The Ancient one | Grimm Cthulhu

Cthulhu is a fictional cosmic entity created by H. P. Lovecraft for his short story "The Call of Cthulhu". First appearing in the February 1928 issue of the pulp magazine Weird Tales, he is depicted as an octopoid Great Old One of enormous power who lies in a death-like slumber in his sunken city of R'lyeh beneath the Pacific Ocean. He is the namesake and the best-known element of the Cthulhu Mythos, appearing in the works of numerous authors following Lovecraft and frequently referenced in popular culture.

The most detailed descriptions of Cthulhu are based on statues of the creature. One, constructed by the young artist Henry Anthony Wilcox after a series of baleful dreams, is said to have "yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature [...] A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings." (HPL: "The Call of Cthulhu") Another, recovered by police from a raid on a murderous cult, "represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind." (HPL: "The Call of Cthulhu")

Cultists believe that the activities of Cthulhu and his Star-Spawn (referred to as the "Great Old Ones") are closely linked to the configuration of the stars, that when the stars are "right" they can move through space to colonise new worlds, but when the stars are "wrong" they cannot live, although they cannot die either, instead entering a sort of suspended animation or stasis, "preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu". (HPL: "The Call of Cthulhu")

In Lovecraft's works, the only description of Cthulhu himself, as opposed to his stone idols, comes from the narrative of Gustaf Johansen, the lone survivor of a group of sailors who stumbled upon a portion of sunken R'lyeh after it briefly emerged from the sea due to cataclysmic tremors in 1925. Johansen's testimony emphasizes the gargantuan size of the creature, which is compared to a walking mountain. The seaman describes Cthulhu as a "gelatinous green immensity", with "flabby claws" and a "squid-head with writhing feelers". Johansen's phrase "a mountain walked or stumbled" gives a sense of the monster's scale. This is corroborated by Wilcox's dreams, which "touched wildly on a gigantic thing 'miles high' which walked or lumbered about". (HPL: "The Call of Cthulhu")

Johansen recounts that two of his companions died of sheer fright as they saw it, while three more "were swept up by the flabby claws" of the monster. As the others tried to escape, a man named Parker "was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there", part of the mysterious alien geometry of R'lyeh. William Briden, who managed to reach the ship, lost his sanity as he saw the massive creature swimming after them in pursuit and "kept on laughing at intervals till death found him one night in the cabin". (HPL: "The Call of Cthulhu")

In the stories of August Derleth, Cthulhu's physical appearance is portrayed somewhat differently. Derleth's Cthulhu is far more protoplasmic than most other depictions, a shapeshifting mass with myriads of tentacles sprouting from its body, and a single eye on its face. (AWD: "Something in Wood", "The Black Island")

In the stories of Brian Lumley, it is suggested that the creature encountered by Johansen was not actually Cthulhu, but merely one of his Star-Spawn, thus implying that the actual Cthulhu would be even more formidable and difficult to escape from. (EXP: Titus Crow)

Regeneration After Johansen rammed the Alert into Cthulhu, the creature's body was ruptured like an "exploding bladder" and turned into a "blinding green cloud", which soon started to re-form itself. (HPL: "The Call of Cthulhu")

In other stories, Cthulhu has managed to survive the detonation of an atomic bomb (AWD: "The Black Island"), although in Robert Bloch's novel Strange Eons, his physical body is indeed destroyed by the bomb, and he only survives by being reborn in another body.

Since Lovecraft establishes that Cthulhu can never "really die", it is possible that the destruction of his body would not result in permanent death in any case, but something akin to banishment to another dimension or location, as has been demonstrated by other entities of the Mythos, such as Chaugnar Faugn (CIRCLE: The Horror from the Hills) and Byatis (EXP: "The Room in the Castle").

Shapeshifting In At the Mountains of Madness, the artwork of the Antarctic Elder Things shows that the Star-Spawn of Cthulhu (and thus presumably Cthulhu himself) are made of a type of matter unlike anything on Earth, which allows them "to undergo transformations and reintegrations" that are impossible to life forms made of traditional matter, such as the Elder Things themselves.

