The Neutrality of the Great Race
[August Derleth's Cthulhu Mythos]

The time-travelling, body-swapping Great Race occupies a uniquely neutral role in Derleth's Cthulhu Mythos. Although somewhat akin to the Elder Gods, the Great Race is not allied with them:

. . . the Great Race, whose members had always striven for solitude and peace, but who were more closely akin to the Elder Gods than to the Ancient Ones [Great Old Ones (3)] . . . [Space]

The Great Race was dwelling on Earth, but fled when the great battle erupted between the Elder Gods and the Great Old Ones:

. . . the Great Race . . . had occupied Earth until they had become involved in the titanic struggle between the Elder Gods and the Ancient Ones for the domination of the cosmos . . . [Space]

According to some accounts, the Great Race fled to a distant future on Earth:

. . . ye Great Race of Yith & ye Gr. Old Ones fail’g to agree, one with another, & boath with ye Elder Gods, separat’d, leav’g ye Gr. Old Ones in possession of ye Earth, while ye Great Race, return’g from Yith took up Their Abode forward in Time in Earth-Land not yet known to those who walk ye Earth today, & there wait till there shall come again ye winds & ye Voices [Elder Things] which drove Them forth before & That which Walketh on ye Winds over ye Earth & in ye spaces that are among ye Stars for’r. [Lurker][Whippoorwills]

But there is also evidence that some portion of the Great Race escaped to more distant locations:

From Earth, the Great Race had fled outward into space, at first to the planet Jupiter, and then farther, to that star on which they now were, a dark star in Taurus, where they remained ever watchful for invasion from the region of the Lake of Hali, which was the place of banishment for Hastur of the Ancient Ones [Great Old Ones (3)], after the defeat of the Ancient Ones by the Elder Gods. [Space]

The Great Race hopes to return to some of its old haunts:

. . . the work we were doing was vital to the return of the Great Race—which was the race to which we belonged—to the places in the universes which had once, aeons gone by, served us as home until the war with the Ancient Ones [Great Old Ones (3)] had forced us into flight. [Space]

The Great Race send some of their minds out as scouts to determine where and when they can migrate to in order to avoid the Great Old Ones (3) and their wars with the Elder Gods:

. . . the member of that race who had gone forth would adjust himself to the life of the civilization to which he had gone until he had sought out the traces of the aeon-old culture which had culminated in the great upheaval between the Elder Gods and the Ancient Ones [Great Old Ones (3)]. [The Great Race member returned after it] learned all it wished to learn of the ways of life and of the points of contact with the Ancient Ones, particularly of their minions who might oppose the Great Race . . . [Space]

Based on this reconnaissance data, the Great Race periodically migrates to new places and times as far from the Elder Gods/Great Old Ones conflict as possible:

Then, wherever they went in mass migration, they went unfettered; all the appurtenances, the artifacts, the inventions, even the great library would be left behind; the Great Race would begin again to build its civilization, always hoping to escape the holocaust which would come about when the Ancient Ones [Great Old Ones (3)]—great Hastur, the Unspeakable; and Cthulhu, who lies in the watery depths; and Nyarlathotep, the Messenger; and Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth and all their terrible progeny—escaped their bondage and joined again in titanic battle with the Elder Gods in their remote fastnesses among distant stars. [Space]

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