People of K'n-yan
'People of K'n-yan, AKA K'n-yanian, People of Xinaián, Xinaiánian, etc.
Origin: The People of K'n-yan are from H.P. Lovecraft and Zelia Bishop's "The Mound (fiction)".
Contents
Description
"...The tall, lean, darkly robed being with the filleted black hair and seamed, coppery, expressionless, aquiline face looked more like an Indian than anything else in my previous experience. And yet my trained ethnologist's eye told me at once that this was no redskin of any sort hitherto known to history, but a creature of vast racial variation and of a wholly different culture-stream.... This man's long-headedness was so pronounced that I recognised it at once, even at this vast distance and in the uncertain field of the binoculars. I saw, too, that the pattern of his robe represented a decorative tradition utterly remote from anything we recognise in southwestern native art. There were shining metal trappings, likewise, and a short sword or kindred weapon at his side, all wrought in a fashion wholly alien to anything I had ever heard of.... He was the product of a civilisation, I felt instinctively, though of what civilisation I could not guess.... As I neared the mound I saw the man very clearly, and fancied I could trace an expression of infinite evil and decadence on his seamed, hairless features.... All the creature's costume and trappings bespoke exquisite workmanship and cultivation...."
— H.P. Lovecraft and Zelia Bishop, "The Mound (fiction)"
The People of K'n-yan are a humanoid race, progenitors of modern humans and actually extraterrestrials who arrived in prehistoric times, that are sometimes said to resemble some unknown Native American race with a long, cone-shaped skull and access to advanced technology. They are immortal and have powerful psionic abilities, including telepathy and the ability to dematerialize at will. They are technologically advanced, using machines that employ principles of atomic energy, though they have largely abandoned their mechanized culture finding it unfulfilling.
Heresies and Controversies
- Alternative_theory. (source)
- Compare with the subterranean, technologically advanced, proto-human, albino, decadent, sadistic, and insane Deros.
Keeper Notes
Associated Mythos Elements
- races:
- Deros (compare/contrast as an alternate take on the People)
- Children Tulu (compare/contrast as an alternate take on the ancestors of the People)
- Lemurian (compare/contrast as an alternate take on the ancestors/cousins of the People)
- Gyaa-yothn, biologically-engineered, Unicorn-like horrors
- Y'm-bhi - biologically-engineered semi-human beasts brought back from the dead with atomic energy and hypnotism to serve as dog-like or mule-like slaves
- Serpent People, a debased, quadrupedal form appear to have populated red-litten Yoth before its conquest under the People
- deities:
- Yig, Father of Snakes; AKA Quetzalcoatl, Kukulcan
- Tiráwa, Father of Men
- Tulu
- Azathoth
- Nyarlathotep
- Tsathoggua
- Nug and Yeb
- Shub-Niggurath
- locations:
References
- fiction:
- H.P. Lovecraft and Zelia Bishop's "The Mound (fiction)" (where they are described in detail)
- H.P. Lovecraft's "The Whisperer in Darkness (fiction)", "The Call of Cthulhu (fiction)", "The Shadow Out of Time (fiction)", "At the Mountains of Madness (fiction)" (which share the background mythology)
- H.P. Lovecraft's "The Nameless City (fiction)", "The Rats in the Walls (fiction)" (bear some similarity to this story)
- H.P. Lovecraft and Zelia Bishop's "Children of Yig (fiction)" and "Medusa's Coil (fiction)"
- Call of Cthulhu Scenarios: Call of Cthulhu Scenarios
