Great Race

[HPL Time (online text)]: A race said to be the greatest of all, because they learned to project their minds into the past or future, and thus learned all the things that were ever known or ever would be known on earth. Knowledge of the past is more difficult for them to glean than knowledge of the future, and is accomplished by a kind of mind-casting outside of the recognized senses. Knowledge of the future is achieved by the use of mechanical aids to project an individual mind to a desired era in the future, where it takes possession of the most advanced individual that can be found, of any intelligent race. Only the superior minds among the Great Race are capable of thus being projected into the future. The mind of the displaced individual would find itself transported to the past, to the body of the Great Race member who had displaced it. While it dwelled in the past, this captive mind would be closely questioned by the Great Race to obtain as much of its knowledge as possible.

After finishing its explorations in the future, a projected mind of the Great Race constructs a machine to reverse the process of projection. The projected mind thus returns to its own body in the past, while the captive mind is returned to its original body in the future. The captive mind is hypnotically purged of all memories of the Great Race before being returned to its own time. However, some former captives have partially recovered their memories. The Necronomicon suggests there is a cult of humans who sometimes aid the voyaging minds of the Great Race.

Besides projecting their minds into the future, the Great Race exchange minds with beings on other planets and explore their past and future as well.

Aside from exploration, the Great Race also use the mind projection technology to permanently escape en masse from planets or eras where circumstances are no longer safe for their survival.

Arrival on Earth

The Great Race came to earth from a transgalactic, dying elder planet known as Yith; on arriving here, they permanently displaced the minds of a terrestrial species of cone-creatures. This was about 600 million years ago. At that time, the Great Race defeated a competing race of Elder Things and drove them underground. The Great Race retained a haunting fear of the Elder Things, which were a taboo subject, rarely written or spoken of.

Description

In their cone-creature form, the Great Race had cone-shaped bodies, ten feet in height and ten feet wide at the base. The skin was ridgy, scaly, and semi-elastic, with shimmering iridescent color. From the apex of the cones extended four flexible, foot-thick, cylindrical appendages, which could be contracted almost to nothing or extended up to ten feet in length. One of these limbs terminated in a globular yellowish head with three eyes spaced widely along its central circumference. From the top of the head sprouted four slender gray stalks with flower-like tips. Beneath the head dangled eight greenish tentacles. Of the other major limbs, two terminated in large claws, which were used for carrying objects and also for speaking through clicking and scraping sounds. The third bore a cluster of four red, trumpet-like appendages used for eating. The base of the cone was fringed with a rubbery gray substance that moved the cone across the ground by expanding and contracting. They had no clothing, but wore satchels or knapsacks suspended from the top of the trunk. Their blood was a thick greenish ichor.

The Great Race in this form had many senses, most of which were not well utilizable by alien captive minds. Of the senses familiar to humans, they had only sight and hearing; the latter sense being provided by the flower-like appendages on the grey stalks atop the head. They had no sense of touch or physical pain. They were almost immune to fatigue and had no need of sleep.

They reproduced by seeds or spores that clustered on their bases and then were grown in shallow tanks of water. The common lifespan was four or five thousand years. They incinerated their dead with dignified ceremonies.

Organization

The Great Race formed a single nation with four divisions. The government was a type of fascistic socialism, with a small governing board that was elected by the votes of all who could pass required educational and psychological tests. In addition to civil wars, the Great Race fought against reptilian or octopodic invaders (presumably the Cthulhu spawn) and against the crinoid Old Ones (1).

Industry was highly mechanized and left the citizens with abundant leisure time, devoted to scientific and artistic pursuits. Transportation included boats, airships, submarines and boat-shaped cars. Food was vegetable or synthetic, and ingested through the red trumpet appendages in a semi-fluid state.

Later History

Parts of the text of the Pnakotic Manuscripts have existed since the time of the Great Race.

