THE WAY IT WENT DOWN: FATHER OF US ALL

The learned know that formless chaos spins within the stars and the spaces between them, an infinite display of terrors in every shape even beyond conception. At the focus of these beings is their balance, a point of turning, a reflection at the center of them all which doubles back...

Some call this nexus Nyarlathotep.

Where the great powers spin, and lash out, and breed and spread, Nyarlathotep, the sum of their will, plots and plans and thinks and dreams. It is the opposition of what all the ancient powers are, but at the same time, it is of them. It is the heart of the mindless beings which turn the clockwork of eternity, and in their stead, it moves among mankind, filled with a demonic, eternal glee.

When man first climbed down from the trees on the savannah, Nyarlathotep was already there. It showed them the rites and rituals of the powers. The practices which could open the way. It knows the dimensions of Yog-Sothoth, the wards that bind Cthulhu, the fecundity of Shub-Niggurath and the depravity of Y’golonac—because it is all of these beings as well. It is their soul, their human expression, a byproduct of their very existence.

In an infinite eternity of choices, Nyarlathotep must exist.

It brought agriculture and cities, it brought writing and math, all for one end—to create enough humans with enough knowledge to pull at the cosmic locks and release the beings it serves like a lap-dog. Men are just another in the chain of evolution who have risen, grown and haunted the Earth, but in them Nyarlathotep finds something novel. A blinkered eagerness to grasp at misunderstood power, an urge to—if a man cannot possess it—to destroy the very world to deny it to others.

Nyarlathotep is the father of human religion and as such; it is the arch-patron of lies. Every god, real or imagined in the human mind has been or will be Nyarlathotep. It shuttles through forms and functions and backstories and history like a stuttering ghost. A million dancing masks of sorrow, woe, fear, humor and hate. It tends to religions like a vinter grows grapes; and when the crop is sufficient, it draws its harvest in blood and it always drinks deeply. 

After Nyarlathotep, there is always blood.

Nyarlathotep loves mankind, after its own fashion. Their raw power. Their lack of organization or scope of vision. Their limited, explosive existences. Billions of tiny, seeking missiles to be used and discarded to shape the world. Mankind is a tool Nyarlathotep uses to struggle open the gates and wards of old.

But time is long. Hate, fear and knowledge stretches thin over the skein of human history. Nyarlathotep has turned its games to more daring, duplicitous things. It lies. It manipulates and changes things. As time drags on, Nyarlathotep finds new and interesting ways to entertain itself; world wars, civilization-ending technologies, new and bloody social movements. Anything novel and deadly.

Nyarlathotep is never far from the minds of those in power, and those who spill blood. Nyarlathotep is the founder of the feast that mankind calls civilization. 

And, when it ends, only Nyarlathotep will remain to look over its creation; a ruined world of bone and stone, burning forever, knowing only that all is as it must be.

Amen.