K'n-yan
K'n-yan (or Xinaián) is a fictional, subterranean land in the Cthulhu Mythos. The underground realm was first described in detail in H. P. Lovecraft's revision of Zealia Bishop's "The Mound" (1940), in which it is discovered by the 16th century Spanish Conquistador Zamacona. Lovecraft also mentions K'n-yan in "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1930) and in his revision of Hazel Heald's "Out of the Aeons" (1935). The people of K'n-yan are sometimes referred to as the "Old Ones", a term of variable meaning in Lovecraft's fiction.
Summary
K'n-yan is a blue-litten cavern beneath Oklahoma. It is inhabited by a human-like race that resemble the Native Americans of the area, though they are actually extraterrestrials who arrived in prehistoric times. They are immortal and have powerful psionic abilities, including telepathy and the ability to dematerialize at will. They are also technologically advanced, using machines that employ principles of atomic energy, though they have largely abandoned their mechanized culture finding it unfulfilling.
The most populous city is Tsath, the capital of K'n-yan. It is named for Tsathoggua, a deity once worshiped there, but later deprecated after the inhabitants found out the true nature of the god. Other deities include Shub-Niggurath, Nug and Yeb, Ghatanothoa, and the Not-to-Be-Named One (Hastur?). The two most important ones, however, are Tulu (Cthulhu) and Yig. The denizens of K'n-yan often place idols of these deities in near proximity, as in the following passage from "The Mound": "[In] a pair of vast niches, one on each side, [the] monstrous, nitre-encrusted images of Yig and Tulu squatted, glaring at each other across the passage as they had glared since the earliest youth of the human world."
In ancient times, the people of K'n-yan traded with the humans of the surface world. But when geological calamities caused the continents of Atlantis and Lemuria to sink into the ocean, the people of K'n-yan sequestered themselves below ground, thereafter having no further dealings with the outer world.
Society
When the denizens of K'n-yan rejected their mechanistic lifestyle, they turned to a sort of socialistic aristocracy, controlled by a ruling class made "highly superior through selective breeding and social evolution". Individual behavior is dictated more by established social norms than the rule of law. Although K'n-yan attained great advances in art and science, its people have become increasingly hedonistic, decadent, and cruel.
Quotes
- "...[Mi-Go have] been inside the earth, too - there are openings which human beings know nothing of - some of them in these very Vermont hills - and great worlds of unknown life down there; blue-litten K'n-yan, red-litten Yoth, and black, lightless N'kai..." - HPL, "The Whisperer in Darkness"
Blasphemies and Heresies
- The population of K'n-yan are Deros, an ancient and technologically advanced but fallen, cruel and deranged race of troglodytic alien sadists who ritually abduct or torment surface-dwellers for their own mysterious, degenerate, and monstrous amusements. (Richard Sharpe Shaver)
See also
Appearances
- Daniel Harms - The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana (1998)
- H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop - "The Hound"
- H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald - "Out of the Aeons"
