Azathoth

Overview

At the centre of infinity, where angled space gives way to something worse than void, there churns Azathoth, the Blind Idiot God, the Nuclear Chaos, the Daemon Sultan whose name the wise do not speak without cause. It has no mind, no purpose, no mercy; it is the ultimate indifference made manifest, and the cosmos itself may be no more than the thin, fevered dream of its slumber.

To contemplate Azathoth directly is counted among the gravest intellectual hazards in this archive. Several researchers who pursued the Dreamlands route toward Kadath returned with their faculties intact but their souls hollowed, as though they had glimpsed the stage machinery behind reality and found it operated by a idiot child.

Description

Accounts from the Dreamlands describe a churning, nuclear chaos, blind, mindless, surrounded by lesser entities who pipe and drum without cease. The flutes must never stop. The rhythm must never break. For if Azathoth should stir, if the Daemon Sultan should wake from its idiot dream, then all that is, the stars, the worlds, the lives of men, may vanish like a candle snuffed between fingers.

Whether 'awakening' would annihilate reality or merely end the dream of existence is disputed among our scholars. The dispute itself may be meaningless. No witness has returned from the throne-room of Azathoth with a report that satisfies the standards of evidence.

Historical Record

The entity enters the written record chiefly through accounts of the Dreamlands, that parallel realm accessible to sleepers, madmen, and those who know the old roads. Randolph Carter's quest for Unknown Kadath brought him near the court of the Outer Gods, where he learned that Earth's gods themselves pay homage to powers beyond the threshold.

The Necronomicon alludes to Azathoth obliquely, as it does to all things that predate human grammar. Later commentaries, some apocryphal, place the Daemon Sultan at the root of the mythos, the source from which Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, and the rest derive their terrible license to exist.

Archive Notes

No field expedition is authorized to seek Azathoth. Research is confined to comparative mythology and the analysis of Dreamlands testimony. Personnel exhibiting an obsessive interest in 'waking' the Daemon Sultan are to be referred for immediate evaluation. The piping, reported by multiple independent dreamers, must be understood as a binding, not a celebration.