The Xothic Legend Cycle

The Thing in the Pit by Lin Carter

THE mythological narrative which follows is taken from the disturbing and debatable translation made by Professor Copeland three years after his return from central Asia. His brochure, The Zanthu Tablets: A Conjectural Translation (1916), was published at his own expense after being rejected by the academic firms which had printed his earlier, more scholarly works. Widely condemned as unsubstantiated "ravings" by his scientific colleagues, the brochure was swiftly suppressed by the authorities. The present editors make no claims for the validity of Copeland's "translation." It must be remembered that the professor returned from Asia, his health, both mental and physical, broken by the terrible privations he endured in 1913, and that he died raving in an asylum only ten years after seeing his "translation" through press. His final manuscript, The Civilization of Mu: A Reconstruction in Light of Recent Discoveries, with a Synoptic Comparison of the R'lyeh Text and the Ponape Scripture (circa 1917 -1926), remains to this day unpublished—and unpublishable.

We have prefaced this extract from the Zanthu Tablets with a note from Copeland’s own introduction.

“Upon prolonged study I became firmly convinced that my initial impressions were thoroughly accurate, and that the Tablets were indeed inscribed in an elder hieratic variant of the primal Naacal language. It is regretful that, with the death of poor, much-maligned Churchward, the last man who could have possibly attempted a decent translation of so obscure a variant was lost to the scientific community. Hoping that a chance existed that the Colonel had left a key or some manner of Naacal glossary among his papers, I hastened to contact his estate and, with time and great cooperation which I am pleased to acknowledge here, a clue to the inscriptions was indeed unearthed in his files.

“What follows, however, is correctly termed a ‘conjectural’ translation, and to this qualification I should perhaps add 'fragmentary' as well: for although the inscriptions are complete, my respect for the public sanity is such that I would not care to subject wholesome, healthy minds to the full depravity, the hideous blasphemies, set down by the hand of the long-dead, accursed wizard-priest of the Abomination Ythogtha, whose tomb I opened, perhaps unwisely, in 1913.

“I.et it be said now and in this place, once and for all, that the matter which I have named 'the Xothic legend-cycle'—which is to say, the mythsequence of the Xothic Triad (Ghatanothoa, Ythogtha, and Zoth-Ommog)— has at its secret core a chaotic and cosmic blasphemy so appalling in its ultimate depravity and in the magnitude of its bearings upon human and prehuman evolution as to stun even the detached and dispassionate scholar."

THE innumerable iniquities of Yaa-Thobboth, hierophant of Ghatanothoa, the Monster on the Mount, I, Zanthu, wizard and last surviving priest of Ythogtha, the Abomination in the Abyss, have endured for long with uncomplaining and stoical fortitude. But this last, supreme, and ultimate affront I could not let pass in silence, nor could I forebear from the action I will describe.

For uncountable millennia, the fortunes of my cult had languished and waned, even as, during the same intervals of time, the rise to affluence and popularity of the rival cults which celebrate the vile Monstrosity that dwelleth ever atop the mysterious and untrodden heights of Yaddith-Gho had enjoyed an unbroken succession of triumphs. It was now many millennia since that legended Year of the Red Moon¹, when the rash and impudent T’yog, high priest of the Old Ones, and votary of Shub-Niggurarh the Mighty Mother, sought with ultimate futility to whelm and break asunder for all time to come the power of Ghatanothoa, in which vain and perilous attempt the unfortunate T’yog came to so unthinkable and shuddersome an end that even that dread chronicle, the Ghorl Nigraal, did not dare whisper a single hint or slightest rumor of his fate.

It can easily be seen that the disastrous failure of the gallant, if incautious, T’yog was sufficient to overawe any other from making a similar attempt in all the ages since the Year of the Red Moon to my own epoch, for during the cycles which have lapsed from the era of T’yog to this day, none other has tried. And the rise to power and unquestioned authority of the cult of Ghatanothoa has been loathsomely smooth and rapid.

