Clark Ashton Smith deities
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The Clark Ashton Smith deities are supernatural entities created for the Cthulhu Mythos universe of shared fiction by California-based horror writer and poet Clark Ashton Smith.
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[edit] Atlach-Nacha
Atlach-Nacha is the creation of Clark Ashton Smith and first appeared in his short story "The Seven Geases" (1934). In the story, Atlach-Nacha is the reluctant recipient of a human sacrifice given to it by the toad-god Tsathoggua.
Atlach-Nacha resembles a huge spider with an almost-human face. It dwells in a huge cavern deep beneath Mount Voormithadreth, a mountain in the now vanished kingdom of Hyperborea in the Arctic. There it spins a gigantic web, bridging a massive chasm between the Dreamlands and the waking world. Some believe that when the web is complete, the end of the world will come, because it will create a permanent junction with the Dreamlands allowing monsters to move freely into the waking world.
Atlach-Nacha probably came to Earth from the planet Cykranosh (or Saturn as we know it today) with Tsathoggua. Because of its appearance, Atlach-Nacha is often referred to as the Spider-God(dess) and is believed to be the regent of all spiders. Furthermore, the giant, bloated purple spiders of Leng are thought to be its children and servitors.
There is some disagreement about its gender. In Smith's original story, Atlach-Nacha is referred to as a male, but in later stories by other authors, it is implied to be a female.
[edit] Abhoth
[H]e described a sort of pool with a margin of mud that was marled with obscene offal; and in the pool a grayish, horrid mass that nearly choked it from rim to rim... Here, it seemed, was the ultimate source of all miscreation and abomination. For the gray mass quobbed and quivered, and swelled perpetually; and from it, in manifold fission, were spawned the anatomies that crept away on every side through the grotto. There were things like bodiless legs or arms that flailed in the slime, or heads that rolled, or floundering bellies with fishes' fins; and all manner of things malformed and monstrous, that grew in size as they departed from the neighborhood of Abhoth. And those that swam not swiftly ashore when they fell into the pool from Abhoth, were devoured by mouths that gaped in the parent bulk.
—Clark Ashton Smith, "The Seven Geases"
Abhoth (The Source of Uncleanliness) resides in the cavern of Y'quaa beneath Mount Voormithadreth. It is a horrid, dark gray protean mass and is said to be the ultimate source of all miscreation and abomination.
Obscene monsters constantly form in Abhoth's gray mass and crawl away from their parent; however, Abhoth's tentacles and limbs grab many of them, pulling them back and devouring them. Abhoth has a twisted and cynical mind, and can communicate telepathically with others near him.[1]
Abhoth is also mentioned in Colin Wilson's The Mind Parasites.
[edit] Basatan
Basatan is first mentioned in the short story "Master of the Crabs" (1948) by Clark Ashton Smith. It is a sea-god, also known as the Master of the Crabs.
Basatan is (most likely) a Great Old One. Very little is known about the deity, except that "he" possesses a ring with supernatural powers. Basatan may be associated somehow with the constellation Cancer.
[edit] Dweller in the Gulf
The Dweller in the Gulf appears in a short story of the same name by Clark Ashton Smith, first published in 1932. The Dweller in the Gulf lives deep beneath the surface of the planet Mars, but may have originated elsewhere. It is worshipped exclusively by a blind, troglodyte sect of the Martian race the Aihai and can be ritually summoned by the stroking of its idol.
The Dweller resembles a massive, eyeless, soft-shelled tortoise but has a triangular head and two whiplike tails. At the ends of its tails are two bell-shaped suckers used for the ceremonial—usually forced— removal of its discoverers' eyes, turning them into the deity's blind, mute servitors.
[edit] Geol
Geol is an earth god worshipped in Zothique. He is mentioned in "The Voyage of King Euvoran (1931)."
