This article is a stub.
THIS IS MATERIAL FROM THE ICE CAVE. IT HAS BEEN TRIMMED BUT NOT YET BEEN FORMATTED.
From: Svend Andersen
Okay, given that both humans and Deep Ones are slumming shoggoth-matter, what about Serpent Men? Are they also part of the accidental shogoth-slops that the Elder Things left lying around? And does that affect the Serpent Men/Mi-go relationship?
From: Steven Kaye
Depends where you derive your serpent men from - if you go with Smith's cold-blooded scientists, they ultimately go back to Ubbo-Sathla (and men are descended from serpent men, somehow). I haven't read Howard's "The Shadow Kingdom," so I can't tell you where his serpent men originate. You could go pure Lovecraft and claim they're a variant of the reptile people from "The Nameless City." Hell, you could go with Machen and say whatever they were, they can breed with humans now ("The Novel of the Black Seal").
Well, either Campbell or Carter did call the Mi-Go "lizard-crustaceans," for no particular reason as far as I can tell. But I tend to keep my inhuman scientist races separate in origin - by all accounts, serpent men tend to shun humanity (unless they're in Chaosium modules at the time), whereas Mi-Go run around Vermont popping brains like they were candy.
From: Andrew D. Gable
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 23:29:24 -0400
I have read it, and can tell you it doesn't explain it. In fact, I don't believe Howard ever really explained where the Serpent Men came from.
On another Howard (well, Hyborian Age anyway)-Serpent Man note, one of the later Conan books talked about the S'tarra. Some kind of reptilian race, always associated with Serpent Men, thought to be a slave race or a degenerate branch (according to GURPS Conan). The latter theory is interesting, especially as they seem not to be the same as the "common" Degenerate Serpent Man. Products of Serpent Man seizure of Crinoid tech?
Machen's stories are excellent, perfect for someone like me who likes to exploit the Mythos side of faerie lore. Well, he was a member of the Golden Dawn, maybe he saw a few things…
That was in Campbell's "Mine on Yuggoth." Always liked Devil's Steps from that story…hell, the landmark even pops up in a scenario or two of mine. But the impression I always got was that Campbell got the FunGuys mixed up with the Yaddith ("Through the Gates of the Silver Key").
In conclusion: so, where are we? Evidently after the Crinoid Boyz petered out, their tech was free game for whatever Mythos race got there. And there's some Crinoids left here on Earth, right? And out wherever they came from in the first place? Seems to me that they might be a mite P.O.'d…
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 14:47:18 +0200
From: Davide Mana
If all life goes back to that fateful lab wastes spill at the time of the ETs, and the Snakes are the product of legit evolution (do not come from space/other dimensions/etc), then they are related to DOs, Humans and shoggoths.
But that's not so bad, you see.
In real life all living critters on this planer are related to each other through common ancestors. It's just a matter of distant relationship.
If they were first sighted in Permian, on the other hand, "legit evolution" is probably not the name of the game. Some say they did come from Venus…
Sounds like the kind of apocriphal stuff Decamp and Carter used to dream up in the '60s. They did more to kill the Conan character than any other out there.
ET tech is becoming a much sought after commodity all of a sudden, eh?
But it figures.
Date: 13 Apr 99 16:28:41 +0100
From: Peter Devlin
According to the official Chaosium output via Shannon Appel writing in 'Starry Wisdom' #3, Summer 1997:
SNIP
SNIP
I'm not too keen on the idea of the creation of a majority of races other than mankind and shoggoths being laid at the feet (tentacles) of the ETs and their experiments with Ubbo Sathla matter.
From: Davide Mana
Right - in fact Permian marks the first appearance of reptiles on land. And the erect posture left them with their forelimbs free and the wonderful world of manuality and manipulation to explore.