That this was, in very large part, the doing of Imash-Mo can easily be demonstrated. For upon the horrible demise of the unfortunate T'yog, gloatfully and hastily seizing upon the moment, the infamous Imash-Mo, who was high priest of Ghatanothoa in his day, proclaimed to all the Nine Kingdoms that his loathsome and noxious divinity was thus proven supreme over all the thousand gods of primordial and everlasting Mu. And, alas, Imash-Mo had long since gained ascendancy over the weak and easily swayed Thabou, king of the province of K’naa, wherein rose the demon-possessed mountain of Yaddith-Gho; and King Thabou hastened to ratify the supremacy of Ghatanothoa even over the might of Cthulhu, the Lord of R'lyeh, himself.

Lustrum by lustrum, cycle by cycle, the wealth, power, and following of the cult of Ythogtha declined thereafter, even as did all of the other of the thousand cults of primal Mu. In vain did my priestly predecessors warn that the vengeance of the affronted gods would someday smite the Nine Kingdoms of Mu, and mayhap trample all of the mighty continent beneath the green and seething waves of Ocean, as ancient prophecies reiterated was to be our eventual and transcendent Doom. But naught could avert or even retard the remorseless decline of the worship of Ythogtha.

WHEN I, in my turn, assumed the scarlet pontificals and the brazen rod of my office, in the Year of the Whispering Shadow², I swore by the Gray Ritual of Khif, by the Vooric Sign, by the Weedy Monolith, and by the might and glory of potent and terrible Ythogtha, that my god should achieve His triumph and His revenge during my pontificate.

Alas, I had reckoned without the cunning and the ambition of Yaa-Thobboth! For no sooner had the brazen rod been set into my grasp and the Thirty-one Secret Rituals of Yhe been given over to my keeping, than the villainous high priest of Ghatanothoa let pass the ultimate and unforgivable affront against the dignity of my office and the splendor of my god.

For this Yaa-Thobboth had at length prevailed upon the palsied and enfeebled Shommog, monarch over K’naa. and a writ was proclaimed which set under ban and interdict any other form of worship of the Great Old Ones than that approved by the followers of Ghatanothoa. The copper gates of the temple of Shub-Niggurath were seated; the greenly lit adyta of Cthulhu were deserted; and, temple by temple, across the breadth of the Nine Kingdoms, the supreme power of Ghatanothoa the Monster on the Mount was proclaimed.

Now King Shommog was regnant over the province of K’naa while I and my few acolytes dwelt in the land of G’thuu to the north, beyond the River of Worms and the Carven Basalt Cliffs and the Catacombs of Thul. But great had the authority of K’naa grown in the eleven thousand years since the reign of King Thabou and the hierophancy of Imash-Mo, and in these moon-dim, latter days, the power of my land of G’thuu was shrunken and seldom did mine own monarch, the degenerate Nuggog-ying, dare oppose the will or whim of the King of K’naa. Thus it seemed inevitable that the last vestige of reverence for the Abomination in the Abyss should gutter and die. and in the very pontificate of one who had sworn by dread and terrible oaths to restore Him to the heights of His former and tremendous might.

IN despair, I withdrew to the crumbling ruins of my palace which stood of old upon the very brink of that profound and shadowy chasm, the Abyss of Yhe, wherein the victorious Elder Gods had hurled the great Ythogtha and had sealed Him therein forever under the potency of the Elder Sign and wherein to this day unbreakable bonds of psychic force imprison Him, even as foul Ghatanothoa is pent and imprisoned in that immemorial and cyclopean citadel atop Mount Yaddith-Gho, and Great Cthulhu slumbers in his Sunken City on the ocean-whelmed and aeon-lost Black Island, and terrible Zoth-Ommng lies chained amid the Deep beyond the Isle of the Sacred Stone Cities.³

