“ | Rhan-Tegoth, infinite and invincible, I am your slave and high-priest. You are hungry, and I provide. I read the sign and have led you forth. I shall feed you with blood, and you shall feed me with power. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Goat with a Thousand Young! | „ | |
~ "The Horror in the Museum" |
Rhan-Tegoth is a fifteen foot tall, medusa-like, insectoid amphibious god-being (Great Old One) of comparatively little power but vital to the return of the Old Ones. It lived in the warm seas of Yuggoth before coming to Earth.
3 million years ago, during the Pliocene epoch, it inhabited an area of Alaska before going into a hibernation like trance. Rhan-Tegoth was the last god to sleep, and probably was meant to be the first to wake. Its body was found by George Rogers and moved to a museum in London, 1926 (HPL: "The Horror in the Museum"), but was then lost track of until It turned up, firstly in Sheffield, UK in the 1980s (EXP: "The Return of Rhan-Tegoth"), and then in Chorazin, New York in the mid-to-late 1980s (EXP: "Wilbur Whateley Waiting"). It was worshipped by the prehuman, cannibal Gnophkehs, but few humans know of it in modern times (CIRCLE: "The Scroll of Morloc").
The god is shaped somewhat like an enormous insect, with a tremendous, barrel-shaped trunk with six appendages ending in claws-like pincers and a near-spherical head covered with hair-like filaments or feelers, a tentacle-like proboscis and three small, beady eyes. The hair-like feelers function as additional mouths that perforate the skin of the creature's prey and secrete digestive acids. Similar to Chaugnar Faugn, Rhan-Tegoth feeds by sucking out the blood and liquefied innards of its victims, the bodies of which are crushed and disfigured by the great strength of the monster.
Behind the Mythos[]
Rhan-Tegoth was created by H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald. It was developed by Lin Carter; Laurence J. Cornford and Chaosium.