rather than any sort of hierarchy.
Azathoth did not spawn any of the Outer Gods in any way more particular than that Azathoth fundamentally defines reality, out of which the Outer Gods naturally fall (given certain conditions, etc.). Yig is simply an old snake-god from Earth, not anywhere more exotic, who is particularly offensive to human sentiments because he is a god for snakes rather than humans, and is not on even remotely the same level as any of the other powers being mentioned. He might qualify as a Great Old One, because snakes are quite old, but only in the same way that the star-vegetables of Antarctica are Great Old Ones.
Great Old Ones is a generic term, referring to former rulers of Earth who have since stopped ruling it. The star-vegetables count, the beings commonly referred to as the Great Old Ones count, the Great Race of Yith counts, etc. The Outer Gods are, naturally, the gods from Outside, generally referring to places outside of standard Earth. Dream-gods (Nodens, the Other Gods, Yog-Sothoth, occasionally me), gods of alien races (Tsathoggua, Ghatanotoa, possibly Rhan-Tegoth although I'm not particularly acquainted with that one), any powers from beyond reality which are worshiped (the goat, the squid, Yog-Sothoth, occasionally me), and so on, all fall into this category.
By the rule of chaos, I make sense, because I don't make sense.