Even in the uttermost nadir of my despair, it were unwise for me to neglect the awful duties of my sacerdotal office and thus I turned from a dreary contemplation of this most dire of all the thousand iniquities of the infamous Yaa-Thobboch to that scrutiny and study of the Thirty-one Rituals demanded of my office. This precious document, of which the Earth affords no single other copy⁴, and which dates from the most extreme and legended antiquity, was indited by the very hand of Niggoum-Zhog, the First Prophet, himself, in the dim aeons before the Old Ones had yet dreamt of creating man. The Secret Rituals themselves were inscribed in fiery and metallic inks upon leaves of parchment fashioned from pthagon membrane, and bound between twin and carven and gem-studded plates of unthinkably rare and precious lagb metal brought hither from dark Yuggoth where it rolls upon the Rim in the most remote of terrestrial aeons by the shadowy Elder Ones. My seething brain a roiling chaos of incoherent images, I perused one by one the Thirty-one Secret Rituals of Yhe, and in the last, most potent and terrific of them all, I found the answer to my dilemma.

For that Thirty-first Ritual contained the dread and portentous formula which is called “The Key That Openeth the Door to Yhe”, and which the primal and elder Prophet warns is not to be spoken aloud save in the final extremity of ultimate Doom.

Therein, in my madness and desperation, I found the answer for which I sought—aii, n'ghaa xutboggon R’lyeh! Iä Ytbottha! A million generations yet unborn shall curse my name!

AND thus was I resolved to open the Door to Yhe, by which term is meant to render null the strictures of the Elder Sign and to release the Primal One, the Abomination in the Abyss, from the chains of psychic force which have imprisoned Him in the depths of the great Chasm for innumerable aeons.

To set free Ythogtha from His Abyss would be at a single stroke to render Him the most awesomely powerful of all the thousand gods of antique Mu, and to thus elevate myself, as His hierophant and prophet, as the supreme and most potent priest in all of the Nine Kingdoms.

The ambitions of Yaa-Thobboth would thus be ground into the dust before my feet; the too easily dominated King Shommog would in a breath be divested of all authority, to the elevation of mine own monarch, Nuggog-ying; the wealth and might of the province of K'naa would drain away like shallow mud before the sucking tides, and my own realm of G’thuu would achieve ultimate prominence over the kingdoms of Mu. What man dares condemn me, if, in the last extremity of my need, I dared set my hand against the tremendous decree of the Elder Gods themselves!

Thus I went down the Hidden Stair to the ultimate and most secret crypt, burrowed deep into the bowels of the planet beneath the age-crumbling foundations of my palace, and there I caused my mute Rmoahal slaves to open the ponderous trapdoor, one single massy slab of hewn and polished onyx, revealing a black depth from which blew ever a chill and noxious wind.

And, steeling my soul, I called upon the power of the Xothic Key, and summoned slithering from his black and noisome burrows the Father of Worms himself, even undying and putrescent Ubb, leader and progenitor of the dreaded Yuggya—the loathly and prehuman servitors of my god, who squirm and slither in the slime about His feet.

Like a great, glistening mass of putrid whitish jelly was Father Ubb, and his squat and quivering trunk supported naught but a swollen and rounded head wherein drooled and quivered ever a pink-rimmed, obscene orifice lined with triple rows of adamantine fangs. Now the Yuggya serve my lord Ythogtha and His Brother, Zoth-Ommog, even as the Deep Ones serve Cthulhu and the Tcho-Tchos their lords, Zhar and Lloigor; and as the Flame-Creatures strive ever to free Cthugha and the Serpentmen of Valusia sought to unchain their lord, Yig, so do the Yuggya tirelessly gnaw at the bonds that hold Ythogtha and Zoth-Ommog.