Approximately 275
25 m.y. require a pretty stiff evolutionary speed for a group to go from first appearance on land all the way to sapiens status. Today we postulate that _possibly_ some of the smaller Cretaceous saurians might have developed the intelligence and the manipulation ability of a chimp. But that's about 150 million years.
If really the serpent people made it so fast, most likely, Father Yig gave them quite a kick-start.
He had to earn that "father" title somehow, right?
And yet, if all living organisms native of the planet share a common ancestor, they must all go back to Ubbo-Sathla. The idea is the Ets did not actually create all of the groups, but simply created the premises for the groups to evolve.
On the other hand, there's no reason why at the very beginning, life started in a few places at the same time, following different patterns. A number of pocket creations, in other words.
This is not such an heretical viewpoint, after all - you just have to fiddle a bit with probability.
Anyway, a suggested reading and a fine general supplement for the library of people dealing on a first-name basis with Permian snake-men is
. Edwin H. Colbert - Wandering Lands and Animals - The story of Continental Drift and Animal Populations - 1985, Dover Books (ISBN 0-486-24918-2)
Not the state of the art (the original edition is 1973) but a definitive introduction to tectonic and its effects on palaeontology, doing without all the technical mumbo-jumbo. Reasonably cheap.
From: "Andrew D. Gable"
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 15:28:49 -0400
Like Stenonychosaurus? That little critter was supposed to be quite smart. And there was that Canadian scientist who made a model of what a living Stenonychosaurus could look like today…
I think some other people (maybe on this list) have proposed that the Valusian Serpent Men aren't really serpents, as such, just large, intelligent reptiles whose appearance was probably more along the lines of Dromaeosaurids (which, BTW, was what Stenonychosaurus was…). They were just called serpents figuratively.
I don't have a history of the Valusians handy - what was going on with them about the time that the Dromaeosaurids (Jurassic Park's Velociraptors…and allow me space to vent my anger—those things in the movie were Deinonychus, NOT Velociraptor!) evolved? And does the theory that Dromaeosaurids evolved into birds cast new light on the fate of the Valusians?
Do some digging around, and I'm sure you can draw lots & lots of parallels between the Valusians (the term I rather prefer) and the "saurian" aliens of UFO conspiracy lore.
BTW, the city of Yanyoga, mentioned in COC, would be now located in South Africa. Interesting, given the Karotechia-South Africa connections we've discussed. Have I answered my own question here, as to why Ssruthaa-Lully was wearing a swastika signet ring in At Your Door? Did the Nazis know about the snaky fellows?
ObDG: A palaeontologist working in South Africa discovers evidences of a new species of Dromaeosaurid. A species of unparalleled intellectual development, even among those intelligent carnivores. A species that possessed sentience. A species that also dates to AFTER the extinctions (IIRC, not too long before the rise of Catal Huyuk). Fun ensues as agents of the Karotechia endeavor to shut him up, and Delta Green endeavors to gain him as a friendly…what the hell, maybe SaucerWatch'll get in there too, since this guy's found the saurians.
From: "Stabernide -"
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 01:39:22 PDT
The term Serpent-people is something of a misomer - if, as the Starry Wisdom article in question is correct, then they're warm blooded like dinosaurs, which, as is now generally accepted, weren't actually reptiles (despite some superficial resembalances; mainly to crocodiles).
In my own Serpent-race rationale, Yig mates with early serpent-men (sorry, 'people'), which accelerates their early evolution, but 'donates' them the alien DNA that eventually leads to their degeneration;- the serpent-race adopts progressively more reptillian features over time, that they initially see as an indication of Yig's favour; re-making them in its own image. Eventually though, hatchlings begin to be born cold-blooded, and start to lose the use of their limbs, prefering to slither close to the ground. The alien DNA is switching off the serpent-race's 'native' genes, and switching on the 'degenerate' ones. They become less intelligent, and without independent heat sources, they die underground, where the serpent-race has always made its home.
Like I always tell my boys;- get it on with a Great Old One and you're just asking for trouble.