Great Old Ones in the BotR mythology?

[Torillan]

With the inevitable release of Green Ronin's 5e update to their awesome Book of the Righteous, I was pondering how the Great Old Ones might fit into the mythology.

My initial thoughts are that they are the few greater qlippoth who escaped the destruction of their kin by the ghaele, fleeing out into the void beyond the Sphere, where they wait, scheming their grandiose schemes. Their power is great enough that they can maintain some contact into the Sphere, but not sure exactly how.

Any other ideas are welcome, and thank you for reading my ramblings.

[EvilAnagram]

The point of the great old ones is that they are unknowable. To give them definite beginnings and motives ruins their effect.


The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

They lurk beyond the frame of human knowledge and experience, beyond our understanding, and on those rare occasions in which they invade our realm, bending it around their hostile minds, the few witnesses who survive are not in any state to convey sensibly what had occurred. We only know that their coming does Herald a violent time in which dastard and despised will rise in appetites vile, that the days of darkness and pain and pleasure will come, that they are coming, that we cannot escape them, Cthulhu fhtagn

Cthulhu fhtagn

Cthulhu fhtagn

[Torillan]

Well...I do get that.

My point is that some will try to postulate and at least question their motives and beginnings, given that warlocks do exist in some fantasy worlds. Even in our own world some ponder the beginning of things, even though most is beyond our current understanding.

I should have made clear these ideas are theories held by learned figures only....not the actual origin of these beings.

And thank you for your reply!

[Naanomi]

In most campaign settings the Old Ones seem to to represent a broad class of things on power level with the Gods (at least) but of more unusual or mysterious origin. I think it does them a disservice when there is 'one answer' to their existence