Emerging at length pale and shaken from my converse with Father Ubb, whose unholy vileness and stench is even that of Abhoth Itself, I gained the upper air with relief. But I had won the aid of the Burrowers Beneath to my great endeavor, and together we swore to open the Door to Yhe, though we incur the wrath of the Elder Gods upon remote and rubescent Glyu-Vho!⁵

I chose the Day of the Writhing of the Aurora as most efficacious for my terrific endeavor; and thence to the brink of the mighty Abyss of Yhe went I forth, with my few frightened acolytes in my train, and in the Hour of the Singing of the Green Vapor I stood upon the cliffs overlooking the profound and gloom-veiled depths of the chasm and made the Scarlet Sacrifice while behind me arose the wailing chorus of my acolytes in the uncouth and alien rhythms of the Yuggya Chants.

I performed the Red Ablution; I brandished the Xothic Key; I traced upon the trembling air in characters of living and supernal fire the Hieroglyphs of Yrr; I performed the Quaar Exorcism; I called upon the Dholes in aeon-forgotten Akio; I employed the lore of the Forbidden Litany; I summoned the Xlath Entities from beyond the extraspatial region of Asymmetrical Etheric Polarity.

I adored the Black Flame in a manner which makes my soul shrink and shudder within me to this hour; I called upon all of the gods of archaic Mu—upon the Great Ones (saving only the noxious and tyrannical Ghatanothoa), and upon the Lesser Ones, upon Yig the Serpent-Father, and shadowy Nug, and Yeb of the Whispering Mists, upon Iod the Shining Hunter, and Vorvadoss of Bel-Yarnak, the Troubler of the Sands—and upon Him Who Is To Come, and upon Father Dagon and Mother Hydra, who rule the Deep Ones who are His servants in the green sea.

And I uttered in a great voice The Name Which Is Nor Ever To Be Uttered Aloud ....

Above me the stars trembled and burned pale as waxen tapers in an icy and miasmic draught ... all save for the scarlet burning eye of Glyu-Vho, which blazed more brightly than before.

Beneath my heel, the Earth shook with tremors; and from the dimly lit west, where titanic mountains march the breadth of Mu, deep subterraneous thunders mumbled and cold black craters burst redly into flame, filling angry heaven with seething smoke.

My acolytes huddled before me, white faces hidden in shaking hands. And there was a great silence upon the Earth for seven breaths of time.

AND then my heart leapt up within me for horrid and blasphemous joy, for Lo! I had released the first of the seven bonds that had, from the immemorial depths of forgotten time, held prisoner the Abomination in the Abyss.

And He lifted Himself above the brink of the vast chasm of Yhe and gazed down upon His arch-hierophant.

Very terrible was Ythogtha to the sight of men, and more huge than my mind could scarcely accept.

Like a black glistening moon He rose above the brink, a gigantic hemisphere of quaking slime, vaster than any mountain. Faceless and neckless was He, save that from His front a terrific beak thrust forth. Cruel and terrible and curved was this beak of blackest adamant, and it measured many thousands of paces in its length.

And then, half a league further along the brink of the chasm, a second hemispheric, black, glistening, beaked head rose into sight—and another!—and then yet a fourth mountainous and colossal beaked head rose above the lip of the Abyss!

And then it was true terror smote me to the heart, for I saw and knew my lord in His awfulness ... and we trembling mortals were dwarfed by Him, like motes before the ponderous yakith lizard were we ... and, suddenly, horribly, I knew what I had done.

