What the heck is a Crawling Chaos Part 2

If you don’t know who Lovecraft is, or what the Cthulhu Mythos is, check out the previous entry or hit up wikipedia for some research.  The Crawling Chaos is one of many names used by Nyarlathotep, Messenger of the Outer Gods – and a key player in Lovecraft’s pantheon.  Nyarlathotep is perhaps the only one of the Great Old Ones and Outer Gods to actually interact directly with humans.  Not because we are important, but rather because he enjoys toying with us for amusement.  He especially enjoys giving humanity the keys to it’s own destruction.  Nyarlathotep has many avatars and appears in many shapes, from a creepy Pharaoh to a flying tentacled monstrosity.  He also takes on a role similar to the devil in one of his forms, signing pacts with witches and their victims.  In addition to having thousands of maddening forms, Nyarlathotep is one of few godlike creatures in Lovecraft’s fiction to be completely free, roaming the earth where and when he pleases.  His many forms also lend him to a variety of stories, where he may be used in different ways with different purposes to suit the author and their intent.  This is part of the reason that we chose Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, to be a part of our short film.  We can use him in the manner we want, while staying within the bounds of the Cthulhu Mythos Universe – and his passion for cruelty and madness allow him to take on a more personal role.  Either that, or Nyarly has taken over our minds and is using us to spread his madness and terror through this short film.

Now that you know a bit about The Crawling Chaos and where he comes from, the next post will discuss the short film itself.

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What the heck is a Crawling Chaos anyway?

You may have heard of our short film “The Crawling Chaos,” but the title probably won’t mean much to you without knowledge of the Cthulhu Mythos.  Let’s start with the guy that invented the Cthulhu Mythos – H.P. Lovecraft.  Around the 1920’s Lovecraft was writing a prolific amount of short stories, and pretty much invented the idea of “weird fiction” or cosmic horror.  His stories all exist within a shared fictional universe, where mankind is inconsequential and ancient beings from the depths of space (or even other dimensions) walk over us like ants.  Within Lovecraft’s writing, stories are told in the third person, usually by academics investigating or finding themselves caught in something supernatural.  As they discover some part of what lurks beyond human knowledge, they often begin to lose their sanity, and ultimately realize the insignificance of our little planet in the vastness of the cosmos.  Great Old One’s are ancient, deity-like beings that are typically locked out of our universe and looking for a way back in – or in the case of his most famous Great Old One, Cthulhu, sleeping death like beneath the ocean in his city of R’yleh, waiting until the stars are right and he can return.  If you haven’t heard of Cthulhu, where have you been?  He even ran for president!  He’s all over pop-culture, as is Lovecraft’s other famous creation, The Necronomicon – The Book of the Dead.  This fictional text was invented by Lovecraft for use in his stories, and is commonly referenced, along with other fictional texts, by different characters who come across them.  Don’t be fooled into thinking the mass marketed and poorly written “Necronomicon” you can buy on Amazon has anything to do with Lovecraft, it’s just around to cash in on his invention and take advantage of the naive.

There are many other examples of Lovecraft seeping into modern horror and sci-fi – everywhere you look you can find his influence.  He had a circle of writer friends that also wrote within his shared universe, such as Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E Howard (creator of Conan the Barbarian) who also added their own strange beings and deities, growing the Mythos ever further.  That’s enough about that though, you can go read wikipedia or pick up some of Lovecraft’s books for yourself if you want to know more.  The next post will focus on who The Crawling Chaos is, and where it fits in with Lovecraft’s Mythos, because hey, that’s why you’re here right?