Not that I’m any great shakes at designing aliens, but one small thing that bothers me, design-wise, about Lovecraft’s ‘civilized’ alien races (the Old Ones and the Great Race), is that they seem to lack any way to lift heavy objects. Sure, they have technology (and in the case of the Old Ones, slaves) but what did they do to take care of the place & carry groceries before they developed that technology? The Old Ones have little teeny-weeny weakish-looking tentacles (maybe they can exert a lot of pressure when you put them together, but still) and the Great Race have limbs growing out of the tops of cones — not the best way to get leverage. My solution to this was to decide that, perhaps, their ‘cone’ is really divided on the inside into four approximately equal segments, and the muscle or cellular tissue of the limb runs all the way down to the core of the cone at the bottom, instead of just sticking out of the top. Instead, like a snail’s eyestalk or a turtle’s head, we’re just seeing a small portion of it which is extended. The brain or core of the Great Race, then, would be located towards the bottom of the central cone, where all the powerful muscles of expansion and contraction are located.
For comparison, here’s my drawing of the Great Race’s enemies, the flying polyps. The flying polyps are free from the constraints of gravity, but (in my vision) they’re basically worm-shaped, or shaped like branching worms — a great twisting writhing floating branch. When I reread “The Shadow Out of Time”, I noticed the part where it’s said that the Great Race breed their young in tanks or vats, kind of like playpens, I assume. But I’m sure that now and then, one of them gets out of the tank and runs around and cause mischief.
It’s Monday, and over at King of RPGs, a new storyline with Theo and Shesh is brewing! And if you’re interested, I do commissioned sketches!