[Abe Sargent]

Now, before we leave behind this idea of immediate impact, let’s take a look at another major element of impact to Call of Cthulhu, one you are likely already familiar with, but which we will reframe in a Mythos context.

Alfred Lord Tennyson’s great poem, The Kraken. Read it again for the first time.



The Kraken



Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant fins the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by men and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

The Kraken, a Norwegian myth, is clearly be seen in the nature of Call of Cthulhu. Is it just a coincidence that one of the major characters, the one who actually sees Cthulhu and survives, is Norwegian as well? The Kraken sleeps, far below the ocean, and will someday return.

Consider The Kraken against many of the other Gen 0 stories.