Just as John Tynes' Hastur Mythos asked the Keeper to accept a different way of looking at the Mythos, so too does the Tsathoggua Mythos. It is a compromise of sorts between the viewpoint of Hastur, and the traditional fashion of conceiving the Mythos. It keeps the original notion of all the Great Old Ones as monstrous alien entities, with identity and species-mates, yet expands upon this, in the fashion of the Hastur Mythos, by positing that certain of the "greatest" of the Great Old Ones have progressed to a point where their unique mental landscape begins to permeate the universe around them. Perhaps, given aeons more, these Great Old Ones will have ascended to the Court of Azathoth as Gods, physical embodiments of universal concepts and constants.
So - in a sense - this is a way to have your cake and eat it too. If one wants
Hastur as a big blobby thing, so be it. If one wants Hastur as a force of entropy
with no personality, it is. The blob's psyche can be so powerful that it broadcasts
the breaking down of bonds in the universe, or the force can have become embodied
in a blob by the collective psyches of all those touched by Hastur. And this
concept can be extended to the other major Great Old Ones of Earth. Cthulhu
is the great Xothian sleeping in R'lyeh, or it is the empty void, smooth and
silent as the sea, the darkness from which man simultaneously pulls away from
and is drawn too. Ithaqua may be the Wind-Walker, the Wendigo, or it can be
random, violent destruction - energy in its purest form. And the subject of
this essay, Tsathoggua, can be the amorphous toad-god, or it can be the antithesis
of Hastur, rather than entropy making all into one, it can be the repulsive
forces, stasis, making the one paramount, the universe unto itself.
Themes
Apathy - a woman is raped and then shot in an alley, a few yards from
a main thoroughfare, and people walk by, deliberately ignoring her screams for
help. Greedy corporations ravage the environment, selling tomorrow for an easy
dollar, and humanity clamors for another 100 cable channels. Politicians are
corrupt, madmen roam the streets, and millions of voices cry out in hunger worldwide.
No one cares. Nobody will deny that this is human nature, but why does it seem
to grow stronger every year? The stirring of Tsathoggua, the ultimate cynic,
worms its way into the unconscious minds of the humanity.
The way this can be worked into a Delta Green game is simple. The investigators are simply tired of running as hard as they can to stay in one place. For every cult they wipe out, another two pop up as the Endtimes approach. It's just too much. Emphasise how steep the uphill battle they fight is, and the investigators may soon start to ask, Why bother? Of course, you need to be careful with how much you play on this theme, as it can soon lead to the players asking the same question, and then you'll end up playing Vampire.
Divisivness - another human trait, enhanced to grotesquery by the Cynic
God. Ethnic cleansings, hate groups, class stratification; anything that says
you're different, and thus evil, plays into the mindscape of Saint Toad. The
Karotechia strengthen Tsathoggua with every plot and scheme, but so does racial
profiling and even demographic focus groups. The bonds of community are weakened
with every clique that forms within it, until everyone is a sociopath, and the
universe is centered on each individual.
This is an even easier theme to incorporate. Simply describe everyone different from the investigators in sinister tones. Terms such as 'swarthy', 'squint-eyed', 'furtive' all stay in the tone and voice of Lovecraft, and serve to make the players suspicious of anyone. The outsider is an easy villain for any conspiracy, and it's a short step to making everyone an outsider.
Stasis - the more things change, the more things stay the same. Ancient enmities lie quiescent, but never die. Freakishly preserved corpses, ancient yet undesecrated temples, and cthonian realms where evolution seems to have stopped are all images and ideas that can illustrate this theme. Another way to use this is the return of things to their original state - devolution, revivals of long-dead styles and mores, etc.
Elements
The Men of K'n-Yan - Long ago, the K'n-Yanni revered Tsathoggua alongside
Tulu and Yig. But, once the decadent men of that blue-litten cthonian realm
learned of His true nature, they destroyed their idols and smashed their temples
of Tsathoggua. The chieftans of the K'n-Yan realized the dangers of such adoration
of Tsathoggua when their society was already stagnant and decadent. They hoped
that by ignoring the Lord of N'Kai they could revitalize their society, and
claim the surface when Tulu rose and wiped the sky-devils from the surface.
Unfortunately for them, even without worship, the mind of the Cynic God is pervasive,
and K'n-Yan lay directly over N'kai...
