Modern Mythos - Ep.28 - Ecology of the Great Race

Jun 25, 2023

A deep dive into the ecology and history of the Great Race of Yith. They unpack prehistoric body-hopping, ancient cities in Australia, and engineered future hosts like beetle swarms. The conversation covers bizarre Yithian senses, time-travel mind-swapping tech, cults that trade human worship for advanced tools, and campaign ideas for using Yithian mechanics in tabletop play.

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ADVICE

Feel Free To Expand Yithian Senses

Use Fred Van Lente's Weird Detective as permission to expand Yithian senses and powers at your table.
Add novel senses or abilities to make Yithian NPCs feel truly alien and playable.

INSIGHT

They Design Their Own Evolution

Sandy Peterson's version has Yithians design their own future beetle bodies using human geneticists.
That frames them as engineers shaping their evolution, not passive survivors.

ANECDOTE

Helping The Future Inheritors

Jon recalled running scenarios where aiding Yithians unintentionally benefits Earth's future inheritors.
Victory can mean helping the Yithians prepare the world they plan to reclaim.

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The Great Race of Yith

Created in "The Shadow Out of Time," published in the June 1936 issue of Astounding Stories. (87 years ago)

Early History:

Original home planet: Yith
Escaped the planet by mind-swapping with a race of conical-shaped beings that ruled Earth 200 million years ago (co-existed with dinosaurs)

206 mya - 248 mya Triassic Period earliest evolution of dinosaurs and small mammals

Why leave home planet?
What was their original form like?
Built city of Pnakotus in what became Australia
Waged war with Flying Polyps and Elder Things
Had airship
Giant books in libraries

Age of Mankind:

Yithians use mind-swap ability to study mankind and observe humanity and "history" through human eyes
Human Cult (believe angels, share technology)

Future History:

Swaps minds with bee-like race of beings who inherit the Earth after the fall of mankind
Beetle swarm
Sandy Theory of designing own bodies

Special Abilities:

Time travel - via mind-swapping

Since only swapping minds and not physical travel, appear to be immune to Hounds of Tindalos

Engineers

Lightning gun
Stasis cube
Tabula rasa device
Temporal communicator

Unique Abilities as presented in Weird Detective comic book series, by Fred Van Lente, (2016 Dark Horse Comics, 5 issues):

According to the comic book, Yithians have 17 senses, (as compared to a human's 5 senses, but only 7 are specifically described in the series of comics). Keepers could run with this and design the other 10 senses themselves.
Rennakesh - sense of emotionalocation: people are sometimes physically in one place, but mentally in another. A Yithian can sense that separation of physical and mental states, and actually "see" where your mind/attention is otherwise located.
Ranos - reverse sonar: resonating sound from the chest cavity allows for a mental picture of things on the other side of solid objects. And, another pitch in tone allows for the Yithian to move their body through solid matter.
Mochadin - reading the mind through eyes: essentially it's vision backwards. Animals typically try to communicate to other beings through mochadin, but humans haven't developed the ability to perceive it yet like Yithian have.
Aushure - reading of psychic impressions left in the ozone: able to correlate residual psychic energy into a visual playback of recent events in an area.
Prubika - sense of mind reading: similar to reading of Braille, licking a brain allows the Yithian to read/see/experience memories.
Dasein - sense of attunement to your surroundings: so attuned, that you blend-in and become indistinguishable from your surroundings.
Kolmak - removal of memories: the ability to remove memories from a human mind, and possibly to insert memories into a mind.

CoC Modules

The Asylum
Bad Moon Rising (The Great Old Ones)
Timeless Sands of India (Goodman Games: Age of Cthulhu vol.7)
Fungi From Yuggoth (Day of the Beast: The Dreamer)
The Bleeding Stone of Iphtah (White Dwarf #60)
City Beneath the Sands (Terror Australis)
The Glendale Fairies
Two Minutes On High (The Unspeakable Oath #11)

Video Game: Dark Corners of the Earth

Ruthanna Emrys version in the novel Winter Tide

Patreon Support: https://www.patreon.com/modern_mythos

We immortalized a number of our Patrons in a book of Mythosy artifacts appropriately titled, "Mythos Artifacts." Available now on the Miskatonic Repository on DriveThruRPG.com.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/390047/Mythos-Artifacts?manufacturers_id=2?affiliate_id=51821

Of Wrath & Blood is available as a print-on-demand book: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/271923/Of-Wrath-and-Blood?term=of+wrath+and+blood

We can't do this show alone. We want to thank our amazing editors Max Mahaffa and Edwin Nagy for their hard work and keen skills at making us sound awesome!

We also want to thank John Sumrow, for our badass logo. He's a very talented artist, so please follow him on Facebook, check out his official website, and please consider joining his Patreon account. Links in the show notes.

https://www.facebook.com/johnsumrow

http://www.johnsumrow.com

https://www.patreon.com/JohnSumrow

And finally, we want to thank The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets for generously allowing us to use their song, Gluttony, as our intro and outro music. If you are a fan of Lovecraft's writing and the Call of Cthulhu RPG, then you need to check out The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. Please check out their BandCamp site and their official band site. Links in the show notes.

https://thedarkestofthehillsidethickets.bandcamp.com/

http://thickets.net/