Folklorist Albert Wilmarth believes that Cthulhu can exist as a gas and seep through solid rock. (CIRCLE: "The Terror from the Depths")

In Derleth's fiction, Cthulhu is portrayed as a malleable shapeshifter. (AWD: "The House on Curwen Street", "Something in Wood", "The Black Island")

Psychic Abilities Castro, a Cthulhu cultist, reports that the Great Old Ones are telepathic and "knew all that was occurring in the universe." They were able to communicate with the first humans by "moulding their dreams," thus establishing the Cthulhu Cult, but after R'lyeh had sunk beneath the waves, "the deep waters, full of the one primal mystery through which not even thought can pass, had cut off the spectral intercourse." (HPL: "The Call of Cthulhu")

It is important to note that the creatures that Castro refers to as the "Great Old Ones" correspond only to the Star-Spawn of Cthulhu, not to any of the other entities referred to as Great Old Ones elsewhere in the Mythos. This is evidenced by Castro's claim that "They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R'lyeh". Elsewhere in the story, Cthulhu is also identified as the "priest" of the Great Old Ones. (HPL: "The Call of Cthulhu")

When a portion of R'lyeh, believed to be Cthulhu's citadel, rose briefly above the surface in 1925, Cthulhu's influence was felt globally by psychically sensitive individuals, with artists and asylum patients being particularly susceptible. All over the world there were "cases of panic, mania, and eccentricity", up to and including suicides. (HPL: "The Call of Cthulhu")

As with other Great Old Ones, statuettes of Cthulhu can serve as a "point of contact" that allow him to manifest himself physically and mentally through the idol. This is not limited to those idols made of extraterrestrial minerals brought to Earth by Cthulhu and his Star-Spawn, but has also been observed with wooden sculptures carved on Earth as well. (AWD: "Something in Wood")

Elemental Nature In Derleth's stories, the Great Old Ones are portrayed as elementals, divided in four categories that correspond to the Aristotelian system of earth, air, water, and fire. Cthulhu in particular is associated with water (AWD: "The House on Curwen Street", "The Seal of R'lyeh"), and is the "leader of the elemental water powers" (AWD: "The Sandwin Compact"). This makes him inimical towards the forces of air, such as Hastur the Unspeakable, whom Derleth portrays as Cthulhu's half-brother (AWD: "The Return of Hastur").

However, Derleth also wrote that in at least one of the Great Old Ones' conflicts, Cthulhu sided with Ithaqua against Hastur and Cthugha (AWD: "The Black Island"). Given that Ithaqua is also an air elemental (AWD: "The Thing That Walked on the Wind"), this suggests that the alliances and rivalries of the Great Old Ones might not be always based on their elemental alignment.

Although Lovecraft established that Cthulhu is capable of swimming (HPL: "The Call of Cthulhu"), he also stresses out that his Star-Spawn were strictly land-based, and built their cities on dry land long before their sinking (HPL: At the Mountains of Madness). The physical appearance of Cthulhu, at least as portrayed in his stone idols, is notable for combining the traits of sea-dwelling life forms (such as tentacles) with others more commonly associated with creatures of the land (such as claws) and the air (such as wings).

Albert Wilmarth's assessment is that Cthulhu "can go anywhere he wants through space, or air, or sea, or earth itself". (CIRCLE: "The Terror from the Depths")

Derleth himself has frequently described Cthulhu as "amphibious". (AWD: "The Dweller in Darkness", "The Watcher from the Sky", "The House in the Valley")

The water elemental B'Moth is an avatar of Cthulhu (EXP: Ye Booke of Monstres II) that can manifest itself in water, fog or rain, but cannot manifest in the proximity of fire or heat. In common with Cthulhu, B'Moth is also identified as a giant prehistoric entity that lurks at the bottom of the ocean, and can communicate telepathically with its cultists throughout the globe. It feeds on the souls of men and wants mankind to return to the anarchy that existed before civilisation, the "law of the jungle" (ADJ: "The Scourge of B'Moth"), which is similar to how the cultists in "The Call of Cthulhu" claim that in the future mankind would be liberated from social laws and free to relish in violence and chaos.