Politics is the new game for the K'n-Yan, another thrill to pass the endless
centuries. Faction within faction, violently despising their enemies. What are
the shadow wars over? Does it matter? There are two factions within the city
of Tsath who have been locked in a bloody struggle for two hundred years over
the proper hand to hold sacrificial daggers with. The slightest difference in
the interpretation of doctrine is excuse to create a new secret society, to
break off into a new faction and destroy the heretics. And now, following the
example of the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign, several of these factions have
taken their wars to the sunlit lands.
The New Hyperboreans (the closest English translation) are the oldest that openly
venerate Tsathoggua. They wish to return the lands of the Northwestern quarter
of the Earth to its primal state of Hyperborea, when Tsathoggua reigned above,
and ancient K'n-Yanni heroes such as Xocatl and Kuckulan ruled vast kingdoms,
warring with the Atlanteans and Lemurians. They are heavy supporters of groups
such as Earth First!... as well as
genetic research, as they hope to reactivate the genes within men that produced
the furry, ape-like forms of the Hyperborean Age.
The Secret Masters also long for a past time, but one which comes from after
the sinking of Atlantis, Lemuria,
and Mu. They remember when
the K'n-Yan were worshipped as gods, or sidhe, or prophets by the feeble humans
of the surface, and they long to play those games again. They have
reopened the ancient tunnels below the Earth, and are beginning to probe the
surface around the ancient temples and faerie mounds. Should they
reopen the ancient mound near Severn Aerospace, a bloody, bloody conflict should
result, as the K'n-Yan's ability to dematerialize effectively
negates the Shan's greatest weapon, and the Secret Masters, as are most K'n-Yanni,
are fanatical about the purity of their bodies, and will retaliate against possession
attempts with a fury beyond any (to us) rational bounds.
A group that may be a sub-faction of the Secret Masters, or may be their bloody
rival (or given the factionalism of K'n-Yan society today, both) are the Nordics.
One of three more common forms of "extraterrestial" known to UFO lore
(the other two being Greys and the Saurians (aka Reptoids)),
the Nordics claim to
be from any number of different worlds, and to be here to save humanity from
the inhuman Greys. This story, often repeated to abductees, and given the explanation
of the Greys in the Delta Green mythos would also indicate the the Nordics may
have split off from the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign.
The Traditionalists believe that the surface is no place for their people, and
thus work to eliminate all surface factions. They use traditional K'n-Yanni
technology to acheive this; ie, superdeveloped science. MJ-12 could prove invaluable
allies to them, or implacable foes.
There are literally dozens of others factions (Hundreds, if you move below the
Earth) within the K'n-Yanni people, including The Brotherhood
of the Yellow Sign and Christian Conkle's Men
in Black, both of which are detailed elsewhere.
(The K'n-Yan use human statistics, except for POW, which is rolled on 4d6, and
INT, which is 2D6+9. They are telepathic, and may become dematerial at will,
although this takes 3 rounds to accomplish. Weapons are similar to those described
in Machinations of the Mi-Go, particularly the Electric Gun, although
K'n-Yanni weapons are much more understandable by men, and tend to resembles
staves and other ancient melee weapons.)
The Serpent Men - these even more ancient
entities were the first Terrans to worship Tsathoggua, and the first to feel
his mental influence. The Serpent Men are truly a "society" of individuals,
each working on his own plans and goals, a nation unto himself. They haven't
significantly changed, evolutionarily speaking, in hundreds of millions of years
- obviously the stagnating effect of Tsathoggua. The devolved savages of today
are the result of Yig's displeasure, and the indifferent, slothful decline given
by Tsathoggua. The atavists and ancient sorcerors walk a fine line between incurring
either god's displeasure.
Their schemes are insanely baroque and long-term, even more so than the K'n-Yan
who have only recently discovered immortality. Recently awakened Serpent Men
will be the most easily discovered, as their plans will invariably center around
learning about today's world, and gathering
power to themselves, but those few (perhaps 4 in the world?) immortal scientists
who have been scheming since Valusia was destroyed have plans that could cause
SAN loss in mortals trying to comprehend the complexities.
The Formless Spawn - The true embodiment of their father's spirit. They
are the ultimate apathetics, flowing silently through their troughs, worshipping
their father by doing nothing; they are the ultimate in divisiveness, refusing
to take any form, rather than be like their brothers; and they are static, unchanging
in their constant change of form.
They are today, in these dawning End Times, Tsathoggua's eyes and hands in
the outer world, enforcing his will. His will so far seems to simply be the
silencing of the incessant mental chattering of those noisy vermin on the surface
so he can go back to his millenial dozing.