Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-1915529-20140702204420/@comment-3547390-20150124230137

I stopped reading Lovecraft at a certain point, but I did read quite a bit. I did this a few years back, so my memory might not be the best, but it is something and I did gain a good understanding of the world.

It isn't so much that as it is the fact that the Old Ones are so large. If you are at least familiar with Cthulhu, you should know that he is a gigantic beast that is a little bit larger than the stuff we see in Quake. Now, Cthulhu is considered a God by our standards, he is what is referred to as a Great Old One (yes, there are two types of gods referred to as Old Ones). A Great Old One is a massive god but is something we can understand, especially since they impose their will on the Earth in an effort to bring it back to the days of old (basically, the big story behind these gods is that they went into a slumber and have come back to reclaim the Earth).

The Old Ones (I think these eventually became the Outer Gods in the Expanded Universe, but Lovecraft wrote Old Ones) were basically the gods of the Old Ones. Unlike the Great Old Ones, there is very little that man knows about these things because they are so maddening to understand. Even beasts like Cthulhu can barely understand them, meaning we are at a complete loss. Those that have tried to learn about these things tend to go insane, Lovecraft loves the theme of man being unable to comprehend the world around him. Lovecraft is usually quite vague with only bits and pieces in each story, meaning it is quite hard to say anything for certain, especially for beings he is intentionally trying to make incomprehensible. These things are cosmic beings, possibly thousands of light years away from us, but still able to influence our lives somewhat. As for their size, if I remember correctly, they are massive clouds that I believe can rival planets. I don't recall if there was an exact measurement of their size. They are basically shapeless clusters of matter.

About 95% of the references I have seen are just people worshiping the Old Ones. Almost every mention of Shub-Niggurath just happened to be in some chant, meaning most of what we get is people yelling out her name. Even when we do get a mention of an Old One causing mayhem on our world, it tends to be perhaps the most powerful of them all, Yog-Sothoth, the gate and key. These chants interchange names, meaning we get some of Shub-Niggurath's nicknames at times. I don't recall if we ever get more than that for Shub-Niggurath in the original mythos.

Also, a bit unrelated, but I think I am in the place most likely to bring about a world like Quake. Most of Lovecraft's stories were set in Massachusetts, though the towns themselves were fictional.