The acolyte huddled at my feet knew in the same instant, and squealed shockingly, and wallowed in squalid and gutless terror, wriggling from before the altar of the Abomination ... to flee, staggering and stumbling, white to the lips, with wide, mad, staring eyes that burned with pale fire like sick moons ... and I, too, quailed to the depths of my being, and turned on palsied and trembling limbs, hurling from me with sudden horror the loathsome volume of the Rituals, which fell into the Abyss from which ultimate and mind-blasting Nightmare had but part-way emerged ... and I ran—ran—while the Earth shook and great crevices opened to split the land asunder ... ran, while mountain after mountain erupted in flame and thunder, and the sea boiled madly, and a great terrible shaft of unearthly light burned down the star-gulfs from distant and blazing Glyu-Vho ... ran, even as down that terrific star-beam descended, from the remote star that flamed like a wrathful and revenging Eye athwart the smoke-veiled and volcano-shaken west, terrible great Things like terrific Towers of Flame ... which I knew to be either the Elder Gods or Their servants ... while sky-tall and burning Towers swept the Abyss with their lightnings—and I fled through the gates of Yu-Haddoth, where dwelleth my king, but which lay now in smoking ruin, shaken by the great tremors of the Earth—and I scourged the panic-stricken multitudes before me—who knew not the true nature of the monstrous and inconceivable Thing I had almost freed—drove them shrieking into the vidya valutas, the ancient sky chariots of elder and doom-fraught Mu ... while the ground shook and the towers fell and mountain after mountain erupted in thunderous flames ... and we fled through the storm-torn skies and across the wind-lashed waves ... fled all that unending night of flame and doom and chaos, while behind our sky-borne keels immemorial and terror-haunted Mu crumbled under the mighty waves that beat in from the angry sea, and broke apart, shaken to its unstable core by the convulsions of outraged nature, lashed by starry fires of the Elder Gods ... on we flew at length into a distant land near the Hidden Gates of elder Shamballah itself ... but mere distance can not erase from my terror-frozen brain the ultimate glimpse of nethermost Hell that shook my soul when I saw ... and knew ... that vast and beaked and mountainous Head of the Thing in the Pit ... that awful and aeon-accursed Thing whose unthinkably prodigious FINGERTIPS I had seen ....

1. Friedrich Wilhelm von Junzt, in his impressively researched Unaussprechlichen Kulten (XXI, 307). identifies this date as B.C. 173,148.

2. Evidence in the Ponape Scripture (particularly the astronomical data in Versicle 9759) suggests this date may be equivalent to roughly B.C. 161,844; von Junzt does nor include any reference to this period, as his commentary breaks off several millennia earlier.

3. The cryptic and horrible Ponape Scripture says that Ghatanothoa, Ythogtha, and Zuth-Ommog are "the Sons of the mighty Cthulhu, Lord of the Watery Abyss and dread and awful Potentate of drowned R'lyeh." While neither the Scripture nor any other text of elder lore known to me records the planet wherefrom Cthulhu descended to this world, the Scripture says of the origin of his three sons: "The Spawn of Cthulhu came down from remote and ultra-telluric Xoth, the dim green double sun that glitters like a daemonic eye in the blacknesses beyond Abbith, to whelm and reign over the steaming fens and bubbling slime-pits of the mist-veiled dawn aeons of this Earth, and it was in primordial and shadowy Mu that They were great." Von Junzt (XXI, 29-a) cannot identify Xoth save to say that it lies in the same star cluster as Zaoth, Abbith, and Ymar. The reference to the "Isle of the Sacred Stone Cities" and the Deep that lies off its shores, together with geographical data hinted at earlier in the Zanthu Tablets, enables me to identify tentatively the place whereat Zoth-Ommog the Dweller in the Deep lies imprisoned as a submarine chasm off Ponape.

4. The hierophant Zanthu is in error here, for the surviving fragments of the Susran myth cycle list a copy of "the Yhe Rituals from elder Mu" as among the necromantic tomes in the library of the great magician Malygris, according to the inventory recorded by the sorcerer Nygron, and an incredibly ancient copy of the Rituals was in the possession of the Saracen wizard Yakthoob, Alhazred's mentor, according to the Irem chapter of the Necronomicon (Narrative II).

A copy, perhaps the same Yakthoobic redaction, is rumored to have been found in a sealed tomb in Egypt about 1905.

5. In an often-quoted passage of the Necronomicon, Alhazred identifies this name, which is primal Naacal, as that of the star known to the Arabic astronomers of his day as Ibt al Janzab, which is to say, Betelgeuse.