Around 150 million years ago, the Great Race came into possession of a cube sent by the Spawn of Yekub, from another universe. The cube served a purpose similar to the Great Race's own technology of mind transference, but rather than swapping personalities across space and time, the cube swapped personalities between universes. The Great Race quickly understood that the cube was transporting invading minds among them, and they exterminated all the possessed members of their own species. Thereafter they kept the cube hidden and under guard in a shrine in a polar city, but the cube was lost amidst the chaos of war by 50 million years ago. [HPL Challenge (online text)]

The Great Race remained in the cone-creature form until 50 million years ago [Time], when they fled to escape an eruption of the Elder Things. At that point, the Great Race transported its foremost minds to the bodies of the coleopterous species that will immediately follow mankind as the dominant race on earth.

Sometime after that, the Great Race will again migrate to the bodies of the bulbous vegetable entities of Mercury.

Peaslee and the Great Library

Miskatonic University professor Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee's body was possessed by a mind of the Great Race in 1908, while his mind lived as a captive among the Great Race of 150 million years ago [HPL Time; FL Terror2]. His mind returned to his human body in 1913.

In the city where Peaslee was held, the central archives were in a colossal subterranean structure near the city's center. Libraries such as this stored the whole of earth's history, past and future. The records were written or printed on a very long lasting cellulose fabric. The Great Race wrote using a stylus gripped in their head tentacles. All the captive minds were urged to write copiously in their own language about themselves and their respective periods. Other records were written in the hieroglyphic language of the Great Race; these presumably record knowledge written down by members of the Great Race after their return from other planets and eras. Although Peaslee wrote in English, he learned to speak in the Great Race's language of claw-clickings, and was able to communicate with other captive minds.

Peaslee's memories of his time with the Great Race eventually came back to him in dreams. These inspired an expedition to Australia, where he alone found the ruins of the Great Race's city and the central archives. The shifting sands have so far prevented the city from discovery by anyone else.

The Great Race in Derleth Stories

According to a passage in the Necronomicon, there was a three-way conflict between the Great Race, the Elder Gods (1), and the Great Old Ones (3):

. . . 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 which drove Them forth before & That which Walketh on ye Winds over ye Earth & in ye spaces that are among ye Stars forev'r. [AWD Whippoorwills]

It would seem that "ye winds & ye Voices which drove Them forth" were the Elder Things. We already know from Peaslee's account [HPL Time] that the Great Race left their cone-creature forms about 50 million years ago to flee from the Elder Things. This Necronomicon quote identifies the Elder Things as being members or allies of the Great Old Ones, and also associates them with the Wind-Walker (Ithaqua or Wendigo).

Piper's Revelations

[AWD Space]: Another Miskatonic University professor, Amos Piper, underwent an experience similar to that of Peaslee starting in 1930. After Piper's recovery in 1933, he was troubled by recurrent memories as Peaslee had been. However, Piper's trouble was more severe, because the memories came not only in his dreams, but in the form of waking visions whenever he closed his eyes.

Piper also seems to have had more facility with written languages than Peaslee did. During his captivity, Piper learned to write in another language, presumably the language of the Great Race. By contrast, the captive Peaslee wrote only in English.

From Piper, we learn that

The true form of the Great Race is akin to a shaft of light.
The Great Race has existed not only on multiple planets, but in multiple universes.
When a Great Race mind is sent forth, it can view the available subject individuals and decide which one it wants to inhabit.
The Great Race sometimes sends minds to verify that formerly-possessed subjects have not regained their memories of their time in captivity. If necessary, the Great Race may possess the same subject body again.
The Great Race can perform its mass migrations either backward or forward in time. By contrast, in Peaslee's account, the mass migrations are always to the future, apparently because mind-casting to the past is more difficult.

The history of the Great Race, as given by Piper, differs significantly from Peaslee's account. The differences could be because each learned only small portions of the Great Race's history, and remembered even less after returning to human form.

