Kthanid (Art by Borja Pindado)
| “ | Don't worry about that cult to Cthulhu that almost succeeded in waking him up. We got some information on the cult's whereabouts from... let's just say an anonymous source. | „ |
| ~ Raguel |
| “ | After all we sacrificed, for Kthanid to revive; that wretched monster, Mother. This act I cannot forgive. | „ |
| ~ Enki |
Kthanid is one of the Elder Gods and is the brother of the mighty Cthulhu. A member of Cthulhu's race, he helped banish his brother and the other Ogdru Hem to Earth before binding them.
He is the de-facto leader of the Elder Gods who reside in the Dark Nexus, an existence parallel to our own.
Description[]
It is said that he is as good as his brother is evil, and yet equally as alien. Kthanid is physically identical to his sibling - a colossal humanoid with stubby bat-wings and sporting a growth of octopus tentacles from his lower face - in every way but one: his eyes are a deep gold in color. Kthanid also radiates an air of benevolence to all those in his presence.
Despite his immense power, he is not someone who would use actual violence in combat, but instead uses only binding spells, illusions and memory-erasure to deal with his enemies, as he has done with Hastur and Cthulhu. He is one of few Old Ones that mainly speaks the language of the world he currently presides in.
History[]
Background[]
Kthanid is believed to come from a race of deities known as the Elder Gods that originated within the Dark Nexus, a parallel universe that is depicted as a "dark underbelly" of our own, taking shape during the passages of time from Yog-Sothoth and breathing life from the Nameless Mist. He bears a great hatred for the Ogdru Hem for they had killed his family while he lay sleeping. Some believe that it was Kthanid himself who helped an alien race (known as the Mi-go) banish his brothers Cthulhu, Ghatanothoa, Yig, and Tsathoggua from the Xoth star system and transport them light years across the galaxy to imprison them deep within the primeval Earth.
Because of Kthanid's distaste towards the rest of the Ogdru Hem and the Ogdru Jahad along with his desire to do good even as an amoral entity, he is one of the only Old Ones that the angels and the gods have respect for, to the extent where the latter even allowed him to join the Council of Godheads, despite the distrustful dispositions some gods held towards him due to his status as an Eldritch entity. Nevertheless, he has become an invaluable ally to them especially since he designed the Elder Sign which would provide protection to the humans from the influence of the Ogdru Hem.
However, despite his benevolent nature, Kthanid appears to have personal goals of his own which does not aid in easing the tension between him and the gods who only show mistrust towards him. This distrust is founded in the events of the primordial battle against Tiamat. At the climax of the Battle of the Powers, Kthanid would communicate with the discorporeal essence of Tiamat that lingered within the veins of creation. Kthanid used his occult knowledge to salvage only a sliver of Tiamat's essence, even as the rest of her celestial body was dismembered and used by Marduk to construct the bulk of their heavenly abode in conjunction with the bridges the connected it to the Earth. He placed this sliver of Tiamat in the Alterworld, hoping that the goddess would aid him in the inevitable war against the Ogdru Hem. As a show of gratitude, Tiamat gifted Kthanid with powers over the sea.
Champion of Kthanid[]
Kthanid later encountered a mortal by the name of Titus Crow, who was lost and adrift through time and space after escaping the Old One Ithaqua's wrath. Seeing that Titus had a seething hatred towards the Old Ones and a desperation to stop their machinations, Kthanid enlisted him in their battle against the Old Ones. Their first order of business was to aid in preventing the destruction of the Dreamlands by Atlach-Nacha though Titus Crow cannot travel to the Dreamlands.
As such Kthanid summoned Dream of the Endless to help send Crow on a mission to Earth’s Dreamlands in order to defeat the threat of Atlach-Nacha, while also being accompanied by Ananasi. Atlach-Nacha's threads were being tethered to the mortal realm and creating unthinkable distortion through the Collective Unconscious. Titus Crow faced many hazards in the Dreamlands, not least among them the Men of Leng and the Fly-the-Light, but finally came to the source of these threats where he unwittingly opened a portal which would allow the horrors of Atlach-Nacha to spill forth into the Dreamlands and Earth, a potentially devastating turn of events for mankind.
Kthanid was able to use Crow’s dimensional time machine to appear in the Dreamlands himself, and used his power to destroy Atlach-Nacha whilst sealing shut the portal for good. Kthanid was also present during the peak of World War II where he and his fellow Elder Gods would come to aid the various combatants of the Allied forces against the growing power of the Nazis, preventing them from completing the Rite of Solomon. Kthanid's aspect was one of the keys needed to complete the rite but was instead recovered by one of the Allied operatives and used Kthanid's latent power inside the key to push back against the Nazi forces.