[edit] Quachil Uttaus
Quachil Uttaus has the appearance of a squat, mummified corpse. The being first appeared in Clark Ashton Smith's short story "The Treader of the Dust" (1935). In a passage from the story, Smith describes him this way:
It was a figure no larger than a young child, but sere and shriveled as some millennial mummy. Its hairless head, its unfeatured face, borne on a neck of skeleton thinness, were lined with a thousand reticulated wrinkles. The body was like that of some monstrous, withered abortion that had never drawn breath. The pipy arms, ending in bony claws, were outthrust as if ankylosed in a posture of an eternal dreadful groping.
Quachil Uttaus can reduce all living tissue that he comes into contact with to dust (and is therefore similar to another of Smith's characters, Ubbo-Sathla). Quachil Uttaus is usually associated with age, death, and decay.
[edit] Rlim Shaikorth
Rlim Shaikorth was created by Clark Ashton Smith and is featured in his short story "The Coming of the White Worm" (1941). Rlim Shaikorth appears as a huge, whitish worm with a gaping maw and eyes made of dripping globules of blood. One of Rlim Shaikorth's avatars is known as the White Worm and is part of Smith's Hyperborean cycle.
The White Worm travels on a gigantic iceberg called Yikilth, which it can guide across the ocean. In its colossal ice-citadel, the White Worm prowls the seas, blasting ships and inhabited land masses with extreme cold. Victims of the White Worm are frozen solid, their bodies appearing eerily white, and remain preternaturally cold—they will not melt nor warm even when exposed to fire.
[edit] Tsathoggua
See Tsathoggua.
[edit] Ubbo-Sathla
There, in the grey beginning of Earth, the formless mass that was Ubbo-Sathla reposed amid the slime and the vapors. Headless, without organs or members, it sloughed from its oozy sides, in a slow, ceaseless wave, the amoebic forms that were the archetypes of earthly life. Horrible it was, if there had been aught to apprehend the horror; and loathsome, if there had been any to feel loathing. About it, prone or tilted in the mire, there lay the mighty tablets of star-quarried stone that were writ with the inconceivable wisdom of the pre-mundane gods.
—Clark Ashton Smith, "Ubbo-Sathla"
Ubbo-Sathla (The Unbegotten Source, The Demiurge) is described as a huge protoplasmic mass resting in a grotto deep beneath the frozen earth. The being is of a monstrous fecundity, spontaneously generating primordial single-celled organisms that pour unceasingly from its shapeless form. It guards a set of stone tablets believed to contain the knowledge of the Elder Gods.[2]
Ubbo-Sathla is said to have spawned the prototypes of all forms of life on Earth; though whatever its pseudopods touch is forever devoid of life. Ubbo-Sathla is destined to someday reabsorb all living things on Earth.
Ubbo-Sathla possibly dwells in gray-litten Y'qaa. The being may also dwell in Mount Voormithadreth and may have spawned another of its residents, the being Abhoth, whose form and nature is very similar. The tablets that Ubbo-Sathla guards have been oft sought by sorcerers, though no sorcerer has yet succeeded in acquiring them.[3]
[edit] Vulthoom
Vulthoom is featured in the Clark Ashton Smith story of the same name, first published in the September 1935 issue of Weird Tales. The being is also known as Gsarthotegga and The Sleeper of Ravermos.
- "Vulthoom" (short story)
In the story, Vulthoom is the Martian Aihai's equivalent of Satan. Though most rational people believe him to be a myth, he is nonetheless greatly feared by the lower class. In truth he is a mysterious being from another universe, exiled by his fellows there and lying in wait on Mars in the underground city of Ravermos. He plans to take over Mars and then conquer Earth as his next trophy. Because of his vast intellect and advanced technology, he seems godlike, but is actually a very powerful being who must rest for millennia at a time. While under the influence of the hallucinogenic perfume of an alien blossom, one man envisioned Vulthoom as a gigantic, otherworldly plant, but the being's true form is unknown.
The DC Comics character Power Ring is associated with an entity named Volthoom.
[edit] Xexanoth
Xexanoth appears only once, in Clark Ashton Smith's "The Chain of Aforgomon" (1935), where it is summoned by the main character. Xexanoth is apparently the bane and mortal enemy of the time god Aforgomon, possibly an avatar of the Outer God Yog-Sothoth.