Thus, in Peaslee's version, the Great Race of 50 million years ago fled their cone-creature forms to escape the Elder Things. In Piper's version, the Great Race fled to escape the titanic struggle between the Elder Gods and the Great Old Ones for the domination of the cosmos. The Earth was the center of this conflict. The difference can be resolved by referring to the Necronomicon quote given previously, which specifies that the Elder Things are members or allies of the Great Old Ones. According to Piper, the Great Race have always striven for solitude and peace, but are more closely akin to the Elder Gods than to the Great Old Ones.

In Peaslee's version, the Great Race migrated to the future coleopterous race on earth, and will migrate again to the bodies of bulbous vegetable entities of Mercury. In Piper's version,

The Great Race fled from Earth to Jupiter, and then to a planet distantly orbiting a dark star in Taurus. There, they occupied the bodies of another population of cone-creatures, identical in appearance to the cone-creatures that they previously inhabited on Earth. Amos Piper dwelt with them in one of the cone-creature bodies during his captivity. They remain watchful for invasion from the region of the Lake of Hali, where Hastur was banished by the Elder Gods.
Their star is dying, and they are preparing for a mass migration to another star, either backward or forward in time. The hope to occupy bodies of creatures more long-lived than the rugose cones, who are shorter-lived than most of their host species. They are surveying Earth for possible reuse, and consider it a leading contender despite the danger of atomic war. However, they consider humans to be of a lower order than the cone-creatures, so probably would prefer not to migrate en masse into human bodies.
In general, the Great Race hopes to return to places in the universes where they lived before the war with the Great Old Ones. They also hope to escape the holocaust that will occur when the Great Old Ones eventually escape their bondage and resume their battle against the Elder Gods. Wherever they send their exploring minds, the Great Race attempts to find news of the Great Old Ones and their minion races, such as the Deep Ones, Tcho-Tchos, and shantaks. These minion races are considered to be potentially hostile.

In general, the Great Race in Peaslee's account seems to have reliable knowledge of the future, whereas in Piper's account they view the future as uncertain and have not yet fixed their plans.

Replicating Humans

[AWD Brotherhood]: It appears that the Great Race are attempting to invade Earth using an alternate technology, different from the mind-exchanges described by Peaslee and Piper.

In modern-day Providence, Arthur Phillips was shown a vision of a race that exactly resembled the cone-creatures. He was told that the scene was in another universe. The cone-creatures are on a planet orbiting a dying star, and they need to escape the planet or perish. These cone-creatures are engaged in serving or tending to an aggregation of great cubes. The Great Race is not mentioned, so there is no way to be certain that this particular population of cone-creatures is possessed by the Great Race.

Phillips' vision resembles Amos Piper's description of a population of Great Race-possessed cone-creatures who live on a planet of a dying star. However, Phillips' account places the star in another universe, whereas Piper's account places the star in our own universe, in the constellation Taurus. Phillips' account also adds the giant cubes, which are not mentioned by Piper.

In Phillip's account, these alien creatures have an apparatus in Providence that creates physical duplicates of existing human beings. They can make multiple duplicates of the same person. Thus, they created seven replicas of Edgar Allan Poe. Once a duplicate is created, they can transfer one of their minds into the new body. This seems to be a one-way mind transfer, rather than a two-way mind exchange as described by Peaslee and Piper.

Possibly the Great Race have invented this body-duplicating apparatus to solve a problem raised in Amos Piper's account. According to Piper, the Great Race see the Earth as a promising destination for their next migration, but regard humans as inferior (and thus probably not a very appealing host species). The new apparatus may create bodies that appear human, but are superior in some way. They might be longer-lived, have more brain capacity, or have more types of physical senses than humans do. The Great Race is apparently planning to gradually replace us with this race of superior duplicates.

Phillips believed that the aliens needed to duplicate a human female so their new race could begin breeding and having offspring. Phillips destroyed their apparatus and apparently killed all the Poe duplicates, but a duplicate of his girlfriend Rose Dexter seems to have escaped.

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