A sketch of the final scene in “The Other Gods,” commissioned by Brian O’Connell! I was torn as to whether to draw Barzai’s transfiguration at a distance, to show the scale, or up close, but in the end I chose ‘up close.’ Brian specifically asked me to draw certain of the Lovecraftian Other Gods (can you guess which ones?) in the picture.
I break with Cthulhu Mythos canon in that I don’t really think of the Dreamlands and the non-Dreamlands stories as being in the same ‘universe’; Nyarlathotep and Azathoth are definitely there in Dreamland, and all the other shadowy half-hinted horrors of the cosmos, but I have trouble imagining the purely materialistic creatures from Lovecraft’s later works, say the Mi-Go, the Great Race, etc., existing in a universe where great dreamers can craft reality and where the gods really *do* care about humans, even if only in the sense of intentionally smiting them (and inviting them to Hadath to give them lectures). Of course, the work of creating a roleplaying game setting or doing a complete categorization is really trying to make it all fit together somehow…. but I’m happy with Lovecraft’s fantasy phase not quite meshing with his later science-fiction phase. Regardless, in this drawing late-phase and early-phase Lovecraftian horrors coexist to crush the hopes of the poor Dreamlanders. MERCIFUL GODS OF EARTH!!!! AGGGGHHHH!!!
NEXT UPDATE: Monday!