Death-like State Although the details vary widely, most sources generally agree that Cthulhu and his Star-Spawn are currently in a death-like state of dormancy, possibly akin to suspended animation, aestivation, or hibernation, from which they cannot emerge without outside assistance from their cultists. The ritual to release them might involve the opening of dimensional gateways, as suggested in The Trail of Cthulhu series. In many cases, it is assumed that they can only return to life when "the stars are right".

This liminal state between life and death is illustrated in Lovecraft's statement that "dead Cthulhu waits dreaming", and rendered poetically in the (in)famous couplet of Abdul Alhazred

In H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu, Cthulhu is described as a colossal, mountain-sized monster with a vaguely humanoid body, an octopus-like head covered in writhing tentacles, clawed hands and feet, and narrow, rudimentary wings on its back. Its rubbery, scaly body inspires madness in those who see it.

Key Features

Head: An octopus-like mass featuring numerous feeler tentacles surrounding a pulpous mouth area.

Body: A grotesque, scaly, and rubbery humanoid or ape-like shape of immense, towering proportions.

Limbs: Massive, powerful arms and legs tipped with huge claws.

Wings: A pair of narrow, rudimentary, bat-like wings on its back that appear too small for true flight.

Nature: As a cosmic entity, its geometry and form defy normal human physics, making its total appearance difficult to fully comprehend without psychological distress.

Cthulhu does not have a human personality. As a cosmic entity created by H.P. Lovecraft, his mind and motives are entirely alien, operating on a multi-dimensional scale that human psychology cannot comprehend. He is not "evil" or malicious in a traditional human sense; rather, human concepts of morality do not apply to him.

Key Aspects of Cthulhu's Nature

Alien Indifference: He views humanity the way a human might view microscopic bacteria—without hatred, but entirely without care.

Telepathic Influence: While sleeping in the sunken city of R'lyeh, his distant dreams leak into human consciousness, inspiring vague fear, artistic madness, and fanatic cults.

Cosmic-Scale Intent: When his cultists chant that "that is not dead which can eternal lie," they await an awakening driven by cosmic cycles rather than petty malice or revenge.

Incomprehensible Intelligence: Trying to define his emotions or personality is impossible, as his basic presence shatters normal human sanity.

Cthulhu, the iconic cosmic entity from H.P. Lovecraft’s The H.P. Lovecraft Wiki - Fandom universe, is a Great Old One whose powers rely less on physical combat and more on mind-shattering cosmic influence.

Mental and Psychic Powers

Dream Influence: Broadcasts thoughts and commands into human subconscious minds from R'lyeh, creating a worldwide cult.Madness Inducement: Causes instant psychological breakdown and hysteria in mortals who perceive his non-Euclidean geometry and physical form.

Telepathy: Communicates across vast interstellar distances and directly into the minds of sensitive humans.

Physical and Cosmic AbilitiesImmortality: Cannot be permanently killed; his cosmic body exists beyond standard biological limits.

Instant Regeneration: Re-forms his physical tissue almost immediately if damaged or blown apart.

Vast Size and Strength: Manifests as a mountainous, towering entity with godlike physical force capable of moving through oceans and continents.

Shape and Density Control: Alters his physical consistency, allowing him to transition between solid matter and a semi-fluid state.

Ai Note - The appearance of this version and variation of Cthulhu is that of a Grimm. The only thing that isn't black with bone plating armor is her green tentacles. Cthulhu's skin is all black like the Grimm, and like the Grimm he has white bone plating armor, red glowing eyes. His wings are like the Wyvern Dragon, red webbing of the fleshy texture of his wings.