Arkham City: Aliens!
Sticking to the Golden Age “supers vs mobsters” paradigm might not be Four Color enough for some folks, and certainly doesn’t showcase the science fictional nature of either superhero comics or the Cthulhu Mythos. While the alien invasion trope didn’t really come about until the Silver Age, I am setting this campaign in 1953 so the Atomic Horror angle works. Here’s a rundown of some Mythos creatures of extraterrestrial origin that could appear in a Mythos Supers game. For this go-’round I’m sticking to our own solar system.
Mercury
In the far future, the Great Race of Yith will inhabit the bodies of vegetable creatures living on Mercury. What this means to me, in short, is that there are vegetable people on Mercury right now. And as the Great Race of Yith are also time travelers, there’s no reason they’re not watching and manipulating the vegetable people already.
Venus
While most Mythos sources say the Serpent People originated on Earth, a few say they come from Venus. SERPENT MEN FROM VENUS! has a nice pulpy ring to it, so I’m sticking them there for this campaign.
Mars
The Aihai people live on Mars, as does the Elder God Vulthoom. Not much description is given of the Aihai, so I’ll assume them to be human-looking enough to not warrant description. One is described as having double rows of snaggy teeth, but it’s unclear if that individual was typical or unique. A giant vampiric plant with many tendrils, Vulthoom is supposedly a son of Yog-Sothoth. His servants are Aihai people who have been turned into vampires. As with Earth people, Vulthoom (and most of the Mythos) is merely a legend among the Aihai, and the Elder God sleeps in a cavern deep underground. (See the story “Vulthoom” by Clark Ashton Smith.)
*******
The nearly-extinct race of flying polyps, arch-enemies of the Great Race of Yith, once lived on *******. Just the imagery of polyps and *******’s gaseous nature gives me ideas. If the Yithians are up to something, the polyps are probably plotting revenge, or setting a trap with Earth caught in the middle.
******
Better known in the Mythos as Cykranosh. Tsathoggua and Atlach-Natha come from there. The wizard Eibon visited there. No word that it’s inhabited, but it’s either got atmosphere or Eibon has magic to survive the environment.
Uranus
Better known in the Mythos as L’gy’hx. The inhabitants are multi-legged metallic cubes that worship the Lrogg the bat-god. The Shan, insect people from the planet Shaggai, came as sort of missionaries set up a temple of Azathoth there.
Neptune
Better known in the Mythos as Yaksh. An unnamed species of fungoid creatures live there. Tsothoggua’s uncle Hziulquoigmnzhah lived there for a while, but the fungus people apparently annoyed him and he moved back to ******.
*****
I don’t want to hear any crap about ***** not being a planet. It was a planet in 1953, and that’s all that matters. *****, of course, is also known of Yuggoth, home of that funky fungi race, the Mi-Go.
Like
So picture this: a bunch of Reavers crash their ship on a frontier world. They survive, but the ship is wrecked. Naturally, they make their way to the nearest settlement. The player characters have to help defend the settlement, and evacuate the settlers to the next town over where there are better defenses. Of course, all of the settlers won’t fit in the player characters’ ship at once, and a staged evacuation would leave too few people behind to hold off the Reavers. So the player characters run decoy and draw the Reavers off so the settlers can escape.
