Elder Thing

Elder Thing's History

The Elder Things are a race of sentient extra-terrestrials that arrived on Earth at some point during the very early development of life on this planet. For many years, the Elder Things fostered and helped shape life on Earth to both aid them in constructing as well as for food sources. Their most impressive creation was of the protoplasmic Shuggoths, who could adapt and reform their bodies to whatever their masters hypnotically commanded them to do.

The Elder Things found their peaceful rule of the planet interrupted with the arrival of the Starspawn of Cthulhu. The Cthulhi wished to make Earth their own and began devastating the Elder Things and nearly destroyed them. However, at some point in the conflict, the Elder Thigs were able to hurt the Cthulhi enough to end the war with a peace treaty that ceded much of the Earth to the Starspawn while allowing the Elder Things to have continued dominion over some of the planet.

Sometime during the period of Earth where dinosaurs walked the Earth, a massive tectonic event happened and sunk the parts of the Earth the Cthulhi had claimed. This event forced the Starspawn into a hibernation-like state and allowed the Elder Things to reclaim control of the planet. Soon after, however, the Shuggoths rebelled and forced the Elder Things to fight desperately for survival. Eventually through the development of molecular manipulation weapons, the Elder Things were able to subdue the Shuggoths.

Exhausted from the effort of this triumph, the Elder Things were handily defeated when the Mi-Go invaded and were forced to retreat to Antarctica, where the rapidly cooling temperatures proved too much for the Elder Things to cope with and the remainders of the civilization went into hibernation.

Untold eons passed while the Elder Things slept until a group of fourteen were discovered in Antartica by a group of explorers from Miskatonic University. Initially thought dead, one of the aliens was cut open and dissected to learn more about their strange biology while another five had not survived the hibernation process. The survivors would reawaken and butcher the camp before returning to their city in the mountains. This was a mistake, however, as a Shuggoth still lived within and it quickly dispatched its long lost masters through decapitation.

Another Elder Thing civilization appears briefly in The Dreams In the Witch House and a displaced Elder Thing�??s consciousness is found in The Shadow out of Time.